Chapter 1
October 31st, 1975 — Lexford, Massachusetts
Janet
It was blackmail, pure and simple. But it was blackmail Janet could get behind, since the ransom at the end of it was something she’d pined over the past year.
“No one and done,” her father said as her mother nodded. “You make an effort. Outside your room. Outside this house.”
“For how long?” she’d asked.
Her father stood up and retrieved the World Book Dictionary from the book case. He flipped pages until he found what he was looking for.
“Socialize: verb; Participate in social activities; mix socially with others.”
“Activities, plural,” her mother added. “With others.”
“So what, twice?”
Her father had never finished high school, but he was the smartest man she—and a lot of others—knew.
“The more people you’re around the more it will count.”
She knew where this was going and she didn’t like it.
“Dad…”
“Do you want the guitar or not?”
She dipped her head so that her bright red hair fell over her face, hiding her freckles.
“Fine.”
Nothing short of a Yamaha FG-180 Red Label would have gotten her to this stupid dance. It didn’t just sound better—it felt better. The first time she played it, the room seemed to recede. The lows were warm, like a cello humming under her ribs. The mids were sweet and open—like laughter. The highs were glassy and clear.
Her parents were right, she spent most of her free time in her room, strumming her old FG-75 or writing in her song book. But every day on her way home from school, and on weekends, she would stop at Waltz’s Music shop, pick up the display model 180, give it a quick tune by ear, and start playing until Bill Waltz kicked her out. He knew she couldn’t afford it, and didn’t give her much grief. And he appreciated the crowd that would form some days and listen to her play. But not sing. That only happened in the safety of her bedroom.
The annual Halloween dance that brought high school kids from Lexford and Sommerbridge together would go a long way to getting her the sweetest guitar ever made in Japan. There were more expensive instruments in Waltz’s music, but not out on a stand for anyone to pick up and try. And anyway her father couldn’t afford those. Not on a mill foreman’s salary.
Lexford was slightly bigger than Sommerbridge. Both villages traced their roots back to the early 1700s. They had been rivals even then, one more royalist than the other. But spilled blood had brought them together to throw out the red coats that had done the spilling. Now it was football, baseball, hockey or basketball that brought them into opposition.
The dance alternated each year, and whoever was hosting made a point of decorating the gymnasium with every banner or pennant they had won over their local opponent. This year it was on enemy soil, Sommerbridge High School. Not that Janet cared. Her dad was a regular at all those games, not her. Jeff Blackwood had participated in some of them himself before he’d been forced to drop out to help his own father support the family.
It made it easier not being in the gym she knew well—and hated. Her hair was a dead giveaway and the mask only covered her face. She wore a kerchief over her long titian locks. Between that and the mask, she should be safe from discovery. She’d pick a spot against the cinder block wall that the overhead lights didn’t reach.
She slipped through the double doors and kept her shoulder to the painted brick. She followed the outline of the large room around before she spotted someone who seemed to have the same idea she’d had. Even from this distance she could tell that the masked person was a boy. He was alone, making no attempt to join in the dancing that was going on in the middle of the room.
He’d chosen well. It was a good spot. The nearest overhead light was out. She’d have been happy to have found it first. She was less happy to find it occupied, and she considered alternate locations to hide, but there weren’t any.
Maybe I won’t stand out as much if I look like I’m with somebody.
She could try it. If he was waiting for friends or a girlfriend she could just move to another spot.
She slowed her pace as she turned the last corner and approached him. He glanced at her and gave her a friendly nod, which she returned.
Tall, she thought as she stared at the dancers. Skinny. He was wearing clothes that were two sizes too big. Her own clothes weren’t any better. Her sister had screamed at her when she saw what she was wearing to the dance.
They stood like that for several minutes before something happened that caused her to react.
“Who the hell plays Deep Purple at a dance?” she asked no one in particular in a loud voice as Highway Star began to play.
The boy next to her smiled broadly behind his mask at her exclamation.
“Someone with really bad judgement in music,” he said loud enough to be heard over the lyrics nobody’s gonna take my car.
Aric
It wasn’t blackmail that brought Aric to the dance, it was loneliness.
Two years.
Two years since he freed himself from a fever dream that had lasted a week—voices in his head, thoughts that weren’t his.
The first six months had involved doctors. Many doctors, increasing doses of drugs that did absolutely nothing.
“This isn’t possible. Eight hundred milligrams? He should be unconscious. I’m calling the distributor—there’s no way this Thorazine is real,” Doctor Wood said as he scribbled furiously on a pad of paper.
“My father was never affected by medication. Pain killers, anesthesia. Not that he ever took any before the end of his life. Could it be genetic?”
“If it is, it’s a paper in JAMA. But I think it’s more likely we got a batch of counterfeit medication.”
The only thing that had helped was distance. From everyone. His aunt and uncles tiny beach house at Fox Point. In winter. Not a soul around.
