Double Time
Chapter 94
“Unless you know the code, it has no meaning.”
—John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
CINDY. REMEMBER HER? Cute little freshman girl who is a flute virtuoso. I did a recital with her in January. Back then, she asked me if I’d do more work with her and I’d readily agreed. She gave me some music for the guitar part of Albrechtsberger’s ‘Concerto for Flute, Guitar, and Orchestra.’ Johann Albrechtsberger was an Austrian Baroque composer of the eighteenth century. The piece didn’t seem to be overly complex. I’d practiced it a few times with Cindy over the past couple of months but we couldn’t get together too often with my crazy schedule.
Which was not letting up. We were at a point of having two track meets a week. They were outdoor meets now and went longer than indoor meets. As a result, we seldom ran a meet at the same time as the girls and the meets were with just two to four schools participating. I was right at the twelve-minute mark for the 3,200-meter run and Jock finally managed to get a full 4x800 JV relay team in place. In regular competition a runner could participate in two individual events and a relay. I was now regularly running the 800, the 4x800 relay, and the 3200. I could usually place in the 3200 and had won a couple of times. It had to be a pretty small field for me to place in the 800. And face it, with one of our shot putters running the second leg of the 4x800, we could place fourth in a three-way meet. But we ran.
All that to say, I was surprised when Ms. Devine asked Cindy and me to report to Mr. LeBlanc in the orchestra room during our music theory class on Monday.
“I don’t normally buy a pig in a poke,” Mr. LeBlanc said, “but I’ve known Betty Marvel for many years and she says you are up to this. Now we need to put it together.”
“I’ll do my best, sir. Cindy and I have played together before.”
“Of course. I heard your recital in January. But you’ve never played with an orchestra before.”
“An orchestra?” What the hell was that about? He sighed.
“Cindy?” he said, fixing her with his eyes. She dropped her head.
“The… um… music says ‘Guitar, Flute, and Orchestra.’ I just assumed he understood,” she said. The hell! Mr. LeBlanc put a hand over his forehead.
“Let’s at least hear how the two of you do together. Then we’ll discuss integrating with the orchestra.”
Cindy set her music on her stand so I figured I’d better, too. She subtly laid a pencil on the rack and we began. We weren’t far into the piece when LeBlanc rapped his desk with his baton.
“Guitar, measure seventeen. You are holding the fermata on the last note too long and coming in half a beat behind the flute on measure eighteen. Mark it.” I understood what the pencil was for and made a note on my score. “Pick it up at sixteen. One, two…” and we were off again.
I admit, I don’t follow music that well. My normal mode is to play from the score until I have the notes memorized and then play them the way I feel at the moment. Mr. LeBlanc insisted they be played exactly as the music was written. I think he was frustrated by the time we made it through the fifteen-minute piece. It had taken the entire period.
“I can’t do this every day, but you should. I’ll ask Ms. Devine to release you for practice during your sixth period class. Next week, you need to rehearse with the orchestra. We meet in split fifth period. I’ve looked at your schedule, Mr. Hopkins. I’m amazed you know the music as well as you do. You’ll need to spend your lunches with the orchestra next week. That will be all for now. Pay attention to the music!”
I had a notion to tell him to stuff it but I looked at Cindy and she had such an intense expression of anxiety on her face I couldn’t say anything. I packed my guitar and music and hustled off to my personal finance class.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” Cindy pled. She was waiting for me outside my class at the end of the day. I heaved a sigh.
“I’m not angry,” I said. “Not too much. It would have been nice if you’d told me we were playing with the whole orchestra and that I needed to pay more attention to the way the music was written. When we practiced together, I thought we were doing pretty well.”
“I get so lost in the e… in the moment when we’re playing together, I forget to watch the music. Mr. LeBlanc won’t let us get away with that. You can do it, Jacob. I know you can. I’ll help.”
