Keira liked the feel of the keys under her fingertips and the low, steady hum of motherboards working in the sterile lab. Here, in the library’s small computer room, Keira could think, had access to those large databases that would open up the past. There were articles and papers older than her country, collected microfiche data all nestled together and accessible with the click of her fingers on the keyboard.
Professor Miller sat in the corner of the room reading, occasionally frowning at the probable typos in the student newspaper. Everyone worked in silence, looking through the library’s databases or sending ages-old articles to the printer. It was peaceful, an easy cluster of silent space where Keira could think without distraction.
“I don’t see why this project is such a big deal.” There goes the silence, she thought, and rolled her eyes at Kona when he waved off the librarian who shushed him.
The big linebacker sat next to her in front of a computer that wasn’t even on. Despite how often she jabbed him with her elbow, Kona had done little more than play a game of solitaire or cast quick, unsubtle looks in her direction.
Keira didn’t know how to respond to these lengthy stares. That night in her room had caused something to shift between them. Neither of them mentioned it, and they’d spent most of their time together either talking about their paper or not speaking at all. It had gone on for over a week now, and every time they met, at the library or in the cafeteria, the tension only grew.
Next to her, he sighed, and the exhale was so forced that Keira was obliged to look at him. A quick shift of his eyes from her face to her computer screen had her guessing that this was one of those moments where Kona actually wanted to kill the quiet.
“The legends can be tied into just about any story you can think of.”
“Bullshit.” He nodded once when Miller cleared his throat and rumpled the paper in his hand, a clear reprimand that Kona should shut the hell up.
Keira dropped her voice so low that Kona had to lean next to her to hear her. “There’s an old theory that dictates only seven archetypes, or seven basic plots, exist in the world. I’d add that if there are only seven, then there are a billion variations of those stories.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Keira leaned against her chair, pulling her hands away from the keyboard so she could give Kona her full attention. He gave her the same stare he’d been wearing for a week now, like he wasn’t quite sure what to think about her, but she had gotten through the week by not wondering what that expression meant.
“The legends started as folk tales, parables and lessons on what you should and shouldn’t do. For the most part they are morality tales. Where do you think that sort of morality comes from?” Keira felt like a teacher, feeding bits of knowledge to a first grader. Kona was smart, she knew that, but literature and grammar weren’t exactly topics of choice for the mathematically minded. Kona had quoted figures and tallies to her when they discussed how much money someone would lose if they’d bet against CPU in a game, as if his brain was a calculator. He could tick off statistic after statistic and he knew the tackling efficiency of every linebacker in the NFL for the past twenty years. But he just didn’t care enough to be interested in the legends or Shakespeare, or Chaucer, or any of the other poets and scribes she’d asked him if he’d read during their meetings.
Kona frowned, shifted his eyes to his hands and then back at Keira’s face. “God?”
She nodded, offering him a quick smile. “When you’re talking about the legends, then yes. So we have a system of legends that cover pretty much the gambit of morality: lying, stealing, cheating, killing, and the consequences of all those things. You can pretty much use any story as an example and relate it back to the legends.”
Kona didn’t miss a beat. “Die Hard.” His smile wavered, and he looked around the room, Keira guessed to make sure no one was listening. “I watched those movies with my kuku…um, kupunakane.” When Keira squinted, confused, Kona clarified, his voice dropping an octave. “My grandfather. He’s the only dad Luka and I ever really had, and we’d all sit around watching those movies as kids on summer breaks when Mom was off doing research shit.” Kona looked over Keira’s head, not in her eyes as though giving Keira that small bit of information had surprised him.
