Unforgiven fallen book 5, p.7
Unforgiven (Fallen Book 5), page 7




“I heard you were always late to school,” he said.
Lilith’s chronic tardiness didn’t strike her as fascinating gossip. Aside from Tarkenton, a few teachers, Jean, and now Cam, no one at Trumbull had ever cared to notice Lilith. “If you were expecting me to be late, why are you waiting for me before the bell?”
“Isn’t that what one does in high school?” Luc glanced around the hallway. “Wait at a classmate’s locker in hopes of being asked to prom?”
“You’re not a classmate. And I hope you’re not trying to get me to ask you to prom. Because you would be waiting a long time.” Lilith opened her locker and tossed in some books. Luc rested his elbows on the locker door and stared down at her. She glared up at him, waiting for him to move so she could close it.
“Have you ever heard of the Four Horsemen?” he asked.
“Everyone’s heard of them.” Chloe King turned away from her admirers to face Luc. Silver eyeliner glittered against her flawless dark skin, and she wore her hair in a hundred tiny braids. She glanced down at Lilith. “Even trash like her.”
“Since when do you listen to the Four Horsemen?” Lilith asked.
The Four Horsemen were haunting and profound. Their rock ballads were smart and sad, and every album was different from the last, so true fans could see a real evolution in their style. Their lead singer, Ike Ligon, wrote songs that were the reason Lilith wanted to be a musician. There was no way a girl like Chloe could relate to the pain they expressed in their music.
“It’s cruel to get her hopes up,” Chloe said to Luc, and started humming the chorus of the Four Horsemen’s latest single, “Sequins of Events.”
Lilith shut her locker and stood. “Get my hopes up about what?”
“If you didn’t skip school so often,” Luc said to Lilith, “you might have heard the news.”
“What news?” Lilith asked.
“The Four Horsemen are the closing band at prom,” Chloe said. Behind her, her three girlfriends squealed. One of them had a soft guitar case slung over her shoulder, and Lilith realized these girls were probably in Chloe’s band.
Lilith’s blood drummed in her ears. “No way.”
“I’m getting Ike’s name tattooed right here.” Chloe turned back to her boyfriend and his friends, undoing a button over her cleavage to show off her future ink site. “Right above my heart. See?”
The boys definitely saw.
“The Four Horsemen are coming to Crossroads?” Lilith said. “Why?”
Chloe shrugged, as if she couldn’t imagine an amazing band not wanting to visit their dismal town. “They’re helping Tarkenton judge the Battle of the Bands.”
“Wait. You mean the Four Horsemen are going to watch bands from this school perform?” Lilith asked quietly. “At prom?”
Luc nodded as if he understood how world-altering this news was. “I pitched the idea to Ike myself.”
“You know Ike Ligon?” Lilith blinked at Luc.
“We were texting last night,” Luc said. “I hope this doesn’t embarrass you, but your performance at the open mic got me thinking about how amazing it would be for the Four Horsemen to perform a song written by a Trumbull student.”
Luc had been there last night? Lilith was about to ask why, but all that came out of her mouth was, “Whoa.” It had finally hit her: The Four Horsemen were going to be here, in Crossroads. At Trumbull. This was the closest she’d ever come to fangirling in public.
“Ike loved the idea,” Luc said. “Starting today, we’re accepting lyrics, even MP3s of student-written material, and Ike will sing the winning song to close out the prom.”
“Daddy thinks it’s a way to make prom more inclusive,” Chloe added. “Except for freaks like you.”
But Lilith was barely listening to Chloe. In her mind, she imagined Ike Ligon’s scruffy face lighting up at her lyrics. For a split second she even imagined meeting him, and soon her fantasy had flown her to a real recording studio, with Ike producing her first album.
Chloe squinted at Lilith. “I’m sorry. Are you, like, imagining one of your songs getting picked?” Chloe turned back to her friends and laughed.
