Jude's Music

Five

The day I saw him playing wasn't too long after the day I saw him in the woods. There was about a week in between, I'd say, and the skies above Mosspond weren't getting any brighter. I was beginning to feel like we'd moved to the North Pole, where the sun stops shining for months. I half-expected to step out of the front door onto a great silver iceberg sloshing around in dark waters.

But my mother persisted in her belief that the sun was going to be showing itself soon enough. I could only hope that she was wrong. I wasn't quite ready to see the sun yet.

Jillian Lee was pestering me in class that day. I say "pestering" because it tells you exactly what she was: a pest.

"Do you appreciate mushrooms, Nat?" she asked me in a whispery voice during silent reading. I hadn't a clue what she was talking about, so I didn't answer her. She kept going, though. "I saw whole circles of them down by the old stump. Rings and rings – like the ones they say fairies use. Do you believe that there are such things as fairy rings?"

"What old stump?" I asked, ignoring her last question.

Jill paused. Then she said, "You don't know the old stump?"

I shook my head, keeping my eyes cemented to my book so the teacher wouldn't suspect anything.

"I can show you today, after school. Meet me by the swings."

Part of me wanted to go; part of me didn't. She didn't expect me to answer with an "I don't want to" or a "forget it," though; she'd already turned back to her work. Jill seemed like someone who would think "no" was an unacceptable answer. I had the impression that she was a fairy – an imp, more like. That's exactly what she made me think of. Something mischievous but not particularly mean. A troublemaker who hadn't a clue she was causing trouble. That was Jillian Lee. I had her figured out entirely.

Still, I had fully intended to join her at the swings after school. Even if spending an hour or so with an innocent-eyed imp wasn't appealing to me, the thought of seeing an aged tree stump surrounded by rings of mysterious mushrooms was. Although I didn't say a word to Jill, I was anxious to have her take me there.

But what happened after school was not what I expected.

I was late leaving the building, walking quickly down the concrete slabs of steps and past the long windows of the kindergarten, which were plastered with finger-painted art projects. The air was damp; it gave me chills. Picking up my pace, I hurried on toward the playground. Jill had gotten out of class quicker than I had, because I'd stayed late with the teacher. I hoped she would still be at our meeting place.

The schoolyard dipped down at the back of the building. A set of stairs was chopped into the hill, leading up to a stretch of field, and that was where the sets of old rubber swings were. This school wasn't as stylishly safe as the ones I was used to back home. There were no plastic slides or safety swings. The two swing sets and some monkey bars were all we had, and all of them were rusted metal.

I couldn't see up to the field, so I had no idea if Jill was still there. The entire school yard was empty, and I was a little nervous that she would've left, thinking that I wasn't going to come. I was about to race up the stairs two at a time when something stopped me dead in my steps.

There was no wind. What I heard was clear enough. It was piano music.

The sound was coming from somewhere back toward the school. Turning, I glanced at the building. The music class was the room I was closest to, and I knew there was a piano in there.

There was no question in my mind what I should do. The entire idea of meeting Jill was totally wiped from my brain. A need to know where that music was coming from caused every other piece of information to lose its hold on my thoughts. I was certain that what I was hearing was the same thing I'd heard while standing on the fringe of woods behind the fence. I had the same feeling that I'd had at the house in the trees. It was all circling around Jude.

My legs moved me toward the school, through the lunchroom doors, into the dim hallway. I could hear a vacuum running somewhere upstairs, and I was annoyed by the noise of it. I didn't want to hear that! I wanted to hear the music. My irritation passed as I moved away from the vacuum and toward the music.

I had thought that I would want to be right in the room, to watch the person playing and see the way their fingers moved. But strangely enough, as I drew nearer the source of the sound, I found movement more and more difficult. I could hear every note, every rise and fall of the melody. The piece being played was one I'd never heard, and yet I thought I recognized in it something familiar. I was moved by the tune. It was sad, angry . . . bitter. I couldn't understand what it made me feel. Suddenly I went from burning curiosity to deepest sorrow. I was afraid that the heaviness in my chest was going to implode and drag all of me into the black hole my sudden misery was waiting to create. My feet were leaden; it was more than effort just to lift them. By the time I did reach the open door of the room, I felt such sadness that I honestly didn't think I could go any farther before I collapsed in misery.

The music kept on. I was close to it now, but still far from knowing its meaning. It was dark yet shimmering, serious but delicate. I couldn't describe it. It couldn't be labeled. It couldn't be categorized and packaged and put in a neat little box. It was nothing and everything at the same time. I was desperate for it to stop, but I would have begged for more if it had.

It did come to an end, though it must have been at least twenty minutes later. I didn't know how long I'd been standing outside the door, pressed against the wall with my eyes shut tight. Time was meaningless. I had never witnessed such incredible beauty — such wretched beauty. Inside me, something had moved. Whether it had done so for the better or for the worse was too soon to tell.

When the playing did come to a close, I accepted it. I did not have to beg for more. The ending was appropriate and right. It was not abrupt. The music had not been severed at an untimely moment, but rather it had drawn itself in and slowly faded into nothingness.

In the following quiet, I noticed how loud my own breathing sounded. I hadn't looked into the music room yet, but I wasn't going to get a chance to. The piano bench scraped against the floor. I knew I had to move. I didn't want to be seen. Quickly, I ducked behind a display cabinet containing fossils and metamorphic rocks, and just as I did, the boy walked out of the door.

The boy was, as I had expected, Jude Wood.

I tried to look at him as he passed, tried to study his face. As usual, his mouth was set in a thin line. He was tired. I knew he was by the way he came out of the room, the slow way he moved. If I had been any closer I would've been more certain, but what I thought I saw on his ghost-colored cheeks were the leftovers of tears.

I waited for such a long time after Jude left the school that the sky was turning dark when I got home. I hadn't stayed in the building; I'd gone outside and begun to wander. My walking took me across town, through the main streets, and through the alley near Sue's bakery until I was once again at that spot between the fence and the trees. I heard nothing as I stood there. There was no urge in me to head into the woods.

I was not in the mood to eat dinner when I got home. I told my mother I'd been late because I went into town with a friend and gotten a snack at the Soup Bowl, which was a local restaurant. Lying wasn't something I liked to do, but I couldn't tell her where I'd really been, or what I'd really seen. What upset me most was the way my mother's face looked when I told her I'd been with a friend. She thought things were starting to return to normal. If only she knew how abnormal they were at the moment!

"Next time you make sure to call me, all right, honey?" my mom's voice called up the stairs after me. "And you can have your friend over some time after school if you want."

I didn't respond. I just went straight into my room and shut the door softly behind me. The evenings were getting darker earlier. Gray shadows were beginning to settle over the furniture like blankets of spider webs. Not bothering with the light switch, I pulled my desk chair over to my solitary window and sat down.

I stared out the glass in thought. My window overlooked the patch of wooded area where Jude lived. I hadn't realized that until recently. Now it was making sense to me, though. The first day we'd moved in I'd been drawn to this room. I'd known it had to be mine. And the first day I saw Jude Wood I was certain I had to know more about him. Then, today, I'd heard his music – his eerily radiant music – and I knew something larger than me was at work. Some great thing was pulling at me as if I were a marionette. I didn't know quite where to turn; I wasn't sure how to begin. But I did know one thing, and it was that I must not give up on trying to talk to Jude.