In Harmony (Fenbrook Academy #2)(23)
Author: Helena Newbury

“Wedge it.”

I dug around and found a book of sheet music, but it didn’t seem right to stuff Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata under the door. I dug around some more and found an old scales practice book and figured that would be okay.

Connor’s voice echoed from the other end of the room. “Today?”

“Don’t rush me!” I wedged the book under the door as hard as I could and triple-checked that it couldn’t possibly come loose. Satisfied, I turned towards Connor. “Shine the light! I can’t see anything.”

He held the phone out towards me and I walked towards the glow, the light from the doorway fading with every step. I couldn’t see where I was putting my feet, and the air was dry and horribly still, like a tomb. I kept thinking of that cobweb by the door, and wondering how many more were hanging right above my head, or in front of my face….

Finally, I was next to him, our faces lit by the ghostly white light of the screen. Something in my expression must have given away how nervous I was, because he gave me an encouraging smile. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was—”

A long, ugly sound, the sound of paper being rent apart by brute force. I didn’t understand—I actually turned to see who was ripping a book in half. It was only when I saw the door swinging closed that I realized what had happened. The wedge had worked just fine until the thirty year-old volume had simply split in half from the strain. Now the huge door was closing itself, the chain rattling loudly as the iron weight dragged it closed.

Connor reacted faster than I could, sprinting past me to the door. He reached it just as it closed. He’d taken the phone with him, leaving me in pitch blackness, and I tried to contain my panic. It’s not locked. I have the key. He’ll open it again in a second. Any second….

“Um….”

“What?” I asked quickly.

I saw the light—just a faint glow at the far end of the room, moving up and down. “You know how the door opened inward?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s no handle on our side.”

Cold, twisting fear, rising up inside. “What?”

“I’m serious. There was one once, but it’s been taken off. Just screw holes. There’s nothing to pull on.”

I looked around me. I knew that the room was fifty feet or more long. I knew that, narrow as it was, there was still a good six feet of space in front of me. I knew that the ceiling was high overhead. But in the utter blackness, none of these things felt true anymore. I felt as if I was in a coffin with the walls creeping towards me, pressing tighter and tighter.

“Shine the light down here.” My voice was ragged with fear.

“What?” He was distracted, still searching for some way to open the door.

“Shine the light!” Almost a sob.

Immediately, he shone the light towards me and a dim, ghostly glow washed over me. The walls were pushed back, breathable air opening up in front of me. I started blundering towards him, hands stretched out in front of me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the worry in his voice. I couldn’t answer, though. All that mattered was getting to the light of his phone, getting closer to the hairline crack of light around the door. I was almost panting with fear, the speed at which it had come on only adding to the panic, my throat closing up. Every step brought the threat of a cobweb brushing my face, every shelf my fingers touched felt loaded with creeping, scuttling life—

And then I reached him, and my hands instinctively grabbed at his arms and pulled him close. I panted against his chest.

“Karen? Karen?! Are you okay?”

And somehow, my face pressed against the soft cloth of his t-shirt, I was. He was clean and solid and real and, if I closed my eyes, I could forget how dark it was and imagine we were out in the sunlight somewhere. I took a deep breath and then another, feeling my fear ebb away. “…yes,” I said slowly. I started to feel stupid. “Sorry. I just panicked.”

“It’s okay.” His voice was more tender than I’d ever heard it—except maybe outside the bar, weeks ago, when he’d agreed to help. Pitying the poor scared girl. I could feel my face grow hot, and was almost glad it was so dark.

“Were you kidding, about the door?” I ran my hand over the wood.

“Kidding? No, of course not! There’s no handle.” Like an idiot, I still felt the need to check for myself, but he was right—there wasn’t.

“Okay, let’s not panic. We just need to call someone to come push the door from the other side,” he said.

I waited. “Okay—so call someone.”

“I’m just deciding who to call. Someone reliable…someone who’ll come and get us right now….” He was trying to be casual about it, but I could see him scrolling through name after name on his contacts list. “Thing is,” he said, “most of my friends are people I meet from bands and stuff. They don’t go to Fenbrook and the ones who do…they don’t show up every day. Or even most days.”

The party animal, the guy who spent his life hanging out with friends…didn’t have even one he could absolutely rely on.

“Call Jasmine,” I told him. My phone was in my bag outside the door, so I gave him the number. She answered on the third ring.

I’d seen too many movies where the trapped person starts off with something like “Now listen carefully, I’m—” and then gets cut off. “I’mshutinthemusicstoreroom,” I said, all in one breath.

