Episode Six, The Eternal Sonata

I once promised a little kitty I would never date in high school; a promise that I had sure hoped to keep. Then a little birdie told me what a bad idea it was to date a friend and I agreed mindfully, but my heart had soon persuaded me otherwise. I took the leap and landed on solid ground, but soon realized that yet another ledge was in front of me and the momentum was too much; I would soon fall.

There I was, sitting on the bench inside the tennis court, waiting for my rendezvous to arrive.

I was deep in thought when I heard a quiet ‘meow’ next to me. The noise startled me, but I knew right away who it was. I turned to see Bia sitting next to me, her flowing red hair and pale white face were a nice contrast to the darkly dreary day. “Something wrong?” she wasted no time in asking.

I figured the whole school knew by now. Nothing was ever private in high school. “I’ll get over it,” I said as I spun my racket between my fingers.

“If you say so,” she replied and took hers out of her bag. “Ready to lose!” she quickly changed the subject.

“You wish,” I laughed; we were pretty even and she was getting better every time we played. I had to watch it or else she just might have beaten me.

She tossed me two balls and took two for herself. “We can talk anytime, if you want,” she added quietly before we started.

I smiled, “That would be nice.”

I would serve first, as I always did. I placed my feet and threw the ball up in the air, swinging my racket in a smooth, wide arch, and made contact with the ball. Perfect serve.

But out of no where the ball came flying back over the net. She had gotten better.

It ran to return it and hit a fluid shot right on the opposite line. Again, she got to it and had me running to return. After a for more shots she got the point; I had hit it right in to the net. “Scared!” she taunted me playfully.

“We’ve only just begun!” I pointed out as I retrieved the ball. “Love, fifteen,” I recited before I served, as was tennis courtesy. I never did understand why no points equaled love, though; it made no sense.

In a crazy turn of events, she beat me the first set, six games to four. I however, came back to beat her six games to three in the second set. In the final set the sky was beginning to darken and black storm clouds were blotting out the sun. To no surprise, I felt a rain drop, then another, and in no time it was pouring. We packed up our stuff and ran to the alcove in the front of the school.

We stood just outside the doors, stomping our feet dry, when Bia said, “I would’ve so beaten you too!”

"Hey,” I replied. “We were tied, four:four, remember? Anyone could’ve one.”

“Yeah,” she teased. “But it would have been me.”

“Until next time.”

A couple minutes went by and the rain turned into a torrential downpour. Our parents weren’t due to arrive for another twenty minutes. “Why don’t we go inside?” Bia suggested.

”I’d rather take my chances in the cold,” I said. We had all gone to talk to Ms. West after the incident and it turned out that it had not been enough. The specters were still haunting our school.

“What?” Bia questioned, confused. “We’re getting soaked.”

“We are not going in that school,” I said sternly. “We can’t.”

“Sure we can, the door’s unlocked.”

“Not what I meant.”

“Then explain.”

Uh oh, hadn’t been expecting that. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” Bia said seriously.

It’s not like I had a choice and I could trust her not to tell anyone. She may laugh at me, but she wouldn’t open her mouth like half the other kids. The only other ones who knew were Kitty, Addy, and Lucas, it might be nice to have another schemer in on things.

So I explained about the specters and everything Ms. West had told us. She didn’t question me once until the end. “Do you think there are more of these things. I mean, in places other than our school.”

“You know,” I replied, “I’ve never thought about that. There probably are.”

“Yeah, which means that there are problems that need solving.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

“Well,” she said, less seriously now, “that’s why you have me.”

“I don’t know how the others will feel about this though,” I said slowly.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, you know how people are. Usually if there is a something secret like this, people get bitter when the someone tells the secret without asking for the ok first. But they can’t say no now.”

That’s when we heard the honk and saw a silver SUV pulling up. “Well, that’s me,” Bia said. “See you tomorrow morning for Quiz Bowl.”

“Of course,” I responded as she ran into the rain.

Then she was gone and I was left to stare through the window into the school, which would soon be crowded by restless souls, trapped forever in the eternal sonata of a world unseen.