Free Mercy by Rebecca Lim Page A

Masson beaming with pleasure — two sudden spots of high colour appearing on his cheeks — Miss Dustin holding her chunky, ring-infested hands to her jowly face. For some kind of alchemy is taking place. It is Carmen’s body doing all the work, her musculature, her impossibly tiny frame, her breathing, but I am the animus , the reason, the force.
    And I have remembered every word; sing every word as if it is a language that I alone have created. Together, we are 95

    sublime, I know it. Some things the body just remembers.
    I see the dark-suited, old music teacher’s undisguised excitement, Miss Fellows nodding tightly, Paul Stenborg’s suddenly mesmerised expression, as everyone strains to hear my instinctive phrasing, my superlative attack, my entries, my exits, the clean, lyrical beauty in my voice. Not too big, not too showy, not Italianate. Something else altogether. Something almost otherworldly. Sweetness with power. The cadences rising and falling towards the ceiling, single notes hanging there, suspended, as if they have their own lives, are made of lambent crystal.
    I’m leaving them all behind. They are singing, the other soloists — the girls of St Joseph’s, the quavery tenor, the hopeless bass and so-so baritone — but they
    may as well be miming now. Tiffany is furious. Her face is lit up like a Christmas tree with ill will and bad choler as she tries to outsing me, but fails. A lark striving to catch a burning phoenix arcing skyward. The whole room is listening so hard that the entire chorus, almost two hundred people, fails to come in after Figure 10
    and I sing on alone for what feels like an eternity, and I wonder how much of this glorious sound is Carmen and how much of it, if any of it, is me .
    96

    Mr Masson abruptly shuts off the sound system and I stumble to a halt, my last word ringing in the air.
    Creasti shimmers there. Created .
    ‘Well, let’s leave it there for now. We’ll reconvene at four this afternoon,’ says Mr Masson delightedly, eyes shining, as the room erupts into noise and movement.
    ‘We might have a concert on our hands, boys and girls, we just might. Good work, Carmen. Superb.’ He gives a nod in my direction.
    Beside me, Tiffany lets loose a long breath, like a hiss.
    ‘Beautiful,’ declares Miss Dustin, clapping me so hard between the shoulderblades with one of her man-hands that I almost fall off my chair. ‘Really wonderful, Carmen. There was a quality in your voice today I don’t think I’ve ever heard before.’
    I’m speechless, still grateful that my gamble has paid off. Turns out I have some kind of weird mnemonic memory for music and lyrics, and Carmen has a set of lungs to write home about. Who knew? It’s some kind of lucky break.
    ‘You certainly showed us,’ Miss Fellows snipes nastily before moving away to speak with Mr Masson, who keeps stealing glances at me as if I might dematerialise.
    97

    I think what Miss Fellows really means is showed off .
    I speak subliminal messaging better than most people.
    Around me, Tiffany and some of the other girls stand up abruptly, clutching their scores to their chests like armour plate.
    ‘I’m Laurence Barry,’ interrupts the elderly music director of Little Falls, moving forward with his right hand held out. Not scowling at me today, not at all.
    ‘Have you considered —’
    Someone else cuts in before the old man can finish his sentence or touch me, which I’m grateful for. ‘Paul Stenborg,’ he says, as if he hadn’t ignored me all morning, his light, luminous eyes looking over and past Carmen Zappacosta’s nondescript head, her nondescript features.
    ‘Though of course you know that already. Certainly hiding your light under a bushel there, young woman, extraordinary, so unexpected …’
    I feel eyes on my back and turn. Catch the back view of Tiffany tossing her side pony over her shoulder.
    She leads the other St Joseph’s girls away to first period without a word and I know from the way