Song Without A Name
The 10th piece of pie
In the grand inner picnic of
Lady Yate-xel
More music.
More empty halls.
More strange conversation.
Even the hallway to the choir and band rooms was strange and scary looking at night. Johnny obviously knew every turn, every crack in the floor, every slight grade in the hallway, but Edgar was a little less adept at navigating the shadows of the school. They’d already been around most of the first floor in total darkness. He didn’t understand why they had to stumble around in the dark, and had tried to ask.
“Why don’t we get a flash light from the closet?”
“Are you kidding? That ruins it! Careful, there’s a box there.”
Edgar had fallen on it anyway. In fact, it never mattered what was in front of him, or even how early Johnny warned him, he never seemed to get by anything without first slamming into the floor.
They were moving along a hallway he had never used aside from the day he tried to find Johnny. It was wide, and had doors on either end, so he had nothing to really run into, plus the glow of the vending machine on the end nearest the choir room helped with visibility.
“Nny, where are we going, exactly?”
“Over to the b- OH WAIT. The gym is really great at night. We’ll stop in there first… you’ve got to see this.”
Johnny shuffled over to the right side of the hallway, and took out the keys. Edgar was about to bring up how useful the flashlight would have been here, but was surprised when the lock opened in seconds.
“Wha… How did you…?”
“What?”
“The key to the gym. How did you find it so quickly without a light?”
“I told you before; I always come out here in the dark. I learn the keys by how they feel. Our best sense isn’t always vision, you know. You might want to stop abusing it; I've been reading that humans as a species rely on it so much that our other senses are stunted. ”
Edgar stood still while Johnny pushed the gym doors open. A silvery light spilled out along the floor as the doors were eased wider and Johnny walked inside. There was a slam as Johnny locked the left door into an open position, then a pause before he stuck his head out into the hall way.
“Are you coming?”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry.”
The gym looked enormous when the bleachers were pulled against the wall, and while that was impressive, what Johnny had obviously wanted Edgar to see was the effect from the skylights. Half a dozen beams of light came from the ceiling, dissipating about half way to the floor, dust particles floating within them, leaving six pools of fuzzy, silvery light on the wooden floors.
Johnny made his way over to one highlighted spot, paused for a moment, and then dropped to the floor, staring up into the light. Edgar felt sort of stupid standing there just inside the door, so went to join him.
“It’s a bit too early yet,” Johnny said, still staring up and out.
“For what?”
“The moon. At the right time, it slides right past this spot. We’re still too early.”
“Oh.”
They sat for a while, watching the stars, watching the occasional stray cloud that passed by. Edgar wasn’t sure if he should say something about the time it would take the moon to sweep by or not.
“Hey,” Johnny said suddenly. His voice echoed across the gym.
“Hmm?”
“Listen to this.”
Johnny held out his headphones, which Edgar was rather surprised to see as he didn’t remember Johnny having them when they had left the choir room earlier that night. Edgar also hadn’t been able to see a damn thing, so that probably explained why.
He put the headphones on, and was greeted to a soothing slow tune, something that reminded him of floating in the ocean, drifting on his back out to… somewhere. After some time, some percussion worked its way in, and Edgar thought he could make out some very faint words. But maybe not.
Then a buzzing. At the volume he had the music, it was deafening, and he winced trying to find the volume button on the CD player. Soon he could hear nothing but the buzzing, tensed up, and could see nothing but Johnny sitting calmly in the light from the night sky, seemingly oblivious to Edgar’s audio peril. Just when Edgar thought he would do something sensible and remove the headphones, the buzzing was gone, and he relaxed again. The soothing wave music was back, and words were definitely there this time; he could tell they were being spoken, but not what they were. Then everything slowly faded away, music, voice, any trace of buzzing. Only when the final pang of music was gone was he able to remove the head phones.
“The best part about that,” Johnny said as soon the headphones left Edgar’s ears, “is that you don’t really appreciate the sound of the melody until that buzzing stops. By then, it’s almost too late. It’s very rare that anything is really appreciated before it becomes noise. I like listening to that one in here, especially.”
“That’s…” Edgar wasn’t really sure what it was. Well, he had an idea, but he had been avoiding that word as of late. It impressed him, though, at the very least. He almost felt like he had missed out on being blessed with the wisdom of the universe because he hadn’t lived in a high school. “That’s just-” he tried again.
“Shh, it’s starting!”
