James Patterson - The Gift

Wisty

EVEN WITH THE KING of the Weasels in my band, I totally understand why people want to become rock stars. There’s no other rush, no other feeling like it. This cavern has a natural reverb that seems to transform my voice into a chorus of hard-rocking angels. It’s like an out-of-body experience.

And then I realize I’m playing the audience, too. Hundreds, make that thousands, of people are moving to my rhythm, to my melody, to my words.

Well, not all “my” words.

After I finish the first song and I think my face is going to bust open because I’m smiling so hard from the euphoria, I let everyone know who wrote the words to the next number.

“This is for my brother, Whit, who wrote the lyrics and who unfortunately couldn’t be here with us tonight.”

I’m actually pretty glad Whit’s not here, because I’d have to explain how I kind of copied the lyrics out of his journal when he was sleeping. I don’t regret it, not for a second. I’ve wanted to put these words to music ever since I first read them.

“It’s called ‘The Fire Outside,’ and it goes like this.” I begin picking out a simple, clean melody.

Byron waits a few bars and sticks a bass line underneath. We are disturbingly in sync, I have to admit. Musically, I mean. Apparently he must have been a pretty good upright bass player in the school orchestra back home, and he’s showing a surprising sense of rhythm here. With his shirt untucked and his hair kind of messy for once, he almost looks like he belongs at a rock concert.

Lighters are being held aloft, and a whole cavern full of people is swaying back and forth to the music we’re making.

No sooner are Byron and I laying down the final chords when the six-foot-one poet himself appears at the back of the amphitheater. There he is! Whit is peering around intently, his head bobbing, as if he’s trying to find somebody, and it’s important.

Now he’s sidling through the crowd toward the stage. He’s shooting urgent looks at me and drawing his finger across his neck as a sign for me to stop the set, and pointing off to the dressing-room area to the left.

Something’s definitely up.

Wisty

THE POWER OF THE STAGE and the crowd is too much to resist, though. I finish the song first. Whit deserves to hear his words sung out to the masses.

Then I hurry backstage, expecting him to accost me-or strangle me?-instantly, but… he’s MIA.

“You were fantastic out there,” says Byron while I look around for Whit. “If this magic thing doesn’t work out, you could always be a musician, you know. I mean, I guess after you failed out of orchestra in, what was it-fifth grade?-I just assumed you were hopelessly terrible.”

“Yeah, well. It took you long enough to realize that a perfect grade point average isn’t the only measure of somebody.”

“Definitely not, ” says Byron. He steps toward me with an infuriating eager-beaver expression on his pinched little face. “I really should have taken you seriously a lot sooner, Wisty. I want to make up for that.”

Ew. He’s not doing what I think he’s doing, is he? Please, somebody tell me Byron Hall Monitor Swain is not trying to put his weaselly moves on me. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, especially tonight, but he’s not leaving me much choice.

“I was wrong to underestimate you,” he goes on, inching even closer-and there aren’t many inches left at this point. “I mean, you were always beautiful, anybody could see that, but I guess I never appreciated… the brains behind your… badness.” He said “badness” with a sly smile, as if he were thinking about a kind of badness… of which I wanted no part. Gross!

“You know, Byron, maybe it’s just exhaustion from the show, but I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. You might want to back up.”

“Oh, here, let me give you a hand,” he says, and puts one of his ferrety paws on my arm. Next, he’s steering me toward the “greenroom” couch made out of nongreen cushions pilfered from furniture in bombed-out homes.

I’m so shocked that Byron Belly-Crawler Swain has his hands on me that I can’t even react. I should have shoved him off the stage when I had the chance.

“I know some great massage techniques for all sorts of exhaustion,” he’s saying, but just then the Bionics and a swarm of their groupies burst into the room… along with my brother.

I guess the universe hasn’t totally forsaken me.

Whit

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” Wisty asks me as she pivots away from Byron’s pathetic clutches. Normally I’d be ready to teach him a lesson for putting his creepy claws on my sister, but now I’m just relieved to see that he’s not one of the fake rockers who were nosing around at Garfunkel’s.

I’m pretty sure they’re here somewhere-and they’re definitely looking for my sister. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that she has something that they want. Badly.

“New Order spies,” I tell her. “And they’re after you, Wist. So next time you decide to take the stage at a packed concert, will you give me a heads-up? You know, so I can tell you that it’s a totally boneheaded idea.”

“Huh? What spies?” she asks, looking only mildly distressed. Meanwhile her eyes are darting over to some of the rock-star types being swamped by chirping groupies and whatnot on the other side of the room.

“Wisty, listen to me. Closely. Some guys came by Garfunkel’s asking after you and the concert. They were dressed like some old person’s idea of a rock band. They were obviously New Order Citizen Patrol, or worse.”

Her head drifts off toward the fan herd again, so I put my hands on either side of her face and swivel it back toward me.

“Oh, okay.” My sister blinks several times, finally processing what I’m saying. “Are they here? Should I be worried?”

“I gave them the wrong directions, but I don’t think I fooled them. We’d better get out of here.” I grab her hand, but she shakes me off.

“Whit, I’m okay! This is probably the safest place in the city. We’re surrounded by, like, a jillion Freelanders hopped-up on New Order hate. Not to mention half of them are packing weapons -”

“Plastic weapons,” I remind her, frowning. “They’re in costume, for God’s sake.”

Wisty shrugs. “Costumes, whatever, doesn’t matter. We’re practically indestructible down here. Can’t you feel it? It’s the most amazing thing.” Her eyes are still glazed over with some sort of euphoria I don’t understand. I have a future flash: Wisty, rock star, being interviewed twenty-five years after her career goes south. They slipped something into my drink that night, she insists. I didn’t know it. But after that, I was an addict.

I’m shaking my sister now, and her head swings like that of a bobblehead doll. “Wisty, snap out of it! I know you don’t believe me, but I’ve got this feeling we’re on the verge of something really bad happening.”

“You mean something bad ‘like a rabid mad dog, poisoning me, ’” sings Byron, inserting his unwelcome presence as usual, “‘while the fire inside me glows, the fire outside you grows.’”