Chapter 19
“T his is insane! Lucie had synesthesia, so the colors must mean something to her! But how to be sure? Is that all she left you?” I said to Levi the moment he went back to his seat, carrying a to-go cup.
For the past six hours, we had been working on it—or rather, I worked on it, while Levi, with his so-called genius brain, was less than helpful. His gaze was either dissecting me like I was Frankenstein’s creature, or he was making snarky comments about the meaninglessness of life while sauntering through the many shelves.
Levi jerked his head back, his feet propped casually on the table. “As I said hundreds of times, she only left me two music scores. That’s the first one.”
He slid the cup in my direction, and I analyzed the drink doubtfully. He brought it for me? Why didn’t he bring something for himself too? His gesture could have been misinterpreted as sweet. But Levi and sweet didn’t fit together, so it was probably only a decoy to keep me awake.
“Thank you. But the colors, it has to—”
“Well, you’re the one who’s supposed to help me.” He tossed his pen in the air before catching it. “And you’re not doing such a great job at it.”
“I’ll succeed!” Frustration tinged my voice, my fingers curving as if I wanted to squash something—preferably his face. “You’re distracting me and not helping.”
“Is it the first time you’re spending a full night with a man, Dalia?” he teased. “Did your incompetence allow me to take another of your firsts tonight?”
I readjusted my wild hair that probably took the form of a crazy scientist conducting experiments. “Shut up.”
He let out a thin, satisfied laugh. Plus, it wasn’t the whole night; it was only four o’clock. I finally tasted whatever was in this cup. Matcha with oat milk and honey . It was exactly the way I loved it. When his hard gaze settled on me with a satisfied sneer dangling on his lips, I cleared my throat.
“I made some progress.” I defended myself amid the chaos of papers strewn across the table. “I divided the measures based on the indications in her sketch, considering the tempo and her notes. But I still can’t place some measures; it could fit at least two parts out of four. And look at those notes inside this measure; it’s so long and messy it looks like a Brian Ferneyhough’s music score and—” I blinked, my mouth hanging open. I lifted a finger and started rearranging the scattered pieces.
“And what?” Levi complained.
“I’m so stupid!” I screamed in the middle of the deserted library. “It was right under my nose all this time! I wasted so much time!”
“My company is never a waste of time.”
Ignoring him, I retrieved Mr. Delgado’s book and returned to Scriabin’s biography, pointing at the page to show Levi.
“He invented the clavier à lumières . He had synesthesia too, and look, each color matches a note!”
I quickly associated the colors of each of the four parts in chronological order with the French notes they referred to: Mi ? , Mi, La ? , Si ? .
“I didn’t know that,” he whispered to himself, as if not knowing something was his biggest disappointment.
“It means that the first note of part one is Mi ? , so the first note of the score has to be Mi ? , so the first note is already correct. This means the first note of part two is a Mi , and so on… Now that I know the first notes of each of the four parts, I can readjust the whole score in the right order and find where the rest of the measures belong.” I was smiling and doing a little dance on my seat. “Isn’t that great?”
Levi didn’t share the same elation, his brows creasing in a deep frown. “They say quantum computing is hard to understand. Mother dearest surpassed herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mother had a thing for puzzles and treasure hunting, things like that. She may believe I’m still eight and willing to play those silly games. ”
“I think it sounds like fun.” I smiled.
Levi gave me a cryptic, cold smile. “You’d think so. Each of her puzzles was increasingly complicated. It’s the only thing she liked doing, apart from music.”
“She was trying to connect with you because she knew you were smart. I mean, I would have loved to play those games with friends.” Or Mom. “In each of our music classes, we were interpreting a song based on a drawing, a color, or an art piece of my choice. She was always so creative.”
I remembered how she’d cry listening to beautiful music or observing some pieces of art.
“She was a hermit,” Levi gritted between clenched teeth. “To the point that some children from my school had come to our house without invitation because they wanted to verify if it was haunted like the rumors said. I played along. They were so gullible that I almost made my life sound cool until Mother dearest completely lost it.”
A memory flashed into my brain. How did I not remember that sooner? I was eleven years old, and it was the only time I saw Levi outside of the manor. The only time I’ve been confronted with a glimpse of how they were treated in our town.
“Look who just arrived,” the fake blond lady whispered to her friend, my attention snagging on Lucie strolling through the supermarket with a frenzied energy. “Dalia is still taking class with her, right?”
She and her friend seemed about the age Mom should have been by now. Going on secret adventures with Grandma to the local supermarket wasn’t something we did often. I wanted to enjoy my time out of the house as much as possible, but they had trapped Grandma at the checkout.
“Lucie is the best. She’s teaching me how colors sound, and how to speak with my violin,” I said with my brightest smile, even though all I really wanted was to play a game of guessing where the fruit came from and grab some licorice.
My heart fluttered like a trapped bird in my chest the moment I noticed Lucie’s son in the parking lot, staring at the postcards by the kiosk. He clutched a sheet of stickers in his hand, which he had taken from the stand. The seller, who had been reading his journal, suddenly stopped and looked at Levi with a suspicious glare as if he were trying to catch him doing something wrong. I never saw him outside of the manor. The excitement made my ballerina shoes tap together softly.
