As I stared at the spinning clay in front of me, the lump became a blur. The harder I focused on it, the more the room dissolved around it, until the clay seemed to be spinning the classroom, the table, my chair along with it. As if we were all tied together in this whirlwind of constant motion, set to the rhythm of the melody from the music room. The room was disappearing around me. Slowly, I reached out a hand and dragged one fingertip along the clay.
Then a flash, and the whirling room dissolved into another image—
I was falling.
We were falling.
I was back in the dream. I saw her hand. I saw my hand grabbing at hers, my fingers digging into her skin, her wrist, in a desperate attempt to hold on. But she was slipping; I could feel it, her fingers pulling through my hand.
“Don’t let go!”
I wanted to help her, to hold on. More than I had ever wanted anything. And then, she fell through my fingers….
“Ethan, what are you doin’?” Mrs. Abernathy sounded concerned.
I opened my eyes, and tried to focus, to bring myself back. I’d been having the dreams since my mom died, but this was the first time I’d had one during the day. I stared at my gray, muddy hand, caked with drying clay. The clay on the potter’s wheel held the perfect imprint of a hand, like I had just flattened whatever I was working on. I looked at it more closely. The hand wasn’t mine, it was too small. It was a girl’s.
It was hers.
I looked under my nails, where I could see the clay I had clawed from her wrist.
“Ethan, you could at least try to make somethin’.” Mrs. Abernathy put her hand on my shoulder, and I jumped. Outside the classroom window, I heard the rumble of thunder.
“But Mrs. Abernathy, I think Ethan’s soul is communicatin’ with him.” Savannah giggled, leaning over to get a good look. “I think it’s tellin’ you to get a manicure, Ethan.”
The girls around me started to laugh. I mashed the handprint with my fist, turning it back into a lump of gray nothing. I stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans as the bell rang. I grabbed my backpack and sprinted out of the room, slipping in my wet high-tops when I turned the corner and almost tripping over my untied laces as I ran down the two flights of stairs that stood between the music room and me. I had to know if I had imagined it.
I pushed open the double doors of the music room with both hands. The stage was empty. The class was filing past me. I was going the wrong way, heading downstream when everyone else was going up. I took a deep breath, but knew what I would smell before I smelled it.
Lemons and rosemary.
Down on the stage, Miss Spider was picking up sheet music, scattered along the folding chairs she used for the sorry Jackson orchestra. I called down to her, “Excuse me, ma’am. Who was just playing that—that song?”
She smiled in my direction. “We have a wonderful new addition to our strings section. A viola. She’s just moved into town—”
No. It couldn’t be. Not her.
I turned and ran before she could say the name.
When the eighth-period bell rang, Link was waiting for me in front of the locker room. He raked his hand through his spiky hair and straightened out his faded Black Sabbath T-shirt.
“Link. I need your keys, man.”
“What about practice?”
“I can’t make it. There’s something I’ve gotta do.”
“Dude, what are you talkin’ about?”
“I just need your keys.” I had to get out of there. I was having the dreams, hearing the song, and now blacking out in the middle of class, if that’s even what you’d call it. I didn’t know what was going on with me, but I knew it was bad.
If my mom was still alive, I probably would’ve told her everything. She was like that, I could tell her anything. But she was gone, and my dad was holed up in his study all the time, and Amma would be sprinkling salt all over my room for a month if I told her.
I was on my own.
Link held out his keys. “Coach is gonna kill you.”
“I know.”