“Cindy, you know I’ll do my best for you. I agreed to play this concert with you and I’ll do my very best. Next time, just let me know what I’m in for, okay?”
Wednesday after school we had a combined meet with Wayne and Luers at Luers. All three teams ran. In the three-way meet, each school was allowed three competitors per event. Most tracks are only eight lanes wide, but Bishop Luers had ten lanes on their extra wide oval. We won the meet in all three divisions, Girls’, Boys’ Varsity, and Boys’ Junior Varsity. I placed third in the 800 and my teammate placed first. I won the 3200 with my first time under twelve minutes. Yes, the varsity runners were still a minute and a half ahead of me, but I was beginning to close the gap.
Time was collapsing on me, it seemed. I was forgoing my morning run half the time in order to finish assignments for school. I got to school, attended classes, including practicing with Cindy during sixth period, while still trying to keep up with the material on transposing Ms. Devine was teaching, and then running during track practice or going to a meet. I’d get home in time for dinner and if possible, study with my girlfriends. That was less possible this week. Desi was in rehearsal for the spring musical, The Drowsy Chaperone. Her schedule was no better than mine. AP Exams would start in three and a half weeks. All of us had at least one AP class and if we didn’t do well on the exam, we wouldn’t get the extra half point AP credit we’d been working toward. Frankly, I was beginning to wonder if I could even pass US History.
Rachel, Joan, and Livy were just as intensely involved in their Constitutional Government Class. Brittany’s family were Catholic and this was Holy Week, so they had some church thing almost every night. Beca, Desi, Brittany, and I all had honors English and we were dealing with Shakespeare again—this time comedy. We had a huge paper on the use of dramatic conventions and dramatic irony in Twelfth Night. Ms. Levy wasn’t letting up on us at all.
Speaking of which, I’d figured out part of her puzzle. The easy part. The sheet of music she’d given me was written in the exact notation of a guitar. The guitar is tuned with the low E two octaves below middle C and the high E two whole steps above middle C. Nonetheless, guitar music is all written in the treble clef, an octave above the tuning. The notes Donna Levy had put on the staff all fell in the range of my guitar. So, I tried to play them.
What a disaster!
Yes, I could play all the notes and I could play them in the relative rhythm of the line without measure markings. But they made no sense. It was like each series of notes between rests was completely independent from all the others. And they jumped around from high notes to low notes and back again.
Saturday morning, we had a two-way meet at Northside and it went pretty quickly. We were back at noon. I headed straight for Joan’s and found her in the TV room with Beca. Both of them were in short T-shirts and panties.
“Wow!” I said, taking in the sight.
“Like what you see?” Beca asked. “Won’t you give your girlfriends a kiss, Jacob?”
“Oh, hell yeah!” I said, folding Beca into my arms. I just couldn’t help running my hands down to cup her little round ass cheeks. She ground herself against my rising expectations.
“Mmm. Joan is waiting for hers.”
I turned and Joan was, indeed, ready to maximize my attention as she met my mouth and my tongue.
“Are we skipping studying and just having an orgy this afternoon?” I asked hopefully. Beca and I had double-teamed Joan before and I was looking forward to the next time.
“No. We’re doing art,” Joan said. She turned and displayed the tattoo on her hip. “No one in the pod has seen it except you, Beca, and Em. I wanted everyone to see that I really had it done.” I dropped to my knees and kissed the artwork. It was pretty much healed and was vivid against her pale skin. While I was kissing, I kept petting and stroking her butt and legs.
“Me, too,” Beca said. “I want my artwork kissed.” I looked at her and she showed me that Joan had used her pens to draw the tattoo on Beca’s cute little butt. I gladly kissed the area in question and did just as much petting of Beca’s butt and legs as I had Joan’s. “I’m beginning to think…” Beca panted, “…that I might be bi instead of gay. You can keep doing that all afternoon, Jacob.” While I kissed her butt and nipped at it with my teeth, Joan captured our girlfriend’s lips.