Edgar looked up to see the moon creeping into view in the skylight. It was almost unnoticeably slow, like watching an eclipse, but at certain points he became aware of how much progress it had made. Only when it was fully in the window, after what felt like hours later, did Edgar notice that Johnny was laying on his back watching it rather than sitting cross-legged at his side.
They may have been there an hour, they may have been there all night, Edgar hadn’t worn a watch, and he was sure Johnny didn’t own one. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to matter to him what time it was, or what he was doing; he felt amazing.
When the moon had moved along enough to satisfy Johnny’s desire to watch it, he got to his feet, brushed his back off, and held a hand out to Edgar, who didn’t realize that he had also ended up on his back. He took the offer for help though, and surprisingly, given their difference in weight, didn’t pull Johnny down to the floor in the process.
Johnny made his way to the door of the gym without a word, and waited for Edgar to leave before fiddling with the latch to keep it open. Once closed again, he re-locked the door, and they resumed the trek down the hall.
It wasn’t more than a few feet before Johnny made a quick left, pulling Edgar with him. Just a quiet little offshoot of the hall, and Edgar wondered why it was there at all until he heard Johnny unlock another door. Yet again, light was visible, Johnny kicked the door stop and walked casually through. There was a high set of stairs directly to the left when he walked inside and Edgar watched Johnny take them a few at a time before following himself. The light was at the top of the stairs and turned out to be coming from a bridge to another part of the building. It was all glass, save for the floor and a strip along the roof, so the same light that had been beaming from the gym roof filled the area here and spilled out into what looked to be the second floor of the school.
“Why didn’t I know this was here?” Edgar asked, taking in the sight of the parking lot and the town lights far beyond it.
“You don’t spend enough time here?”
“Can people always get to this?”
“During the day, yeah.”
“Huh.”
Edgar looked out towards the elementary school, and saw the swing set on the playground shifting in the wind, lights from the rest of the town, cars, and the occasional plane. Why was it that he had never paid any attention to things like this before?
“You come out here a lot, Nny?”
“Almost every night, yeah. I like watching the sky, and I haven’t found the key for the roof yet, so this is as high as I can get.”
Edgar leaned on the railing, and fiddled with one of the locks on the window. He heard it click, and tugged at the frame. When he finally managed to pry it open, the breeze that had been playing with the swings rushed in and ruffled his hair. The cars and the breeze made just enough noise to fill the space in the bridge, but not enough to be distracting. Edgar thought for a second about the buzzing from Johnny’s song, and hoped he appreciated the sounds of the city enough now that they would never become as deafening as the song had been.
“You never answered my question, Edgar.”
“Which one?”
“If you still had your faith.” Johnny was leaning on the railing now too, bits of his mess of a hair cut flipping in the breeze that occasionally ran through the window.
“Oh. That.”
Edgar took a deep breath of the rush of air that had come in through the window before he continued.
“It’s difficult to say, now. I mean, after what I’ve been through, I can’t not believe, because, well, he’s obviously up there, but it’s hard to… feel the same way about it. And I’m not saying I was the world’s greatest religious guy by any stretch of the imagination, I just had faith in it being there. It was my perception of it that turned out to be a bit off, I suppose.”
“You seem to take that awfully well.”
Edgar laughed a little. “When it was first shown to me that I really had had great love for a system that didn’t care so much for me, I was freshly dead. After twice through that and then seeing someone you really cared about treated the way you were... it wasn’t so hard to accept that it wasn’t how I imagined it to be. I’m grateful that Heaven is there, I guess, but somewhere inside, I’m still disappointed that I have nothing to fall back on.”
“It’s better not to fall at all.”
“You’re not surprised at how they turned out to be at all, are you?”
“No. Not that I really give a damn one way or another, of course.” Johnny shrugged. “For me, it’s a stronger thing to do to fall back on oneself, on... something deeper than a deity. If you have enough strength to use your own soul as a crutch, nothing can beat you.”
“Chicken Soup.”
“Excuse me?” Johnny raised an eyebrow.
“You sound like one of those books. Those ‘self-empowering’ books or whatever they are.”
“Quiz tomorrow morning, smart ass.”
“Hilarious.”
“Thank you.”
Edgar sighed, almost content, and was about to talk about the breeze when he remembered that he had wanted to address something from earlier.
“I had wanted to ask before... about Pepito.”
“What about him?”
“You didn’t tell the others anything important. Hell, I don’t think you’ve told me everything, but...”
