Plucking the Strings of My Heart

From where she was standing, Rayna could see where her twin sister was sitting. It won’t take long for her to figure out that I’m here. And, it meant that Rayna was in for a very stern lecture from her sister; she would not take too kindly to the fact that she was lied to. This was the reason that Rayna wanted to hide this from her sister, so as to avoid the lecture that was surely going to come. Within the next hour, Lynette and Rayna Krezica would meet for the first time in two months; and, she doubted that it was going to end very well. “Do I really have to do this?” Rayna asked Joe just after the song ended. “Do I have to tell her?”

“It was part of the deal, Rain,” Joe reminded her.

“And I disagreed with it then, too,” she hissed.

“Doesn’t matter,” Joe argued. “She needs to know.”

As much as she hated having to do it, Rayna had no choice but to tell her sister the truth. Surely, Lynette had already seen her and was curious as to why she wasn’t in Italy. The question was firmly planted in Lynette’s mind and it was only a matter of time until Rayna was questioned about it. The reluctant violinist sat backstage until the concert ended. It was then in which a trio she recognized all too well; her sister, Demi, and a young man she was introduced to as Chad Cooper. Rayna hesitantly waved. “Uh, hey, Nettie.”

“Rayna Sable Krezica!” Lynette yelled.

Middle name. Of course she would use that. She’s pissed that I would even consider lying to her, Rayna groaned. “What are you doing here, Nettie?” she asked innocently.

“What am I doing here? That’s a rather stupid question, don’t you think? A more appropriate question would be what are you doing here?” Lynette hissed. “You’re supposed to be in Italy.”

Rayna bit her lip. Now was the moment of truth. It was time for Rayna to tell her sister the truth about what had been going on for the last seven months, as much as she didn’t want to. “Nettie, I really don’t know how to tell you this – didn’t want to do it, actually – but I haven’t exactly been honest with you about everything that’s been going on. Not since January actually. See, Nettie; your efforts really were successful. You never knew it, because I hid it so well, but I started playing the violin again; just like you wanted me to.”

Lynette’s eyes widened. “You…you…”

The younger twin nodded. “I know, Nettie.”

“But…you…and then,” she sputtered.

Rayna shook her head. “Nope. Never.”

“How?” she asked.

She handed her violin over to Lynette. “The day Joe asked for Mom’s violin, this is what he did to it. You know the lyrics; it’s Turn Right, the very same song you heard me play the violin on. Nettie, that song is the reason I’m here; the reason I agreed to do what I swore not to.”

“Why?” Lynette asked.

“Joe wrote it for me,” Rayna admitted.

“He wrote a song for you?” she repeated.

“It’s why I’m here, because of that song,” she replied. Rayna never wanted to tell her sister that Turn Right was written for her. It was not something she ever wanted to admit to anyone, least of all Lynette. So long as Lynette knew that Joe writing her a song was all it took to convince Rayna to play the violin again, the older Krezica twin might gloat about the fact that it was her attempts that eventually led Rayna to pick the violin back up again. Rayna pointed a finger at her sister. “Nettie, don’t you dare start gloating. Just because I started playing the violin again doesn’t mean that you can start taunting me about it.”

“But, it was my friendship with Joe that led to it,” she argued.

“Not the point!” Rayna yelled.

“You two really need to stop arguing,” Demi muttered.

Lynette turned to Demi and Sterling. “You guys knew!”

“No one was allowed to say anything to you,” Demi admitted. “Rayna had to be the one to tell you. Not me. Not Sterling. Not Joe. Not Nick. Not Kevin. No, it had to be Rayna, since the two of you are family. She was the only one ever allowed to say anything about this.”

“And all thanks to Joe,” Rayna muttered.

“I think it was a good idea,” Demi said.

“That’s because you know what the prophecy says,” Rayna retorted. “You’re the only person outside of Joe and Miley to know what the prophecy says. That prophecy controls my destiny, something I’m not too fond of.” She was still pissed about the prophecy, because a part of her suspected that Joe was still working on it; even after she warned him not to. She had no proof, only a suspicion, which wasn’t really much to go on.

Lynette stared at her. “You were telling the truth?”

“Of course I was!” Rayna raged.

“The prophecy Joe told us about all those months ago really did force him to come after me,” Rayna informed her sister. “As much as the two of us and Connor didn’t want to believe him about the prophecy, he was telling the truth. And, he’s obsessed with it. That’s the real problem; he’s weird, like beyond weird. It got even weirder after Kevin got engaged. Which by the way, Nettie, I know you were at their engagement party. It’s how I was able to figure out the real reason you came to California, because you asked Joe and the others to help with that.”

“So glad you figured it out,” Lynette grinned.

“Yeah, took me long enough,” Rayna grumbled.

“Now, can you figure out the other thing?”

“What other thing?” she asked.

Lynette stepped aside to remind Rayna that the two of them and Demi were not the only ones in the room. Rayna had forgotten about the fourth person in their party, the young man whom Lynette introduced to her during their prom as Chad Cooper. It occurred to Rayna, however, that there was something weird about that. Even during the prom, Rayna knew that there was something familiar about him; it was as if she had seen him before. And she had; she was sure of that. Because even the name sounded familiar. While Rayna knew him as Chad Cooper, both Lynette and Demi knew him as Sterling. And there was only one actor in the world that could ever pull that off. Rayna snapped her fingers. “Sterling Knight. I could smell the Chad Dylan Cooperness of the plan, without even realizing that I did.”

“Finally!” Sterling groaned. “That took forever you know.”

“Sorry,” Rayna shrugged. “Took me awhile to realize it.”

“Well, you know now,” Sterling said, “so it’s okay.”

Rayna shook her head. What the hell was with all the secrets that everyone was keeping from her? Not only did Lynette decide to hide how she came to be in California, but she also happened to hide the real identity of her boyfriend, the actor she knew Lynette had a crush on – and seemed to have met. “Nettie, you do realize that lying to me about this was kind of pointless, right? In the same way that my celebrity crush was Joe Jonas, yours happened to be Sterling Knight. Of course I was going to find out about your little lie.”

“It’s why I thought you’d figure it out sooner,” Lynette said.

“Well, sorry!” Rayna complained. “I was kind of busy.”

“Yeah, playing the violin,” Lynette taunted.

Rayna hit her sister. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Uh, where are the boys?” Demi asked.

“Kevin’s with Danielle, and I’m not sure about Nick or Joe,” Rayna informed the younger girl. “It’s rather hard to say. Although, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that Joe is going over some paperwork of his. I honestly have no clue as to why. He refuses to tell me.”

By the time Rayna finished her rant, Demi had disappeared. Where to, she had no clue. In the meantime, however, Rayna caught up with her twin sister. Now that she knew that Rayna was playing the violin again—well, now that there were no more secrets between the two sisters—Rayna could tell her sister about everything that happened during the last two months. They had the next two days to catch up, before the tour moved to New Mexico.