Rhythm & Clues: A Young Adult Novel Read online

  A minute later, Gavin lowered the phone and stared at it for a few seconds before sliding it into his pocket. He returned to me and leaned next to me against the car, both of us looking out toward the lights flickering to life on the boardwalk.

  “So?” I asked, breath stilled.

  “Got the machine. So now I wait.”

  “For…what?”

  His comment about writing a death sentence didn’t exactly ease my fears.

  He scrubbed at his face. “I meddled and screwed everything up. I’m waiting to see if I can fix it all again.

  “Gavin…” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to fix the situation. But suddenly it didn’t matter. Words wouldn’t have mattered. Despite the heaviness of the situation, a smile crept onto his face. We stared like that for a second longer than comfortable. He started to turn away, and suddenly, before rational thought would make me stop, I placed my palms against his chest, and pushed his back against the side of the car. I stepped in front of him and rose onto my tiptoes like a ballerina balancing for her final act, and then, catching his confused expression as I came toward him, I pressed my lips against his.

  They became soft and moist, moving against mine. He slouched while I flattened my feet, my hand raking through his hair, his fingers running up and down my sides. The kiss grew more passionate.

  Until the ringing cell phone interrupted us. Gavin wrenched his mouth from mine and pushed me away a little too aggressively. My lips still tingled from his kiss as walked out of earshot to take the call.

  Present Day

  As we zoom down deserted streets toward the beach, Isla takes a sip from her Starbucks’ coffee we’d stopped for. “It’s way too early.”

  I fight back a yawn. It is too early. But I would have stayed up all night if it meant finding Gavin. Instead we decide to get to the beach arcade exactly when it opens at seven A.M.

  There, we head straight for Skee ball since the stuffed bunny led us here. The place is deserted except for a custodian washing the display cases. The cheery bleeps and blips sound pathetic without the rush of customers or the glee of little children enhancing the sounds. We scour the machine, finding no obvious notes left by missing boys, so I duck under the Skee-ball machine to look beneath. Something catches my eye on the side of the machine, shimmering in that same shiny permanent marker. In Gavin’s handwriting.

  My heart swells. It reads: OMAR PARKS.

  I show the note to the girls. “Do you guys know who this person is?”

  Isla shakes her head.

  Sabrina throws up her hands in frustration. “This is ridiculous, we have one clue left and we’re not getting anywhere.”

  Isla extracts her cell phone from her purse and pounds the keys. “There are a lot of hits for Omar Parks…and a lot of people with that name.”

  “Search Omar Parks and…” I flip through the clues, trying to figure out which would be the best query string. Maybe the two name clues are tied together. “Dennis Cunningham.”

  Isla’s face sinks. “Nope. Nothing.”

  “Lockhart?” Sabrina eyes us with a look that says, if this doesn’t work, we’re done.

  “Oooh,” Isla says as her finger slides over one of the options. Her eyes widen at the article. “Oh, that’s kind of weird. I don’t know if this is real or a prank.”

  A surge of hope rushes through me. I feel like we teleported toward progress, that much closer to finding Gavin.

  Sabrina’s hands curl into fists. “If you don’t tell us in the next three seconds…”

  “Chill.” She glares at us. “This article says a ghost named Omar Parks haunts the music corridor at Lockhart boarding school. Supposedly this Omar guy died in there in the nineties and students have been using this excuse for years to get out of their music composition final exams.” She waves her phone in the air. “Sounds like a prank to me because this article was published on Halloween a few years ago.”

  “Great. A hoax.” Sabrina slumps onto the floor of the arcade, narrowly missing sitting on a pile of dried gum by an inch. “That helps us oh so much.”

  Still, my pulse thumps. While it does sound like a ghost story made up to scare students on Halloween, there’s one part that sticks out to me. The music corridor. That fits with our music-related clues. “Wait, Zack, does it say how he died? Or the exact date? May 19, 1994 perhaps?”

  Sabrina’s face goes pale, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing I am. That the Tullys had something to do with Omar’s death.