“I decided I didn’t want to tell them.”
Edgar took his eyes off the city and looked at Johnny, who was still occupied with staring out the window.
“Why? Isn’t ... I mean, aren’t the memories important to them, too?”
“Sure they are,” Johnny answered, as he traced some shapes on the window. “But I’m just as worried for them should they ever remember anything they shouldn’t. I don’t want them to change, and I don’t want to ... hate them for it.”
“Oh.”
“A little selfish, maybe?" Johnny laughed. "I’m not going to be offended if you think so; I think so too. I don’t want them to gain memories where I can’t, or become people I don’t like, so I’m going to keep it from them. I can sit here and pretend it’s something noble to do, protecting them from becoming other people, that kinda shit, but there’s nothing but my own motivation there. I figure I’m at least better off for recognizing it than going about it blindly.”
Johnny nodded slightly at the window. “Yeah, at least I know...” Trying to convince himself, maybe?
Edgar focused on his reflection plastered over the city. He might actually look more balanced with that goatee... He squinted at his image and then sighed for what felt like the thousandth time. “But you’re not worried about changing me, I see.”
“I’ve just met you,” Johnny responded quickly. “I have nothing to lose so far, and if I grow to like you as you warp into someone else, then it becomes easier on the both of us.”
“And if you don’t?”
“I’m not really worried about that.”
“Alright then... So... what did he tell you? You know, since you’re not worried about ruining me and all.”
Johnny pushed his hand against the glass in front of him. “Stop talking to me like you assume I think you’re worthless.”
“It’s a worthy assumption when you’re worried about changing the kid you’d rather torture than actually befriend,” Edgar shot back, almost disgusted.
“Just stop it. He told me the keys were for security. He said something about sides, he said the person I was going to talk with wouldn’t tell me anything, and you didn’t, a good call there, he said no one wants me to be what I used to be... he said one of the keys was special, he said...”
“Just one?” Edgar felt all too comfortable with just letting the ‘ruining’ business go until later.
“Yes.”
“You think it’s just that one key that reacts to your name like that?”
“Odds are good, I would say.”
“So why haven’t you taken the ring apart?”
“What would I do with it, even when I saw which one it was?” Johnny rolled his eyes as he spoke. “It’ll lead me to his house, and I’m finding it highly unlikely that he’d let me in after I came up to his door yelling, ‘Hey! I got the key! Let me traipse around your house and see what the hell it’s up to, kay?’ You know, just a feeling I have.”
“Point taken,” Edgar said, smiling at Johnny’s momentary rapid hand motions and stupid facial expression as he mimed asking hypothetical Pepito about the key.
They stood for a while, listening to the city. Edgar started to feel a bit drowsy, and the high from unlocking doors was wearing off. He found he nodded his head quite a bit when tired and it was when he smacked his forehead on the glass that he asked if they might keep moving.
“Maybe we can find the key to the roof?” he offered. Anything to keep him awake. Plus, he still had to walk home.
“Sure,” Johnny answered, taking the keys out again, and walked back towards the door they had come through. Edgar somehow thought the door would be far away, or right along the way they were headed, but it turned out they had been standing mere feet from it.
Johnny stood there, feeling the keys and Edgar smiled when he heard him rattling off the uses for each of them.
“Cafeteria... Art Room...Jimmy’s trailer...Devi...Ok, here we go. I don’t know what this one does.”
Edgar stood beside him, realizing that there was little excitement to be had in watching Johnny try each one of them, as he couldn’t exactly help.
“Not this one...” He paused before grabbing the next key to look over his shoulder at Edgar. “You realize this is going to take a while, right?”
“Yeah...”
“Sure you want to sit through it?”
Edgar shrugged. “Can I try one?”
Johnny looked doubtful that Edgar would even pick one to try that he hadn’t already identified, but handed him the keys. “Here. Go to town.”
Edgar sifted through the keys, looking at each of them, even though Johnny had scolded him for relying on sight so much. He wasn’t a genius teenager living in a school, how else was he supposed to judge a key? He took one that looked reasonable, and tried it in the lock. For a brief moment, visions of personal glory struck him. The door would open, Johnny would be thrilled, and perhaps hug him or something, and then...
And then the door would stay locked.
Johnny smirked and took the keys back.
“My turn,” he said, jamming another key into the lock. He rattled it and pulled at it, but still nothing. He pulled it out sharply, huffed in annoyance at the lock, then held the keys in front of Edgar again.
