A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (9 page)

23. SAM

Melody was pissed but I didn’t have time to worry about
that. I had a couple of sets to put together before Colton’s brother’s friend’s
party tonight, and I needed to bring my A-game. The mysterious Lily from the
record store had kept her word and texted me for info on the gig, and I had
sent her the address. Presumably, that meant that she was going to be there.
Presumably that also meant that she was serious about having a gig she could
offer me. If she could really guarantee me a thousand bucks, I could finally
afford to buy a crappy car of my own, which meant I could potentially land more
gigs and upgrade my rig.

I decided to warm up the crowd with a couple of my old
standbys and then slip into a couple of layered tracks. After that, I’d play
some trance and some dubstep, and then I would read the mood of the crowd and
see which direction to go. I wasn’t fooling myself into thinking I was an
undiscovered
Tiesto
or anything, but I knew I had a
certain flair for the dramatic. And if things went well, I had something that
would make Lily smile, swoon even, but somehow I didn’t think that a girl like
Lily would ever be caught dead swooning for anyone.
Fine by
me.
After being chased by Tara and ignored by Melody for the past year,
I could dig a chick like Lily.

I copied the sets I’d just finished to a backup solid state
hard drive which had cost me a month’s salary but was totally worth it – super
fast, no skips, compact and lightweight. It was one of my favorite additions to
my rig.

The phone rang—not my cell phone, but the land line—and I
practically jumped. That phone never rang unless it was my mom calling or a
bill collector. I lifted the handset to check the caller ID and saw ANONYMOUS
CALLER. Groaning, I answered, hoping that it was Mom.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sammie.
Just calling to let
you know I won’t be in on Sunday like I originally thought. I had to stay a
little longer to close some sales, but it looks like we might be eating steak
and lobster this month instead of mac n’ cheese. Don’t be mad, okay?”

“Sure, Mom.”
Secretly I was
relieved. That gave me an extra few days to clean the house – especially the
kitchen.
“You at a party?
Sounds like you’re at a
party.”

“What? Oh, just a business lunch. You know how the clients
love to take us out to lunch on the company dime.”

“Yeah.
So I’ll see you Tuesday.
Sorry I’ve got to run, I have to go to work – I took an extra shift.”

“Oh, sure kiddo.
See you Tuesday.”

We hung up and then I punched the nearest wall. Not hard
enough to make a hole in the sheetrock, but that’s only because I didn’t feel
like having to explain to her why I’d damaged the house. She would pretend not
to understand. She would pretend she hadn’t been drinking. She would pretend
that me being an ungrateful kid is what drove her to drinking in the first
place.

And then just like that, I flipped that little switch inside
that let me go from caring too much to not caring at all, and I went back to my
room, my music, and my meager wardrobe. Whatever else happened tonight, I was
going to look the part. Lily’s comment about my work clothes the other day had
stung a little; I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

#

The party was lame. But I kept telling myself that was
because the people were lame, and not my music. The lights were too bright, no
one cared about my samples or my mixes and the only thing they had to drink was
a keg of crappy domestic beer in the corner, which meant I either drank beer or
I drank nothing at all. What the hell kind of party didn’t even have soda for
the designated drivers? Broke-ass college party, that’s what. Not-very-gently
used furniture, posters stuck to the walls with double-sided sticky tape,
overly serious guys with beards like
billy
goats, and
stuck-up girls with under-arm hair… if this is what college parties were like,
I resolved never to go to any.

So I drank nothing because I wasn’t going to chimp out on my
own vow to never spin and drink at the same time. Luckily I had bought
a sports
drink on the way over and had that with me – blue
and salty. Better than nothing.

The beats played on and I took a look around the room. My
music seemed to be falling on deaf ears, but I was sure that was at least due
to the fact that it was early and the lights were so bright. I took a pause
during one of my longer tracks and wandered around the small apartment living
room, turning off the overhead lights on the ceiling fan and turning on a lamp
in the corner instead. Then I wandered over to the hallway and turned that
light off, but turned on the one in the bathroom and let the bathroom door open
a crack. There was no help for the kitchen – there were people playing drinking
games at the table and it was pretty crowded, but at least the main space of
the place had a more mellow mood. I turned to head back to my corner when I
spotted Lily by the door.

“Mood lighting.
Nice touch.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked, motioning her back
to my table. I snuck behind and put my hand on my mouse to make sure the next
track was lined up and ready.

“Just long enough to see you strategically turning off
lights. That’s a good sign that you know how to read a crowd. We’ll see if they
respond. I’m going to get a beer. Want one?” Her gaze was level and her teeth
flashed in a slim grin.

