Unsung Requiem by C.L. Stone

Glissando

(A continuous sliding from one pitch to another)

Sang

Mr. Buble drove us back to Goose Creek where Ashley Waters High School was still holding classes. It was late enough in the day that busses were parked out back, waiting for classes to be over. The brown block building with its dead, bare bushes around the base now had matching January brown dead grass surrounding it.

We parked right next to a black Jeep, North’s, I assumed, in the faculty parking lot.

“You two head inside, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Buble said to Kota and Nathan. He then turned fully in his seat to look back at me. “I need to have a follow-up conversation about favors and make sure we understand how they work and so on.”

I waited, not as eager to go inside. I was still in more comfortable sweatpants and hoodie, a more casual combination than I’d ever worn to school before, even before going to Ashley Waters. I sort of hoped we stayed outside long enough that students left and if we had to go in, we could do so without so many of them there. I don’t know why, but even the uniform seemed a better option.

Mr. Buble turned to face the windshield but still spoke to me after Kota and Nathan had gotten out of the car.

“Do you now feel you’ve earned your favor for Victor?”

It was kind of fast, but there was a sense of a job that was done. “Should I be the one to meet up with them?”

“Unless you’ll continue to be there for them for the next few weeks, it’s not something I’d recommend you do,” he said. “Likely we’ll find someone who has the time.” He reached for the rearview mirror and adjusted it so we could look at each other. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

Still, I wasn’t sure. “I think I’m confused as to what to value, as far as a favor. It’s very vague.”

“You know how it works, don’t you?”

“I choose how many favors I earned,” I said. “I take them away.”

He nodded. “The reason it is hard for you is the same reason you’re being selected for tryouts for the Academy. We seek people who desire to help others and simple favors, like babysitting in an emergency, while highly valuable, can also be asked within our Academy without asking for a favor. Because some favors are… simplistic. But it’s up to the individual.” He paused and smiled a bit, the first I’d seen. “While we tend to encourage our younger members to accept such tasks and favors for them, the older you are, the more we appreciate when you’re willing to help without asking for anything in return.”

“Is that why you don’t take favors for helping us?” I asked.

His smile lifted a bit more. “I think you’re getting the hang of it. Eventually you have so many favors, you don’t need to keep count. We don’t really, after a certain point. It’s a guideline when starting out. It allows us to realize when we’re asking too much and need adjustment. It’s important in the beginning, but what happens when you’ve got five hundred favors and you’re still helping and completely taken care of at home with nowhere to spend a favor? Do we quit? Or do we work without asking more?”

I felt better about that. “I’ll take the favor for Victor this time,” I said. “Not that what I did wasn’t worth it, but because… I’d rather be able to do the whole job, too. And earn my way up. And I’d like to get to a point where it’s not important to get more favors. I just want to help.”

He nodded, looking away from the rearview and out the windshield again, toward the school. “We help ourselves as needed, and then help everyone else as we can. That’s all it is. We try to balance. Were there any problems while on the job? Besides the mask?”

I wondered why he asked me alone, but I understood he was trying to help guide me in some way. “I was nervous.”

“But you managed? You were nervous last time. Enough that you called in help. You did do this by yourself, yes?”

“Kota came up with the idea of the tour, in a way,” I said. “Otherwise I think I would have simply walked around. And he, I think, spotted the two. I might have but he spotted them first.”

“Reasonable amounts of help,” he said. “You’re not always expected to go in alone. We actually want to stay together when possible. It can help to have an extra set of eyes.”

“He encouraged me to do the approach on my own. He watched, I talked to one of them.”

Mr. Buble continued to listen as I went over what I did in more detail. “I think even though I was nervous, I just tried not to think about it.”

“Science believes humans are one of the only creatures on this planet that are self-aware, and some to the point to where it can become a distraction. We stop focusing on the task, and consider ourselves, our feelings, etc.”

“So, it’s normal?”

He nodded. “And you did the right thing by trying not to think. That self-awareness, while important, can wait. Focus on the moment. We can work on techniques to help you refocus on what’s important, what is right in front of you, instead of thinking inward about being nervous.”

I nodded slowly, considering things like how Kota sometimes counted to himself when he was stressed. It was how he focused. Maybe I needed something like counting, too.

He paused and I thought he was about to suggest we go inside. I even put my hand on the door, ready to go.

“One more thing,” he said.

I released the door. Waiting, wondering if there was another thing to earn a favor for.

“I don’t know if Victor had a chance to talk to you about his party the other night. The girl, Brie, he was with.”

Brie? It felt like ages since the party, but I remembered her, the girl who seemed much more familiar with what was happening and was upset with us for not being there on time for Victor. “She’d been helping him that night,” I said, not that Victor told me, but that was what I assumed. I was grateful someone was.

“The next morning, there was an article in the newspaper,” he said. “Reporting that they were dating…”

I blinked rapidly. Victor had warned me about things like that. In the past, the newspapers would make assumptions on who you know and what was going on in your family. I never read the newspaper, at least not about local society details.

