Page 16 of Riot Rules
I’m still smarting from the way he dismissed me last night as I pad along the corridor on my tiptoes. It’s stupid that I’d even want to see him so soon after what he said to me, but this weekly pilgrimage is a ritual that I haven’t broken in so long. It would feel wrong to do so now.
When I reach the orchestra room, he’s already there, seated at the low bench in front of Mr. Linklater’s ancient baby grand. His hands slam at the keys, his touch heavier and angrier than usual. The massive swell of music isn’t a problem—the orchestra room is sound-proofed—but the roar of it makes my heart skip as I slip through the small side door and up the narrow staircase that leads to the gallery.
I’m so practiced at sneaking in here that I find my way to my favorite seat with ease, set back in the blackest of the shadows. Dash never looks up. Why would he? Most students leave Wolf Hall on the weekends if they can, and those that remain wouldn’t bother breaking into the orchestra room in the middle of the night. They’re too busy sneaking contraband alcohol into each other’s rooms for that. As far as Dash knows, he’s alone here, and I’ve never given him a reason to believe otherwise.
The first time I stumbled across him playing, I was out past curfew watching the Perseids. The meteor shower was particularly bright that year, and I was sneaking back in after watching the stunning light show. I hadn’t needed my little telescope. I wouldn’t have been able to refocus the observatory’s ’scope to enjoy them in any effective way, either—it’s way, way,waaaytoo big—but sitting out on the grass in my PJs on an August night had been enough. The show was amazing, comets uncounted streaking across the sky. So goddamn beautiful. I came back inside, high as a kite on what I’d just witnessed, only to see Dash disappearing into the orchestra room.
God only knows why I’d followed him, but the music that bled from his fingers that night affected me even more than the raining fire in the sky had. It did something to me that I still don’t understand. I went back to the orchestra room every night for a week. Sunday: nothing. Monday: nothing. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday…Friday… Nothing. And then, the following Saturday, he’d returned.
I don’t know why he comes every Saturday, but he does. And I’ve joined him, half-asleep and bone tired and determined. I know it makes no sense. If any of my friends confessed that they were engaged in this kind of obsessive behavior, I’d be really worried. Alderman…hah. I refuse to even think about what Alderman would say. None of it makes a difference. I come because Ihaveto come.
Head bowed.
Back straight.
Eyes closed.
Jaw clenched.
The music he plays is often peaceful, but Dashiell’s never comes across asat peace. It looks like it costs him something when he sits down on that bench and positions his hands. He can’t sit still as his fingers move to hit each note.
Tonight, the music he’s playing is a summer storm. He’s even more agitated than usual. He starts at the bass end of the piano, and the music is rolling thunder. A fever dream. He works his way up the keys, the complexity of the notes and chords he plays increasing with every second—a dervish, a nightmare, a hurricane—and I know that this isn’t the work of Beethoven or Bach. Dashiell loves Bach. Before I stumbled across him playing that first night, I couldn’t have identified Bach out of a line up, but I’ve learned to recognize him over time.
Shazam has helped. I always triple check that my phone is on silent before holding it up to detect what’s being played through the app. Dash’s renditions of the greats are typically so precise—even without the sheet music—that it takes all of five seconds for the title and composer of the music to appear on my phone’s screen. But tonight, when I hold up my phone, turning the brightness all the way down as I hold it up to listen, the app renders no results. No title. No artist.
This is something new.
This music belongs to Dash.
It’s wild and it’s frantic. It’s electric and terrifying. It’s an outpouring of his soul, an evacuation, an escape, and it brings tears to my eyes. The music is pain, and frustration, and desperation, and it surges from him like a tidal wave. How is this wild, energetic, fearsome creature the same person who tossed me aside last night? He bears no resemblance to him at all. That version of him felt nothing as he told me to get down off the hood of Pax’s Charger. This version of him clearly feelseverything. I try to marry the two of them together, and the pieces just don’t seem to fit. They are diametrically opposing forces, canceling out the other’s existence, but this is a fallacy, a trick of the light, because theyareone and the same…
I just haven’t figured out how they fit together yet.
8
DASH
Lovett Estates
Mon 4.47 AM
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: Dashiell Lovett
Areyou trying to offend me, boy? You’re either slacking off on purpose, or your work is suffering because you are, in actual fact, profoundly stupid. I worry about your diminishing mental acuity. Should I have Hansen transfer you to a school for students with learning disabilities?
Get your shit together.
— Dashiell Lovett III, The Rt Hon. Duke of Surrey.
Location scouts visit Wolf Hall all the time. They arrive in their shiny black SUVs with their tinted-out windows, and they stand in front of the building with faded, scruffy-ass ball caps on back-to-front, gaping up at the façade of the school like they just hit motherfucking pay dirt. See, Wolf Hall is a movie-maker’s wet dream. Crenelated turrets on both east and west wings. A sloped central roof with an eerie-looking window—the kind of window you might expect a shadowy, sinister figure to appear in at any moment, only to vanish into thin air the next. The hulking grey stone that forms the fascia is choked with thick, green ivy, its leaves tinged poisoned-apple red.
When you take into account the huge bay windows, the haphazard, tumble-down columns, the pristinely manicured gardens that lead up to the looming, gothic entrance, and the heavy oak doors replete with obscene gargoyle knockers, you’re looking at the perfect location foranykind of horror movie.
