Post by orinocoflow on Aug 4, 2010 10:53:25 GMT -5
Turning off the running board in the gym, Paul stepped off, grabbing his bag on the way out the door. Flashing a smile and holding the door for a girl coming out after him, he headed down the long, carpeted hallway towards the water fountain. Fortunately, there was no one there already.
Exhausted but now hydrated, Paul straightened slowly, sighed, and turned around.
And with a yelp, he leaped back, hitting the small of his back on the water fountain.
He stood there, cursing softly under his breath and rubbing the hurt spot, staring at something that looked like it had come from outer space.
Dressed in a smoky-black-and-silver tinted jacket of metal wiring with a mask of the same coloring that had firm netting on the front, a red cord connecting the two at the back, and with white pants that reached to the knee, with black socks with the word “Victory” and a huge “V” in red on them, with black shoes with red stripes, the figure held a sharp sword slightly raised above the ground towards him in a hand that was covered in a black leather glove with red stripes on it, and again a silver-wired cuff.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” exclaimed the person, lowering the weapon. Raising the left hand, which had on a normal black leather glove, the mask was lifted so that it revealed a flushed face while still resting on the head. “Don’t worry; it’s just a sporting sabre—it won’t hurt unless I poke you with it.” Flustered, the person shook their head. “Not like I was going to, but anyways…”
Paul could only stare, amazed. Glancing sideways, he could see that the sign on the door next to the water fountain read, “FENCING.” Recovering, he stood up from leaning on the wall and raised his hand casually, waving away the apologies.
“No, no, it’s quite alright,” he said easily, smiling. “I just didn’t hear anyone come up behind me on this carpeted floor.” Moving to the side, he let a few other people get a drink, and ended up right next to the fencer. He could see that there were many other fencers in the room to his left, and, guessing by all the commotion and on-lookers, there was a competition.
“Er, am I allowed to watch?” he asked, entranced by how quickly some of those fencers were flying across the floor, as if they did not have several pounds of armor on them.
The person looked at him, surprised. “Of course! No restrictions here.”
Another fencer squeezed through the group clustered at the door and, seeing the one in black and red, grinned and shoved the helmet off of them. Paul’s eyes widened as he realized that that was actually a girl under all that gear!
Wavy hair that curled slightly at the end was held back in a pony-tail. As he looked at it, he began to wrack his brain trying to figure out what color it really was but was having trouble. Brown, neither light nor dark, with natural highlights that ranged from golden to a brown with a faint reddish tint. Parts of it were slightly bleached to a lighter shade from too many hours in the sun.
“Come on, Shay, you’re up! Just you and Stirling now!” Paul snapped back to reality when he heard that. Looking at the speaker, he saw that it was the girl who had knocked Shay’s mask off of her head. She glanced at him, and then back at Shay, who was actually staring at Paul, mesmerized by something. Blinking when she saw that he was looking back at her, she blushed and rushed away with her friend, calling over her shoulder, “You can come if you like.”
Paul stayed outside for a second, leaning against the wall, and then went inside when he heard cheering.
Chaos.
That was all that Paul could think when he walked in. A lot of people were running around, and even more fencers, mostly in silver jackets, though. A few coaches ran around, telling their students what to do on the…strip? Was that what it was called? Strip. Okay.
When he got to the actual place where they were fencing, he saw that there were ten strips. They stretched from wall to wall, and had a box on the other side on the wall that lit up either a green light or a red one. The room was divided into two parts, with five on each side. The ones in the center of each had a ref facing the strip they were judging, so only eight strips were in use total. The other refs had space to stand on beside the breaks. Basically, it looked like this with refs also on either side of the strips:
| | * | | | | * | |
| | * | | | | * | |
(The refs are the * in the “image”, and the two lines make one strip if you connect them. Proportions are also off.) And the noise was deafening.
“Dewey, Strip 5!”