“How strange,” the lady with the gray hair muttered, pushing her cart up behind us at the checkout. “My poor son went to that manor once and was really scared.”
“Your son is afraid of everything, Martha. Remember when he cried because of bees?” Grandma said as she emptied our basket and placed it on the checkout counter. I grinned and followed suit, emptying my pink bag just like her.
“That lady threw a fit because there was too much noise, but kids are supposed to be noisy,” the gray-haired lady’s voice grated on my ears like a screeching moray eel, not gentle like Mom’s or Lucie’s. “They make messes all the time; that’s just what they do. She locked herself in, apparently for hours, and—”
I twisted my neck to see Levi better. The grumpy seller at the kiosk was waving his hands angrily like he was a bird of bad omen he wanted to get rid of. Meanwhile, Levi, hands buried in his pockets, stood tense and defensive, as if he were used to being treated that way.
“Remember that field trip? She only signed up because her son was there. Poor thing had no friends. I’ve never seen them even hold hands. My son practically clings to me, begging for kisses before school. Anyway, she locked herself, again, this time in the bus bathroom — ”
The women’s voices droned on, their faces twisting into mean lines, while Grandma fiddled with her watch. I glanced back at Levi. He kicked a tiny rock and turned in a circle in the parking lot, away from the rude man. I wanted to go meet him. Butterflies fluttered inside me, and I felt my cheeks heat.
“Even the school headmaster avoids her. She’s always complaining about everything.”
“I saw her at the pharmacy. She had prescriptions for pills. Patrice, on the contrary, is a sweetheart. She is very lucky that he educates her son while — ”
“Hello, ladies.” Lucie arrived by our side, her fingers fluttering in a peculiar rhythm. Her smile was bright, but it lingered a tad too long, almost as if it were glued to her face.
“Lucie!” I hurried over to her with arms outstretched, ready to engulf her in a tight hug.
But as I wrapped my arms around her, she stiffened like a statue. I quickly released her. I always forgot that hugs made her feel weird, but she always smiled back at me.
“Lucie.” The fake blond lady forced a thin smile, her eyes not quite meeting Lucie’s. “How nice to see you. How have you been?”
“Oh, really?” Lucie frowned. “I couldn’t find the brand of bread I usually buy because they were out of it, so I have to try this new brand and I’m not sure.” Her smile appeared strained, a hint of tension flickering in her eyes as her fingers tapped nervously on her cart. “I’ve read that the human body needs an average of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram, so I had to buy a weighing machine to know exactly how much we need. What did you end up getting?” Leaning in closer, she scrutinized the items in the other person’s cart. “Oh no. Those biscuits are filled with chemical additives. And this ham has E249, which is carcinogenic and—”
“I’m not buying this,” Grandma muttered, tossing the ham aside. I silently cheered inside; I never liked eating dead animals, unlike Dad.
One of the women sighed while the other cut in, “Thank you, Lucie. That was very… informative, as always.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” Lucie replied in a voice that sounded kind of flat, not at all like when she talked about music with me. Just then, another cash register opened up nearby, the beep-beep of the scanner filling the air. “If you’ll excuse me, I don’t really feel like sticking around to chat right now. I just want to go home.”
But the gray-haired lady kind of steered her cart in a way that made it hard for Lucie to leave. “So, Lucie, how’s your son?”
Grandma was busy at the checkout, scanning our groceries, and I couldn’t talk to Lucie because of those women. I knew this was my chance to slip away quietly, so I tiptoed out of the grocery shop and snuck under their radar.
Levi was at the very end of the small parking lot, and I waved hello at him. “Levi!”
He turned around, his brow furrowing as he looked in my direction, although it could have been the sun in his eyes. I rushed over to him, my grin stretching from ear to ear. And to my surprise, he began to move toward me too, not exactly running, but still picking up his pace. Was he happy to see me too? It was just like a movie. The sound of barking dogs echoed behind me, closer and closer, but I kept running.
“Levi, you — ”
But before I could finish, he pushed me.
His hand grabbed my arm, pulling me behind him. I tumbled to the ground, my knees screaming in pain as they hit the rough pavement. I glanced over my shoulder to see why he did that, and I saw Levi shielding me from two large dogs bounding on him. One of them bit the arm he raised to protect his face, confusing him with a playmate. My eyes widened in fear — the dogs were nearly as tall as me and so big. Levi remained stoic until they finally calmed down. I’d made the big dogs excited by running, so they started chasing me. Their owner called out to them, and they bounded away, tails wagging.
Levi shot me a dark, unreadable look, his eyes hidden by his tangled locks of hair. His clothes were now dirty from the dogs’ paws, and there was a noticeable mark where one of them had bitten his forearm. He was bleeding.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I didn’t think, I — ”
A sheet of stickers slipped out from under his sweatshirt pocket and landed on the asphalt. Looking closely, I noticed the stickers were shaped like ribbons. Levi’s eyes widened, his cheeks becoming crimson red. Was he embarrassed or angry?
