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9

A vision pops into my head of Allison and me, waiting in line for a ride at an amusement park when we were sixteen. The soles of our shoes were sticky with spilled slushies and gum that had melted on the pavement from the hot sun, and my baseball cap was doing little to protect my pale skin from the angry sunburn I’d inevitably be tending to on my nose and cheekbones.

At our most miserable—when the line seemed never-ending, the funnel cake was making our bellies churn, and the heat was doubling as a crematory—I heard it.

My favorite song trickling out of the earbuds attached to the man in front of us.

I was bold, tapping him on the shoulder and asking him to turn the volume up. Allison swatted my arm, her pearly cheeks pink with embarrassment as she hid behind her hands.

“You like this song?” the man inquired, his eyes twinkling through narrow spectacles. His receding hairline and age spots told me he was at least three decades my senior.

“It’s the best song ever. I don’t even know why.”

I honestly didn’t know why at the time. While other teenagers my age were listening to Taylor Swift, I was slow dancing in my bedroom to Coldplay with a confused tarantula as my audience.

“You got it, kid.” He pulled the cord from his phone and cranked the volume as loud as it would go until the theme park chatter was drowned out.

My heart swelled. I pulled Allison into a clumsy hug, moving our bodies back and forth while we stepped on each other’s feet and I sang through a big smile, “Tell me you looove me!”

“I completely hate you.” She laughed instead, her arms circling me tighter to counteract her claim.

As we lazily danced to “The Scientist” in line to ride the Dare Devil Dive, three hours away from home on the hottest day I can remember, dozens of other people in line danced right along with us. People sang the lyrics, mostly off-key, as a little girl bounced on her father’s shoulders, her chin propped atop his head, and couples twirled and swayed to my favorite melody.

I feel like the simplest moments in life are the ones we take for granted. We don’t appreciate the power in them until they are nothing but soulful memories.

And maybe that’s exactly where their power lies.

I careen back into the present moment. “Sometimes you don’t just hear a song…you feel it,” I carry on, swiping a fallen tear from my cheek, missing so much right now. My heart feels heavy, my soul itching to be relit. “Songs that make you physically feel something become more than words and measures, more than notes. They become a part of you. Engrained. That’s ‘The Scientist’ for me. And I think…Annie and I were a lot alike.”

Out of all the people who have come and gone on the other side of the wall, it’s Nick who gets me purging this emotional release. Closed-off, stone-cold Nick.

The irony.

Heaving in a shaky breath, I close my eyes.

I wonder what he’s thinking. If he agrees.

I wonder if his chest feels achy.

An hour ago, I’d say no. Never. But I sense a shift in him now.

Before I can press him further, I hear the keypad on my door chime to life. My pulse jumps. I scramble off the cot, knocking over my barely touched breakfast.

Anxiety ripples through me.

I don’t get many visitors, aside from Roger at mealtime. The last time I had a string of strangers enter my room was when my procedure was beginning.

Oh, God…it’s happening again.

A stocky woman stalks through the threshold, quickly closing the door behind her and sealing us in. Her hair is cropped short, her eyes like shards of ice, chilling me to the bone.

She pulls a needle out of her front pocket, and I inch away.

There is no expression on her face—no smirk, no glint of excitement. There is no softness, either. She’s blank. A shell of a human.

Watching her move toward me, I curl my fists at my sides, knowing I have nowhere to run. There’s no place to hide, no point in resisting.

A firm hand snakes around my upper arm, and she lifts my nightgown with the other. My underwear hardly clings to my hips, my waistline shrinking with every month that rolls by.

When I squeeze my eyes shut, I feel the needle slide into my belly like butter. I lurch backward, my instincts causing me to struggle in her bruising grip. I hate needles. Ever since I witnessed my dog being put to sleep when I was in junior high, the sight of them is frost to my veins.

“Hold still.” The woman’s words are muffled by the plastic cap between her teeth. Her voice is void of sympathy. She doesn’t care about me. “Stop squirming.”

My limbs quiver, but I obey.

For a moment I wonder if I can overpower her. She’s broad and burly, but smaller than Roger.

My eyes flick to the holster around her waist.

Dammit.

It’s pointless; I’d hardly get a decent punch in before she whipped out the pistol and shot me dead.

I glance at the wall beside me, wondering what Nick is doing as the needle glides back out. He’s silent, and I’m grateful for that. During the first few months of my captivity, there was a different man on the other side of the wall. Mitchell. I’d been terrified, screaming and kicking while a towering giant with peanut butter on his breath jabbed a needle into my abdomen.