Lilith felt herself flush. “I don’t—”
“You don’t even have a band,” Chloe said. “Whereas mine already has three singles Ike is going to love.” She slammed her locker. “It will be so amazing to be prom queen and win the battle and have the Four Horsemen cover one of my songs.”
“Don’t you mean one of our songs?” the girl with the guitar asked Chloe.
“Sure,” Chloe said with a snort. “Whatever. Let’s go.” She snapped her fingers and started down the hallway, her friends nipping at her heels.
“She’s not going to win,” Luc whispered in Lilith’s ear as Chloe walked away.
“She wins everything,” Lilith murmured as she slung her backpack over her shoulder.
“Not this.” Something in Luc’s tone made Lilith stop and turn around. “You have a real shot at winning, Lilith, only…Never mind.”
“What?”
Luc frowned. “Cam.” He glanced at the other students flowing past them toward their classes. “I know he pressured you to start a band with him yesterday. Don’t do it.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Lilith said. “But why do you care?”
“You don’t know Cam like I do.”
“No,” Lilith agreed. “But I don’t need to know him to know I hate him.” Saying it out loud made her realize how strange it sounded. She did hate Cam, and she didn’t even know why. He hadn’t done anything to her, and yet the thought of him made her tense up and want to break something.
“Don’t tell anyone I told you this”—Luc leaned in—“but a while back, Cam was in a band with this chick singer—”
“Chick singer?” Lilith narrowed her eyes. Guys sucked.
“Female vocalist, I mean,” Luc said with a slight eye roll. “She wrote all the songs. And she was totally in love with him.”
Lilith wasn’t interested in Cam, but it wasn’t a huge surprise that other girls were. She got it: Cam was sexy and magnetic, but he wasn’t her type. When he turned his charm on her, it only made Lilith despise him more.
“Who cares?” she asked.
“You should,” Luc replied. “Especially if you’re going to get into bed with him—musically speaking.”
“I’m not getting into bed with Cam in any sense,” Lilith said. “I just want to be left alone.”
“Good,” Luc said with a cryptic smile. “Because Cam is…how should I put this? He’s more the love-’em-and-leave-’em type.”
Lilith thought she might throw up. “So what?”
“So one day, after things had been going so well—or at least so this young girl thought,” Luc said, “Cam just disappeared. No one heard from him for months. Though we did hear of him, eventually. You remember that song ‘Death of Stars’?”
“By Dysmorphia?” Lilith nodded. She’d only ever heard that one single, but she’d loved it. “It was never not on the radio last summer.”
“That’s because of Cam.” Luc frowned. “He stole the girl’s lyrics, claimed them as his own, and sold the song to Lowercase Records.”
“Why would he do that?” Lilith said. She thought back to that moment the day before when he’d gently coaxed her from paralyzing stage fright into song. She loathed him, and yet…that had been one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her.
The bell rang, and the crowd in the hall thinned as students filtered into classrooms. Over Luc’s shoulder, Lilith saw Tarkenton sweeping the halls for tardy students. “I have to go,” she said.
“I’m just saying,” Luc said, beginning to walk away, “your songs are good. Too good to let Cam strike again.”
Lilith walked toward her homeroom, her mind spinning. How could she waste her time in class when there was a songwriting competition judged by Ike Ligon coming up? She didn’t even care that it was happening at prom. She could show up just for the Battle of the Bands. She didn’t need a date or a dress. She only needed to be in the same room as Ike Ligon.
She should be practicing right now. She should be writing more songs.
Before she knew it, her feet had led her to the band room.
Cam sat on the floor, tuning the slim green electric guitar she’d seen him play the other day. Jean Rah was tapping out a rhythm on his jeans with his drumsticks. What were they doing in here?
“We were just talking about you,” Jean Rah said.
“You guys aren’t supposed to be here,” Lilith said.
“Neither are you,” Cam said, and gave her another infuriating wink.