“Charlie, when he attacks you, don’t just stand there! You’ve got feet, so move! And you have a saber in your hand for a reason! Come on, seriously! You’ve been taking lessons for three years now!”
“Dewey, Strip 5 is in the other direction!”
“Come on, you can do it, Peter! Lunge, just lunge, he’s close enough!”
“Smaller steps, Sam, smaller steps…that’s it…”
“I got 3rd place!”
“Yeah, well I got 2nd!”
“Well, I beat both of you, so I got 1st!”
Lifting his head to see above the mass of people, Paul could see the girl, Shay, preparing to fence on the strip farthest from him. With a groan, he began to make his way over there, careful not to step on swords of all kinds lying on the floor or catch any cords and wires attached to fencers running about. Finally, he got other there and watched, trying to figure out what was going on.
“En garde, ready, fence!”
In three seconds, the fencers both rushed forward at incredible speed, jumped back, and then lunged and hit each other at the same time.
“Halt!” yelled the ref. “Simultaneous, no point.”
And so on. The two seemed to know exactly what the other was doing, and no matter how intricate or complicated the attack, they both had the same combinations in mind. After about five minutes, Shay finally got a point, and from then on, it seemed that the other fencer had given up. In a matter of minutes, she had 8 and the other had 3.
“Okay, fencers, you have a one-minute break.”
They both took off their helmets as their trainers ran up with bottles of water and began giving instructions on what to do.
“Fencers, test please!”
They put their masks back on and went to the center of the strip, hitting each other on the head to test if the masks worked. Frowning, Paul wondered if it hurt. He had seen one fencer get hit on the arm and then have to walk off the pain, rubbing vigorously and flexing the arm. When they had lost the bout in the end and taken off their jacket, there was a huge black bruise on their arm after only a few minutes.
“Fence!”
Catching himself drifting off for the second time that day, Paul focused back on the fight in front of him. Shay was still in the lead, but the other girl, Stirling, as her name turned out to be, gained a few more points than the first time around. At the end, the score was 9-15, with Shay winning the bout.
Surprisingly, there were few cheers. When the other girl had scored a point, half of the crowd erupted into applause, but whenever Shay scored, there were claps only from a few friends gathered around.
“That was great,” Paul said as she came around with the friends tagging along behind. Looking up, she seemed astonished to see him there.
“Thank you,” she said, beaming, this time holding her sword close to herself.
Ten minutes later, there were awards given out. Paul cheered when she came up to receive the first place award, a small golden medal with a picture of fencer on it and a bright blue background. The text engraved in black around the border read, “10th Anniversary of USFA.” It hung by a deep blue ribbon around her neck as she stood in black pants and a black shirt with a red “V” on the latter. She still had the black shoes with the red stripes, and, as it had turned out, a black sole that had once sported a red “V” and some sort of textured surface but was now worn smooth from hours on the rough metal strip.
Waving at her when she looked at him, he smiled and left to go back to the hotel.
They were staying in town for a few days since there had been some complications at the next location and the shows there had been canceled. When Sharon had asked for a vote in which city to stay, they had immediately voted for this one.
Again, Paul went to that gym, this time dragging Ryan along with him to have company. After a few hours of chatting, listening to new music, and arguing over various topics, all of this intermingled with running and lifting weights, they headed out. Passing by the fencing hall, Paul pulled Ryan in with him to show him what it looked like; in truth, he just wanted to see if Shay went there or not.
“Whoa, it really is like you said! Except less people.”
“Well, yes, the competition was yesterday.”
“Is that her?” asked Ryan, pointing to a girl in black pants and t-shirt who was warming up on the strip by herself, gliding back and forth in that strange fencing crouch, but with surprising grace and speed. Again, her hair was tied back into a pony-tail, and she had the same shoes on.
“Going by how your face just lit up, I’m going to take a wild guess and say yes,” laughed Ryan, looking over at his friend when there had been no answer.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, that’s her,” Paul replied, shaking his head to clear it.
