He began to strum the song that Whitney had sung, playing from memory. When he reached the guitar solo, he re-cast the bridge and captured that wild, sultry undertone of Whitney's, borrowing from the storm the night before—the grumble of distant thunder, the hiss of the wind and rain. Then he brought in his own harmony to answer and draw out her melody.
It was not until he had practiced the piece several times that he stopped and recognized that something was wrong.
He'd begun playing the song from memory, and he'd been able to finger the piece even though he hadn't seen the written music. He'd never done that before. Nor had he ever felt the music spring to his hands so willingly.
It couldn't have come from practice. He'd been so exhausted on Monday that he hadn't touched the guitar. There was only one answer: Olivia had wormed her way inside his head.
Bron flushed with anger. He wondered what memories she might have pried, what secrets she might have learned from him.
Had she taken anything? She'd asked if there were painful memories that he might want removed. Sometimes memories fester. Sometimes the infection spreads, until the whole body is wracked with fevers. Had she tried to do him any favors?
And what about new memories? Had she added anything pleasant?
No, he decided. If she had wanted to play with his mind, she would have erased his memories of their talk. She would have left him ignorant, never knowing her powers, or his.
After consideration, he suspected that she had left him only with this gift: the ability to play the guitar.
He experimented, fingering riffs that he'd never tried. Whole new songs sprang to mind, songs that he knew how to play in theory but had never mastered.
He experimented, put the guitar behind his back and played "God Bless America," as Jimi Hendrix had once done. He fumbled a few notes, but it was passable.
Then he brought his instrument around front and moved smoothly into Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption," struggling to adapt it to the acoustic guitar. He was surprised at how good it sounded.
Without amplifiers and the distortion common to an electric guitar, the music felt classical in texture, and he thrilled to the sense of reckless abandon in Van Halen's style warring with the need for precision and beauty.
He didn't have Van Halen's control, but he could feel it coming, just out of reach. It was like trying to pick an apple from a high limb. He could touch it, juggle it on the tips of his fingers, but not quite grasp it.
What had Olivia said? "Deep teaching takes days." Yet she'd only offered to teach him the guitar yesterday.
She must have come to his room more than once. He'd been here only since Friday; he had learned more about technique in that time than he could have learned in five years on his own.
Yet there was something more. He could feel that imaginary apple, the rough texture of its surface. He could thump it and almost taste the crispness of its interior. He was only hours or perhaps days from being able to take it, make it his own.
He yearned for it.
He was angry at Olivia for having violated his privacy, delving into his mind, and yet he was more grateful than words could express. What price would I be willing to pay to be touched by the gods? he wondered.
He knew.
He returned to the house and found Olivia making breakfast, dropping whole wheat bread into the toaster. Bron could hear Mike in the shower, singing a country song accompanied by a hiss like warm rain.
Olivia glanced up, saw Bron with his guitar, and froze. "Everything all right?" She looked pointedly at the guitar.
"Yeah."
"Do you want more lessons?"
He knew what she was asking. "How many more do I need?"
"Three, maybe four."
"To be as good as Hendrix?"
"A few lessons, yes, and a lot of practice," Olivia said. "I heard that song in your head. You have a gift, Bron, one that I didn't give you, one that you were born with. You could be great."
He could see now that Olivia was tired. She had dark bags, like bruises, forming beneath her eyes. She must have been up half the night, and the workload was costing her. "Do I ever wake up when you're doing it?"
"Part of your mind does," she says. "That's why all of your dreams lately have been about playing guitar."
Bron nodded. "You're exhausted. You should take tonight off."
"I can handle my part. I can teach your neural pathways, train your fingers and brain to work in harmony, but even Beethoven lost his skills if he didn't practice every day."
"So will I learn faster if I practice more?"
Mike's shower turned off and the singing abruptly stopped. Olivia nodded, then whispered, "Don't show people what you can do yet. It would frighten them."
Bron guffawed. He couldn't imagine it frightening anyone.
"I'm serious," Olivia said softly. "The things I can teach you.... They'll say that you're in league with the devil, just like Poe and Paganini and Mozart." She was so serious, Bron stifled a laugh. "More than that, you could attract unwanted attention."
"Okay," he said. Bron went to his room. He imagined fingering a song, a more-complex version of the piece that he wanted to do for Whitney. He grinned.
Me, touched by the gods, he thought, and in league with the devil!
School buzzed that morning with news of upcoming auditions. Tryouts began for the Hyperion Club—the most prestigious of all. Everywhere Bron went, people were prepping. Thespians wandered about the grounds delivering lines, talking to the empty air as if they were schizophrenics. Out on the plaza by the Green Open Theater, kids were doing voice exercises. Down in the dance studio, everyone was leaping about.
Amid all the excitement, Bron felt alone, like a wolf on the prowl. He wasn't into musical theater, and because he had nothing else to do, he took his backpack and guitar up to the plaza and sat at a table.
He pulled out his guitar and began to tune.
Suddenly Whitney appeared, sneaking up from behind, took a seat next to him, and sat smiling.
Bron bumped shoulders, drank in her eyes.
"You ready to show us what you've got?" Whitney asked.
Bron froze, looked up at the crowd. Already heads were turning. Whitney had a couple of friends at her back, including Sheriff Walton's son.
Bron had never felt quite so embarrassed.
Whitney said, "Don't worry. We're all performers, and we support each other. We all need applause, so we give it freely."
Bron felt blood rush to his face. He wanted so badly to impress Whitney.
He'd once heard that if you were shy about speaking in public, all you had to do was imagine the audience naked. One glance at Whitney, and his blush deepened.
So he imagined that he was in the barn, playing to the open fields, and to the elk and the cattle.
He swept into the intro, and let instinct take over. With eyes closed, he played by touch, never looking at his fingers or the strings. Whitney fell in, and she took his lead on the rhythm, singing:
At first, Whitney was hesitant, and she listened as much as she sang, as if they were a duet, her voice with his guitar. Most listeners wouldn't have heard the clumsiness or recognized that the timing was off by milliseconds, but when Whitney's voice merged with the guitar, they gathered power, creating an overtone.