  Isla purses her lips. “Sorry, it doesn’t.”

  Sabrina gives a satisfied nod. “Told you, that date refers to my parents’ engagement.”

  Isla checks a few more sites and search strings but the information about Omar Parks runs dry.

  As she’s about to slide her phone back into her purse, it rings with the most obnoxious pop song ring tone that’s ever existed. She glances at the caller and groans. I catch a brief glimpse of Zack’s name on the screen.

  I furrow my brows. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “I do not feel like having a conversation about our non-existent relationship right now.”

  The phone continues to ring, and I remember my promise to Zack. “He clearly likes you. Maybe you should give him another chance.”

  She shoves her phone back into her purse, avoiding my eyes.

  When the ringing ends, I glance at Sabrina and to my horror, her eyes are rimmed with red and she’s sniffling.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Sabrina says when her eyes find mine, her voice thick with emotion. “But my parent’s aren’t murderers. It’s gotta be a coincidence.” She buries her face in her hands. Whimpers escape from her mouth in small hitches.

  I place my palm on her shoulder and squeeze. “Sabrina…” I bite my lip. I know I should side with her, tell her I don’t think they murdered this Omar person. But it answers a lot of questions. Why they lead such secret lives. Why they’re so into church. If you break a commandment, you’d want to repent for it. I think about what Gavin had once said, how his parents used the excuse that they didn’t agree with certain sermons. Maybe they avoided the ones about murder.

  “Okay, we don’t know how Omar died.” Isla, the voice of reason, bends next to us. “It could have been an accident. Or maybe your parents were trying to save him and failed. They’re obviously not in jail, so they couldn’t have been convicted of murder. Maybe Gavin left us this info for an entirely different reason. Like evidence that they’re heroes. Besides, Omar’s death and that song Dennis wrote don’t seem to be connected.”

  Her words make my chest ache. I hate that she can see the good in people when I only fixated on the potential bad.

  “Fine. But can you guys promise me something?” Sabrina wipes her nose and stands up. “Just keep an open mind with things. No one’s guilty yet.”

  My whole life, people judged me by a few rumors spread by my old-and-new sidekick Isla. I’d always wanted the benefit of the doubt too. “Deal,” I agree.

  “Works for me,” Isla says.

  “Good, let’s get the last clue then.” Sabrina jets for the exit before I can tell her I don’t exactly know where the last clue is. We already hit the beach, and that was the last night I saw Gavin.

  Isla takes off after Sabrina so I drag myself away from skee ball and run after them. Sabrina makes her own short cut, dashing through willowy reeds that separate the boardwalk from the parking lot.

  I follow behind, weaving through the willows. They graze against my skin, sending goosebumps along my legs. I giggle as they tickle me, remembering the last time I felt like this. The last time I was with Gavin.

  I stop short. Suddenly, I know what the white powder refers to. Where all the answers lie. And I know why I hadn’t thought of it before. I didn’t dig deep enough. Gavin tried to clue me in by picking two events from our past that took place the same night: the Mermaid Lounge and hospital adventures. And the white powder refers to something that happened im
mediately after the beach.

  Isla and Sabrina notice my hesitation and double back toward me.

  “What’s wrong?” Sabrina asks.

  “I know where the last clue leads.” My voice grows tight. “Sabrina, it’s your house. That’s why your parents locked you out.”

  Late Last Friday Night

  “False alarm. Not the call I was waiting for.” Gavin stared at the caller ID on the ringing phone. “It’s my mom trying to reach Sabrina. We should probably get back to the beach.”

  My head felt cloudy from the kiss and the abrupt way he pushed out of my grasp to take a call he didn’t need. I nodded, trying to make sense of his mixed signals.

  On the walk back, his fingers found mine, clasping tight. I concentrated on keeping one foot in front of the other and not the way my knees threatened to buckle. The kiss played in my mind, covering the image of the wooden planks beneath my feet. Just talk to him, I scolded myself as his grip on me loosened.