It was the voices that came with the grocery visits—that was the missing puzzle piece. It wasn’t voices in his head. It was thoughts. Of the people around him. The more people the more voices—thoughts. The fewer people, the easier to decipher what he was hearing.
I hope he’s better. I don’t know how much longer we can do this. He’s missed so much school.
why can’t I have a normal brother?
Will whatever happened to him happen to me?
He recognized the voices of his family even before the car pulled into the snow covered gravel excuse for a driveway.
He’d begun to lie then—more or less. It was true that the voices had departed, but only when he was alone. With his family there—still bundled up even inside the thin-walled house—he’d slowly begun to turn the volume down on their thoughts. When he went an entire visit without hearing them he said he was ready to go home. It exhausted him, but he’d succeeded. He hadn’t slept through a night since—but he’d learned to cope.
But large crowds had been different, and out of sheer self preservation he stayed away from them. From his friends. From his aunts, uncles, cousins. At school, he had to concentrate so hard to block out thoughts that people thought he was a ditz—the absent-minded kid who ran into walls. Later when he’d grown a bit—and girls began to notice him—he seemed aloof. Snooty. How was he supposed to explain that it wasn’t that.
So it became easier to just get used to being alone.
Two years. A long time in a teenager’s life to be alone. At an age where he really wanted to not be. He wanted friends. He wanted a girlfriend. But how could he have either when one little slip…
It was loneliness that brought Aric to the dance.
It was Janet that kept him there.
Janet and Aric
“Who the hell plays Deep Purple at a dance?”
Aric laughed as the girl standing next to him took the words out of his mouth. Her voice had a husky, intimate quality low in register, with a smoky texture that felt both grounded and quietly magnetic. It carried a kind of worn-in warmth, like faded denim or an old eight track tape played too many times. There was no hint of accent, no South Boston drawl, no dropped “r”s. Her tone held a subtle rasp that might have been because she was shouting over the music.
“Someone with really bad judgement in music,” he replied just as loud.
She heard the laughter in his voice even if she couldn’t see it on his face. His voice was warm and friendly. He’d started speaking as a bass but had drifted up into tenor range before dropping back down, a bell curve made of sound. She’d nodded agreement as she sentenced the DJ to some length of punishment—a week listening to Barry Manilow might be just right. She said it just to hear him laugh again—only realizing afterward what she was doing.
But he did laugh, and she enjoyed it as much as she thought she would. “You’re a harsh judge. But I think he has it coming.”
It seemed that they were not the only ones who felt the selection lacked something—a beat that could be danced to being at the top of the list. The song ended with a whimper, and a moment of blessed silence followed. Some of the dancers began to walk towards them and Janet thought she was about to lose the boy to a sea of his friends, but their real destination was behind the collapsed bleachers where they could paw each other in private.
Aric saw the masked girl turn her head in that direction and got a glimpse of emerald green eyes, and a strand of bright red hair that escaped her kerchief. He glanced that way himself before looking back, and as his gray eyes met hers she felt a shiver. His hair was black, and almost brushing the collar of his oversized shirt. There was a brief feeling of something—happiness and sadness mixed together, but it was gone in a flash.
He was still experiencing momentary bouts of leakage, and he knew immediately that she’d felt it. But it was nowhere near the worst he’d had. And she hadn’t collapsed or run away, or reacted in any way, so Aric felt safe. He just needed to be careful. He was excited just to be around people, even if he was keeping as far away from them as possible. Most of them anyway.
When the music started again it was Shining Star and a cheer went up through the crowd. Dancers ran back to the floor, but the two couples still hadn’t emerged from behind the bleachers.
“I hope the sweep under that after games,” Aric said.
“What?” Janet asked.
Without thinking Aric closed the distance between them before repeating himself. Janet was appalled.
“God, you don’t think—” she broke off, horrified.
“No. Nothing like that. I just think they’re standing knee deep in old popcorn and potato chip bags.”
In most ways Janet was a healthy sixteen year old girl. She fantasized about sex as much as the next girl—unless the next girl happened to be her older sister. But even her imagination didn’t extend to sex behind the bleachers while a dance was underway. Though sex while wearing a mask might be a fantasy worth exploring.
When Best of My Love began to play the mood changed. Couples moved in close, arms wrapped around each other, bodies swaying slowly. Exactly what the boy and girl standing side by side wanted for themselves but were too afraid—for different reason—to pursue.
The melody reminded her of something she’d been playing with on her beat up Yamaha. There was a chord progression the Eagles like to use that she’d changed to suit her own song. She ran through it, mentally marking the places where an extra beat might help.
Aric was enjoying himself. The energy of the crowd, muted as it was for the slow dance, lifted his spirits. When the melody began to play in his head it never occurred to him that it originated from the girl next to him. When he started humming it out loud it was too late.
