The Shadow and the Rose Read online

  Chapter 2

  “Making out in a graveyard,” said Maddie. “Now that must have been an intense experience.”

  “He sounds dicey to me,” William objected. “Even for an emo, picking up girls in a cemetery is a little off.”

  The three of them were gathered once more at their favorite table at the coffee bar. The white rose from Josiah Cavanaugh’s grave stood in a glass of water on the table, and Joy turned it so that the blossom faced the window.

  “It wasn’t like that. And we didn’t make out,” she added, with a dirty look at Maddie. “I keep wondering how he knew who I was. We must know each other from somewhere. And I do have this feeling I’ve seen him before.” She wished she’d had her wits about her last night and had asked him.

  Maddie’s eyes widened. “You knew someone that hot and never introduced me to him?”

  William, not being susceptible to male hotness, stuck to the topic at hand. “Well, if he knew your name, chances are you do know him from somewhere. Maybe from one of your classes. Have you checked the student directory?”

  Joy shook her head and took a gulp of coffee. She had been too wired to go to sleep after her cemetery encounter, and was paying now for her wakeful night. She was already on her second large latte. “What’s the point? No last name, three first names. And there’s no guarantee he’s even at Ash Grove.”

  “He who?” came a new voice, and Blake, Maddie’s current boyfriend, took a seat at their table. He was a handsome black drama student with a theatrical baritone voice and deep brown eyes that made Joy think of Diet Coke. I really need to work on this caffeine addiction, she thought.

  “Just this guy I ran into last night,” she said, and Maddie gave an undignified snort.

  “Just this dreamy mystery man she snogged in a graveyard,” she corrected. “Blake, do you know a guy named Tan, or Tanner, or Tristan?”

  Blake considered. “Well, I don’t know if it counts as all three, but there is that model called Tristan. His billboards for Sybarite are all over Highway 64.”

  “Ooh, good. Let’s see what some Google-fu can tell us about him.” Maddie dug in her purse for her smart phone.

  While she was tapping away, Sheila came in with Alissa, who had evidently been crowned her second in command. A handful of other dancers, Sheila’s usual crew, were with them. Maddie had dubbed them the Ballet Bitch Brigade, or BBBs for short. Gabbling together excitedly, they headed straight for the counter without showing any intention of stopping.

  Joy called, “Sheila! Over here,” and waved to get her attention. Sheila rolled her eyes at her friends, and they stalked over to the table.

  “What is it?” she snapped. “I’m busy.”

  “The rose on Josiah Cavanaugh’s grave. I got it. And I did not, as you can see, get dragged underground by his corpse.” She presented her camera, with the photo showing on the display, and made a “ta-da” motion to the rose.

  Sheila gave them scarcely a glance. “What, do you want a prize or something?” she said.

  “Well, no, but—”

  “You’re holding us up,” interrupted Alissa. “We’ve got much more important things to do. Like scheduling an appointment with… Melisande.” She said “Melisande” as if she were saying “the queen” or “the president.”

  “Melisande, the supermodel?” Maddie exclaimed. “That’s crazy. Why would she be in North Carolina at all, let alone meeting with you?”

  Sheila smirked. “Because she’s scouting for new talent, and that’s us. Buh-bye.” She tossed her hair, and the three of them strode off with the long dancers’ gait that always made Joy feel clumsy and slow.

  “Wow, she just gets more adorable every day,” said William dryly. “I’m sorry, Joy. It looks like you wasted your time.”

  Joy shrugged to hide her disappointment. She had half thought that she would win some props from Sheila for carrying out the dare, but evidently Sheila’s feelings about Joy hadn’t changed. “It’s not like we were ever going to become bestest-ever friends,” she said. “But if it’s true about Melisande, I can see how she’d be more interested in her than a stupid dare.”

  Melisande was a big deal. She was everywhere: magazines, billboards, TV, red-carpet events of all kinds. Her pale, arresting beauty made her one of the most recognizable women in the hemisphere, and one of the elite, like Gaga or Madonna, who didn’t need a last name. The famous poster of her wearing nothing but a strategically arranged snake was on the bedroom wall of practically every teenage boy in America, and when Hollywood decided to remake the H. Rider Haggard story She, Melisande was the natural choice for the beautiful, imperious sorceress of the title, She Who Must Be Obeyed.

  But there were also other, more sinister sides to her persona. More than one of her husbands had died unexpectedly or tragically, so some of the tabloids had gone so far as to call her a black widow. There had even been hints that Melisande was involved in some underground organization that could end her enemies’ careers—or their lives. But as accustomed as she was to hearing ridiculous rumors about Ash Grove, Joy was inclined to dismiss the more lurid stories as pure fiction.

