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  Saved by the Music

  A NOVEL BY

  Selene Castrovilla

  ASD PUBLISHING

  SAVED BY THE MUSIC

  Copyright Selene Castrovilla 2011. All rights reserved.

  www.karenDelleCava.com

  All persons and places described in this novel are fictitious. Any similarity to persons alive or dead is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

  Published by ASD Publishing

  ISBN: 9780985344153

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Dedication

  “It is required, you do awake your faith.”—William Shakespeare

  For my intrepid aunt, Olga Bloom, and for me—survivors, both.

  1

  Stranded

  The taxi’s spinning wheels spit pebbles and dirt as it left me behind at the marina’s gate. The dusty haze was a perfect fit for my state of mind.

  I wobbled across the driveway and into the marina, trying to balance with my heavy suitcase. Sweat beaded under my bangs.

  It was unbearably bright, like the sun was aiming right at me. But looking around, I decided that the marina needed all the brightening it could get. Damaged boats lined the gravel-filled boatyard, all of them in dry dock, up on stilts like big crutches—a nautical hospital. Their exposed insides were like my wrecked life. But at least someone cared enough to fix them.

  The sounds of saws, drills, and hammers punctured the air as I passed the workers using them. I tried tuning out the men’s jeering whistles.

  One yelled out, “Nice ass.”

  Another called, “Hey, Slim.”

  Some people really get off on taunting strangers.

  I crunched though gravel, kicking up pieces as I moved toward the water. Sailboats, cruisers, and yachts were all tied with rope to the docks.

  So where was my Aunt Agatha’s barge? What did a barge even look like?

  Aunt Agatha had told me about the barges that kings rode on centuries before, but she’d never actually described their appearance. There didn’t seem to be anything worthy of royalty bobbing about in this marina, at least not anything I saw.

  “Over here, Willow!” a scratchy voice called out.

  There was Aunt Agatha, waving from the deck of a huge and hideous metal monstrosity. This blows, I thought, doubting there’d be any cable TV.

  My aunt hurried off the vile green vessel, prancing along a wooden plank across the water to reach me.

  “What is that ugly thing?” I asked.

  “That barge is our future concert hall!”

  She could not be serious.

  “It looks like it belongs in the army.”

  “Darling, it just needs some work.”

  I couldn’t believe my bad karma. Instead of staying in the run-down house where I lived with my mother—that is, whenever my mom actually came home—I’d be spending the summer on a steel nightmare. At least, in the house, I had my own room with all my stuff, instead of whatever I could squeeze into my suitcase.

  Snatching my giant bag, Aunt Agatha galloped back up the narrow gangplank that stretched from the dock to the barge.

  “What are you waiting for, dear heart?” she called. “An invitation?”

  I studied the gray, decaying wood of the gangplank, which was still shaking from her running on it.

  I can’t get on that, I thought. My aunt is nuts!

  Beaming at me with her sunbaked, craggy face, Aunt Agatha looked like a happy walnut. What could she possibly be smiling about? She wore a baggy, paint-splotched sweatshirt and frayed jeans.

  Why couldn’t she just be normal?

  “Hurry up,” she urged. “Time’s ticking!”

  I eyed the plank again. “You want me to cross the water on that thing? No way!”

  “It’s the only way, love.”

  I didn’t want to tell Aunt Agatha I was scared.

  “Put your mind in the soles of your feet,” she said, dancing on the plank.

  What did that mean?

  Her voice was bursting with enthusiasm, which annoyed the hell out of me. “Don’t look down.”

  I looked down. Yuk! Could any fish survive in that murk? A piece of a tire and a crushed milk carton floated by. I shivered. I was next.

  “Concentrate, darling. You can do it!”

  My gaze returned to the scrawny piece of lumber. What if it snapped? I couldn’t swim.

  I bit my lip and shuffled mentally through my options: #1: Run. #2: Call the authorities. #3: Keep quiet and walk the plank.

  If I ran away from the barge, it would be smack into the hellish slum I’d just ridden through, which waited outside the tall barbed wire fence of the boatyard.

  I didn’t see any pay phones around the god-forsaken marina, and I was about the only one in tenth grade without a cell phone. That meant I’d have to get on the barge, plank or not. I needed to meet Aunt Agatha’s demands –for now.

  She held out her hand as far as she could reach. “Come on, love,” she coaxed.

  I tried to put my mind in my soles, like she said. I placed one foot on the wood. It quivered. I tried not to.

  I knelt and began crawling across the creaking, sagging plank. It smelled moldy and felt rough. I held my breath. The plank bounced. My eyes focused on my aunt’s insanely happy face, and I forced my body to go on.

  “Okay, love!”

  Aunt Agatha’s outstretched hand waited, just inches away. I lurched forward. The plank shook again as our hands locked. I’d made it.

  “Welcome home, darling,” she bubbled, giving me a hug.

  Home? This place would never be home.

  “And remember, things are only obstacles if you perceive them as such,” Aunt Agatha added.

  Everything was an obstacle. Especially her and her sorry barge.