Keira smiled, and she liked Kona, just then, with his voice soft, his eyes relaxed when he spoke about his grandfather. Typical, though, that he’d choose a ‘splosion’ film, that’s what she’d always called those gun-totin’, ass-kicking movies Leann loved to make her sit through. She wasn’t surprised that one of them was the first example Kona chose. “Okay. Well, Bruce Willis is a cop trying to get his wife away from terrorists.” When Kona only stared at her, seeming a bit more interested than he had a few minutes before, she continued. “He’s Arthur, on a quest. He’s searching for someone, like Arthur searched for the Grail, and along the way he has obstacles to overcome. Same as Bruce. The way the legends unfold are what Joseph Campbell called ‘The Hero’s Journey.’ For the most part, every book, comic, or movie is a hero’s journey.”
“Joseph who?”
Keira tried not to sigh too loudly. They were getting along, and she had to admit she didn’t hate his company as much as she thought she would. But damn, this guy was lazy as hell. “Kona, have you read anything this semester? It’s on our syllabus.” She pointed at the syllabus sticking out of his binder.
Kona took a quick glance down at his binder and then returned his attention to Keira. “I have ADD, Keira. It’s a little hard for me to focus on the material.” He shrugged, brushing off the revelation.
She nodded, offering Kona a grin that he seemed to like, telling her with his eyes that he was grateful that she didn’t pry.
“Campbell had a theory, several, actually, but his hero theory is classic, though he was a bit of a pig.” When Kona frowned at her, curious, she smiled. “He thought only men could be heroes.”
“Bullshit. I mean, hello, Sarah Conner?” he said, smile widening with Keira’s laugh. “You’d make a good teacher. You got the bossy, know-it-all tone perfected.” She punched his shoulder, and his laughter rang in her ears.
“Music,” she said, not certain why she felt comfortable admitting that to him.
“What?”
Keira shrugged, tried to hide her quick blush by not looking him, returning her attention to the keyboard. “I don’t want to be a teacher. I want to write music.” The blush was there not because she was embarrassed to admit what she really wanted out of life, but because she was admitting it to him.
“Seriously?” Kona pulled on her sleeve to make her look at him. “But you’ve got a hard on for all this English shit.’
“I also have a mother who pays my tuition that doesn’t think music is a suitable major. But, I like words. I like stories, just not as much as music.” Another quick glance at him and Keira felt that blush deepening. But Kona didn’t laugh at her like she expected. He didn’t start to tease her for having a pipe dream. And so she felt relaxed, something that had been happening more and more frequently when she was around him. “Words and music. That’s my passion.” She laughed to herself when his smile got bigger, when he looked at her as though she’d just unveiled another piece in the puzzle he thought she was. Kona’s eyes were intense, moved over her face, landed on her mouth, and Keira became uncomfortable, nervous at how he focused on her, how he seemed to be dissecting her expressions with that long, level gaze. “Um…” she started, trying to break his concentration, “what’s yours?”
“My what?”
“What are you passionate about, Kona?”
The smile left his face, and Keira saw his lips move. She thought he was mouthing the word, “passion,” but she couldn’t be sure. When she nudged his arm, Kona’s grin disappeared. “Only one thing at the moment,” he said, recovering from that truthful admission with a shrug of his shoulders. “Playing the game.”
“Ah. The chase, I see.”
Kona opened his mouth, seemed determined to argue with her, but then Tonya Lucas, a rail-thin blonde that lived three doors down from Keira, retrieved something from the printer. Her shirt was too tight, skirt barely covered her thighs, and Kona noticed. Tonya’s gaze honed onto him and the low squint of her eyes, the way she barely pulled her bottom lip between her top teeth, told Keira that with Kona, there really wasn’t a chase.
When Tonya passed their table, gave Kona a wink, the linebacker smiled, watched her until she returned to her seat. Keira didn’t know why this bothered her. She didn’t know why she felt somehow slighted. But she didn’t mention it, didn’t let that overwhelming feeling that she was somehow less-than, somehow not enough, consume her. Instead she shifted her chair, pulled it closer to the table, and the scratch of the leg against the floor brought Kona back to her.
