Vivaldi in the Dark

Chapter 1-3

The Brightside Theatre was a small, almost timid construction on the north edge of the town centre, a fifteen-minute bus ride from school, or a thirty-minute walk in this September mildness. It had two theatre halls, a small lobby, and a cafe that was barely ever open. It had been a project by the council five years ago to bring more culture to town, and Mum’s amateur dramatics group (the horrifically named Stars) had promptly moved in for rehearsals and, three times a year, performances.

Jayden went to The Brightside almost every day after school. It was safe there. The smokers never got the bus, and if he went to the theatre, they couldn’t follow him home. Dwayne, the security guard, never minded letting him in. And at five-thirty, Mum would arrive with the other members for rehearsal (or whatever else they felt like doing, as it was as much a social club as an am-dram club) and he would get taken home in the car at six-thirty. It was Jayden’s refuge, and the only reason he hadn’t gone mad from the oppressive atmosphere at Woodbourne.

He didn’t go much in the summer, so Dwayne halted him in the lobby for a chat. Dwayne was in his forties, divorced, and likely desperately lonely. He was always showing people pictures of his kids, two little girls that had been taken back to Jamaica after his wife left him, and Jayden humoured him even if he couldn’t understand half of what Dwayne said, thanks to his accent: the bastard child of Jamaican and Cockney and utterly impenetrable. But he tried to listen. If Dwayne liked him, after all, he’d let Jayden come and go when technically he wasn’t meant to be there.

Slipping into the main hall brought him peace. The quiet, grand atmosphere was like a balm after a day at school, having his locker promptly decorated with variations on ‘faggot’ and being shoved into the girls’ bathroom between classes. The theatre didn’t care. The theatre had doubtless seen hundreds of gay kids, and it didn’t care. It was all about the performance in here, all about the show, and it didn’t care what the actors or the writers or the techs actually were.

Jayden climbed up onto the stage and took a long, calming breath.

He was going to get out of here. He had a plan. At the end of Year Eleven, he would apply for the scholarship to the sixth form at St. John’s, the private school. He would do his A-levels there, and he would apply to the University of Cambridge. And he would get in. And at Cambridge, nobody would care if he was gay. He could join the drama societies there. He could act, and write, and find other people like him. He could find a boyfriend.

Three years until he was out of here for good. Until then, The Brightside would get him through it.

And then he heard the music.

Life did not come with a soundtrack, and yet some low, haunting melody was drifting through the hall. Jayden stiffened, tuning into the sound. Some classical piece, some string instrument. And it sounded sad. It sounded tragic, like there was a funeral going on in the next hall.

He dumped his bag on the stage and followed the noise off stage left, creeping down the back steps towards the storeroom and the dressing rooms, a narrow, damp corridor leading out to the fire exit. The music got louder as he inched towards the green sign, and when he paused outside the storeroom, the low cadence shifted into a high, keening cry.

He opened the door—and jerked back as a violin bow swept out to jab him in the throat. The music stopped, the quiet ringing in its place, and the boy holding the bow stared at him from close range. A boy with loose, dark curls, stunning green eyes in the naked light of the storeroom bulb, and a pristine black uniform, probably from one of the schools beyond Queen Mary’s Avenue. An ethereal, out-of-place stranger disturbed from a haunting sonata that made something in Jayden’s chest twist uncomfortably. A ghost, if not for the pressure at his throat of the violin bow.

“Sorry,” Jayden said, and the bow slowly dropped. The boy stared, and in the combined light of the storeroom and the corridor, his eyes were a pale, pale green like a tropical sea. They were hypnotising. “I…uh…”

“What,” the boy asked, “the f**k do you want?”

And the spell was broken.