  “But why would she come here to discover the next Heidi Klum?” she asked. “Sheila must have gotten the story wrong. I doubt she’s even in this state.”

  “Actually, it’s starting to look like she is,” said Maddie. “Check out this guy Tristan’s Wikipedia entry.” She gave a whistle. “And definitely check out the photo.”

  The photo did grab one’s attention. It was the guy from the cemetery, in one of those arty black-and-white images that dominated men’s fragrance ads. He was bare-chested, skin glistening with strategically applied beads of moisture, staring into the camera with a sulky pout that should have been ridiculous but… wasn’t.

  “Man, those are some impressive abs,” said Blake. “I wonder how many hours a day he works out? A six-pack like that is a serious time commitment.”

  “It’s time well spent,” said Maddie appreciatively. “I can’t believe you just stumbled into him in a graveyard, Joy. You are so lucky.”

  “But he probably doesn’t look like this in real life, does he, Joy?” asked William. “I mean, I’m sure he’s all airbrushed and CGI’d here.” She thought he sounded wistful. William had what might be called an intellectual’s build rather than an athlete’s. He was skinny because he forgot to eat, and his most strenuous activities were mental.

  “Well, he wasn’t all dewy like that when I saw him, but that’s actually pretty much how he looked.” Embarrassed at the looks the others were giving her, she took refuge in the Wikipedia text. “‘Tristan is the professional name of a print model based in New York and Hollywood,’” she read aloud. “‘After being discovered by legendary supermodel Melisande, he went on to model for Abercrombie & Fitch and Calvin Klein’s fragrance Sybarite. Most recently, he was selected to be the face of Melisande’s upcoming line of herbal skin-care products.’ So it could make sense that she’d be here with him. But that doesn’t explain what he was doing here in the first place.”

  “What he was doing was putting the moves on you,” said Maddie. “I repeat, you are one lucky chick.”

  She thought about her father’s cancer, about being stuck here at school instead of being with him. About being the only student at Ash Grove who wasn’t beautiful or brilliant or both. Lucky was not the word she would have chosen. She got up and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “It’s almost time for music theory,” she said. “William and I need to get going.”

  “See you,” said Maddie. “If you meet any more demigods wandering around, steer them my way, huh?”

  “Hey,” objected Blake. “I’m right here.”

  “Not for long, if this Tristan guy shows up.”

  Blake folded his arms. “Nice, Maddie, real nice. So you think of me as just a temporary placeholder.”

  “Oh, like you treat me any different,” she snapped. “You never pay any attention to me.”

  “That�
�s not fair.”

  “What’s not fair is you at rehearsal yesterday, flirting with every single—”

  Joy and William exchanged a wry look and left them to their argument.

  “Looks like it’s time for another Maddie Relationship Meltdown,” Joy said to him, as the raised voices of Maddie and Blake followed them to the door.

  William shook his head in exasperation. “She seems to have this supernatural ability to pick guys who are bad for her. Blake’s a decent guy, but I could have told her he wasn’t ready to be exclusive. Not that she’d have listened.”

  Maddie’s inevitable messy breakups always left her swearing never to date again. But then, sooner rather than later, she’d be snuggling up with another high-maintenance hunk who couldn’t commit or had trust issues or was on the rebound from a toxic relationship. “I guess she needs the drama,” said Joy. “I just hate that she’s always getting hurt.”

  “Me too. She deserves better.”

  But Maddie and her romantic misadventures left her mind as they approached the classroom building. The campus grounds always had a soothing effect on Joy. Ash Grove High School for the Performing Arts lay in a swathe of grassland in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Pines and oaks grew thickly over a ridge at its back, and from the playing field students had a spectacular view of ranks of gently sloped slate-blue mountains along the horizon.

  She knew from her father that Josiah Cavanaugh, an eccentric philanthropist (but not a pagan, wizard, or zombie, despite Sheila’s claims), had established the school in the 1910s in the hopes of attracting budding musicians from around the world to the tiny, unknown corner of Appalachia known as Brasstown. And, strangely enough, it had worked. Soon word spread that graduates of Ash Grove were consistently brilliant and accomplished, and enrollment grew. A theater building was added to the complex in the next decade, and the school began to turn out actors who won raves from critics and audiences alike. Josiah Cavanaugh’s school soon had a dazzling reputation.