“He told me to never web search his name, once,” I said. “The newspapers… they don’t really know.”

Despite saying that, my heart was pounding and I knew my cheeks were red and blushing. Why was he bringing this up?

“I don’t want to start any problems and I believe him,” he said. “I do need to make sure things like this… it can hurt a team. If you’d caught the newspaper article or… saw her and him together that night pretending to be a couple, even if it’s a lie…”

My chest tightened. “Pretending to be a couple?”

“He was under the impression that his mother and father would let up on him if he showed he was interested in someone they wanted him to date.”

I forced myself to bite my lip to not frown, trying to appear like I was okay with that.

For several months now, when I’d gone to the Morgan house, she made it noticeably clear she saw me as Victor’s friend… if that much. Despite him saying otherwise, even to her.

Was this why he didn’t want to see them again? He was so reluctant to even live nearby them.

How long did he want to hide that we were dating? To the point that he tried to pretend to date Brie?

“I don’t think he did the right thing,” Mr. Buble said. “A relationship shouldn’t be a secret, not from people he will likely have to revisit over and over again. He couldn’t pretend forever.” He looked again at me in the rearview. “I can tell you think the same way.”

I said nothing, pressing my back against the seat. I didn’t want to admit it. I understood… I could see where when pressured he might try it. His mother was a force, and he was always trying to be compliant without crossing too many lines. However, it was a line too far.

It was like he’d given up trying to show we were together and simply tried something else. Suddenly, that night, the whole coming face to face with his parents then and not being aware… it changed my idea of that night. My name wasn’t on the list…

My heart burned. Uncomfortable. I’d felt that way before, with them, like when a girl wrote her number on Luke’s arm.

Mr. Buble spoke, breaking up my thoughts. “However, with you under my care, I didn’t want to ignore it. When you’re in a relationship, you have every right to say what is okay and what is not. Asking you first would have been ideal.”

I nodded. It was like he knew what I was thinking.

“And it’s okay to say no to ideas that aren’t… smart.”

“Right,” I said in a small voice. But what did I expect to do? And it was more complicated since we were all dating. He was saying things like being open about relationships… when for us it was completely impossible. He did see Victor and I together that one night. I assumed he made the connection we were dating and this is why he was alerting me and making sure I would be fully aware of the situation around Victor.

And giving me dating advice? That was unexpected.

Not everyone would be like Erica. Kota’s mother had listened when Nathan and Kota told her we were all dating, except even she had doubts. Victor could tell his parents we were dating, but then what happened when someone snapped a picture with me and someone else? Victor was a public figure, popular. It was bound to happen.

Maybe he was thinking ahead… I wanted to believe he had good intentions. But then he left his home, so what happened now?

“I had wanted you and Victor to team up on this job so we could all have this conversation. If we go inside, we’ll likely have to make decisions on what to do next. Whatever Victor is doing, I need you to agree to do whatever it is. I’ll insist it happens. Have the conversation, but also get the job done, whatever is next.”

He was right. Somehow, I relaxed with him. Mr. Buble wasn’t who I thought he was: uptight, perfection, critical. He appeared this way. Mr. Blackbourne resembled him in many ways.

He breathed in through his nose and out of his mouth once, slowly. “I know I’m butting in…”

“It’s okay.”

His eyes met mine and there was a hardness there I hadn’t witness before, an assured and determined gaze that filled me with something I’d never felt before… that someone older like him could be very concerned for my happiness and welfare. “For everyone under my charge, I try to picture if they were my children… my daughter would deserve much better than to be a secret.”

I didn’t know what to say, but inside, I was trying not to cry. I blinked several times to stop myself from doing so.

It was hard to learn when someone else cared about me. He didn’t know me, but he looked out for me. I was trying not to think of this as a conversation I should have had with a parent, talking about relationships, learning what there was to learn from their experiences. Was this normal between parents and teenagers?

It was what I’d missed out on having parents that didn’t want me. It was everything I’d read about or watched on shows, parents being there for their children, and he was trying to do so.

He was right, but this relationship was complicated. But he was also right that Victor could have checked with me first. We’d have to make the choice together. I understood, of course. I knew he cared about me… but did he care enough about me to worry what I felt over how his parents thought of him?

Did it matter?

I didn’t want to put myself in the middle, but at some point, with their disapproval, it was always destined to come up. It was always going to be what he really wanted or what his parents wanted, and he’d have to make that choice.

Mr. Buble nodded shortly and adjusted the jacket he wore, assuring it was on correctly. “Help me get this team in order, Miss Sang. Nothing is right just yet. For it, I think they’d owe you a multitude of favors.”

Those words gave me comfort. This team. The team I was on. None of us were perfect. Maybe we weren’t going to be. Handling our parents. Getting into a safe place. Starting work on things that mattered.

Get it in order. He was working toward it. He was going to help.

He was trying to help.

We needed to let him. He could show us so much if we did.