  2

  The Horror Continues

  Maybe the inside looked better.

  Then Aunt Agatha yanked open the thick metal door of the cabin.

  Any hopes I had about the inside being in superior shape were swept away in an explosion of dirt and dust. Particles went up my nose and down my throat, sending me into a coughing and sneezing fit.

  “Sorry, love. I’ll have to remember to clean up around this door,” Aunt Agatha said.

  Once the cloud cleared, I saw a cavernous chamber—big, dark, and spooky. That’s all it was—one huge, bleak steel room, about the size of my school gym, with a

  regular-size door at either end, and gigantic sliding doors on each side. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with grime. And piles of wood cluttered the room, along with all kinds of other construction-type junk.

  “What do you think?” Aunt Agatha chirped, propping the door open with a crowbar. “Isn’t she a beaut?”

  I cleared my throat. “It’s not what I pictured.”

  She laughed. “What is?” She tweaked my nose. “You didn’t think the place came all finished, did you?”

  She led me to one of the humongous sliding doors. It ran the length of the wall between the ceiling and the floor and took up a good part of the side wall.

  “I need your strength to open it,” she said.

  If she was counting on me for strength, she was in big trouble. But I followed her lead, leaning into the door.

  The high-pitched squeal vibrated through me. Slowly, we pushed the door open. By the time we were done, my arms throbbed worse than if I’d done a hundred push-ups. The screeching sou
nd rang in my head.

  There was light now, but I was near tears. I dropped to the floor. The cold steel sent a chill through my bare legs.

  Aunt Agatha closed the front door she’d propped open with a crowbar. Then she flopped down beside me.

  “The world thinks I’m completely mad, you know,” she said.

  You don’t say. I guess my face gave me away, or else she could read my mind, because she asked, “Darling, don’t you believe in my vision?”

  No, I did not. But she looked so love-struck, I couldn’t tell her.

  “I do, in theory,” I said.

  Aunt Agatha frowned. She didn’t like halfway, cop-out answers, and she wouldn’t let me off that easy. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I think a boat is a cool idea for a concert hall. But … I’m not sure that this is the right boat.”

  “Why not? Chamber music was meant to be played in chambers. Behold: a chamber!”

  A chamber of horrors. “Yes, but … ”

  “Royalty listened to classical music on barges floating down the River Thames.”

  Okay, no way did kings park their butts on any scroungy old boats like this one.

  “Look at this place!” I said.

  “It just needs some work.”

  “Some work? Oh my God, where do we even begin?” It all seemed so hopeless. I felt the tears coming.

  Aunt Agatha took my hand. “Willow, all I’m asking is for you to believe.”

  Sorry. I was fresh out of hopes and dreams.

  I couldn’t even look at her. I stared at the water through the open door, watching a straw, still stuck in a plastic lid, and a decaying piece of what looked like lunch meat float by. Fat drops fell from my eyes onto the steel between my legs.

  “Dear heart,” she said, gripping my hand, “when you look at this barge, you see ugliness. But I see victory. It’s taken me years to get here.”

  Great. Years to get a garbage dump.

  A seagull swooped down, let out a screeching “Caw!” and scarfed up the lunch meat.

  Aunt Agatha said, “I embarked on this journey when you were born. You actually were the catalyst.” She pressed hard, her pulse beating into mine. Still staring at the floating garbage, I tried to blink back the tears.

  She went on: “I began my search for a place where beauty could flourish, where music could flow uninterrupted, uncorrupted by the politics and corporations of this world. My only agenda was beauty, finding beauty in the unexpected, bringing it to the masses—and especially to you. For a decade and a half, I’ve searched for a place to do that, and now, at last, I have one.”

  Hurray.

  I didn’t turn around.

  She said, “It’s been an uphill battle, Willow. And I need you to help complete my journey.”

  God, she was dramatic. She belonged back in ancient Greece with Sophocles

  or someone. I finally turned my head, but didn’t say anything. She let go of my hand and

  slapped my leg.

  “Let’s get you settled in. We’ll talk about this later.”

  Oh, goodie. More fun to look forward to.

  * * *

  Aunt Agatha showed me my so-called bed: a ratty black vinyl-looking couch three-quarters into the room. I sat down, and a spring sprang into my butt. Fantastic.

  My “bed” was surrounded by mountains of lumber. There were also endless amounts of tools, nails, and other supplies lying around. Stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night would be a delight. Speaking of which …

  “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Behind the galley—that’s nautical language for kitchen—in the far right corner, up two stairs. But there’s one thing… . ”

  Just one?

  “The toilet is a gas-operated incinerator. That means it burns up the waste matter. In other words, leave quickly, or hold your nose. And don’t use the toilet immediately after someone else. If the embers are still lit and they get wet, your derriere will get a steam bath.”

  How did the woman come up with this stuff?

  “What would you like for dinner?” she asked.

  “I brought my own.”

  “Oh, well, I’ll open a can of tuna and join you. Incidentally, there’s bottled water and all sorts of canned goods in the galley.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.”