  It also, locally at least, gained a reputation for stranger things. Some of Cavanaugh’s eccentricities caused comment, like his insistence that the doorway of every building contain iron to ward off evil. There were also stories of things that had never been proven, such as the rose garden. It was said that Cavanaugh had had part of the woods cleared and a rose garden planted there for his bride, but no one had ever found a sign of such a garden. The closest anyone found were the wild roses that his will’s executors had planted by his grave.

  Cavanaugh himself was present in the form of a bronze statue that stood near the dining hall. Dressed in the formal style of the early 1900s, he sported a handlebar moustache and a frock coat. His gaze was fixed on the mountainous horizon. One hand was on his hip, and from the other a top hat dangled.

  William elbowed Joy as they passed. “You should have fed Cavanaugh’s hat last night,” he said. “Then maybe your dreamboat would have given you his number.” It was a tradition for students to throw coins into the statue’s hat for good luck before a performance.

  “Maddie would say I had plenty of luck even without Josiah’s help.” It was just too bad that money in the hat wouldn’t do anything about her dad.

  The campus was as resolutely old-fashioned as its founder. The dorms and classroom buildings were quaint buildings of red brick and local stone, with peaked English roofs and the expected ivy meandering over the walls. Inside were bare rafters, whitewashed walls painted with philosophical homilies, and well-worn plank floors. Despite its old-fashioned appearance, the school kept up to date in the important ways, with the latest lighting and sound equipment for the theater and music departments. But in every other respect it seemed like time had stopped there.

  Ash Grove had never really built up ties to the outside community; most of the locals knew it only by name and through the ridiculous stories about its supernatural atmosphere. The school existed in its own cozy little bubble, out of time and even out of place, and let the rest of the world race on without it. And it continued to turn out brilliant graduates who went on to prestigious colleges and dazzling careers.

  Joy seemed unlikely to become one of them, however. During the afternoon break, she was called to the principal’s office.

  “This is the third time this semester, Joy,” said Dr. Eleanor Aysgarth. “I’m really surprised at you. First skipping classes, and now sneaking out of the dorm after lights out? I hope you didn’t go so far as to leave school grounds.”

  Joy shrugged. “It was a nice night for a bike ride; what can I say?”

  This received a stern look over the top of Dr. Aysgarth’s glasses. Joy suspected that the principal wore glasses only because they made such a great theatrical prop. She gestured with them when she was lecturing. She took them off when she was about to make a significant point. She conveyed disapproval by tipping her head down and looking over them. It worked, though. Joy felt abashed as the cool blue eyes transfixed her over the tortoiseshell.

  “I know things have been hard for you lately, with your father’s illness and your having to move into the dorm.”

  Joy said nothing. The feeling of being out of place had always been there, even when she was a day student, but her father’s presence had shielded her from the worst of it. Now that she had to live with the other students, she was getting the full impact. Some of the students, like Sheila and her crowd, acted as if her presence compromised Ash Grove’s standards. Even those who didn’t treat her like a freak show, like Maddie, seemed confused as to why she was even here.

  When she didn’t respond, the principal continued. “Even taking that into consideration, though, I can’t just let you work out your issues by flouting the school rules. Why are you smiling?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Joy. “It’s just that it’s so nice to hear someone use ‘flout’ correctly. Everyone always gets it mixed up with ‘flaunt.’ I guess that’s why you’re a Ph.D.”

  The principal gave a heavy sigh. “Joy, come on. I don’t want to be a dragon here. But you need to shape up. This isn’t the first stunt you’ve pulled this semester. I thought you wanted to follow in your mother’s tradition and really do good work here. Has that changed?”

  Anna Merridew Sumner, an Ash Grove graduate, had had a brief but brilliant career as a singer, songwriter, and pianist. Her two CDs were now out of print, but pirated mp3s circulated widely. Joy knew she could never live up to her mother when it came to talent, but she had hoped somehow to follow in her footsteps and keep her memory, at least, alive.

  When she said nothing, the principal pressed her advantage. “You might also want to think of your father’s feelings. What will happen if I have to suspend you? How will he feel about that?”

  She winced. Seeing it, Dr. Aysgarth’s expression softened. “I know Sheila probably goaded you,” she said in a gentler tone. “But I also know you’re too smart to fall for that. If you need to get out on your own to work through things, come see me, and we’ll work something out, okay? Otherwise”—she stood up, so that Joy had to look up at her—“I’m going to start to think that you made a mistake enrolling here.”

  Joy nodded dumbly. Her face was burning. It would be humiliating if she got thrown out of Ash Grove—not just for herself, but for Dad as well. It had never occurred to her before that it might happen. “I won’t do it again,” she said, and thought she was telling the truth.