  I dragged my eyes up from the boardwalk floor only to find him preoccupied, checking the cell phone. Well, I guess that explains what he’s thinking about. Comfortable silence, meet your new identity: awkward. I ripped my hand out of his to give him the space he clearly wanted.

  After the longest walk of my life, we told his parents Sabrina and Isla had taken off.

  Chuck’s face drained of color. “We’ll eat in the car,” he said, giving his wife a dirty look.

  She crossed her arms. “Don’t look at me this time. You’re the one who spoke to Isla’s dad.”

  “Not now,” Chuck said through gritted teeth.

  We packed like we were in a competition on a race gameshow. Inside the car, burgers sat on our laps, bare even though the Tully’s had brought an array of condiments. Chuck opted to drive instead of eat, moving hand over hand through turns and placing his palms back at exactly ten and two. The radio stayed off, and soon my new friend, awkward silence, joined the car ride.

  I chewed my burger slowly, trying not to make any sound. Gavin barely touched his hamburger and kept one hand shoved inside his pocket where the cell phone lay concealed.

  I caught Josephine several times in through the rear-view mirror. But it wasn’t me she was looking at.

  At the house, Josephine and Chuck hustled to the door, whispering to each other as they went, too inaudible to hear. I reached inside my purse to grab my keys and stiffened. The blackmail envelope was inside. Josephine must have slipped it in while we were packing.

  Gavin checked the phone one last time. “It’s early. Want to come inside?”

  Inside his house? It was a place that seemed so forbidden before, closed to me, like my heart was to him. Both now open.

  I nodded without hesitation, forgetting about the envelope, about anything that didn’t involve his lips. Everyone was acting strange but this was the most normal thing I had to cling to, Gavin and me.

  He didn’t move. “Listen, just please…pretend like nothing strange is going on. It’s safer if they think you’re oblivious.”

  “Safer?” The severity of his words was like cold ice on my spine.

  He tried to downplay it with a forced shrug as he pushed open the door. “Just being cautious.”

  Josephine sat at the mahogany kitchen table, her head drooped in her hands while Chuck perched on a stool next to the sunflower-colored wall, stabbing his fingers on laptop keys with the force of a punch. Neither glanced up at us, and I only had a quick view of the cheery kitchen before Gavin led me toward a set of stairs, but it was enough to send my stomach flipping.

  Gavin opened the door to the basement.

  I risked speaking despite flattening myself against the wall and trying to stay as unobtrusive as possible. “Your room is downstairs?”

  He looked confused for a second. “Oh, right. I forgot you haven’t been here.” He shut the basement door and changed directions, leading me down a long, narrow corridor that lined the kitchen. “I’ll show you that first.”

  How could he have forgotten something like that? Had Isla been here so often in the last two weeks that Gavin associated all other friends with her level of familiarity of his house? Her level of clearance?

  Flipping on the hall light, he led me up the stairs, and we passed an open door that had to be Sabrina’s room. A large, frilly canopy shaded a lavender bedspread, the quilting ornate.

  Gavin pushed open the next door and gestured for me to enter. My eyes flew to his bed, his blue comforter made up to hospital standards, no creases in the entire blanket. A wooden chest and bureau lined the pale blue walls, not an object resting on top, only the gleam of Pine Sol shine.

  Every item had a place. No dust. No life. No personality. This wasn’t Gavin’s room; this was an extension of his parents’ strict reign.

  “And here I thought you’d have posters of scantily glad girls.” I flourished my hand toward his bare walls that looked so depressing even with the pop of color.

  He let out a sharp laugh. “I lost the decorating battle with my parents and that one didn’t seem important enough to pursue when I could be fighting for things like school.” He inched toward me, and I caught a whiff of sea salt and coconut sunscreen. “I never really thought I’d have a girl in here.”

  A nervous flutter warmed my belly. Did that mean that Isla wasn’t in here?

  Before I could ask, or even think about that more, he opened the drawer next to me and extracted a sharpie marker from a shoe box inside. “The walls have been empty too long. Leave your autograph.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he uncapped the pen and inscribed the walls with the same song lyric he wrote on Krystal’s cast. They were small and huddled just above his bed but already they made the place feel like home.