I debated. I didn’t want a beer, on the other hand. I wanted
that gig she offered and I didn’t want to turn her off since I thought maybe
she’d be interested in hanging out. But I didn’t know her well enough to sell
myself out yet, so I just shook my head. “
Nah,
had a
late dinner and there’s no room.
Maybe later when the party
gets going.”
Was that too lame?

She cocked her head, shrugged and waded off to get her red
plastic cup filled with cheap domestic.

24. MELODY

Gramps and I sat outside in the backyard, starry sky above
and a small fire in the terracotta chiminea. His wheelchair was angled so that
he could see the chiminea on his right and the fireflies in the herb garden on
his left. There weren’t as many this year as there usually were, and I idly
wondered why.

“Melodious girl,” he said, his voice crackling from fatigue,
“Will you help me with my shoes and my socks? I can’t seem to reach the laces.”

“Sure, Gramps.
Are your feet hot?”

He smiled at me, his eyes twinkling in the firelight. “I
want to feel the energy of the earth beneath my feet.”

He pretended to be ticklish while I pulled the brown oxfords
off of his feet and gingerly peeled back his socks. He flexed his old toes, the
crackling of his joints interspersed with a sigh of contentment. Then he put
his feet down, one at a time, in the rich green grass and leaned his head back
as if he were enjoying some exotic foot treatment at a spa.

“I miss this, being connected to the earth. But it’s hard
for my old bones to get out of the chair and garden like I used to.”

“I know Gramps. I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to
say.

He chuckled. “My girl, don’t be sorry. I’ve led a very
interesting and fulfilling life.” His gaze wandered across the yard and paused
on the clubhouse. “I do miss your brother, though.”

I felt a pang of regret. I almost told Gramps about
Matthew’s ghost, but when I opened my mouth to say something about it, I
couldn’t get anything out. And there was this sort of pressure against my lips
– I may have imagined it – but it was like someone was trying to keep me quiet.
The sensation was odd enough that I had stopped listening to Gramps’s rambling
until he said my name again.

“I’m sorry, Gramps. My attention wandered for a second. What
did you say?”

“I asked you whether you remember what it feels like to go
barefoot in the grass. You used to do it all the time when you were small. You
never wanted to wear shoes, not even in the winter.”

That made me smile. I did remember that. I would go barefoot
everywhere that Mom and Dad let me. “I would say I wanted to feel the earth
bubble.”

“That’s right, you did. Do you think you can still feel it?”

I looked sharply at him, but he was leaning back with his
eyes closed.

“I don’t know,” I said after a long moment. Was I actually
considering the question? A few weeks ago I would have dismissed it out of
hand. Could I afford to just dismiss things like that now? No, I didn’t think I
could.

“Why don’t you give it a shot?
You and me,
sitting here together with our feet in the grass.
It’s a good night for
it.”

It didn’t hurt to humor him. And maybe I was a little bit
curious myself about what was happening to me, so I chucked off my Converse
sneakers and peeled off the little footie socks I always wore and planted my
feet squarely in the grass. I folded my arms over my knees and then after a
moment, I decided just to sit crisscross in the grass, bare legs and feet on
the ground. And for a long moment all I felt was prickly from the green blades,
and cool from the moist earth.

And then, I felt a bubbling sensation, as if tiny little
fizzy bubbles were zooming up my skin. Just a little at first, like the buzz in
my legs or feet on the verge of falling asleep, a mild vibration. It started in
my left calf muscle and spread to my left leg and foot. After another moment,
the same buzzing, only slightly less, spread through my right leg and foot.
“Holy cow,” I said, not quite believing what I was feeling.

“Just wait,” said Gramps. “It gets better.”

“What do you mean?” I said, but suddenly I knew. The slight
buzzing began to increase in frequency and
crescendoed
.
The buzz became more of a wave and it spread from my feet, up my legs, into
my rear-end
, through my back and shoulder. Suddenly I felt
light, like I could float away if I wanted to. My hair got staticky and rose
around my head like a halo.
“Gramps?”
I
said,
a catch in my throat. “What’s happening?”

He looked at my wide eyes and chuckled. “You’re completing
the circuit, my dear girl. The earth has a flow to it. Anyone can feel it when
they are paying attention. For them it feels like a buzz, or a bubbling, like
when you were little. But for some, the buzzing takes hold, gets a little
faster and when you’re ready, it just flows right through you like you’re a
live wire.
A part of the circuit.”