“Just so you know, I wasn’t talking about that game, smartass.” He nodded in Tonya’s direction. “Chasing ass isn’t a game for me, no matter what you think. I’m talking about football.”
“I guess everybody has to have something.”
“Exactly what I mean. You don’t get me playing, doing something I love, and I don’t get why you’re so into a bunch of stories written a billion years ago.”
He wouldn’t understand, she thought, convinced that Kona didn’t see the world like she did. He was beautiful and strong and clever, but he was all action, all grit and movement. She wasn’t. She liked the deeper meaning and believed that not everything in life was about the flux of motion. For some reason she didn’t understand, she wanted Kona to get that about her. She wanted him to open his dark eyes just a bit further and see her, really see her.
“Because it’s life.” Keira’s voice was low, but steady, and she turned away from the monitor, twisted her body and her gaze to stare right at him. “Because it’s history. Stories, words, how they fit together, how they flit through time, how they connect people separated by generations, it amazes me.” She was gesturing with her hands, moving her fingers, and Kona followed the movement, watched every expression that she made as though he’d never seen anything like her before. “There’s one big story working through this world, and we’re all a part of it. I love that. It makes me feel like I’m part of something greater than myself. Maybe one day I can write my chapter in the big story.”
She expected Kona to laugh at her, maybe tell her what a dork she was. But he didn’t do that. He only stared at her, let his gaze soak her up.
After a moment, Kona blinked, nodded once as though processing her words and organizing them into files of Crazy Things Keira Says in his mind. “I get that. You want to be part of something. I totally get that.” He sat up, came close to grabbing her hand, but then just rested his elbows on his knees. “It’s why I play. It’s the team, the work we have to do to get our win.”
“It’s your Grail quest.” He frowned, confused. “You and your teammates are like the Knights of the Round Table. All of you doing your part to grab the Grail— the football, and to win. See? Everything goes back to the legends.”
He smiled and sat up with his back straight. “I like that.” Kona’s mouth took on a stupid smirk and he puffed his chest out. “I’m a knight.”
“Yeah,” Keira said, turning back to the computer. “Lancelot.”
“Why am I Lancelot?”
She laughed, trying to keep the sound low, before she leaned toward him, narrowing her eyes. “Because he couldn’t keep it in his pants either.”
Kona’s laugh was loud, sudden, and earned him another glare from Miller and quick shush from the librarian walking around the lab.
When Miller rumbled his paper again, Keira stopped laughing, but kept the smile on her face before scrolling through another list of articles. “Okay, so we have to connect one legend or at least a theme in it to a contemporary work.” Kona opened his mouth, and she shook her head. “Not Die Hard.”
Keira came across an article from 1985. The piece was useless, but one particular word caught her eye. Betrayal. “We could explore Lancelot’s infidelity and how he and Guinevere’s betrayal impacted Arthur with the elements of betrayal and forgiveness in Les Mis.”
“What’s that?”
She stared at him, but was speechless. “You’ve never heard of Les Miserables?”
“Is that on the syllabus?”
She laughed. “No. It’s about the aftermath of the French Revolution…it’s about several different…it’ll work.”
Kona squinted and he wore a frown that Keira suspected was forced and mocking. “You expect me to put all my faith in you on this?”
“You have another suggestion…aside from Die Hard?”
“No, but I need more information.”
“You can always read the book. Victor Hugo. I’ll even help you check it out.” When Kona wrinkled his nose, Keira held back the urge to search the racks. “Fine. Um…” she clicked onto the keyboard, pulling up the library’s media database. “We can rent the musical.”
“Musical?”
“God, Kona, you really should invest a little more attention into stuff off the field. Les Mis is one of the longest running Broadway musicals of all time and has the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.” He seemed dubious, so she hurried to explain. “We can rent it and watch it in my room, and I’ll explain the stuff you don’t get.”
“Okay.” When he said that too quickly, Keira was surprised to see a crack in his constantly cool composure. He’d seemed too eager, too willing to relinquish his argument. “I mean, whatever. You’re the word lady.”