At that moment, she stopped and went to grab a saber. When she turned, though, she saw the two in the doorway and made her way over to them, smiling in recognition.
“Hello again,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Um, I never got your name the other day,” she began, shifting under the way Ryan was staring at her.
“Oh, right. I’m Paul, and this is Ryan, a friend of mine.” When they shook hands, she raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see his friend doing the same. “Er, Paul Byrom.”
Ryan smiled again and, shaking her hand, said, “Ryan Kelly.”
“Shayde Spyrit. And before you start asking questions,” she added, catching their expressions, “yes, that is my real name. And it’s spelled differently.” She spelled it out quickly, obviously having answered that question numerous times before. “But everyone calls me Shay.”
“It’s a nice name,” answered Ryan, letting go of her hand.
“So, you go here?” asked Paul.
“Fencing, yes, university, no. Honestly, I haven’t been able to fence as often as I would like. There is more homework than I could possibly have imagined in college. It’s as if all the professors do everything they can to not let you graduate!” she said with a laugh.
“Sounds familiar,” agreed Paul, remembering what that had been like for him. Of course, he had been singing professionally at that point, but he still had schooling.
After talking for a while longer, they left.
“Well, you’re right about her not knowing about us,” said Ryan as they walked back to the hotel. “She has no idea who either of us is.”
“Yeah…” murmured Paul, but his mind was elsewhere.
“So, Shay, who was that guy? He was here yesterday, and now he’s here today. Who is he?” When there was no reply to the question, Carrey poked her friend. “Come on, spill! You meet a hot guy with an awesome accent, he comes by twice, second time with a friend, and you won’t talk about it?”
“It was nothing, okay!” Shay replied, turning red again. “We kind of just…bumped into each other outside by the drinking fountains, and he asked if he could watch the competition. And today…I think he goes to the gym here, so he was just walking back! This is the only way out, you know…”
“And he just happened to walk by the door, right? And just happened to walk in and start talking to you?” Carrey watched her friend, grinning.
“Why is that so hard to believe? I mean, fencing is fun, right? So maybe he just decided to find out something…about…it…”
“Right, and then he just walked out after talking to you? SO believing that!” she laughed.
Shay turned an even deeper shade of red. “Well, who knows? Anyway, are we going to that movie after this or no?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course we are!”
A few days later…
“Shay, you will not believe what I just found out!”
Shay looked up at her friend, blinking dazedly after having spent the past few hours behind a computer. “What?”
“Okay, your friend really does go to this gym, and he was wearing a t-shirt with the name “Celtic Thunder” on it. So, I mean, it looked official, you know? Not like those shirts that fans can buy from bands, so I Googled this group and it turns out…” she gave a dramatic pause, her face bright.
“What?” Shay asked impatiently. “He’s Irish, so why can’t he like some Irish band?”
“Do you have a computer nearby?”
Shay nodded, pulling out her laptop.
“Okay, now type in dub-dub-dub point celticthunder dot com, one word on the group, no caps, and see what you get.” They waited ten seconds for the site to load, and then Carrey told her to look at the top of the page.
There was a long silence.
“Oh…my…god…”
The next day, Shay did not wait for Paul to come by to see her—she went straight to the gym before class, hoping to catch him. And sure enough, there he was, jogging on the running board, iPod in hand.
“Paul?” When he did not reply, no doubt not hearing anything over the music, she touched his arm lightly. He jumped with surprise but then smiled when he saw who it was. Pulling one earplug out, he slowed the board and stepped off to stand beside her. Even though she was not small, he still towered a good six, maybe even seven inches above her.
“What’s up?” he asked, his amazing blue eyes shining.
“Um…” There was no delicate way to ask this, so she just blurted out, “You’re with a group called Celtic Thunder, right?”
He paused, his incredible smile dimming a bit. “Your friend told you after she saw me with that shirt, right?” “Dimmed a bit” was an understatement; he now looked downright miserable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, I just kind of wanted a break from the fans and everything else…and besides, why would you want to know?”