Mitchell shouted. Cursed. Smacked his chain against the wall so hard, I thought he might break through it. He couldn’t, of course. Our kidnappers are too smart to build walls made of simple plaster and drywall.

All it got him was a beating from Roger, then an hourglass the next morning.

I’m not sure if Nick is smarter, wiser, or if he’s just utterly indifferent to my circumstances. Either way, I’m glad he’s quiet.

Hardened and stone-faced, the woman pulls back and caps the needle, not sparing me a single glance. She swivels around and storms out of the room, swiping her keycard and leaving me with a droplet of blood on my stomach and my gown caught in the hem of my underwear.

I exhale a rattled breath and straighten out my clothing. Tears prick behind my eyes at the realization that they’ll be stealing more of my eggs.

Nobody in this place has confirmed it. The Timekeeper speaks in riddles and rhymes, and Roger is practically mute. But the memory of my feet in metal stirrups is never far from my mind, paired with that rodent-like doctor who hovered over me as can lights from above illuminated my shivering body. He spread my legs. Removed my underwear. Yanked my gown up to my waist until I was fully exposed and humiliated. A steel tray beside me was littered with what looked like torture devices: speculums, probes, more needles.

And then…

Nothing.

I woke up in my cell, my belly cramped, and my inner thighs caked in dried blood.

Then the pediatric nurse, Mary, took up residence in the room beside me. I gave her the details surrounding my procedure.

Egg retrieval.

The injections were filled with medication, causing multiple eggs to grow and mature, followed by a dose of hCG. Then my follicles were stolen from my womb by a needle and a suction device.

It’s sick and twisted.

Someone out there has paid for this.

Turning, I face the wall, waiting for Nick’s inevitable ambush of questions.

They never come.

I step forward and press both palms to the white divider, dropping the tip of my nose against the cool surface. My eyes close. “Nick?”

Nothing.

I slide down the wall until my knees hit the cot, biting my tongue to keep the cry in my throat. “Nick.” His name falls out cracked and broken, and I hate myself for showing weakness. I need to stay strong. Be brave. I need to be a fighter . “Say something…”

Seconds trickle by like grains of sand, slipping through an hourglass.

Thirty-seven seconds.

“Who was that?”

I blink my lids back open, my lashes damp. He doesn’t sound like himself. The question is strained, too soft, like he’s hardly keeping himself together. Empathy pokes holes through my pain. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

He’s not fine. I’m not sure why, but I can only assume it has something to do with our conversation from earlier.

The guitar pick. Music.

Annie.

Nick misses somebody.

“It’s your turn to tell me a story,” I murmur, my lips grazing the wall as I speak.

A beat passes. “I’m the trapped audience, remember? You’re the storyteller.”

“I think I’m all out of stories right now. Unless you want me to start reading out loud from one of the books I have over here.”

“The eighties bodice rippers?”

I stretch a small smile. “Yeah.”

“Once upon a time…” Familiar sarcasm laces his tone, but the words trail off quickly. A quiet hum fills the space between us. “So, the owner of this guitar pick…let’s say she got her first instrument as a little girl. It was just a toy, impossible to tune. She was so proud that she could make her own music. It never left her sight…tortured her family relentlessly with it.”

I imagine Annie as a young girl, around eight or nine years old. Coffee-brown pigtails and hazel-spun eyes. I picture her with thick bangs, dimples, and a charming gap between her two top teeth as she toted around a toy guitar, the strap hanging off a lanky shoulder. My smile grows tenfold as I settle against the wall and brush my thumb along the smooth pick.

“It got to the point where she’d sit at the dinner table and punctuate everyone’s sentences with musical interludes. Like a dissonant chord for suspense, or a minor chord during something sad. And different notes for question marks and exclamation points.”

“I love that.”

“No, it was completely obnoxious.”

His tone betrays him, and my lips twitch with endearment.

“Soon, she collected other instruments. Some from thrift stores, others hand-me-downs from nice neighbors and whatnot. Her family didn’t have much money, just enough to get by, so they were never great, but she made it work.”

“Resourceful. I like her.”

“She went through this phase with a cheap synthesizer that had all these terrible electronic effects that were meant to sound like an orchestra or a choir. Blasted that thing at top volume in the backyard ‘cause it was banned in the house while she taught herself to play.” A chuckle slips out, organic and pure. “The neighborhood dogs had their own opinions on that. She called them her background singers .”