“Good. When are you free?”
“Tuesday night. That good?”
“Yeah. That’s cool.”
“Sweet. It’s a date.”
Keira frowned. Whatever this was between them, it wouldn’t add up to much; she knew that. The mild flirtation with that tart Tonya made that clear. Kona Hale was beautiful, an athlete, part of a crowd in which Keira would never be welcome. No matter what she thought she felt that night in her dorm, the two of them together would never be a good idea. With one glance at Kona, that invented idea of something between them deflated, and Keira was brought back to reality. Kona wanted physical connections, not attachments. An attachment was all Keira wanted, just once in her life. An attachment that stuck. Love that didn’t leave. So she took a breath and watched Kona’s smile twitch until it disappeared when she shook her head.
“It’s not a date. It’s research.”
“Is your mom coming to campus or something?” Leann’s voice was a little worried, anxious, as though she was concerned Keira’s mother could be showing up. Leann was her mother’s only niece, the only person left of the brother she lost years before. But Keira’s mother always had a somewhat Scrooge-and-Fred relationship with Leann. They’d never gotten along.
Keira lowered her guitar, pulling her fingers from the frets in order to give her cousin her full attention. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“You cleaned my junk.” Leann glanced around the room. It had taken Keira an hour to put away Leann’s things, to organize her cousin’s mess so that their room didn’t look like a tornado had touched down in it. It always bothered Leann when Keira did this, as though the tidiness was some sort of insult to the weird, unkempt way Leann filed her belongings. “Your stuff is always sorted because you’re an OCD clean freak, but you cleaning my shit? Something is up.”
“Nothing is up, calm down.” Keira picked up her guitar and strummed a few notes, not eager to hear the big deal she knew Leann would make about tonight. She didn’t look at her cousin’s frown or the way she tapped her foot against the carpet, the soft pat of her dance shoes not making a sound. There would be suspicion, Keira knew, and quite a bit of warning, because that’s what Leann did when she thought Keira was being irresponsible. She had never understood why her cousin, who was only six months older than her, always felt it necessary to treat Keira like a kid. Maybe it was because Leann got to experience life a bit more. Maybe it was because Leann’s mother wasn’t as controlling, as overbearing, as her own.
Whatever the reason, Keira’s cousin was wary on her behalf. Always. When she didn’t immediately explain her reasons for cleaning up Leann’s mess, the girl sat next to her on the bed. “Well?”
Keira looked down at the fret board, plucking out a soft, sweet melody she hoped would calm her cousin. “Um, Kona Hale is coming by to watch Les Mis.”
She didn’t notice Leann’s reaction, too focused on the notes under her fingers and so she was a little shocked that Leann grabbed the neck of the guitar, stopping Keira’s fingers. “What?” she asked her cousin.
Keira wanted to laugh at Leann’s wide eyes. “Did you say Kona Hale?” At Keira’s nod, Leann dropped her hand from the guitar and leaned back. “I don’t think I can wrap my brain around the fact that you are going to have a real live boy in this room, not to mention that boy is CPU’s resident whore.”
“Leann, we’re working on a project together. There will be no whorish activity going on.”
The older girl seemed doubtful—suspicious—and then annoyed when Keira rolled her eyes and returned her attention to her guitar. “Keira, you don’t know what kind of person he is. Besides, I thought your mom has been after you about Mark Burke.”
“She keeps trying to get me to go to the hospital and accidently run into him when he’s there doing his internship. ‘To have lunch with Steven, oh, look, it’s Mark,’” she mocked. “But I haven’t gone yet.”
“Is he ugly?”
“No idea.”
“Well, he might be better than Kona Hale, at least.” When Keira ignored her, Leann threw one of the plain, blue pillows at her.
“You really think that of every guy on campus, I’d pick him?”
“He is pretty.”
