“I’m fine. Are you?”
I don’t tell her she looks hungry, I’m sure she already knows.
Her knees clack together as she holds them to her chest. “It’s loud at my house right now. Bad things happen if they see me there when it gets loud. What happened to your eye?”
“Well...” I look around the treehouse. “You can just come here when it’s loud there. No one has to know, and I got in a fight at school.”
“Oh. Did you win?”
No. “Of course I did,” I lie. It isn’t fully a lie, the teachers broke it up before I could knock him out, but I would have won if I had the chance. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
Her gaze drops to the ground. “I won’t. Not until dark.”
I watch her a second longer because she looks like she’s ready to run, but maybe that’s just how she always looks.
Dropping down, I sneak inside my house to grab her some food, somehow managing to dodge both of my parents asI stuff my pockets with snacks and cans of Dr. Pepper. As I climb back up the ladder, the crinkling of wrappers warn her of my return before I see her confused expression. “Here. Eat something.”
I dump out my pockets and open up a soda for myself, passing her her own so she doesn’t drink all of mine again. Her face screws up a little like she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but she takes a bag of Goldfish with a sniffle. ”Thanks... um... sorry, what’s your name?”
“Oh, I was going to ask you that. I keep calling you sad girl in my head, and I think that’s probably not... nice. I’m Bash. What’s yours?”
“My name is Alaina, but I guess sad girl works too.” She shoves a handful of Goldfish in her mouth and adds, “Bash is a cool name.”
“Thanks. I like it too, but I don’t really like Sebastian, because it makes me feel like I’m in trouble or something. Do you like music?”
I pull out an iPod I stole from school and offer her one of the earbuds, scooting closer so the cord isn’t stretched too far.
She looks at it a little strangely, but puts it in her ear like I did. “Whoa. It’s like a tiny radio.”
“It’s cool, huh? The best songs scream the loudest, because everything else disappears. Watch.”
I put the volume up and switch to one of my favorite songs, watching her expression as she hears it for the first time. It goes from shocked to confused to curious, but she smiles for the first time.
It changes her whole face.
I force my eyes to stay open and not blink so I don’t miss it. This is why I love music so much. Whatever Alaina is going through at home has to be terrible, and yet hearing someone else scream out their pain into a microphone is helping her smile, telling her she isn’t alone.
I’m only twelve. I don’t know much about the world outside my own struggles, but I’m old enough to know that if I need this type of music, so do other people. Maybe even more than me.
When the song ends, she looks a little wild. “Do you have more?”
“There’s only like twelve songs on this, but it’s all kind of like that. I think I stole ittoo soon, my teacher didn’t have a chance to put more music on it.”
I press play on the next song, realizing a second too late that I said the quiet part out loud.
“You stole it?”
“Oh. Um... no, I didn’t mean to say that.”
Crap. She’s not going to want to be around me anymore like all the kids at school. They all act scared of me, and look at me the way she’s looking at me right now. I could tell her how mean my teacher is to all of us, and how his music taste is the only good thing about him, but I don’t think that would make a difference. Bad kids are bad kids, and mom and dad have always told me I’m the worst of them.
“It’s okay. I have to steal most things too, I just... thought you wouldn’t let me come here anymore if you knew that. I won’t take anything from you, I promise.”
I meet her gaze for too long, neither of us knowing what to say about what we just accidentally confessed to each other, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel awkward. “Unlike my parents, I’m not a hypocrite. You can always come here and use whatever you need. There’s blankets in thatbox right there since you never have a jacket.”
Alaina glances at it and takes one with slow movements so she doesn’t dislodge her earbud. “So how come you have to steal stuff? It seems like you have everything.”
“I’m sure it does seem that way,” I admit a little sharply. “I have the necessities, because dad says that’s all he legally has to give me, but I’m not allowed to listen to music or watch TV. I know I seem spoiled to you, but they don’t believe me when I say I need music. It’s not the Devil’s work like they say. When it’s quiet, I just want to scream or... jump off a building. I need it.”