  I waggled my fingers for the market and added a new lyric beneath that I composed on the spot.

  These words erase / This barren, empty space.

  I didn’t tell Gavin how I hoped the lyrics applied more to the distance between us these past few months than the room itself.

  Gavin took the marker from me and set it back on his desk. “I have something I want to show you, and I don’t want to waste any time.” He patted the his pocket. “In case the phone rings.”

  We crept down the carpeted basement staircase, which opened into a makeshift classroom, complete with two desks, a blackboard, several shelves filled with textbooks and notebooks, and a couch in the back. Cozier than any classroom I’d ever been in. My throat closed with something that could only be described as jealousy.

  “I got the idea from Harry Potter,” he explained, even though I didn’t know what he was talking about until we rounded a corner and he opened a door on the side of the staircase. A closet under the stairs.

  I blinked at him. “Your parents let you read Harry Potter?”

  He laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say let so much as didn’t know about it. Why do you think I loved going to the library?” He removed a large white tub from the closet and set it outside the door. “Okay, come in.”

  I crawled inside, my knees depressing fluffy pillows.The ceiling looked like stairs in reverse, made out of wood. The walls were white and unimaginative, a blank canvas. He shut the door but didn’t turn on another light, caging me into darkness. The glow seeping in from beneath the door created the eerie halo of him lying down.

  “I come here to get way.” Hands gripped my waist and tugged. I toppled down, landing with a splat on Gavin’s chest before rolling over next to him. My heart thudded as he said, “Sometimes this feels like my real room.”

  I stretched out my legs and sunk into the comfort. The place smelled like it was freshly painted. “Did your dad renovate this recently? It smells new.”

  “That’s just because you’re here.” He trailed his fingers along my forearm, releasing waves of tingles.

  I closed my eyes, relaxing, my heartbeat slowing under the lull of his touch.

  “This is what I wanted to show you.” Gavin shifted, ripping his fingers from
my arm. I could only make out his vague silhouette moving to the far end of the closet. The blankets rustled, and he plucked something out from under them that banged against the wall with a hollow sound. His body returned beside me, radiating heat. The tinny sound of a music chord strummed, along with the metallic scrape of strings. They squeaked as his fingers fumbled for a new key.

  I ran my fingers over the smooth wood of an acoustic guitar. Smaller than normal. A ukulele probably.

  “I have to play quietly. Even with all the freedom going on here, I’m not sure my parents would approve of this.”

  A secret ukulele apparently. “Your parents are weird.”

  “Maybe, but I think I understand where they’re coming from now.”

  “Really?” I started to sit up, desperate to know what was going on. Why he suddenly had so much power over his parents. What phone call he was waiting for.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. And I wasn’t sure if he was referring to his parents overhearing or because he didn’t want me to ask anymore questions. Instead he said, “I don’t know many chords, just a few, really. I can only play this one song.”

  He played slow and methodically, and I recognized that he was playing the make-shift ballad we’d first created in the warehouse and then revised at the Mermaid Lounge.

  Remembering the lyrics all too well, I sang in a whisper, not wanting to break the moment. The song flowed through me like a bridge, connecting the two of us. Gavin messed up a few times, changing to the wrong chord, hitting the wrong note, but it didn’t matter. It was still our song. And we were playing it together.

  It’s the process that counts. The notes all start with silence, a puncture of a chord bringing sound to life. The words become the glue, making everything seem whole.

  Gavin stopped playing, his fingers sliding off the eyes. This time the silence didn’t feel awkward but charged, the music still playing in my ears, our breaths reciting the notes. He reached for my body again, his fingers accidentally grazing against my bare sides where my shirt flipped up. I giggled, flinching at the tickle that erupted. He jerked away, startled, but I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged him back down. reached for him. His body settled over mine, his weight feeling amazing as we scrambled to tangle every inch within each other, legs wrapped like a pretzel, arms entwined. His breath and my heartbeat mixed to create their own harmony of music.