“Just out of curiosity, I guess. I mean, I’m really into Celtic art, dance, and stuff like that. And I love their songs, too, even won a local competition singing ‘Orinoco Flow’ and ‘Dulaman.’ We had to design the stage for a theater production and the design I made won. So basically, anything Irish had been really interesting to me. I saw Riverdance for their final tour this year, and it was awesome.”
Paul stood there, turning those things over in his head. “Do you have any plans for where to go for university?” he asked, an idea forming.
“Ironically, I got accepted into a Dublin university as well as Oxford and MIT, so I’m still choosing. Why?”
“Well, our last designer left because he got another offer, a better one, apparently, and we have a new tour coming up but no design plans yet so…maybe we could talk with Sharon to see what we might do. But don’t get your hopes up,” he added quickly when he saw the surprised look in her face. “I still have to talk to Sharon, see what she says. We’re going out tomorrow, so I think it would be best if we went to talk to her now. Can you do that?”
When Shay nodded enthusiastically, Paul turned off the equipment and they left together, pausing only so that she could tell her coach she was not going to fence that night.
Paul knocked on the door to a hotel room. About ten seconds later, there was a rattle as the lock was undone and the door opened to reveal a very tired-looking Sharon. She took one curious look at Paul in his jogging clothes, another at Shay in a similar outfit, and then at Paul again, this time with exasperation and a hint of caution.
“Do I want to know why you’re knocking on my door at eleven in the evening with a girl next to you?”
Paul blushed. “Uh, it’s not what you think, trust me. She’s not a fan. She…um…we’re here about the designer that left, and she just happens to have quite a background with designing…and in singing, too.” The more he talked, the more Sharon intensified the scrutinizing glare. Finally, after a few moments of silence, she stepped back and opened the door more, ushering them inside.
Shay walked in, glancing around. There were sheets of paper with schedules scattered all around the room, and the couch was buried under a few suits that needed to be sewn up.
“So, you have a background in designing?” Sharon asked. When Shay turned to look at her, she saw that the glare had been replaced by an interested, kinder expression.
“Yes, I do,” she replied, happy to be on ground that she knew something about. She relayed the experience she had had, flushing and trailing off when she realized how minor it seemed in comparison to the size of their production. Sharon caught her uncertainty and smiled.
“That is very impressive, Shayde; don’t be embarrassed—many famous designers started out like that. Do you think you’ll have the time for this?”
Shay stared at her in surprise. “You actually mean that?” she asked, amazed.
“Of course! Paul usually has pretty good taste when it comes to finding talent, and I would like to see what you have to offer. We’re leaving tomorrow, but the tour is almost over, so we should be back soon, and we can stop here on the way back. I will give you some rough ideas of what the tour will be like, and then you can work on it while we finish up. By the time we get back, we’ll see what you have come up with, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Thank you so much,” Shay said sincerely.
“Also, didn’t Paul say something about you having a singing background?”
Shay nodded slowly. “I won a few competitions, but that was years ago and it was small-scale. Since then, I haven’t sung, except just for fun.”
“We’ll see; maybe I’ll have you sing something when we get back. Here, let me get you the plans for next tour.”
When she walked out with Paul a few minutes later, she was shaking her head in amazement.
“I really don’t know how to thank you for offering me this chance.”
Paul smiled. “If you have the talent, why waste it?”
Shay nodded in agreement. “I guess so.”
Paul walked her back to her car, leaning on the hood while she dug the keys out. She opened the driver’s door and tossed the folder on the passenger seat, resting her arms on the top of the car.
“Well, good luck with the rest of the tour. I wish I had known about you guys earlier; then I could have gone to see the concert you had here.”
“Thanks. Maybe next time, hopefully. This tour is actually a repeat of one that we already had come out on DVD, so you can find it in the library or someplace. It’s called Take Me Home.”