“Oh, he’s gorgeous, but I’m not stupid.” She adjusted her body, turning toward her cousin with her arms resting on her Gibson. “And I’m not blind. I know how Kona operates. I also know that he’s not interested in me. Not like that.”
Keira didn’t like the look Leann gave her. It was pity and sympathy and all the things that she never wanted to see on anyone’s face when they looked at her. Especially not Leann. Her cousin knew this. She knew that above all, Keira wanted to be free from the control that had weighed her down her whole life. She knew that Keira wanted to make mistakes because she’d never been allowed to before.
So Leanna did what she always did when there was tension between them. She pulled on the end of Keira’s long hair and gave it a tug, gentle, but just enough to tell Keira she was sorry for doubting her.
“Bitch,” Keira said, her head down and gaze still focused on her guitar.
“Brat,” Leann returned, and she stretched her legs across the bed and nudged Keira with her foot. “Play me that sad song.”
Keira knew what she meant. Leann had been requesting that same song for months now, ever since she and her boyfriend Michael started sleeping together. Leann was happy it happened, she’d told Keira that much, but she suspected that her cousin missed that sex was one experience she’d never get to have again for the first time.
There were smooth grooves on the fret board, large dips that Keira’s father had made over the years. They were bigger than Keira’s fingertips, wider, but whenever she played her father’s guitar, she felt close to him. It was like reaching through the ether and touching him, paying tribute to the hope and heartache he’d laid down on that instrument. Keira’s own emotion, the sliver of hope that lived in her heart, came through with every note, with each line of lyric that left her mouth.
He’d taught her to play at eight, and by nine, she was as good as he’d ever be. He told her she had a natural ability, that he wanted her to never forget what it felt like with the music in her mind, swelling her heart the very first time she played.
She never had.
Keira’s voice was low, an alto with a hint of a rasp, and it followed the notes, slid along B flats and Cs like she was trying to catch up to them, to make them settle.
She didn’t watch her fingers when she played. That was a habit of a newbie guitarist Keira had long since abandoned. Eyes closed, the vibration of the guitar against her chest, Keira was taken over by the words, by the refrain in her mind, flickering from her throat.
Her lyrics were a spell, magic woven from her father’s blood, that she would never be able to define. She didn’t know why the sounds in her head never matched the notes she played or where those haunting, melodious words came from, why they fit together so perfectly.
Little girl I used to be
Shadows covered broken dreams
Forgot the promise I made to me
And then, Keira reached the bridge, climbed through the music like it was a mountain. She didn’t have to watch Leann’s expression to know that there were tears in her eyes.
No first kiss
Small last breath
Little girl gone, put out to death
The song continued, weaving through that small dorm room, and Keira felt the bed move, the tremble of Leann’s body as she tried hold back her shuddering breaths. When the vibration from the last note ended, Keira finally looked at her cousin, shaking her head at the sloppy way Leann wiped her face against her thin sweatshirt.
“Damn. You’re too good for CPU.”
“You’re biased.”
“Of course I am, but I mean it.”
Keira didn’t let Leann’s look stagger her. It was a compliment she’d heard from her cousin for years starting back to when they were eleven and Keira had written her first haunting melody, her very first lyric filled with melancholy.
Leann looked at the door when the knock sounded and offered Keira a glare, her emotions transformed in moments. “Be good,” she told her before she jumped off the bed and grabbed hold of her bag. “I have rehearsal until ten. Ten, Keira.”
“Are you still here?” She waved her cousin off and leaned her guitar against the footboard of her bed.
Kona’s smile appeared when Leann opened the door. He dwarfed Leann, was at least a foot taller than her, but that didn’t seem to bother her cousin in the least. The girls shared that ‘you can’t intimidate me’ gene.
Kona heard the music before he knocked. The voice had him resting against the doorframe, listening. He knew it was Keira singing, her natural tone evident in each note. Just the sound had him punch drunk.