  “Fine, fine. Let’s close the door, and you can have all the privacy you want. My cot’s on the other side of the room.”

  Once again, I had to huff and heave, this time closing the door. I wished we hadn’t bothered to open it in the first place. That was just like Aunt Agatha. She looked for hard work. It seemed like her mission was to make everything as difficult as possible.

  “Does anyone else work here?” I asked.

  “I’ve got a boy from the yard helping me out,” she said as the door closed on the last sliver of daylight, leaving us in complete darkness. How special.

  “Hold on, hold on, love. I always forget to turn on the light beforehand.” She climbed over all the junk on the floor without tripping once and popped on the light—a dark brown, sad-looking ceramic garage-sale number with a beat-up, bent tan shade.

  I stumbled over the debris, sank onto the couch, and buried my face in my stinging hands. A weak ring of yellow light from the sickly lamp circled me and the couch, putting me center stage in a room full of gloom.

  A boy from the yard, a woman who was no spring chicken, and I were going to turn a steel atrocity into a place people would actually want—even pay—to go.

  Right. Not unless a magic wand was involved.

  If only I could click my sneaker heels three times and go home.

  3

  Scraps

  There was nothing to do but sleep.

  Except I couldn’t even do that.

  It was beyond creepy on that saggy couch, surrounded by plywood and power tools and noises. A scraping. A swoosh. A bang. I wished Aunt Agatha wasn’t at the other end of the barge, separated from me by all that junk.

  I shifted and turned, trying to find a comfortable position. The motion of the barge was making me a little nauseous. I hadn’t noticed it before, and it wasn’t like the barge was rocking. Instead, the feeling was more of a fluttering, so slight that it almost wasn’t there.

  I pounded on the sides of the couch cushion—the closest thing I had to a pillow—to fluff it. But it was still a lump. I pulled the flimsy brown checkered blanket higher, up to my neck, wishing that I could just yank it over my head and disappear.

  The sounds got louder. What was causing them? Were the piles of things shifting from the tide? Were water rats scurrying around? Eeew.

  The darkness freaked me out, too. I couldn’t see past the ring of light the lamp made around me and my “bed.” The inky hollow emptiness reminded me of my own. Sometimes I felt as meaningful as a scrap of paper.

  Of course, sometimes scrap paper has value. It could be the raw material a playwright uses to scrawl his latest vision. It could be the tool some girl uses to jot down her phone number for the gorgeous guy she just met. It could be the start of something big. But it will probably get tossed in the garbage. And the playwright will probably get lousy reviews. And the gorgeous guy will probably never call.

  It’s all how you look at things.

  I looked at things in the worst way possible. That way, there wouldn’t be any disappointment.

  This could all be traced back to my name.

  How could anyone called Willow be substantial? I swayed, I bent, I folded with the weight of the rain bearing down on me. What kind of a whooshy, wishy-washy, spill-your-guts-and-weep kind of name is Willow, anyway?

  I bet my mom did that to me on purpose. She wanted to saddle me with a wimp name so she could bask in the sunlight. Isadora, that’s her name. Why would an Isadora make a Willow? To stomp all over her, that’s why.

  Once, I was sitting on my bed, surrounded by my many admirers—rock stars plastered all over my walls to
cover the awfully bright, blind-your-eyes yellow paint that was covering the awfully bright, makes-you-want-to-puke green paint that was on the walls before that. I was rocking a bit, singing, “That’s me in the corner.”

  “Did you write a song, Willow?” Mom moved into the room like an unpredicted storm front.

  “No, Mom. It’s an old R.E.M. song,” I answered.

  “Oh, it sounded like something you’d say,” she commented. Then she was gone. It’s like she encourages depression.

  My mother spent a lot of my childhood exposing me to life’s possibilities: the opera, the stage, classes in art, journalism … you name it. But it all just made me feel crappier. That’s because I knew, deep inside, that I’d never be able to do any of those things. It wasn’t possible. I was like a stray dog with her face pushed against a restaurant window, begging for scraps. See, scraps again.

  I was really good at hiding how I felt. At school, I faked everyone out by being an overachiever of sorts. They thought I was excelling, but I was actually accelerating. You can’t get ambushed if you keep moving. So I studied like a fiend and belonged to six clubs. This way, I got to fit in with everybody—sort of. But I was more of an observer than a participant, to be totally honest.

  What I did was zero in on one person in each group, whether I was in a classroom, club, or whatever. Someone who was needy, someone who was shifting his or her eyes around, searching for salvation. You know the type: just short of bifocals and pocket protector. We’d bond out of necessity. Except they didn’t know that I was needy. I didn’t give anything away, and they were just relieved that I wanted to talk to them.

  As for everyone else, they saw me, yet they didn’t see me. On the school newspaper, they’d ask me to help edit something. In French club, they’d ask me for the correct pronunciation that they couldn’t quite get. In poetry club, they’d ask me if their verses flowed the way they should. Everyone came to me for advice and help, but that was it. There was no real connection.