  “Good,” said Dr. Aysgarth. And then, in such a low voice Joy could hardly catch it, “And if you do, don’t get caught.”

  Sometimes, thought Joy as she headed to class, the principal was several shades of awesome.

  After classes ended for the day and Joy returned to her dorm, she paused by the open door of Gail Brody’s suite. Gail (it was hard to think of her as Mrs. Brody) was the resident faculty member, or dorm mother. She taught honors math, so Joy didn’t have any classes with her, but they’d known each other for years, since Gail used to babysit Joy. It was nice having someone who felt like family in t
he dorm, but it made things awkward when teacherly duties clashed with family feeling. This was one of those times.

  “Hey,” she said, and Gail looked up from the papers she was grading. They were spread out across her living-room carpet, and she was sitting cross-legged in their midst. She was young, under thirty, and had only been married for a few years. Her husband, Jim, taught at Murphy High School, a short commute away.

  “I just wanted to let you know that I spoke to Dr. Aysgarth,” said Joy, feeling awkward. She knew that Gail was probably the one who had reported her absence last night.

  The teacher nodded, which made her ponytail bob. In sweats instead of her teaching clothes, she looked little older than the students she supervised. “I was sorry to have to report you, Joy. But after Sheila told me you weren’t in, I didn’t have any choice but to follow it up.”

  Joy could have dope-slapped herself. How did she not guess that Sheila was setting her up? And she’d walked right into it.

  But that wasn’t Gail’s fault. “No problem,” she forced herself to say. “I knew I was out of line. Hereafter our heroine is a reformed character and becomes a shining example to the entire student body.”

  Gail laughed at her glum tone. “Surely not. That sounds pretty grim. Oh, did you hear the news?” she added, as Joy was turning away. “Melisande, the supermodel, is in town. You know that mansion they just finished building over the ridge from Ash Grove? It turns out it’s hers, and she’s moving in. She says—or her people say—she intends to start mentoring students.” She wrinkled her nose at people. “I guess we didn’t rate a personal appearance. Anyway—could be something to consider.”

  So it was true, and Melisande was in town. “But why would she move out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Apparently the herbs for her new skin-care line are grown in the area, and she liked the climate so much she decided to build a vacation home here. I suspect this is going to be her get-away-from-it-all refuge for when all the glamour and fame get to be too much for her.”

  “But won’t she be bored?” Joy wondered. “I can’t imagine just giving up that lifestyle.”

  The teacher shrugged. “Maybe she truly is interested in being a mentor to the next generation of toothpaste and underwear models. But honestly, I’ll be surprised if we see much of her. I suspect that after a few months of country living she’ll be jetting back to Hollywood. Except that she’ll have to go all the way to Atlanta even to find a jet.”

  As Joy crossed the lobby and climbed the stairs to the room she shared with Maddie, she turned over the idea of Melisande as a mentor. No doubt about it, she was a very influential woman, and it would be a boost to anyone in the entertainment field to be able to drop Melisande’s name. She suspected that this would be an exciting prospect to far more than just Sheila and her crowd.

  Inside her room she dropped her book bag on her bed and kicked off her sneakers. Anyone seeing the room would have known just whose half was whose. Maddie’s was a colorful jumble, the bed unmade, clothes heaped all over the floor, movie posters crowding the walls. Joy’s area looked as if she hadn’t finished moving in. The walls on her side were bare, and the top of her dresser held only a stack of books and a framed photograph of her with her father, taken when she was around eight years old, two years after her mother’s death. Her father was giving her a piggyback ride, and both of them were looking into the camera with identical grins. She remembered the day the photo was taken: they were at Six Flags, and the July heat made the whole park smell of creosote. It was a smell she always associated with rollercoasters and happiness.

  There were no pictures of her mother. Those were back at home, where Joy felt they would be safer, instead of being exposed to the hectic life of the dorm. Or maybe, she admitted to herself, she just hoped that she wouldn’t be in the dorm long enough to miss her favorite possessions.

  She booted up her laptop. It was an old one, without a built-in webcam, but William had set her up with an external one. Soon enough, there was her dad on the screen. It was always a bit of a shock to see him looking so pale and tired, but his smile at least hadn’t changed. “Hey, kittycat,” he said. “How’s my girl?”

  Twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday, they saw each other on Skype. Her father had said that any more often might derail Joy’s studies, but she suspected he also found the visits tiring and didn’t want to let her see it. She was always careful to avoid telling him about anything that might cause him to worry. Lately it meant that she’d been leaving a lot of stuff out. But since long conversations tired him, it was just as well.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “I had an infusion today, so I’m kind of wobbly. Nothing serious, though.”

