A red tainted Silence by Carolyn Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

and a robe. I’d been sick for a week. Having all my music and equipment stolen, and finding, connecting with, and losing Nicholas all in one afternoon had made me feel even worse. My head had finally stopped hurting, as had my hand, but that depressed me even further. I could no longer remember how his touch felt against my skin.
    I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t even bother turning on the light or opening the curtains, just lay in the dark, letting my anger and despair roil over me. Jenny hadn’t gotten any responses to her flyers except for some prank calls, which made me wallow ever deeper in my misery. I knew I needed to shake this, but couldn’t let it go. Not yet.
    Finally my mom came in and kissed me on the forehead. She wrinkled her nose.
    “Brandon, you need to get up. At least take a shower, let me change these sheets.” Guess she was right. I had gotten kind of rank.
    So I dragged myself up and into the shower, kinda freaked at just how skinny I’d gotten in so short a time. Six, seven pounds doesn’t sound like much, but on me it was. If I didn’t gain it back, Sprout would add “string” to her nickname for me. The shower did make me feel better, though. After gelling my hair and shaving, I pulled on my jean shorts and an old AC-DC t-shirt my brother Jonathan had discarded. All my clothes were at the apartment.
    So I emerged from my cave at last. While I was in the shower, my mom had pulled the curtains back and stripped my bed, but hadn’t made it yet -- think she did that on purpose so I wouldn’t crawl right back in. Smart mom.
    Padding barefoot through the house, I ended up in the kitchen. She’d left me a note: Gone to the store to pick up some chicken and Oreo cookies. I grinned. Oreos, the best medicine.
    I fixed myself a glass of ice water, then leaned against the sink and stared through the kitchen door into the room beyond, my gaze settling on the baby grand piano, which gobbled up most of the front room.

    30 Carolyn Gray
    Sunlight glinted across the wooden floors and bathed the piano in beckoning light. My fingers twitched. It’d been a long time since I’d sat and played anything but electronic keyboards, and I realized I kinda missed the purity of the piano’s sound.
    I was nine when my parents got the baby grand for me. My older brothers’ musical interests had taken them different directions, but I’d shown from a very early age to have a gift for the piano and for memorizing music. I spent years banging away on our old upright, spending all the hours I could spare sitting on its hard bench. My butt still remembers that bench.
    But the upright was old and easily went out of tune, especially as much as I played it.
    After a time, I began to get frustrated with the sound quality, and my playing sessions would abruptly end. My mom would watch me storm off and yank open the back door, slamming it behind me as I went outside to mope. I’d never answer when she’d ask me what was wrong. I began to play less and picked up the guitar, finding in it a lot of the pleasure I’d had playing the piano. But it was never the same.
    Then, one weekend, I went with my parents on vacation to the home of a friend of theirs. They were rich, these friends, living in a huge house overlooking the ocean. I remember vowing to myself that someday I’d have a place overlooking the ocean, too. That dream became reality, but back then I didn’t really believe it would ever happen. After all, I was just a kid, nobody special.
    The house was incredible, with room after room packed with antiques and amazing artifacts from all over the world. Giant urns from Egypt, a stuffed tiger from India, Ming vases, fine porcelains, a collection of snuff boxes made of precious metals and stones, each one different from the other, that fascinated me. I remember asking what a snuff was and everyone laughing.
    But everything in that house paled in comparison to the piano that graced a ballroom-size room with