“Was it for me?” I asked, still seated on the ground. “Did you steal this for — ”
“Forget it,” he cut me off, his lips downturned, his shoulders tensing.
He talked to me. He finally talked to me again!
“Dalia!” Grandma’s panicked scream echoed through the parking lot, her hurried footsteps causing her to drop her grocery bag near the two gossiping ladies trailing behind her.
“A child shouldn’t be left alone in a parking lot,” one of them chimed in, her gaze fixed on Levi who clenched his hand.
“He tried to hurt my dogs!” The owner of the dogs pointed an accusing finger in Levi’s direction.
“He pushed her,” the kiosk owner added.
“No! He was helping me, and I — ” I tried to defend Levi, but my words were lost in the chaos.
Grandma crouched beside me. “Dalia, your knees are bleeding! How am I going to explain this to your father?”
“It’s nothing. I — ”
Just then, Lucie emerged from the store, gesturing for Levi to join her.
“She should watch her son,” the one with a moray eel voice spat. “What a terrible mother.”
“Grandma, I just wanted to play with him and — ” I pleaded, but Grandma interrupted me with a gentle kiss on my forehead.
I tried to reach for the sheet of ribbon stickers on the ground, but Grandma held my hand firmly as she led me away. Levi bent down to pick them up, and I pleaded with my eyes for him to keep them, hoping he would offer them to me next Wednesday. However, my heart sank as he tossed them into the trash while making his way back to his mother who was already racing to her car.
Our small town looked down on them, glaring like they were demons in need of an exorcism.
It was the end of our secret supermarket adventures. Or of any adventures at all, when Dad heard about my fall. I was too weak for this world and needed protection. But I should be grateful. Every Wednesday, I could still go to Mrs. Delombre’s house. Every Wednesday, I could still feel free.
In the quiet of the library, I blinked away the memories, unaware that my knuckles had tightened around my pen, turning white.
“Something is on your mind,” Levi observed, squinting. “You’re unusually quiet.”
I wanted to ask him why he had never offered me those ribbon stickers, but deep down, I knew the answer. I was the privileged princess, and he was the outsider, labeled as a freak by others. Perhaps he’d never imagined I could see him differently from everyone else. He protected me, yet he was the one in need of protection.
“It’s nothing.” I forced a smile, feeling my heart ache in my chest.
I had to do this for him. I had to solve this mystery. There must be a reason Lucie left those music scores to her son. The colors… It had to mean more. Why did she divide the score into four parts? Why four?
Music was Lucie’s language, so what if the notes represented a word? I referred to the seven letters of the musical alphabet. I continued it by adding its seven flat notes, repeating the process like a loop until the last letter.
I blinked and stared at Levi.
“What?” he growled, his fingers drumming impatiently on the table.
“It’s just that I continued the music alphabet, and it gives me: Mi ? is L, Mi is E, La ? is V, and Si ? is I, the four parts mean…” I gulped. “Levi. This is meant for you. She was trying to tell you something.”
He hummed, clearly not impressed. “What else?”
I divided the measures into a box and realized there was a pattern between the measures.
“It’s seven,” I said. “Each seven measures, we find the right order of the melody. But why seven, though?”
I started arranging the music score in its proper sequence, feeling Levi rise from his chair and circle the table to peer over my shoulder. A gulp caught in my throat. His presence looming behind me, I sensed his breath grazing my hair, as if he were inhaling its scent. I bit down on my lip, my handwriting quivering on the sheet.
“It’s done,” I whispered, hardly believing my eyes as morning approached. We’d spent the entire night on it. “But look here.”
I pointed at the sheet music I’d rewritten, letting my hair fall over my opposite shoulder to give him a clearer view. His eyes absorbed the sheet, and it took me some time to avert mine from the gray depths of his gaze and the sharp, merciless edges of his face.
“Inside some measures, it still feels incomplete.” I cleared my throat. “There are abnormal pauses, but no notes are left, no more information. It’s all here, yet still incomplete. Every thirteen measures, something is missing.”
Levi nodded, pulling himself upright. “That would be enough. You’ll play the music score for me tonight at eleven o’clock in our special spot. Don’t be late, and try to be discreet for once.”
“But I’ll have to go to class soon!” I swiveled in my chair to face him. “Then I have to study for the mission and analyze all the notes before that because this music score is still a mess, and I haven’t slept and—”
“You’ll manage,” he deadpanned.
“Easy for you to say. You’re a cyborg,” I mumbled.
“We both know you love your late-night violin sessions.” His lips turned into a thin line. “As for the other thing, you should begin with the memoirs of the youngest brother.”
He glared at the largest book of Pantheon’s origins dating back to the 18th century written by the oldest founding member of the Hungway’s family. There were four brothers and sisters: each member founded a house.
“But—”
“The eldest founding member’s book is worth nothing. Take my advice or leave it, I don’t care.”
On that note, he left.