“Okay, I will,” she said, smiling.
“Good bye,” murmured Paul, watching her drive away.
Exhausted but now hydrated, Paul straightened slowly, sighed, and turned around.
And with a yelp, he leaped back, hitting the small of his back on the water fountain.
He stood there, cursing softly under his breath and rubbing the hurt spot, staring at something that looked like it had come from outer space.
Dressed in a smoky-black-and-silver tinted jacket of metal wiring with a mask of the same coloring that had firm netting on the front, a red cord connecting the two at the back, and with white pants that reached to the knee, with black socks with the word “Victory” and a huge “V” in red on them, with black shoes with red stripes, the figure held a sharp sword slightly raised above the ground towards him in a hand that was covered in a black leather glove with red stripes on it, and again a silver-wired cuff.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” exclaimed the person, lowering the weapon. Raising the left hand, which had on a normal black leather glove, the mask was lifted so that it revealed a flushed face while still resting on the head. “Don’t worry; it’s just a sporting sabre—it won’t hurt unless I poke you with it.” Flustered, the person shook their head. “Not like I was going to, but anyways…”
Paul could only stare, amazed. Glancing sideways, he could see that the sign on the door next to the water fountain read, “FENCING.” Recovering, he stood up from leaning on the wall and raised his hand casually, waving away the apologies.
“No, no, it’s quite alright,” he said easily, smiling. “I just didn’t hear anyone come up behind me on this carpeted floor.” Moving to the side, he let a few other people get a drink, and ended up right next to the fencer. He could see that there were many other fencers in the room to his left, and, guessing by all the commotion and on-lookers, there was a competition.
“Er, am I allowed to watch?” he asked, entranced by how quickly some of those fencers were flying across the floor, as if they did not have several pounds of armor on them.
The person looked at him, surprised. “Of course! No restrictions here.”
Another fencer squeezed through the group clustered at the door and, seeing the one in black and red, grinned and shoved the helmet off of them. Paul’s eyes widened as he realized that that was actually a girl under all that gear!
Wavy hair that curled slightly at the end was held back in a pony-tail. As he looked at it, he began to wrack his brain trying to figure out what color it really was but was having trouble. Brown, neither light nor dark, with natural highlights that ranged from golden to a brown with a faint reddish tint. Parts of it were slightly bleached to a lighter shade from too many hours in the sun.
“Come on, Shay, you’re up! Just you and Stirling now!” Paul snapped back to reality when he heard that. Looking at the speaker, he saw that it was the girl who had knocked Shay’s mask off of her head. She glanced at him, and then back at Shay, who was actually staring at Paul, mesmerized by something. Blinking when she saw that he was looking back at her, she blushed and rushed away with her friend, calling over her shoulder, “You can come if you like.”
Paul stayed outside for a second, leaning against the wall, and then went inside when he heard cheering.
* * *
Chaos.
That was all that Paul could think when he walked in. A lot of people were running around, and even more fencers, mostly in silver jackets, though. A few coaches ran around, telling their students what to do on the…strip? Was that what it was called? Strip. Okay.
When he got to the actual place where they were fencing, he saw that there were ten strips. They stretched from wall to wall, and had a box on the other side on the wall that lit up either a green light or a red one. The room was divided into two parts, with five on each side. The ones in the center of each had a ref facing the strip they were judging, so only eight strips were in use total. The other refs had space to stand on beside the breaks. Basically, it looked like this with refs also on either side of the strips:
| | * | | | | * | |
| | * | | | | * | |
(The refs are the * in the “image”, and the two lines make one strip if you connect them. Proportions are also off.) And the noise was deafening.
“Dewey, Strip 5!”
“Charlie, when he attacks you, don’t just stand there! You’ve got feet, so move! And you have a saber in your hand for a reason! Come on, seriously! You’ve been taking lessons for three years now!”
“Dewey, Strip 5 is in the other direction!”
