Read The Love That Split the World for Free Online

Mom says, squeezing Megan’s elbow and putting on that smile that earned her the real estate license. “Isn’t that fun, Patrick?”
    Dad nods, says nothing. Coach thinks
he’s
a man of few words, but I’d like to see him spend a day at the stables with Dad. Mom turns to me and assumes an expression filled with so much empathy I think her soul must hurt to make it: “Was that hard for you, to watch the dance team perform?”
    “It was hard for me,” Dad interrupts quietly. “I thought Rachel Hanson’s eyeballs were going to pop out of her head. What do they call that stuff she does with her face?”
    “Facials?” Megan says.
    “I think they call that particular facial ‘sharting while doing a
grand jeté
,’” I say.
    “Natalie,”
Mom says.
    “When a horse makes that face, you know she’s infight-or-flight,” Dad muses.
    “When Rachel dances, everyone’s in fight-or-flight,” Megan agrees thoughtfully.
    Mom buries her face in her hands. “She comes from a broken home.”
    “Yeah, so did War Horse and Seabiscuit, Mom. That’s no excuse.”

    The school’s pitch-dark and cool, though still heavy with humidity. I look over the balcony down to the cafeteria and the wall of windows overlooking the lawn, and then, remembering this afternoon, I do a quick once-over of the shadowy foyer before taking off through the too-dark halls.
    The farther I get from the doors, the more terrified I am to be alone in the dark. Grandmother’s voice echoes in my head with every step.
You need to be prepared for what’s coming
.
    I spin through my locker combination, dig through the obsessively ordered rows of binders and memorabilia still left in there, stuff the phone charger into my purse, and turn to leave before the inevitable axe murderer arrives.
    Something stops me.
    Beautiful music, spilling down the dark hall from the band room.
    I’ve been hearing the myth about the Band Room Phantom for the past four years, but whenever I’d thought about what I would do if confronted by its siren song, I certainly hadn’t pictured myself venturing toward it.
    But there’s no ghost, I remind myself. There’s just a sneakysenior, whom I must know, and a hauntingly beautiful song trailing un-self-consciously across the keys of a piano.
    I creep down the hall and stand outside the wooden doors, just listening for a while. The song is sad, heartbreaking even, and I’m overcome with frustration that I don’t have a better word to describe it. It occurs to me then that Grandmother would. She’d have a whole story that would sound exactly like this song. I open the door as quietly as I can and slip inside.
    The black grand piano sits in the far corner, heavily scuffed but still elegant. The person playing it hasn’t turned on a single light, which makes him hard to see. But if the broad shoulders and long, slightly dirty hair didn’t give him away, the paper bag sitting on top of the piano definitely would have.
    Who the hell is this guy? Maybe he really
is
a being like Grandmother. Either way, I don’t want to interrupt the song. I stay close to the door with my head tipped back against its dewy surface as I listen and watch. His too-big hands travel gracefully over the keys, his too-big shoulders tensing under his worn-out T-shirt, and the image—a grizzly-bear-sized boy hunched over a piano, who shouldn’t be able to make the keys sing like that, so tenderly, so gratefully—would be funny if the song weren’t so arresting.
    I close my eyes and think about all of Grandmother’s stories, finding the one that feels the most like this song.

4
    “This story is true, girl,” Grandmother said. “So listen well.”
    “You say that about all of them,” I argued. I was nine, and, so far, none of the stories had seemed true.
    “They
have
all been true,” Grandmother said. “But you’ll think this one is truer than the rest.”
    “So you mean it actually happened.”
    “No story is truer than any other story that