Timeslip

Kat felt the bass drum before she could hear it, like an insistent heartbeat. Standing at the back of the small, deserted, semi-dark concert hall, she could see the stage at the front was equally empty. She was totally alone, and yet... there was music here. She knew it.

With a quick, nervous look behind her, Kat moved toward the stage. The air was still as she walked past rows of vacant chairs to stand at the edge of what was clearly intended as a dance floor. As Kat stepped forward onto it, she felt a slight resistance to the air, as if she were pushing her way through invisible dancers. The drumbeat thudded louder in her ears.

Kat stopped and covered her eyes with her hands, straining to listen, willing the musicians and their audience into existence. She imagined how strange she would look to someone walking in off the street, a lone teenager standing in the middle of an empty room listening intently to nothing. They might have thought she was crazy. Kat might have questioned her own sanity too, except this wasn't the first time something like this had happened.

Something bumped Kat from behind and startled her into dropping her hands. The instant she did, the sound burst into life. All around her, teenagers were jostling into each other, dancing and jumping around. Another push came from behind. Kat turned her head to glare, but the boy there gave her an apologetic smile, which she weakly returned. He was wearing a suit jacket, and though his tie was coming undone, she couldn't help but feel underdressed in her faded skinny jeans and Chuck Taylor sneakers. The boy didn't seem to notice or mind, and Kat's smile at him, tentative though it was, must have been encouragement enough for him. He grabbed her hand and twirled her around.

Kat couldn't focus on dancing - she was too distracted by what felt like sensory overload. The dance floor was crowded with other boys in suits and girls who twisted and spun, skirts swirling out around them. Kat was sure that someone would notice that her wardrobe, not to mention the blue streaks in her dirty blonde hair, clearly marked her as an outsider, but no one spoke to her. Not even her dance partner.

Then there was the music. The beat was driving, but Kat recognized it as old-fashioned rock and roll, the kind of twelve bar blues that was popular long before she was born. Despite its age, rock and roll music from that era still thrilled Kat and spoke to her in a way modern music didn't. Her very favorite band had started out playing music just like this in small clubs and auditoriums all over the U.K. over fifty years ago. Small venues like this one. That was why she had come here in the first place today, wasn't it?

Being able to explore places like these was one of the few benefits of being torn away from her home and her friends, and having to move to a foreign country for her father's job. Kat would be spending her last year of high school in a strange, new place, but at least she had a few precious weeks to herself before that began.

Her days were spent wandering the older parts of town, and when she'd learned that the band had once played here, she had to see it for herself. To experience it. Kat wasn't sure if it would work, wasn't sure if she could make the place come alive once more, even for a few brief moments.

But she had done it.

Kat suddenly realized the spell could break at any moment. Giving the boy she was dancing with a quick smile, she broke away from him and pushed through the crowd. She had to make it to the stage and get a glimpse of the band, of him, before it all went away. And suddenly, there he was in front of her. She dared not even breath his name for fear that doing so would break the spell and cause him to vanish.

Feet planted apart, aggressively strumming rhythm on his guitar, he was every bit the rebel despite his dark suit. Kat watched fascinated as he sang, punctuating the verses now and then with a whoop or a scream.