  “You’re getting plenty of rest? Not trying to do too much?” She didn’t want to nag, but sometimes it felt like the closest she could get to actually helping him get better.

  “Yes, Nurse Ratched.” But the crinkles around his eyes showed that he wasn’t scolding. “I’m in the running for patient of the year. How’s English with Mr. Berenger?”

  “Okay, I guess. He’s started us on Macbeth, but he doesn’t do the Scottish accent like you do. It’s not nearly as much fun as reading it with you.”

  That made him laugh. “I wouldn’t have the energy right now to do the accent anyway. It takes a lot of gusto—at least, the way I do it. And how’s the job in the dining hall working out?”

  She shrugged. It was okay as long as Sheila and her crowd didn’t use it as an opportunity to mess with her. Just the teensiest sliver of turkey. Maybe that one there. Ew, gross, not that one! The one next to it. To the left. No, my left. How hard can it be to put a slice of meat on a plate? And so on.

  It would be so different if Dad were home. They’d be cooking supper together at their house near the river, with the radio playing the oldies station and the back door wide open to the soft twilight air. If the river was running high, they would be able to hear its chatter, even over the music and the two-lane road that separated their front yard from the riverbank. After supper he’d run lines with her when she was in a play, or they might take turns reading aloud, Dickens or Wodehouse or Terry Pratchett.

  Things would be like that again, she told herself. Dad would get well and come home, and she’d be able to leave the dorm and stop working in the dining hall.

  If she just told herself that often enough, maybe she’d even start to believe it.

  “I wish you’d let me come to Oklahoma to be with you,” she blurted. “I feel so useless. I know I’d be more help to you there than I am here. I could keep track of your appointments, manage your meds…”

  “We’ve discussed this already,” he said. “It’s better for you to stay at Ash Grove and not disrupt your education.”

  “It’s already—” she began, but stopped. Part of her wanted to tell him she’d been reprimanded by Dr. Aysgarth. If she stopped shielding him from things, he might be concerned enough about her to consent to let her join him—but on the other hand, more worry wouldn’t be good for him right now. She compromised.

  “I can’t focus on school when I’m worried about you,” she said.

  “Nevertheless.” He was at his most teacherly when they argued. “I need you to try.”

  “If it’s money that’s the problem, I’ve been saving up, and pretty soon I should be able to afford plane fare. Maybe in a few more weeks—”

  “Joy, no.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose in the gesture that meant he was weary, but his voice had lost none of its conviction. “The best way you can help me is by staying on track with your studies and taking good care of yourself.”

  She sighed. “You’re the one who needs taking care of.”

  “And I have a wonderful team of nurses and techs to do just that. In fact, here’s Angela now, so I’ll have to go.”

  Joy conceded defeat.

  “I’ll talk to you soon, then, Dad,” she said. “I love you.”

  She
never used to say that before his diagnosis; it was always understood between them. But now, when he said, “I love you too, honey” and closed the session, she wondered if he knew that she said it because she was scared he might die.

  She shut down the computer and gathered up her sheet music. Still in sock feet, she padded back downstairs to the dorm lobby, where a piano stood against the back wall.

  Her mother had been a piano virtuoso before she had graduated from high school, so Joy had some catching up to do. Unfortunately, she still found reading music a slog. Also, she had inherited her father’s short, stubby fingers, so she had to work hard to span the keys. As she played scales to warm up, she found her thoughts returning to Tristan. With those long, slender fingers, he’d probably be a terrific pianist.

  Then her hands stilled on the keys, as the image flashed into her memory all at once, like a snapshot.

  Not piano. Guitar.

  He used to sit at the first table on the left as she entered the dining hall. Feet propped up on a chair (until a teacher caught him), picking softly at a guitar. Never paying attention to anything but his own music. He had been skinnier then—the long sessions at the gym must have come later. And his hair was shaggy and fell in his face, hiding his remarkable eyes and cheekbones. But it was definitely the same guy. Tanner Lindsey had been a student at Ash Grove.

  He was at least a year ahead of her, she remembered, so they had had no classes together. She couldn’t remember ever having seen him hanging out with anyone, so it was no wonder her friends hadn’t been able to place him either. And after the start of her sophomore year she couldn’t remember seeing him again—not until their encounter in the graveyard. She wondered how he had been discovered by Melisande, and what he was doing back in town. She couldn’t imagine that rural North Carolina had much to attract world-class models. Maybe he still had family here?

  But that wasn’t the most pressing question. What in the world would make a celebrity model exile himself to a graveyard and call himself a dead man?