The Gift

Chapter 28

Wisty

THE POWER OF THE STAGE and the crowd is too much to resist, though. I finish the song first. Whit deserves to hear his words sung out to the masses.

Then I hurry backstage, expecting him to accost me-or strangle me?-instantly, but… he's MIA.

"You were fantastic out there," says Byron while I look around for Whit. "If this magic thing doesn't work out, you could always be a musician, you know. I mean, I guess after you failed out of orchestra in, what was it-fifth grade?-I just assumed you were hopelessly terrible."

"Yeah, well. It took you long enough to realize that a perfect grade point average isn't the only measure of somebody."

"Definitely not," says Byron. He steps toward me with an infuriating eager-beaver expression on his pinched little face. "I really should have taken you seriously a lot sooner, Wisty. I want to make up for that."

Ew. He's not doing what I think he's doing, is he? Please, somebody tell me Byron Hall Monitor Swain is not trying to put his weaselly moves on me. I don't want to hurt his feelings, especially tonight, but he's not leaving me much choice.

"I was wrong to underestimate you," he goes on, inching even closer-and there aren't many inches left at this point. "I mean, you were always beautiful, anybody could see that, but I guess I never appreciated… the brains behind your… badness." He said "badness" with a sly smile, as if he were thinking about a kind of badness… of which I wanted no part. Gross!

"You know, Byron, maybe it's just exhaustion from the show, but I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. You might want to back up."

"Oh, here, let me give you a hand," he says, and puts one of his ferrety paws on my arm. Next, he's steering me toward the "greenroom" couch made out of nongreen cushions pilfered from furniture in bombed-out homes.

I'm so shocked that Byron Belly-Crawler Swain has his hands on me that I can't even react. I should have shoved him off the stage when I had the chance.

"I know some great massage techniques for all sorts of exhaustion," he's saying, but just then the Bionics and a swarm of their groupies burst into the room… along with my brother.

I guess the universe hasn't totally forsaken me.