It took Janet several seconds to realize what was happening. She’d been strumming that melody for six months. She’d played it an hour straight once, fine tuning, adding, subtracting, extending. She’d hummed it herself while playing it. But hearing it now—in a clear tenor tone—from a boy she’d only just met, who’d never heard her play—it took her brain a moment to confirm what she was hearing.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked more forcefully than she’d intended. The humming stopped. She could see the shock in his eyes as his body stiffened.
That’s when Aric realized what had happened. He threw up walls that nothing could penetrate. He’d pay for it later with a splitting migraine, but right now he had something else to worry about.
He ran through every excuse in a millisecond. Only one came close to plausible.
“You were humming it,” he said innocently.
Bullshit, she thought. She never hummed her own songs, not where anyone could hear them, and scoff at them.
“I don’t think I was,” she said as she gave him a side glance.
He hated lying to cover his mistakes, but he’d started down this path and there was no changing it.
“Well, I heard it someplace.”
She paused for a moment before answering. “I guess,” she said skeptically.
Maybe he was right. Maybe he had heard it someplace. Maybe she had too, some time long ago. Maybe she only thought she’d written it herself.
But he’d been humming it at the same time she’d been thinking of it.
“What kind of music do you like?” he asked her. “Not Deep Purple I guess.”
She shrugged, her mind still on what had just happened. “They’re OK. In the right setting. Which this is not.”
“True,” he answered before offering an olive branch. “I’m sorry if my humming bothered you. I’m never going to win any singing awards.”
“I like your voice,” she said before realizing that the words were coming out of her mouth for all to hear.
Her face was bright red behind her mask when he answered. “I like yours too.”
He made the leap before his courage completely deserted him.
“Would you like to go someplace sometime? Someplace quieter where we can talk for real?”
There are many songs that refer to the phenomena of two hearts beating as one. If one of them had started playing in that moment it would have been an appropriate accompaniment for Janet and Aric as their hearts beat in time to an allegro they composed together.
November 1st, 1975 — Lexford, Massachusetts
“Gesundheit,” her father said after she told him the last name of the boy she was meeting later.
Janet’s reply was tart. “Ha ha. It is to laugh.”
Her mother’s question was more benign, but still loaded with New England prejudice against anything with a hint of foreignness. “What sort of name is that?”
“Scandinavian. His grandparents arrived here in the twenties. Both his parents were born here.”
Her father looked at his watch before putting his hands in his pockets and glancing at his wife. “That’s something, I guess.”
Janet was going through her closet for the third time, hoping that something would magically appear. Nothing.
“You wanted me to socialize. I’m socializing. I thought you’d be happy.”
“We are,” her mother began before stopping. “We meant groups. Not a date with a boy.”
Her father jumped in before she could explain. “If this is just so I’ll buy you that guitar then you can call and tell him you can’t make it and we’ll drive to Waltz’s and you can spend your evening getting to know that guitar instead of him.”
“It’s not a date, and it’s not that—” she began to explain before her sister Chrissy appeared and rescued her.
“Come with me, little sis. We have work to do.”
She left her parents behind. They looked at each other for a moment, silently reviewing how their finely crafted plan had gone off the rails.
“Two dates in two days,” Margaret—Meg to her friends—Blackwood said.
“That’s two more than I thought she’d have,” Jeff Blackwood responded.
Across the hall, behind a closed door, a second conversation unfolded.
“So, what’s he like?” Chrissy asked as she held a series of blouses in front of her little sister.
“He’s really nice. Funny. A bit sad.”
Christine Blackwood rolled her eyes. “I meant what does he look like?”
Janet smiled as she recalled their stroll through the parking lot after the dance.
“I don’t really know. We kept our masks on the whole time. In fact we’re wearing them to the pizza place in Sommerbridge. We’ll take them off once we’ve sat down.
Her sister did a double take.
“You going on a date with a boy and you don’t know what he looks like? What if he’s ugly?”
Janet remembered a pair of gray eyes looking out of a devil’s mask and the warm voice that accompanied it and smiled.
“It’s not a date. We’re meeting for pizza and to talk about what music we like, what books we like, what we like to do for fun. It doesn’t matter what he looks like.”
Chrissy shrugged. “Sounds like a date to me. And everybody says it doesn’t matter what he looks like. Right up until it does matter.”
Janet couldn’t imagine it mattering. She’d felt so comfortable talking to Aric that it didn’t even dawn on her to be nervous. There was something about him—she’d felt a connection immediately. But she’d felt something else as well. That mixture of happiness and sadness that she almost mentioned to her parents. Maybe that was why she felt as if she’d known him forever. That feeling had resonated inside her like a guitar string vibrating in harmony with its neighbor.
“This one,” her sister said, holding up a white blouse with a delicate floral pattern.
It was beautiful, and Janet had admired it many times when Chrissy wore it. But—
“You think it will look OK on me?”
Chrissy smiled. “Just don’t get pizza sauce on it.”