The door opened, and Kona’s gaze shot down to the petite girl in front of him. She looked a lot like Keira; they both had the same fierce scowl, the same fine, pale skin, but this girl was bolder, her eyes sharper as she glared at him.
“Kona Hale.” Leann said his name like a curse, each syllable a dirty clip that she didn’t seem to want on her tongue.
“What’s up?”
“You tell me.” Her eyes lowered, her gaze sliding down past his hips before she jerked her attention back to his face. He caught her meaning, didn’t find her stupid joke funny.
“Leann, leave him alone,” Keira said, moving her cousin aside so Kona could walk into the room.
Keira’s cousin whispered something to her, something Kona thought might be a warning, but Keira pushed Leann toward the door before he could make out the threat.
“Well, kids, have fun.” Leanna stepped up to Kona, eyes fierce again, mouth quirked in a humorless smirk. “Not too much fun, you hear me, Hale?” She looked behind Kona, at Keira putting her guitar up. “My cousin is a good girl. I expect her to still be a good girl when you leave here.”
“Jesus,” he said, barely able to finish the word before Leann slipped out of the door.
“Sorry.” Keira’s face had gone blotchy and pink again, and Kona smiled at her expression. “She’s a little overprotective, but she’s harmless,” she said, waving her hand to direct Kona toward the foot of the bed. He followed her, rested against the makeshift sofa of thick cushions and pillows as Keira opened the cover and slipped the DVD into the player.
“It’s cool.” It wasn’t the first threat he’d ever received from overprotective friends. God knew, it wouldn’t be the last.
His eyes moved around the room, watched Keira as she knelt in front of the TV, skipped through the intro. She wore low-slung jeans, and when she bent to lift the remote higher, Kona had to shift his gaze from the pale skin that peeked between her waistband and the tight T-shirt she wore. He was torturing himself. He knew it, and he wondered if Keira had any idea what just being in the same room with her did to him. He doubted it. The girl had no idea the power she had. She had no clue how badly he wanted her, how being near her had him forgetting every steadfast rule he’d given himself about women.
Blinking away the image of that skin, Kona shifted over, made room for Keira when she sat next to him. The area was comfortable, and Kona figured that the girls set it up for when the common room downstairs didn’t invite shared TV watching. Their set was decent, not really that big, but the color was great. At that moment, Kona couldn’t really concentrate on the damn TV or the music spilling out from the speakers.
Keira smelled different, another flowery scent he couldn’t place, and he tried hard to keep his inhales short and brief, to focus on what was happening on the screen. But damn it was hard. It was also giving him a headache.
“The quality in this one isn’t the best.” Keira leaned against the cushion and kept rambling. Kona didn’t care, he liked how excited she seemed to be as the music started growing louder. “The librarian told me they had to convert it from a VHS because the company doesn’t sell the ’85 London original cast version, which sucks because aside from seeing it live…” she trailed off, stopping when she looked up at Kona. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m good.” He tried for casualness, not wanting Keira to know how she was affecting him, how just the excitement in her voice had him fighting back the smile that threatened to split across his face. He rested back, slid down on his elbow and moved his long legs in front of him. They nearly touched the TV.
As the musical began, Keira sat up, lifted the remote to increase the volume. Eyes wide, she started to explain the premise, her smile growing, and Kona didn’t stop his grin this time. “So Valjean is prisoner 24601. He’s been in prison for nineteen years and is being paroled by Javert, who is a total bastard. But he’s going to have to display a ticket of leave, which means he’ll be shunned because he’s an ex-con.”
“How’s he supposed to eat or work if no one will help him?”
“The Bishop of Digne offers him food and shelter.”
And then, despite the completely lame idea that Kona was sitting in a girl’s dorm room, not touching her, having her seemingly more interested in a bunch of stuffy singing actors on a stage, Kona let the music pull his attention, and then, just as Keira said, the story, and the girl, completely infected him.