“Come on, you can do it, Peter! Lunge, just lunge, he’s close enough!”
“Smaller steps, Sam, smaller steps…that’s it…”
“I got 3rd place!”
“Yeah, well I got 2nd!”
“Well, I beat both of you, so I got 1st!”
Lifting his head to see above the mass of people, Paul could see the girl, Shay, preparing to fence on the strip farthest from him. With a groan, he began to make his way over there, careful not to step on swords of all kinds lying on the floor or catch any cords and wires attached to fencers running about. Finally, he got other there and watched, trying to figure out what was going on.
“En garde, ready, fence!”
In three seconds, the fencers both rushed forward at incredible speed, jumped back, and then lunged and hit each other at the same time.
“Halt!” yelled the ref. “Simultaneous, no point.”
And so on. The two seemed to know exactly what the other was doing, and no matter how intricate or complicated the attack, they both had the same combinations in mind. After about five minutes, Shay finally got a point, and from then on, it seemed that the other fencer had given up. In a matter of minutes, she had 8 and the other had 3.
“Okay, fencers, you have a one-minute break.”
They both took off their helmets as their trainers ran up with bottles of water and began giving instructions on what to do.
“Fencers, test please!”
They put their masks back on and went to the center of the strip, hitting each other on the head to test if the masks worked. Frowning, Paul wondered if it hurt. He had seen one fencer get hit on the arm and then have to walk off the pain, rubbing vigorously and flexing the arm. When they had lost the bout in the end and taken off their jacket, there was a huge black bruise on their arm after only a few minutes.
“Fence!”
Catching himself drifting off for the second time that day, Paul focused back on the fight in front of him. Shay was still in the lead, but the other girl, Stirling, as her name turned out to be, gained a few more points than the first time around. At the end, the score was 9-15, with Shay winning the bout.
Surprisingly, there were few cheers. When the other girl had scored a point, half of the crowd erupted into applause, but whenever Shay scored, there were claps only from a few friends gathered around.
“That was great,” Paul said as she came around with the friends tagging along behind. Looking up, she seemed astonished to see him there.
“Thank you,” she said, beaming, this time holding her sword close to herself.
Ten minutes later, there were awards given out. Paul cheered when she came up to receive the first place award, a small golden medal with a picture of fencer on it and a bright blue background. The text engraved in black around the border read, “10th Anniversary of USFA.” It hung by a deep blue ribbon around her neck as she stood in black pants and a black shirt with a red “V” on the latter. She still had the black shoes with the red stripes, and, as it had turned out, a black sole that had once sported a red “V” and some sort of textured surface but was now worn smooth from hours on the rough metal strip.
Waving at her when she looked at him, he smiled and left to go back to the hotel.
* * *
They were staying in town for a few days since there had been some complications at the next location and the shows there had been canceled. When Sharon had asked for a vote in which city to stay, they had immediately voted for this one.
Again, Paul went to that gym, this time dragging Ryan along with him to have company. After a few hours of chatting, listening to new music, and arguing over various topics, all of this intermingled with running and lifting weights, they headed out. Passing by the fencing hall, Paul pulled Ryan in with him to show him what it looked like; in truth, he just wanted to see if Shay went there or not.
“Whoa, it really is like you said! Except less people.”
“Well, yes, the competition was yesterday.”
“Is that her?” asked Ryan, pointing to a girl in black pants and t-shirt who was warming up on the strip by herself, gliding back and forth in that strange fencing crouch, but with surprising grace and speed. Again, her hair was tied back into a pony-tail, and she had the same shoes on.
“Going by how your face just lit up, I’m going to take a wild guess and say yes,” laughed Ryan, looking over at his friend when there had been no answer.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, that’s her,” Paul replied, shaking his head to clear it.
At that moment, she stopped and went to grab a saber. When she turned, though, she saw the two in the doorway and made her way over to them, smiling in recognition.