“That looks like fun. Can I play?” Rachel said as she and Livy came into the room.
“I hope so,” Beca said as she turned to greet Rachel. The turn caused my lips to slide right over her mons and I bit it gently with my lips. “Oh, God!” Beca said. “Definitely, definitely turning bi!”
I got up to kiss my other girlfriends. As soon as they saw Joan’s tattoo and what she’d drawn on Beca, they stripped off their jeans.
While Rachel was being drawn on, Livy turned to me.
“I’m thinking I want mine here, on the inside of my thigh,” she said, pointing to a place just an inch away from her labia. I practiced kissing there while Rachel had her artwork finished and shoved our girlfriend out of the way.
“You’re supposed to have it drawn before he starts kissing. What if the ink won’t stick with all that slobber?” Rachel laughed. Joan grabbed a towel and made sure Livy’s skin was dry before she started inking in the designated area. I noted Livy’s panties were kind of wet from where I’d been slobbering but it didn’t stop Joan from latching on there with her lips. I kissed all around Rachel’s new mark as I petted her butt and ran my hands up the inside of her thigh until I could caress her pussy. Her hips started rocking.
“I hope we’re not too late to get some of that,” Nanette said as she, Desi, and Brittany entered the room. “Truth is, I’ve been horny all week.”
“We’ll try to take care of that, lover,” Beca said. “We’re having Joan draw the tattoo on each of us as a test run. Want to play?”
“Yes! I was on Skype with Emily Wednesday and she showed me hers. That’s where I want mine.” Nanette stripped off her T-shirt and sports bra. Aw, fuck! I turned to her to get a greeting kiss and my hand went straight to her boobs.
“I’ve heard tattoos really hurt. Maybe I could distract you while Joan works by sucking on these.” I bent my head and caught a nipple between my teeth.
“Would it be okay if I fuck you right now?” she asked. “I’ve been missing you for our morning runs.”
“At least wait till he kisses the rest of us hello,” Desi said. She smashed herself against me and I realized she was now topless as well. I helped support her tits. “I’ve decided on the traditional tramp stamp,” she said.
“I thought of that, but I’ve already got one,” Nanette said. She pulled the back of her jeans down enough that we could all see the little Celtic love knot on her tailbone.
“If Jacob is going to use the tattoo as a target for kisses, I want mine right here,” Brittany said. She pointed to a spot just below her left breast. Bare breast. As I looked around the room, I saw the rest of my girlfriends stripping off their tops. That left Joan, Beca, Rachel, and Livy in just their panties. Oh, man! I was like an old dog and just wanted to roll in a field of titties. I kissed Brittany and continued down her front until I had her left nipple between my lips and could lash it with my tongue. “I don’t think I’m going to make it to my sixteenth birthday as a virgin,” Brittany sighed. “I mean a virgin from boys.”
The girls all got their tattoos eventually and we all kissed them thoroughly. I saw Nanette even lean in to peck Brittany’s breast tattoo quickly.
“Where do you want yours, Jacob?” Joan asked.
“Where? What?” I was so enjoying the girls that I hadn’t even thought about where I’d want my own tattoo. God! It almost seemed real. “Oh. Um…” I stripped off my own shirt and immediately had hands on my chest and boobs pressed against my back. “I want it here, above my heart. After all, that’s where you all live.”
There were a lot of caresses and kisses before Joan finally got to the point of inking me.
“Is there a specific one that you want?” she asked, pointing to the large printout of the mural in my bedroom.
“Yeah. That one… with one arm pointed up and one down. He could be playing the guitar. Or dancing. That’s what I’d like.” Joan smiled and went to work. As soon as the ink was dry, I got the kissing treatment from all seven of my girlfriends. Somehow, they couldn’t stick to just the artwork. My left nipple got a workout and there is a nerve that extends directly from that nipple to the tip of my cock. I was leaking buckets by the time Beca had finished gently sucking on it.
