I'd Give Anything(24)

But then last year, for his seventeenth birthday, his grandfather bought him the saxophone of his dreams, an outrageously pricey piece of brass curvaceousness the sound of which I once recklessly joked rivaled the music of the spheres, which prompted CJ to go on a long diatribe about Pythagoras and celestial harmonies and the length of an instrument’s air column and musical notes and Aristotle, too, I think, along with a bouquet of pretty Latin phrases, and the upshot seemed to be that the music of the spheres was not in fact real and if it were real, it would not in fact be actual music, just math. But CJ does not dispute the fact that his saxophone makes a pure, gold, awesome sound.

The trouble is that because he cherishes it so much, he is terrified of ever not owning it. Which means, by extension, that he’s terrified someone will steal it. We have pointed out to CJ that people who have been happy as clams stealing gym shorts for the past six years are unlikely to suddenly graduate to expensive musical instruments, but CJ still worries. When the saxophone is at school, the band teacher Mr. Oliver keeps it locked in the band room closet to which he swears he owns the only key, but CJ still worries. Honestly, CJ is downright paranoid about it.

So last January, when we had to submit our proposals for our individual senior projects, CJ chose to research and write a paper on the architectural history of the school.

“It started off as a house built in the early 1800s, and then it was built onto, and onto, and built onto again. And in between, old parts were torn down and the inside was reconfigured over and over, and air-conditioning was put in.”

We were outside in one of the courtyards, eating lunch. CJ had just started researching his project and was doing the thing he did when he got excited, which was jitter his legs under the table and flutter his hands frantically around in the air like two white moths.

Kirsten leaned her chin on her fist. “Air-conditioning vents and drywall. Fascinating.”

Gray laughed. “It is, though,” he said. “It’s like the whole story of the school is folded up inside its walls.”

“Exactly!” said CJ, jittering and fluttering faster. “And the history of the school is folded up inside the history of the city and the state and the country. For instance, there used to be a full kitchen back near the gym so that girls could learn home ec, while the boys had gym class. Mr. Foulkes the old librarian told me that.”

“What’s home ec?” asked Kirsten.

“Exactly!” said CJ, practically screeching. “And also there was a room full of typewriters.”

“What’s a typewriter?” I asked, scratching my head.

“See what I mean? So cool. And that’s not all.”

“How could there be more?” I asked, smiling at him. To me, an excited, moth-handed CJ is one of the sweetest sights on the planet.

“I know, but there is!” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Hiding places.”

“Who do you need to hide from, honey?” asked Kirsten, frowning.

“Not for me,” whispered CJ.

“Oh!” I whispered. “For your sax!”

“Which no one is ever going to attempt to steal. Ever,” said Kirsten, rolling her eyes. “Ever.”

“Hey,” said Gray. “Maybe not. But if a really good hiding place gives CJ peace of mind, that’s worth a lot, right?”

It was a Gray thing to say. I picked up his hand with its hills-and-valleys landscape of tendons and kissed it.

And now, months later, when we were supposed to be at lunch, here we were in the basement. Which, as it turns out, isn’t just one basement, but three or at least two and a half: one that the custodial staff still use occasionally, then a deeper one you get to through a door, and then another, very small one a few stone steps down from the second one, also behind a door.

Levels! Like Hell!

For some reason, I’d expected dankness. Damp floors and sweating walls, but the place was dry and dusty and crumbly and musty-smelling.

Since CJ had spent the last six months exploring the building and studying old blueprints and building plans and photographs from the school archives, he had a lot—and I mean a lot—of information to share, which he did in a nonstop stream of chatter that resounded off the basement walls. In addition, he wore, on his little blond head, a pith helmet with a headlamp, like a spelunker, so that every time he turned toward someone, he blinded them. And, for reasons known only to himself, he carried a baseball bat, which he occasionally used to pound on something, usually a wall, in order to demonstrate either its solidity or its hollowness.

CJ in Hell was something to behold.

The third-level basement was really just a large room containing a big metal tank-looking thing with a few little doors in it. CJ said it was a coal-burning gravity furnace.

“Defunct now, of course,” he said.

“Of course,” said Kirsten. Kirsten wasn’t a fan of the basement. She kept pulling (mostly) imaginary cobwebs from her hair.

“But you know what the furnace is now?” CJ said, grinning.

“I know you’ll tell us,” said Kirsten.

“What?” asked Gray.

CJ bonked the side of the furnace with his bat, and the clang made us jump.

“The hiding place!” he said.

“You’re going to come all the way down here every day to hide your sax?” I asked. “CJ. Honey. Is that not a little crazy? And how will you not get caught?”