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A guitar pick.

Fuck.

The room closes in. My chest caves with every excruciating breath; I crack with every heartbeat. Meanwhile, Everly is over there chattering away, as though she didn’t shatter my entire fucking world with a triangular piece of plastic.

Dead people’s things.

My stomach twists, doubling me over where I sit. It’s a volatile edge I’m teetering on, and this time I have none of the usual outlets available to temper it. There’s nowhere to unleash this churning sea of violence. No obsessions to lose myself in, or substances to binge and regret tomorrow.

No way to dull reality.

With every shift of my leg, the chain scrapes over tile, a reminder that I’m literally welded to the floor. I let my head thump against the wall. It doesn’t make me feel better, so I do it again.

And again.

I’m trapped. Imprisoned with my ghosts. My demons.

Myself.

“I know it sounds silly,” she says with a hint of self-deprecating amusement, “but this little pick has anchored me more than once, when I was sure I was losing my mind. Sometimes I imagine entire concerts pouring out of it. Like it has a life of its?—”

“How do you know they’re dead?” The words wrench from my throat, burning like poison.

“What?”

“How do you know? You’re still alive. That woman across the way could have been knocked unconscious. We didn’t hear a gunshot. Maybe they’re just transporting their captives somewhere else. Maybe—” I cut myself off, sickened by the sound of my own desperation. This isn’t me. I’m pragmatic. Realistic. And yet…I just want her to tell me she might be wrong. That I might be wrong.

“I’m not really sure what you want me to say.” There’s a fragility in her voice, like she’s back on eggshells. “I thought you wanted honesty.”

“I do.” Usually.

“Well…I held out hope for a long time. Surely, if I’m alive, there could be others like me, right? It makes sense. But then little things added up, and…”

“And what?”

She hesitates for too long. “I guess I can’t be sure.”

But she sounds like she’s sure. And that goddamn treasure trove of trinkets says it all, doesn’t it? Just like the feeling in my gut.

She doesn’t say anything else for a long time.

I close my eyes.

In the dead space, the haunted air seeps into my pores. Maybe I really did die under that bridge, with Dolph and his goons kicking my limp body into the muddy ground. This cell feels like limbo. Purgatory. The Devil’s waiting room.

I’m no ghost-whisperer, but my life’s work has been based on talking to the deceased—following their footsteps, studying victimology, analyzing their final moments. I’ve just never been one of them before.

Feels a lot like drowning.

“Nick?”

The sound of my name—Nick’s name—pulls me to the surface.

“Do you like music?” she asks.

“No.”

“Come on. Tell me one song that makes you feel everything.”

I swallow. It tastes like sour memories and fleeting happiness. Like hopelessness and regret. “I told you,” I mumble. “There’s nothing.”

I haven’t felt anything in a long, long time.

There’s nothing but a deep, black hole where my heart should be. A dull roar in my ears. It suits me. That’s how my life started, and that’s how it’ll end. But just for a little while, there was music…

I didn’t hate it back then.

A melody plinks note by note in a far-off memory that feels like a dream. Strings plucked. An acoustic guitar, played with skilled fingers, strummed with a blue guitar pick. That’s the one she would have been using that night. The only one she used since the day I gave it to her.

It’s just an inanimate object. Not much different than any of Everly’s other mementos of the dead: a tube of lip balm, a rubber band, a wad of string braided into a bracelet.

But this one has the power to shake me to my core.

As Everly continues, I imagine a solo female voice joining the phantom chords, like a haunting accompaniment. “Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on what makes a song special,” she says. “Could be the harmonies, the cadence, or a lyric that reaches in and expresses something you’ve never been able to put into words. But sometimes there’s one that manages to capture that whole package; a song—that reaches into your soul and says I get you .”

My lungs slowly deflate. The way she talks about music sounds a lot like Sara.

“Mine is ‘The Scientist,’” she adds.

“The what?”

“‘The Scientist’ by Coldplay. You’d know it if you heard it.”

I know it.

“It’s been my favorite song since middle school,” she explains. “It was Annie’s favorite song, too.”

“Annie?” My voice cracks.

Who the fuck is Annie?

“The girl who carried the pick.”

That wasn’t her name.

As she continues, there’s a dreamy quality to her words that doesn’t belong in this hellhole. “Annie played the guitar. Music was her passion, her love language.”

I suppose her fairy tales are preferable to our reality. I can almost believe it could have belonged to a girl named Annie.

Except…

As her story goes on, I get an image of brown pigtails and crystal-colored eyes, always sparkling with life, understanding more than was natural for her age. Especially when it came to music.

“I think she wrote her own songs. She was a skilled lyricist. Some people have the power to make you come alive with just words, but that wasn’t good enough for her. She needed melodies and harmonies. Annie sang symphonies for the soul. Everyone stopped what they were doing the moment her favorite guitar pick glided across strings. Heads turned, conversations melted away. She sang like an angel.”

That, she did.

“She always played the best songs…the ones that give you that achy chest feeling. You know what I mean?” Her voice is full of warm, fuzzy memories and hopes for a bright future—a future some girls with angelic voices and stars in their eyes will never see.

Because they’re gone now.

“Yeah.” For the first time, I notice the way my hand rests absently over my heart, fingers twisted in the tattered material of my T-shirt. “I know what you mean.” The words come from somewhere dark and hollow.

Everly makes a sound like she understands.

She doesn’t.