“Alright, you’re up.”
And it went like that for at least a dozen trade-offs; back and forth, minimal conversation at best, as though picking a new key required immense concentration. After some time, Edgar had resorted to trying two or three in a row, while Johnny grew restless and paced around the bridge.
Edgar found himself driven to getting this damned door open. He would open it, Johnny would memorize the key, and he’d forever remember that Edgar had found it. Edgar had found it for him, and wasn’t worthless, and it would be wonderful. It would be perfect. His moment of mental glory was interrupted by a small click, and the wind forcing the door open even as he held the handle.
“Oh.” Fantasy over too soon - interrupted by the reality that should have caused it.
He actually heard Johnny coming from the other end of the bridge. Usually he moved in such a way that Edgar rarely heard him coming, but this time, Edgar supposed and hoped, excitement got the better of him.
“Which key, which key?!” Almost bouncy.
Edgar held the keys out; still surprised he had actually managed to find the right one. Someone would have done it eventually, he knew, but because it was something Johnny wanted, and he had done it, it felt significant.
Johnny rubbed the key between his fingers, then clutched it tightly, as though worried he might lose it.
The wind was the first thing Edgar noticed when he followed Johnny up the stairs to the roof; tonight had been exceptionally windy and Edgar could hear it whistling around all the nearby buildings. Next was that the roof was covered in gravel. He wasn’t expecting it at all, and couldn’t find any real purpose for it, but, as he had never built a school before, assumed it to be important somehow.
Johnny didn’t seem to pay any attention to the gravel, or even the wind. He had stood in silence for a moment when he reached the top of the stairs, then had run across the roof to the edge overlooking the city.
The view was nice, really, but Edgar just didn’t feel quite as affected by it as Johnny seemed to be. It was a building, and a skyline, that he had seen countless times from just sitting on a hill a few blocks from his house. Nothing special. He took his time walking over to Johnny, kicking some rocks, poking at lost and faded fluorescent-colored Frisbees that dotted the landscape. An old shoe had managed to get up there as well. An old game of kickball gone horribly wrong, it seemed.
As he drew closer to Johnny he noticed that Johnny seemed unable to take things in fast enough. He looked at the sky and no sooner had it seemed that he had found something to focus on then he looked out over the city. Back and forth, and trying to take in just a little too much all at the same time.
At that moment, he saw Johnny lean over the side wall.
No problem there. What was he doing, letting all the blood go to his head?
Then a foot lifted from the ground.
Um.
And the other.
Edgar wasn’t sure when he got close enough to get such a hold on Johnny’s ribcage, and he also wasn’t sure how he was going to explain why he had a such a hold.
He wanted to imagine a long silence about now. What he got instead was his heart attempting to deafen him. He thought maybe if he didn’t make any sudden movements, Johnny wouldn’t notice. No, that was retarded. Johnny knew very well that he had an Average Joe attached to his person. Maybe if he pretended not to remember. Yes, that seemed to happen to him all the time anyway.
“Um.” Ok, Johnny could still speak. This was good. He hadn’t passed out from rage. This also meant he could still kill Edgar. To let go or not to let go.
“I... I thought you were going to...,” he let go, embarrassed, and finished, “...to fall.”
And there was that almost-but-not-quite-thanks-to-his-heart silence again.
Edgar thought that Johnny was going to ignore it as he turned back to the wall. Oh, good. Sigh of relief, no harm done. Edgar turned away for a moment, then looked back to see Johnny’s feet leave the ground once again, his hands braced against the bricks. He looked like he was ready to vault the wall.
And again, Edgar found himself attached to a doubled over Johnny before he could think rationally about it. He was about to apologize, and then he felt Johnny shaking. Did Edgar actually rescue him that time? Could Johnny actually have been... scared? Was this shaking a signal of visions of life flashing before the eyes?
“Um... Nny?”
The shaking got a little more violent, and Edgar thought he heard a sob.
“Nny?”
And then unrestrained laughter.
“TWICE?! You fell for that TWICE?!” Johnny’s words were drowning in his laughter. He struggled even to stand up.
“Here, wait, lemme try it again!” he was still laughing as he mocked throwing a leg over the side. Something in Edgar made him lunge to stop Johnny, latching onto an arm, no matter how much a joke he knew it was. Johnny leaned onto the brick, holding his forehead in a hand Edgar didn’t have a death grip on, still laughing. He dangled an arm over the side.