“Do you have some sort of tic?” Lilith asked. “Like a muscle spasm in your eye?”
Cam looked taken aback. “It’s called a wink, Lilith. Some people actually find it charming.”
“Other people think it makes you look like a huge perv,” Lilith said.
Cam stared at her, and she waited for him to say something snarky, but instead he said, “Sorry. Won’t happen again.”
Lilith sighed. She needed to focus on her music, and Cam was a distraction. Everything about him was distracting, from the way his fingers moved over his guitar, to the inscrutable smile crinkling his green eyes when he glanced up at her. She didn’t like it.
And she’d never liked Jean. She wanted them both out. Her mouth pinched into a scowl. “Please leave,” she said. “Both of you.”
“We were here first,” Jean said. “If anyone needs to leave, it’s you.”
“Both of you, chill,” Cam said. “Let’s just jam. Wait until you hear this groove Jean and I just made up.”
“No,” Lilith said. “I came to work on something. Privately. I don’t even have my guitar.”
Cam was already inside the band closet, pulling one from a case. He walked toward Lilith and rested the guitar in her hands, reaching behind her head to drape the strap over her shoulders. It was a Les Paul, with a thin neck and a cool silver spray-paint job on its fingerboard. She’d never held such a nice guitar before.
“Now what’s your excuse?” Cam asked softly. His hands stayed at the nape of her neck longer than they needed to, like he didn’t want to pull away.
So she did.
The smile on Cam’s lips vanished, as if she’d hurt him somehow.
If she had, she told herself she didn’t care. She didn’t know why he was being so forward, what he meant by encouraging her music.
She thought about Chloe King, how rude she’d been to her about the open mic performance. It was the only time Lilith had ever played in public. Holding this guitar, she realized that she didn’t want it to be the last.
It didn’t mean they were starting a band. They could just, as Cam said, jam.
“What do I do?” she said, feeling vulnerable. She didn’t like being at anyone’s mercy—especially Cam’s.
Silently, Cam guided her hand up the guitar’s warm neck. His right hand traced hers over the strings. She swayed a little.
“You know what to do,” Cam said.
“I don’t. I’ve never—with other people—I…”
“Just start playing,” Cam said. “Wherever you go, we’ll follow you.”
He nodded at Jean, who tapped his drumsticks together four times as Cam grabbed the slim green Jaguar bass with the vintage-style tremolo arm.
And then, like it was no big deal, Lilith set her fingers free.
Her guitar locked in with Jean Ra’s kick drum like a heartbeat. Cam’s scratchy chords crisscrossed the heavy rhythm like a Kurt-Cobain-and-Joe-Strummer hybrid. Every now and then, Jean fingered the short, black Moog synthesizer that sat next to his drum kit. The synth chords buzzed like fat and friendly bees, their vibrations finding safe homes in the spaces left by the other instruments.
After a while, Cam lifted his hand into the air. Lilith and Jean stopped playing. They could all sense they were onto something.
“Let’s move on to some vocals,” Cam said.
“You mean, like, now?” Lilith asked. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Cam flipped a switch and tested the mic with a fingertip, then aimed the mic at Lilith and stepped back. “How about the song you sang yesterday?”
“ ‘Exile,’ ” Lilith said, her heart racing. She took out her journal, the one with all her lyrics, but then she thought back to the day before, how much everyone had hated her performance. What was she doing? Performing in front of anyone else was only going to cause her more humiliation.
Then she thought of Ike Ligon singing her song in front of the entire school.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Softly, Cam said, “One, two, three, four,” and he and Jean began. Cam motioned for Lilith to start singing.
She couldn’t.
“What’s wrong?” Cam asked.
Everything, she wanted to say. The only thing Lilith had ever known was disappointment. Nothing in her life ever worked out. Which, for the most part, was okay, because she never let herself expect anything, so she never really cared.
But this? Music?