“Hello again,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Um, I never got your name the other day,” she began, shifting under the way Ryan was staring at her.
“Oh, right. I’m Paul, and this is Ryan, a friend of mine.” When they shook hands, she raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see his friend doing the same. “Er, Paul Byrom.”
Ryan smiled again and, shaking her hand, said, “Ryan Kelly.”
“Shayde Spyrit. And before you start asking questions,” she added, catching their expressions, “yes, that is my real name. And it’s spelled differently.” She spelled it out quickly, obviously having answered that question numerous times before. “But everyone calls me Shay.”
“It’s a nice name,” answered Ryan, letting go of her hand.
“So, you go here?” asked Paul.
“Fencing, yes, university, no. Honestly, I haven’t been able to fence as often as I would like. There is more homework than I could possibly have imagined in college. It’s as if all the professors do everything they can to not let you graduate!” she said with a laugh.
“Sounds familiar,” agreed Paul, remembering what that had been like for him. Of course, he had been singing professionally at that point, but he still had schooling.
After talking for a while longer, they left.
“Well, you’re right about her not knowing about us,” said Ryan as they walked back to the hotel. “She has no idea who either of us is.”
“Yeah…” murmured Paul, but his mind was elsewhere.
* * *
“So, Shay, who was that guy? He was here yesterday, and now he’s here today. Who is he?” When there was no reply to the question, Carrey poked her friend. “Come on, spill! You meet a hot guy with an awesome accent, he comes by twice, second time with a friend, and you won’t talk about it?”
“It was nothing, okay!” Shay replied, turning red again. “We kind of just…bumped into each other outside by the drinking fountains, and he asked if he could watch the competition. And today…I think he goes to the gym here, so he was just walking back! This is the only way out, you know…”
“And he just happened to walk by the door, right? And just happened to walk in and start talking to you?” Carrey watched her friend, grinning.
“Why is that so hard to believe? I mean, fencing is fun, right? So maybe he just decided to find out something…about…it…”
“Right, and then he just walked out after talking to you? SO believing that!” she laughed.
Shay turned an even deeper shade of red. “Well, who knows? Anyway, are we going to that movie after this or no?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course we are!”
* * *
A few days later…
“Shay, you will not believe what I just found out!”
Shay looked up at her friend, blinking dazedly after having spent the past few hours behind a computer. “What?”
“Okay, your friend really does go to this gym, and he was wearing a t-shirt with the name “Celtic Thunder” on it. So, I mean, it looked official, you know? Not like those shirts that fans can buy from bands, so I Googled this group and it turns out…” she gave a dramatic pause, her face bright.
“What?” Shay asked impatiently. “He’s Irish, so why can’t he like some Irish band?”
“Do you have a computer nearby?”
Shay nodded, pulling out her laptop.
“Okay, now type in dub-dub-dub point celticthunder dot com, one word on the group, no caps, and see what you get.” They waited ten seconds for the site to load, and then Carrey told her to look at the top of the page.
There was a long silence.
“Oh…my…god…”
* * *
The next day, Shay did not wait for Paul to come by to see her—she went straight to the gym before class, hoping to catch him. And sure enough, there he was, jogging on the running board, iPod in hand.
“Paul?” When he did not reply, no doubt not hearing anything over the music, she touched his arm lightly. He jumped with surprise but then smiled when he saw who it was. Pulling one earplug out, he slowed the board and stepped off to stand beside her. Even though she was not small, he still towered a good six, maybe even seven inches above her.
“What’s up?” he asked, his amazing blue eyes shining.
“Um…” There was no delicate way to ask this, so she just blurted out, “You’re with a group called Celtic Thunder, right?”
He paused, his incredible smile dimming a bit. “Your friend told you after she saw me with that shirt, right?” “Dimmed a bit” was an understatement; he now looked downright miserable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, I just kind of wanted a break from the fans and everything else…and besides, why would you want to know?”