“What?” asked Jasmine.

“Come rescue me. Please. Second floor, right at the back. Big door. Pitch black in here. Spiders. Help.”

“I don’t recognize this number,” said Jasmine. “Whose phone is this?”

“Connor’s. He’s in here with me.”

There was a pause.

“What are you doing in a storeroom with Connor with the lights off?” asked Jasmine.

“Just come and rescue me! Please!” I hung up. “She’s on her way,” I told Connor.

And then there was silence. And as I relaxed a little more, the silence grew to be…comfortable.

Even intimate.

The phone’s screen was lighting up a little of the room in front of me, but Connor was standing just off to the side and I couldn’t see him. That meant I couldn’t tell exactly how close he was to me…and that started to play all sorts of tricks on my mind.

We’re in a dark room together, a little voice said. If he feels the same way as you….

Stop it, I told myself fiercely. “Say something,” I said out loud.

“What?”

“Anything. Just so I know where you are.”

There was a pause. “Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“Helping me.”

“I haven’t helped you yet. And you helped me.”

That silence again.

“Say something else,” I said. “Tell me about the tattoo…tell me about Ruth.” As soon as I’d said it, I regretted it. Why did I want to know about her?

“We met in New York, but she’s from Ireland. One of those funny things, you know? Come thousands of miles and meet someone from back home.”

“Uncanny,” I said, feeling sick.

“Lasted six months. Then we split, and she headed back to Ireland.”

“Why’d you split?” It was out before I could stop it.

There was a long pause. “We had a falling out.” And there was a bitterness in his voice I’d never heard before.

Quick, change the subject. “That’s one tattoo. Tell me about the other one.”

“That means I was in prison.”

The darkness went from being warm and comfortable to a freezing, yawning void in an instant. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly.

“It was a fair cop,” he said mildly. “I deserved to be there.”

I didn’t ask the obvious question, so he went ahead and answered it for me. “Three months, because I was young and the prisons were full. GBH.” He sighed. “That doesn’t mean anything over here, does it?”

If it did, I had no idea what it meant. “No.”

“Grievous. Bodily. Harm.” He sighed, and I heard him tilt his head back to rest against the wall. When he spoke, it sounded like he was dredging the words up from deep within. “I was the stupid kid everybody made fun of. One guy in particular. And I got used to that. After a while you just accept it, and you accept getting the shit kicked out of you, too. But this one fella, that wasn’t enough for him. He caught me with my guitar one day and he smashed it.”

I stayed silent, listening.

“It was a piece of crap, if I’m honest. Could never tune it dead right. But it was the one thing, you know? The one thing I could do, the one thing in my life that wasn’t shitty. And I watched him lift it over his head and bang it down on the curb, until it was in pieces, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford another one. And…I sort of blanked out. Next thing I knew, I was standing over him and he had a bust jaw and a broken rib.”

“Oh.” It was a lousy thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

“I was lucky—he healed pretty fast, no lasting damage. I was young, so they wiped my record not long after.”

The story was reverberating through my head, the images so different to the Connor I knew. I couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone.

You were right about him, a little voice inside me sang happily. Back at the start, when you avoided him, when you thought he was trouble.

But he wasn’t like that. He’d helped me. He was kind. Or was I just hopelessly naïve? I stood there in the darkness and let it all seep into my brain…the prison record, the parties and the booze….

And I didn’t care. I only cared about who he was now. I was getting to like that Connor; I was getting to like him a lot.

“Do you think we can do it—the recital?” I asked.

“Honest answer?”

“Yes, honest. Of course honest!”

“No.”

My jaw dropped open. “No?!”

“Not unless you get that stick out of your arse.” I didn’t need to see him. I could hear the grin in his voice. Relief slammed through me.

“I don’t have a—Well, you need to sharpen up a little. Since we’re being honest.”

“Yes ma’am.”

I hesitated. “Do I really come across like that? Uptight?”

“I meant your playing.”

“I know. But do I?”

The silence this time was heavy with possibilities.

“Maybe a little bit.” The sound of rustling cloth—he was moving. “But nothing that couldn’t be fixed.”

I swallowed. Was he moving towards me? “Fixed how?”

“I was thinking….” His voice was very close now—right behind me. I tensed, but I didn’t turn around. “I was thinking about maybe….”

Something dropped onto my cheek and scurried down my neck and under my top. I screamed at the top of my lungs and started pawing at my clothes, but it was moving, scuttling across my stomach, its legs hooking into my belly button—