"But you choose not to. Okay," he said, laughing. He skated ahead, then turned around quickly, skating backward, facing me.
"I really appreciate your spending the time with Patrick."
"It's fun." Sam skated closer to me, his legs matching the movement of mine like an ice dancer's.
"I can't see past you," I told him.
"You don't need to. Just follow me."
"Follow a guy who is skating backward and can't see where we're going?"
I know when someone is behind me," he replied. "It's a sixth sense."
He skated closer still, as close as he could without actually touching me.
He's doing this on purpose, I thought.
"You'd skate better if you didn't look down," Sam said. "You don't have to worry, my feet will move out of the way of your feet."
"I'm not worried," I insisted.
"Look up. Keep your eyes on my eyes. Trust me," he said.
I glanced up, briefly meeting his eyes, then tried to look past his left shoulder.
"Trust me, Kate," he said softly. ''I can't."
"Give it a try. It's not hard. Just skate and look me in the eye."
I did, and it wasn't hard. In fact, it was far too easy.
There was no music, but we were in perfect rhythm. We didn't touch, but his dark eyes held me, his intense gaze keeping me there, his body tantalizingly close.
Then suddenly, that sixth sense of his failed. Sam was stopped as if he'd backed into a brick wall, and I flew into him. His arms wrapped around me. We spun off the rink wall and he held me tightly against him. His face was a breath away from mine-he could have kissed me. His eyes lowered, and I thought he might, then Dion's laughter burst the moment. Patrick cackled.
Sam and I released each other slowly.
"Dion, you jerk!" Sam said, grinning at his friend, who had skated into us.
I laughed, trying to act like a normal teen girl with school friends, but nothing seemed normal to me. How can it, when your heart is beating absurdly fast and you feel a person's fingers like heat under your skin?
Dion looked pleased with himself. Patrick tried to laugh with a deep voice like the older boys, which made them laugh more. I got through the moment by focusing on Patrick, playing my nanny role.
Sam reminded Dion about their pile of homework, and the two of them left. Patrick and I skated a little longer. When we emerged from the college athletic center, a soft snow was falling.
Patrick swung his skates, kicking up the thin frosting on the grass. "No school tomorrow, Kate! They'll have to close school."
I think we'll need a few more flakes than this," I said, though it was falling in the quiet, steady way that is the beginning of big snows.
At home, Patrick told his parents of his glorious night, then fell asleep almost immediately. I sat for a while by his bed, listening to his soft breathing and watching the snow. I wished the peace of that moment was mine. But everything was stirred up inside me, questions and suspicions running wild. And through it all I kept thinking about the feeling of being in Sam's arms, being there longer than necessary. Which one of us had been reluctant to let go?
I sat up in bed with a start and glanced around my room, wondering what had awakened me. My sleep had been dreamless. With the heat turned back for the night, the house was cold and silent, not even the banging of old pipes to break the quiet. Shivering, I climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the window.
By the light of the garage lamps I could see that it was still snowing, a windless, silent snow.
Check Patrick, I thought; perhaps he cried out.
I donned my ski jacket, which was warmer than my dressing gown, and started toward the stairway that connected our rooms. Halfway there I turned around. Music-piano music-was coming from the schoolroom. The simple tune sounded familiar, like a nursery school song one had sung repeatedly as a child but had long since forgotten.
"Patrick?"
I hurried into the third-floor hall, then stopped. It couldn't be Patrick-he wasn't capable of playing songs on that level for another two months. My skin prickled. Each note played was like a ghostly finger touching my shoulder. A wrong note was struck, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. Ashley had delighted in playing that note incorrectly; she had played it repeatedly to frustrate Joseph.
The song ended. I held my breath, waiting for what would happen next. The music started again, the same piece. I hummed the melody, anticipating, dreading that one wrong note.
It was struck. My back grew rigid.
Fearing what I might see-fearing what I might not-l crept toward the schoolroom. I'm not crazy, I told myself; I have to be hearing it. But I couldn't imagine anyone currently living in the house playing that song. The schoolroom door was partway open. The nerves in my fingertips tingled as I laid them lightly against the wood, then pushed the door all the way.
Patrick sat on the piano bench. With no moonlight and just a pale triangle cast by the hall night-light, I could see only his silhouette and the rectangular shape of the piano. A feeling of deep uneasiness seeped into me, a sense that something hidden in the dark was watching me, and it didn't want me there.
"Patrick?" I called softly, approaching the bench. "Patrick." I spoke it with more insistence, but he didn't turn around. "Patrick, stop playing!"
He didn't move his head, didn't show any sign of hearing me.
His failure to listen made me bolder. I placed a hand on his shoulder, then leaned over to look at him. Though his hands moved, his face was still, strange, inanimate as a molded puppet's. His eyes were partially closed, the pale irises and whites of his eyes like half-moons, his mouth slightly open.
"Can you hear me?" I asked.
He continued to play.
"Patrick, stop!" I grabbed his hands and held them still. After a moment, he raised his chin to look at me. His eyes slowly opened to full size. He didn't speak.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
He glanced down at the keyboard. "Playing."
"What song was that?"
He thought for a moment. "'Little Red Rooster.'" I could picture the page in Ashley's songbook, for she had crayoned a waxy red rooster next to the title. How could he have learned it? What made his hands suddenly able to play the song? "Who taught you that?"
"I just know it," he said.
"I think you may have played the song incorrectly. One note was wrong."
"I played it the way I play it."