Chapter Three
After dinner Terrence carried the cordless phone into his room, shut the door, and called the relay service. He knew now (from doing a Google search) what it was: a service that provides communication assistance to the deaf, hard-of-hearing, and speech-impaired. Terrence had never thought about how a deaf person could use a telephone before, and now he knew. Upon reaching the automated response he selected the option to hear a recorded message explaining how to use the service. And then, thus armed with this knowledge, he punched in Reese's home number.
"Ringing," said the voice of a female operator. Almost a minute of silence later, Terrence was still wondering if he was supposed to acknowledge that when the operator said, "Hello?"
The operator was reading what Reese had entered into her teletypewriter when she answered the call. Terrence knew that but it was still weird, and he tried to act like he was talking to Reese. "Um, Reese?" he said. "Go ahead," he added quickly, remembering that he was supposed to.
"Yeah?" was the reply.
"It's Terrence. Go ahead."
"Oh," said the operator, and Terrence attempted to mentally project some enthusiasm into the operator's expressionless, pleasant voice. "Do you like the game?"
"Yeah, its great," said Terrence, not so sure he wanted to tell a some random operator how much he enjoyed thwacking the Insane Children with the Croquet Mallet. "Hey, uh, I'm off restriction on my birthday. Do...you..." here he felt a little stupid, "still want to see a movie or something? Um, go ahead."
A pause. "Come over here," replied the operator smoothly.
Terrence frowned. "What?" he said, and hurriedly added a "go ahead."
"Come to my house. Bring a swimsuit and some clothes you don't mind messing up. Come before lunch and we'll feed you."
Terrence blinked. It was one thing to be invited to the movies by a girl, that was neutral ground but...to her house? He hadn't been invited to someone's house in a long time, and never by a girl. "Oh...uh..." he blathered into the phone. "What...time?" he managed at last. "Go ahead."
"Come at ten. What day?"
Terrence told her the date, and Reese gave him the address. It was very near Tillman.
"Maybe if you're lucky you'll get to meet Papa," the operator said, startling Terrence. Was he ready to meet a girl's father? Even if she wasn't his girlfriend it still seemed like a dangerous proposition. He was good at fooling grownups into thinking he was well-mannered but the ruse never worked when said grown-ups' kids had already told them all about how he really was.
"Okay I'll see you then," said the operator, and Terrence tried to come back to reality.
"Yeah bye. Um, signing off," he added, as per the relay instructions, feeling a bit like he was directing aircraft. He hung up.
He was going to hang out with a girl on his birthday. And go swimming with her. And maybe meet her dad. Even more than two weeks away, it seemed too soon, and he was nervous already. Great. On top of worrying about his audition he was now nervous about something else entirely. What a dope he was. Now he was going to be worried about that while he was supposed to be looking for a piece to play. Surly at himself, he booted up Alice. And when the title screen came up, he realized something.
Alice had kickass music.
Terrence found the game manual but there was no information on the music in there so he hopped on the Internet and Googled it. Turned out that a guy who used to be in Nine Inch Nails wrote the score.
Awesome. Terrence was willing to bet anything that no one else at the audition was going to play anything by Chris Vrenna.
He did some more Googling and turned up nothing regarding sheet music. He had to have sheet music to turn in. He scowled, crushed. There went that idea.
But then he thought about it. Who said he had to use professionally made sheet music? Why not jot out his own? If he could work out the notes by ear, what difference did it make?
He downloaded a sheet music template and fired up the printer.
Mom held the sheet music carefully, gazing down upon the papers as if they were priceless treasures. They were. Her son had made them. Selections From American McGee's Alice, composed by C. Vrenna, Terrence had printed carefully across the top of the first page.
"And this is from a video game?" Mom asked wonderingly, glancing up at Terrence, who was bringing in a chair from the kitchen.
"Yeah," was the reply. Terrence took the bow and cello from the case and set the bow on the chair while he extended the endpin. "I didn't want to be boring."
Mac was already sitting on the couch; he kicked his legs impatiently. "Come on, Mom," he said as Terrence sat on the chair. He hadn't been able to hear much of the practicing as Terrence did most of that while the younger boy was away at Foster's - ditto for Mom, who worked all day.
Mom lingered in the kitchen, fingering the sheet music a moment more, before slipping the papers into their folder on the table and joining Mac on the couch. Terrence had the piece memorized and didn't need to read the music; at this point, the sheets were more to appease the judges this afternoon than anything else.
Mac bounced eagerly. "Come on," he prodded Terrence, who was fastidiously searching for just the right place to balance the cello.
"Hang on to your pacifier," Terrence muttered back distractedly, tugging at his collar. The Tillman brochure had specified respectable attire for the auditions and therefore the boy had been roped into the dreaded slacks-and-dress-shirt-and-tie ensemble. He'd put his foot down and talked Mom into swapping the sweater vest and bowtie for a regular tie, but the collar was still tight and the shoes still pinched. He'd have to live with it. At last satisfied with his position, he began to play.
It had been difficult to write down music from a video game, even using the pause button. He had wanted to included samples from more than one of the compositions and so he had had to powergame his way through Alice, using the God mode and playing on the easiest setting so he could reach as many areas of the game as possible. Google told him there had been a soundtrack cd released but it was now out of print and it wasn't likely he would have been able to get hold of a copy in a timely manner regardless; which was too bad because that would have certainly been easier. Amazon had downloadable samples of the tracks and that had helped, anyways. Terrence wound up putting together a mishmash mostly from "Village of the Doomed" and "Wonderland Woods" - the latter already featured a cello solo, which he borrowed, but for the former he had to be a bit more creative. Still, he thought it sounded all right.
The piece was only about two minutes long, as specified in the brochure, and when Terrence drew to a close he was greeted with a moment of silence from his audience. He was just starting to panic when they suddenly applauded.
"Woah, that was creepy," was Mac's comment as Terrence heaved a massive sigh of relief that they hadn't hated it.
"Yes...isn't it a little dark, dear?" Mom asked, arching an eyebrow suspiciously. "What game is this again?"
Terrence jumped up and hastily put the cello and bow back into the case, snapping it shut and fumbling with the latches. "Oh...some old game," he said hastily. "Can we go? I wanna get there early."