Alex Van Helsing Voice of the Undead - By Jason Henderson Page 0,35
she received her applause with a mix of pleasure and slight, charmingly perfect humility, and then the seat was taken by another student Alex didn’t know.
Sid was third of the evening, and Alex watched his friend slowly move to the front and take his seat. The thin boy with ginger hair squirmed a bit as he gathered his papers. He opened his mouth, looking like he was about to pass out. Alex wanted to shout in support but let it go.
“‘The Box.’”
Sid began to read, his voice quavering at first and then slowly building into a confident sound that never gave out for all fifteen pages of his manuscript. As Sid read, Alex heard all the things Sid had learned. He heard cadence and rhythm and repeating mantralike phrases. Sid even pulled out what sounded to Alex like a high-wire act of words, in which he managed to end every short scene with sentences that echoed one another without repeating. Alex had the suspicion that he was even missing half the tricks. Somehow, Sid had become a master of composition. The difference between what Sid was doing with words and what Alex himself could do—based on what he churned out in English assignments, anyway—was like the difference between an Olympic ice dancer and a Sunday ice-skater. The tools were the same but the result was orbiting on a higher plane.
The story was of ghosts in a tower, of hidden messages in a silver box, all right, but beyond that it was a presentation of foreboding. It built on itself, tightening the screws of suspense and then releasing, tightening and releasing, and at the end snapping in a crescendo of shock and tragedy.
Alex watched the crowd. The students, especially the girls, were not merely engaged; they were held tight to their seats and transfixed.
There was a chestnut-haired Asian girl, tall enough that Alex guessed she was a senior, standing along the wall. Alex watched her sway slightly as she listened. Another girl, blond and wearing a lavender sweater, had gone glassy at the eyes, her mouth slightly parted.
Alex was awed by the power of Sid’s reading. In his years of making characters, Sid had become a master of story, and his audience was held in his hypnotic sway. When he was done, there was an electric silence. It took Ms. Daughtry, who began clapping, to rip the silence open into a shock of applause.
Alex had no idea a story could do that to its listeners. In that instant he was insanely proud of his friend. For one person at least, the move to LaLaurie had netted a clear triumph.
There were other stories in the evening, but Minhi and Sid had put themselves in the minority by choosing prose: Alex and Paul endured a litany of pop songs, monologues from The Crucible, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and The Children’s Hour, an authentic yodeling demonstration from a German girl, and one poem by Maya Angelou. Alex found himself wishing Minhi had done her Hung Gar, or at least used it on the yodeling girl.
After the readings were over, Ms. Daughtry made a few announcements about the next heats: This was Round One. There were two more to go. Ten contestants would make it, no telling who, but one of them was in no doubt. Sid had been the master, and that had ended the evening well before its actual finale.
Chapter 13
Visiting Steven at Secheron Hospital on Wednesday was a nuisance that none of them had time for, but they did it anyway. The second Pumpkin Show was that night and the ball—just two days away—was occupying the girls’ every thought. (Alex had yet to ask Sid how the first rehearsal went.) Alex had almost begged off from the hospital visit except that Minhi had insisted that it would mean a lot to Vienna and somehow that was that. Alex felt overwhelmed by demand.
Everything not destroyed in the fire had been moved to LaLaurie, and Alex rode the spare bicycle he habitually borrowed from Sid—he kept forgetting that he needed to ask his parents to ship him one. They pedaled all the way into town.
Going into town required a bike or a bus. It was nicer by bike, Paul had told him, and this was still true even now that they had about twice as far to go, around the lake and into Secheron Village. As they rode, Alex was watching the trees, half expecting Elle to appear.