“Just out of curiosity, I guess. I mean, I’m really into Celtic art, dance, and stuff like that. And I love their songs, too, even won a local competition singing ‘Orinoco Flow’ and ‘Dulaman.’ We had to design the stage for a theater production and the design I made won. So basically, anything Irish had been really interesting to me. I saw Riverdance for their final tour this year, and it was awesome.”
Paul stood there, turning those things over in his head. “Do you have any plans for where to go for university?” he asked, an idea forming.
“Ironically, I got accepted into a Dublin university as well as Oxford and MIT, so I’m still choosing. Why?”
“Well, our last designer left because he got another offer, a better one, apparently, and we have a new tour coming up but no design plans yet so…maybe we could talk with Sharon to see what we might do. But don’t get your hopes up,” he added quickly when he saw the surprised look in her face. “I still have to talk to Sharon, see what she says. We’re going out tomorrow, so I think it would be best if we went to talk to her now. Can you do that?”
When Shay nodded enthusiastically, Paul turned off the equipment and they left together, pausing only so that she could tell her coach she was not going to fence that night.
* * *
Paul knocked on the door to a hotel room. About ten seconds later, there was a rattle as the lock was undone and the door opened to reveal a very tired-looking Sharon. She took one curious look at Paul in his jogging clothes, another at Shay in a similar outfit, and then at Paul again, this time with exasperation and a hint of caution.
“Do I want to know why you’re knocking on my door at eleven in the evening with a girl next to you?”
Paul blushed. “Uh, it’s not what you think, trust me. She’s not a fan. She…um…we’re here about the designer that left, and she just happens to have quite a background with designing…and in singing, too.” The more he talked, the more Sharon intensified the scrutinizing glare. Finally, after a few moments of silence, she stepped back and opened the door more, ushering them inside.
Shay walked in, glancing around. There were sheets of paper with schedules scattered all around the room, and the couch was buried under a few suits that needed to be sewn up.
“So, you have a background in designing?” Sharon asked. When Shay turned to look at her, she saw that the glare had been replaced by an interested, kinder expression.
“Yes, I do,” she replied, happy to be on ground that she knew something about. She relayed the experience she had had, flushing and trailing off when she realized how minor it seemed in comparison to the size of their production. Sharon caught her uncertainty and smiled.
“That is very impressive, Shayde; don’t be embarrassed—many famous designers started out like that. Do you think you’ll have the time for this?”
Shay stared at her in surprise. “You actually mean that?” she asked, amazed.
“Of course! Paul usually has pretty good taste when it comes to finding talent, and I would like to see what you have to offer. We’re leaving tomorrow, but the tour is almost over, so we should be back soon, and we can stop here on the way back. I will give you some rough ideas of what the tour will be like, and then you can work on it while we finish up. By the time we get back, we’ll see what you have come up with, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Thank you so much,” Shay said sincerely.
“Also, didn’t Paul say something about you having a singing background?”
Shay nodded slowly. “I won a few competitions, but that was years ago and it was small-scale. Since then, I haven’t sung, except just for fun.”
“We’ll see; maybe I’ll have you sing something when we get back. Here, let me get you the plans for next tour.”
* * *
When she walked out with Paul a few minutes later, she was shaking her head in amazement.
“I really don’t know how to thank you for offering me this chance.”
Paul smiled. “If you have the talent, why waste it?”
Shay nodded in agreement. “I guess so.”
Paul walked her back to her car, leaning on the hood while she dug the keys out. She opened the driver’s door and tossed the folder on the passenger seat, resting her arms on the top of the car.
“Well, good luck with the rest of the tour. I wish I had known about you guys earlier; then I could have gone to see the concert you had here.”
“Thanks. Maybe next time, hopefully. This tour is actually a repeat of one that we already had come out on DVD, so you can find it in the library or someplace. It’s called Take Me Home.”
“Okay, I will,” she said, smiling.
“Good bye,” murmured Paul, watching her drive away.
* * *