And I was in my underpants, too. Somewhere along the line I lost my jeans.
We didn’t devolve into the threatened orgy. Quite. At one point, Nanette and I—with permission—snuck off to Joan’s bedroom and paid a little soft attention to both our needs. No one really got dressed after our art class and I was happy to see and appreciate all seven pairs of my girlfriends’ breasts for the rest of the afternoon. Some of that appreciation was tactile.
“Jacob brought his guitar. Are you going to play for us?” Brittany asked just after I’d finished another feast on her nipples with my hand in her panties.
“Oh. Um… I was looking for some help with something,” I said. “You all know that I read you the piece I wrote that Donna, I mean Ms. Levy, didn’t mark up.”
“She liked the sex. And we noticed you called her by her first name just now. She’s going to be one of us eventually, isn’t she?” Rachel asked.
“Did you see that she has a copy of the art in her drawer?” Brittany asked. “I saw it when she reached for a pen.”
“Where do you think she’ll want her tattoo,” Desi asked. “Can’t you just imagine kissing that beautiful butt? Or breast? Or thigh? Or…”
“Take it easy, lovers. Donna is still a teacher. You know what the risk is to Nanette being where she could be accused of improper behavior with Brittany. That’s just the age thing. I um… sort of held her hand during our last review. I mean… not really holding it but touching it. I lusted after her from the first time we met but now I’m seriously beginning to fall for her. But being involved with a student could be an absolute catastrophe for Donna. She might avoid jail but she’d never teach again. And that would be awful,” I said.
“Yeah. We understand. But she’s just so yummy,” Beca said. “So… um… what did fantasizing about Ms. Levy have to do with your guitar?”
“Oh yeah. So, when we finished that review, she handed me a sheet of music she said she wrote and asked if I could make sense of it. She sort of gave me permission to show it to you,” I said.
“Sort of?” Joan asked.
“She said she’d appreciate it if I didn’t share it outside my most intimate circle of friends. When she said that, she tapped the printout of our mural Britt said she’d seen in the drawer. The only thing is, I don’t think she quite comprehends how big my most intimate circle is.”
“If she watches your concerts regularly, she’s seen all of us with you. She probably figures Francie and Cindy are members, too,” Rachel said. “It’s too bad you couldn’t record with Emily when you were out there.”
“Believe me when I say there was no room in that car for his guitar and recording equipment,” Joan said.
“Okay, so what is it?” Beca insisted.
I pulled out what we thought of as music and laid it on the floor so everyone could see it. I got my guitar and played through the notes on the first line, feeling like I was stopping and starting with the frequency of the rests. Even playing the notes without the rests didn’t make sense. It just wasn’t… musical.
“I don’t think it’s music,” Nanette said.
“No kidding. What is it?” I asked.
“Hmm. Code?”
“For a computer?” Joan asked.
“No. I mean a secret language that requires some kind of magic decoder ring to understand.”
“I read about the Navaho code talkers during World War II,” Beca said. “Remember, Jacob? Ms. Renault talked about how the code was never broken because it wasn’t a substitution code and didn’t have a key. It was an entire language and they didn’t have an instructor.”
“Yeah. Like speaking Klingon from Star Trek or Elvish from Lord of the Rings,” I mused. “But if it’s a different language, how would I ever make sense of it?”
“Cryptogram,” Nanette said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a message written with a substitution code. Once you have the key, you can substitute the letters in the right places and read the message,” Nanette said.
“But we don’t have the key,” Livy said.
“We have to figure out the key. In a cryptogram, you look for common letters and common words then substitute those in where they fit. For example,” Nanette said, warming to the subject, “English has only two one-letter words, I and A. So, wherever you see a one-letter word, it has to be one of those. You try the substitution and see what works. One of the most common words in the English language is ‘and’. So, you look for which one-letter word also starts the most common three letter word.”
“How do we tell what’s a word?” Brittany asked.
“Rests,” I said. “This might take a while.”
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