I looked over my shoulder at the darkening sky, wavering. He was right, I barely knew him. And I had homework to do. But that song I’d heard was really good. And I was curious. About the band. About him.
I met his gaze. “How much does this snapping gig pay?”
He grinned. “Free matcha for life.”
I handed him my bag, then looked at the girl with the shaved head. “I know your loyalty is probably to him, but if I’m not back in ninety minutes, call the police.”
7
A CEILING OF HEAVY STORM CLOUDS had settled over the valley. With each crack of thunder, I expected them to burst open, but the rain held off.
“Where are we going?” I called to North as we crossed into the woods, having to shout a little over the rustling trees. My stomach twisted in nervous little knots. I wasn’t good at spontaneity. Or surprises.
“The cemetery,” he replied, stopping to help me down the hill.
“The cemetery?”
“I’ll explain when we get inside,” he said, lifting my cup from my hands. I went down the hill sideways, careful not to slip, and waited for him at the chain-link fence Hershey and I had climbed over the day before. North stooped down next to me and reached under a raised part at the bottom of the fence, setting my cup on the other side. The way the grass was matted, I knew he’d done this before.
“Inside?” I asked, looking around. “Inside where?”
He pointed at the small square building at the center of the cemetery. It was built into the side of a hill, so its roof was covered with grass and its entrance was only partially in view. There was an apple tree directly in front of it, like the one on the pin stuck to my shoe, planted in a square plot of grass the same size as the building, surrounded on all sides by the cemetery’s stone sidewalk. “The rain’s gonna start any second, so unless you want to get soaked . . .” He clasped his fingers together, making a little platform, and nodded at my foot. I put a hand on his shoulder and stepped up.
It started coming down just as North dropped inside the fence. “C’mon,” he said, grabbing my free hand. We sprinted across the grass toward the entrance, weaving around headstones. The air smelled like wet stone. I kept my eyes on the ground as we darted past the statue of the angry angel in the center of the cemetery, avoiding his menacing gaze.
We were both laughing as North unlocked the structure’s gated door and we stepped inside the narrow overhang. With his guitar on his back, North had to stand away from the wall behind him, which left less than a foot between his chest and mine. My limbs were electric with his nearness.
“Now what?” I asked, keeping my voice light, as if I were used to being in tiny semi-enclosed spaces with boys I barely knew. I brushed my hair out of my eyes, but a strand fell back down. North reached for it, twisting it gently before tucking it behind my ear. My bottom lip quivered a little when his fingers brushed my cheek. I bit down on it, hard, reminding myself he was a complete stranger.
“Now we go inside,” he said. He leaned into the granite wall beside us, and it retracted then slid smoothly aside.
I did a double take. “How did you . . . ?”
“It’s a lever and pulley system,” North explained, gesturing for me to follow him inside. “The stone’s actually sliding down, not over.” The inner chamber was dark even with the door open, so I moved carefully, not wanting to walk into anything. To my surprise, the air inside wasn’t heavy or dank like I expected it to be, but smelled fresh, like the room had just been cleaned. I heard a soft thud and the sound of a zipper. A few seconds later, the room lit up.
North’s backpack lay open on top of the marble coffin in the center of the room, next to an LED lantern. The walls and floor were marble too, and the ceiling was covered in gold leaf. The room was much bigger than I expected it to be, nearly as large as my dorm room, and empty save for the coffin and the low ledge that lined the walls. A bench for mourners, I supposed.
“This is a mausoleum,” I pointed out.
“No wonder they let you into the academy,” North teased. He started lifting things out of his backpack. A thin silver laptop. A tiny black microphone, no bigger than a button. Two metal coffee canisters. A thick rusty chain. A plastic Baggie of coins. Outside, rain pounded on dry earth.
I tried again. “You record music in someone’s internment space?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Internment space. Nice use of a vocab word, Rory.” It was the first time he’d said my name. I liked the way it sounded on his lips. The r’s rolled just a little, not like he was trying to roll them. It was just the way he talked.
Just then there was commotion outside, and the stone door slid open. Three soaking wet guys tumbled in out of the rain. They were laughing and cursing at the same time.
“Rory, meet Nick, Adam, and Brent,” North said, pointing them out. “Aka, Cardamon’s Couch. Guys, meet our snapper.”
“Hey,” they said in unison, dropping their instrument cases onto the marble.
“Holy crap, it’s pouring,” Brent said, shaking the rain out of his hair. He looked younger than the other two, younger than me even, and his red curls were the exact same shade as Nick’s.
“I told you guys to leave when you heard thunder,” North said.
“Yeah, but genius here said it had to be a thunder clap, not a rumble,” Nick replied, punching Adam in the shoulder.
“I didn’t want to schlep all the way out here if it wasn’t going to actually rain,” Adam said defensively, shrugging out of his wet jacket. He tossed it onto the coffin. It landed with a wet slap. I shuddered. “Don’t worry, no one’s buried there,” he assured me.
“How do you know?” I asked him.
“North opened it.”
I gaped at North. “You opened it?”
North shrugged. “I figured if it wasn’t sealed, there couldn’t be a body inside. The lid is really light,” he said, putting his hands under the rim and lifting it a little. “No way it’s actually marble.”
“So why would they put a coffin in here if they weren’t going to put a body in it?”
“Good question,” Nick said, unzipping his mandolin case. “Better one: Why put a building with perfect acoustics in a graveyard?”
“Ah. So that’s why you come here to play.”
“It’s better than a recording studio,” Adam replied, tugging open the large rectangular case at his feet. “And it’s free.”
“But why the need for rain?” I asked.
“It masks the sound,” North explained. “Plus, it’s the only time we can be sure no one will be out here. It’s a private cemetery, so technically we’re trespassing. Fortunately, only a crazy person would come to a graveyard in a thunderstorm.” He grinned.
I knew I should be worried about getting caught, arrested even, and what it would mean for my future at Theden, but I told myself the odds of that actually happening were slim. Thunder and lightning were crashing just seconds apart, which meant the storm was right over us, and the rain was coming down so hard, it sounded like we were standing under a waterfall. North was right; no one in their right mind would venture out here now. I could start worrying about consequences when we left.
Nick had started to strum his mandolin. The instrument had to be at least a hundred years old, but it was in perfect condition, not a single scratch in its veneer. I was watching his fingers dancing effortlessly over the strings when the others joined in. Adam on a bongo drum, Brent on an upright bass. Even just riffing like that, they were awesome.
“Okay,” North said, setting his laptop and the mic down on the floor in the center of the little circle we’d formed. “Which one do you want to do first?” he asked Nick.