I listened to him with half an ear, but the rest of me was
overcome with awe. I could feel the energy around my body, and I could feel the
frequency of the earth. It had a deep, slow crest and trough to it, like a sine
wave. I remembered hearing about that in physics class; my teacher had called
it the Schumann Resonance.

I tried to concentrate on the wave and make it spread across
me, but it grew fainter, farther away, and it was gone. I was disappointed for
a moment and then euphoric. “Holy cow,” I said again, my voice reverent.

“Holy cow, indeed,” said Gramps as he made fists in the
grass with his toes. “It gets even better with practice.”

25. SAM

The crowd responded to the change in lighting and music like
a cat who’s found a warm spot beneath
it’s
feet. Guys started leaning in, girls started laughing,
it
was almost as if they liked each other instead of circling like a pack of
hyenas, wary and hungry. I suppose it helped that a crew of hot girls showed up
and started dancing in the middle of the living room, but I didn’t mind taking
credit for that. A couple of them even checked me out, which was weird, since they
were at least two or three years older than I was. Maybe there was a shortage
of good-looking guys at college? Could be the only ones they knew had
billy
goat beards? I turned to look at Lily, who was at
that moment studying me with sleepy eyes and a
slitted
smile.

“You’re pretty good,” she said. And then her eyes slid from
my face, down my torso to my crotch and back up again. Her grin widened.

I felt my face flush. “I bet you say that to all the fresh
meat,” I said, looking away quickly to switch tracks and also to avoid being
even more embarrassed. Apparently I was really out of practice when it came to
flirting. I snuck a glance. She was outright grinning now.

“Not really. You’ve got the gig.” She pulled a slip of paper
out of her leather top and handed it to me. “Be at this address on Friday night
by 7:00pm. We’ve got speakers and an amp. You just need to bring your rig. The
rave starts at 9:00 p.m. – I assume you have something more suitable to play
than just a rerun of this stuff?”

I took the paper and looked at it – the address was for some
place on the edge of downtown Fort Worth. I’d never been over there, but I knew
where it was. “Yeah,” I said, this time looking directly at her. I wasn’t shy
about my music at all. “I’ve got it covered.”

She took a long swallow from her red plastic cup, her eyes
twinkling at me over the rim. Damn, she was hot.

“Party’s wrapping up,” I said. “You
wanna
get a cup of coffee or something after this?”

“Hell no,” she said. “I never stay till the bitter end. Come
late, go home early, before the vomit and trash detail.” She cocked her head.
“I’ll see you Friday.” It wasn’t a question.

She turned to walk away, and before she got to the door, I
had my mash-up with
Dexy’s
Midnight Runners
'Come
On
Eileen' up and running. She paused at the door, hand on
the jamb, and gave me a long, appraising look. This time she didn’t glance down
at my crotch, but she didn’t have to – I felt him waking up as if she had. She
was hot and she knew it—that just made her hotter. She threw up the peace sign
and left the party. Somehow I managed not to whoop out loud like some sort of
Neanderthal on the prowl.

#

It took me a little over an hour to lug my stuff back
downstairs and load it into Colton’s car. Having my own car would be so much
better. In that respect, I was really looking forward to the gig and the cash
it would bring. But it was more than that. There was a promise of something
with Lily, and thoughts of her and that tight little leather top she was
wearing were really distracting.

Even now, lying here on my bed, trying to go to sleep, I was
distracted.
Lily, music, the rave, having my own car, Lily in
my car, making out with Lily in my car.
Argh! If my brain didn’t quiet
down, I was never going to fall asleep.

An owl hooted, deep and low outside my window, and I looked
to see if Mr. Smith was on the verge of becoming owl food again, but I didn’t
see him sauntering past Thompson’s. Instead, the street was deserted, the
houses were dark, and it was only the owl, swooping past the streetlight that
filled the empty night with the sound of its hoot and the flap of its wings.

Even the owl couldn’t
creep
me out
tonight. My phone flashed from the bedside table and chirped once to let me
know I had a text message. It was Melody, checking to see if I was back from my
gig.

Yeah. It’s late.
Going to sleep.
Talk to you later
, I replied, then
thumbed the phone off so it wouldn’t wake me up. I didn’t feel like talking to
her tonight, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I’d finally had enough.

Another ten or fifteen minutes flew by, my thoughts a
chaotic miasma of images of Lily naked combined with ideas of music for the
rave. Finally, I decided I would never sleep unless I got some of that energy
out. When the creative juices were flowing, you just had to go with it.

I powered up my rig and started fishing through my tracks.
On a whim, I thumbed through some of Mom’s old vinyl. I pulled out some Gracie
Slick.

Something old, meet something new.