“Wanna go for four?”
“That’s not funny at all.”
“Damn, you don’t think so? I think I’ll make a habit of falling off buildings now, since I’ll never have to worry about actually getting anywhere!”
“It’s still not funny.” A trace grin betrayed him horribly, but he maintained that it wasn’t a laughing matter.
“Sure, sure, okay.” Johnny rubbed his eye a few times, still a little giddy.
Edgar leaned on the brick beside Johnny now that he didn’t have to worry about him falling to his death. In a way, he almost wanted Johnny to have been in some danger so he didn’t look so completely moronic. At least Johnny would have been grateful. The roof had made him happy, but Edgar didn’t really have to put forth any effort to do that. There would be something.
Something.
God, Johnny was still snickering.
“What were you doing, anyway? Before I freaked out, I mean.” Get him away from the laughing, yes.
“Before you tried to snap me in half? Just looking.” Johnny continued to stare at the sky.
“What is it about the sky? Looking for something in particular?”
Johnny smiled. “Not really. Just...I kind of want to...” He extended his feet for a minute, standing on his toes. “Like...up. Sort of... yeah, up and over.” Johnny bounced on his foot once and made a sort of dome or diving motion with his hand.
“Nny, that looks like you want to bomb the city.”
“Shut up, you know what I mean. Not that that wouldn’t be fun too. I just want to... go up and over everything. I really like places like this, where there’s only sky above you, and anything that could possibly bother you is somewhere underneath.” He spread his arms for a second, but put them down quickly. Edgar blinked at him quizzically. “Nothing,” Johnny answered the silent question. “Just looked like an old stupid movie there for a second.”
Edgar got what he suspected was a completely stupid grin on his face and spread his arms entirely too enthusiastically, nearly hitting the side of Johnny’s face.
“I’m king of the-!”
“Yes, stop, or I’m jumping.”
Both smiling. It was completely stupid, but very few things that they had found amusing weren’t. Might have been three in the morning, and Edgar was going to completely regret staying up this late later, but for right now, he was at least king of the roof.
“God, Nny, what time is it?”
“Mmm... Threee.... seventeen, looks like.”
For a moment, Edgar, in 'amazingly tired' mode, was going to attribute this fantastic reading the stars ability to the rest of Johnny’s talent for surprising him. Then he remembered the giant clock on top of the school. “I should... really go soon if I’m going to be here in the morning to sit with you guys again.” Edgar ran a hand through his hair, and felt the onset of a yawn, which he tried to hide by pretending it was simply extended inhaling. Probably not convincing.
“You’re going home?”
“Was I not supposed to?”
“No, no! I stayed with you, now you’re going to stay with me.” He nodded for emphasis. “It’s fair or something.”
“Oh.”
‘Stay with me’ really should not have shot his heart rate up. Shouldn’t have made him feel suddenly quite awake. Shouldn’t have made him feel anything but being dealt a convenience. Shouldn’t have made him that much happier.
But damn if it didn’t anyway. He tried to ignore it.
Johnny was staring at him, seemed to be waiting for something. “So?” he said.
“So what?”
“I said, do you want to go back down, or were you planning on falling to your death when you fall asleep on the side of the roof?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think I’m quite ready to fall to my doom yet. I could stand to go back in... Take your time though!” He added the last bit in on a quick thought; didn’t want to seem like a pushy guest in Johnny’s home. House. Something.
The walk back to the choir room was worse than the walk from. Now he was tired and disoriented. He crashed into things he was sure weren’t there, and things that should have been painfully obvious. (“Edgar, don’t get so close to the ... wall. Wow, are you ok?”) It got to a point that he was sure he’d need to be dragged back. He didn’t understand why it was an ordeal to get down the hallway, but it seemed so much longer now than it had before.
Finally, Johnny managed to lead them both back to the office, tore the beanbag off the stack of random things it was perched on, and pushed Edgar onto it.
“There,” he said, tossing the blanket from the basement into Edgar’s lap. He clapped his hands together once, and let his gaze pan around the room. He made an expression as though he spotted something he was looking for, and pulled the old worn blanket out from behind an office chair.
“Sleep ok,” Johnny said, looking back at Edgar.
“Not ‘Sleep well’?”
“Sleeping ‘ok’ is all you can do here, trust me.”
Johnny shut the door to the office, and Edgar was left in silence. As he drifted off, he thought he heard an ocean.
And the buzzing wouldn’t stop.