I laugh. The sound startles me for a beat and sends a shot of warmth to my chest. Wrapping my palm around the pick, I place a closed hand to my heart and sink into the wall.

“But her dream was to own something she could make real music on, so she saved up every penny she’d get from holidays and allowances. She refused to blow a single cent of it on bullshit stuff like candy. Real disciplined for a kid, you know?”

“Impressive,” I say softly, lost to the story, his words, everything.

“Eventually, she was able to buy herself a nice guitar. One she could tune that came from an actual music store. It was her prized possession. She played every waking moment until she figured out how to play all the songs she loved.”

My eyelids flutter open in time with a shaky exhale. “Was she a songwriter?”

“Sometimes she wrote her own music,” he tells me, his voice a fusion of controlled emotion. “Her real appreciation was for cover songs she could put her unique twist on.”

“Those are the best.”

“That’s when she started singing. Until something happened and she put it all away for a while.”

I press my cheek against the wall, as if I can get closer to him somehow. “What happened?”

“Some asshole told her she sang off-key and was embarrassing herself.” Nick sounds closer, too. Almost like we’re back-to-back, mimicking the same position, only inches apart. “He had his own issues—no excuse, though. He was just being a jerk and took it out on her. She was actually really good.”

“She doesn’t stop, right? Making music?” The story can’t end here; I’m too invested, too captivated by the girl and her notes and strings to let her tale slip away unfinished.

One of us needs a happy ending.

“Yeah,” he says. “Once the jerk was out of her life, she decided to play for herself, because she loved it, and it didn’t matter whether she was good or not. When she got older, she had a part-time job at a coffee shop and worked up the nerve to sing her favorite song on an open-mic night. Everyone loved it, of course, because she was amazing. And she never stopped.”

I wait for more. My bare toes tap together, my legs stretched out over the edge of the cot.

“Here’s the special thing about this girl: she had this incredible capacity for forgiveness, and she was able to spread that gift to everyone with her music. It was healing. It was magic.”

Swallowing, I blink the mist from my eyes. “The world needs more people like that.”

He hums thoughtfully, his mind far away from here. “She grew up, kept playing, kept shining light in the dark places with this angelic voice she had. And because she had the uncanny ability to see the truth, she realized that some people only hurt others because of their own pain. So, she sought out the asshole who tried to take her music away all those years before…and she forgave him.”

My smile is glowing, entranced, and I’d give anything for him to see it.

“It was a miracle…but when she played her favorite song, something in him broke a little.”

“What song was it?” My voice is breathy and fraught, a pitch above a whisper.

“Her own rendition of ‘Wild Horses.’ Sang the hell out of that thing. Just her voice and her guitar. I swear, it would give you chills.” His control dangles by a thin thread, overpowered by raw emotion. “Damn song. Got to him every fucking time.”

“All because of that toy guitar.”

“Yeah…that blue sparkly plastic guitar.” He hums, thoughtfully. “God knows why she even bothered with the guy, but it’s a good thing she did, because he was a miserable fucking nightmare. After she came around, though, things were better. For a while, at least.”

I don’t notice the tears slipping down my cheeks, not at first, not until they dangle from my jaw like delicate pearls. One drips onto my gown, leaving a salty stain behind. I unfold my palm, staring down at the glittery pick, awareness carving new holes in my heart.

Blue and sparkly.

Inhaling sharply, I swipe at my face, breathless. “Then what happened?”

“She vanished, taking all the music in the world with her. The end.”

The end.

It can’t end there.

God…it can’t .

But everything inside me shrivels with realization, with understanding, with soul-numbing pain.

And I know that it does.

“What was her name?”

“Could be anything. Make one up.” The usual bite to his voice is gone, leaving something brittle.

“Was it Sara?” The words unfurl so softly, I’m not sure he hears me. Especially after a handful of heartbeats go by.

Five.

“There are lots of Saras in the world, Beverly without the B.”

I close my eyes as the tears fall, and I imagine Sara on the other side of this wall. Sara, with the sweet, angelic voice. Sara with a heart so vivid and pure, alive with songful beats. She was as close as I’d come to hearing music in a long time.

Nick goes quiet.

I feel his pain as deeply as I feel my own, even with this barrier between us. It’s tangible. Heartbreaking.

And I’m not sure if my next words will only make it worse, or if they will offer a glimmer of solace through the darkness that closes us in.

I clutch the precious pick inside my hand and whisper softly, “She sang for me, too.”