It mattered to her. If she sang and she sucked, or if her song wasn’t chosen for the battle, or if she, Cam, and Jean started a band and it all fell apart, Lilith would lose the only thing she cared about. The stakes were too high.
Best to back away now.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?” Cam asked. “We’re good together. You know that—”
“I don’t know that.” Her eyes met Cam’s, and she felt tense, like a wire about to snap. She remembered her conversation with Luc that morning, and the chorus of Dismorphia’s “Death of Stars” started playing in her mind:
The stars are on your face tonight
There is no outer space tonight
“What is it?” Cam said.
Should she ask him about the song? And the girl? Was that crazy?
What if Cam was a lyric thief? What if that was the real, secret reason he wanted to start a band with her? Aside from her guitar, Lilith’s songs were the only things she valued. Without them, she had nothing.
“I have to go,” Lilith said. She set down the guitar and grabbed her bag. “And I’m not entering my lyrics in the competition. It’s over.”
“Wait—” Cam called, but she was already out the band room door.
Outside, Lilith crossed the school parking lot toward the smoke-filled woods. She coughed, trying not to think about how good it had felt to make music with Cam and Jean. It was stupid to have jammed with them, stupid to hope for anything, because she was Lilith and everything always sucked and she never, ever got what she wanted in life.
Other kids didn’t hesitate when they were asked about their dreams. “College,” they’d say, “then a career in finance.” Or, “Backpack in Europe for two years,” or, “Join the marines.” It was as if everyone but Lilith had gotten an email that explained which schools to apply to, and how to join Tri Delt once you were there, and what to do if you wanted to be a doctor.
Lilith wanted to be a musician, a singer of her own songs—but she knew better than to believe it was possible.
She sat down at her spot by the creek and unzipped her backpack, reaching inside for her journal. Her fingers groped for the book. She reached deeper, pushing aside her history textbook, her pencil bag, her key ring. Where was her journal? She opened the bag wide and dumped out its contents, but the bound black book wasn’t there.
Then she remembered she’d taken it out in the band room when she thought she was going to sing. It was still in there. With Cam.
In a heartbeat, Lilith was on her feet and sprinting back to the band room, running faster than she knew she could. She shoved open the door, gasping for breath.
The band room was empty. Cam and Jean—and her black notebook—were gone.
Twelve Days
Lilith’s black notebook lay open on a bench in the boys’ locker room the next morning as Cam got dressed for school. When she’d run out of the band room yesterday, his intention had been to return the journal to her immediately. He’d looked for her at Rattlesnake Creek, but she wasn’t there, and he couldn’t drop it at her house because he didn’t know where she lived.
The longer he held the journal in his hands, though, the deeper the temptation became to open it. By sundown, he broke, and he’d stayed on the roof of the Trumbull gym all night, reading and rereading every one of Lilith’s brilliant, devastating songs by the light of his cell phone.
He knew it was wrong. A violation of her privacy. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was like someone had lifted the velvet rope outside Lilith’s heart and given him VIP access. Once, long ago, Cam had touched this tender, vulnerable side of Lilith, but now he could only glimpse it through her songs.
And these songs? They wrecked him. Each one—from “Misery Loves” to “Standing at the Cliff’s Edge” to Cam’s personal favorite, “Somebody’s Other Blues”—was dominated by suffering, humiliation, and betrayal. The worst part was knowing precisely where all this pain came from. Bearing the memories for both of them was torture.
The way Lilith looked at him now, like he was a stranger, was torture, too. Cam could finally empathize with Daniel, who’d had to start over with Lucinda every time they met.
Dressing in another stolen T-shirt and his usual jeans and leather jacket, Cam was so ashamed of the pain he’d caused Lilith that he found it hard to meet his own eyes in the mirror. He finger-combed his wet hair and was surprised to find that it felt a little thinner. And, now that he thought about it, his jeans felt a little tighter around the waist.
He leaned in to look at his reflection and was taken aback by a few age spots near his hairline—which, he could see, had receded a half inch. What was happening?