Until I heard it.
A piano.
The melody was imperfect. Hesitant in places, too fast in others, stumbling over a transition before catching itself and continuing with renewed confidence. The kind of playing that comes from a beginner.
Beneath the notes was the humming that made my heart stop altogether. It was soft, tuneless, unselfconscious.Authentic—and I knew that sound so perfectly my bones sang with it. I knew it better than I knew my own heartbeat.
Listening to Jinx play before she really started to get the hang of the piano would forever remain one of my favorite things to do. Allfeeland no skill. She feltthe music, even if she didn’t know how to play it yet.
I stopped falling.
The nothing stopped with my heartbeat. The images stopped moving and whispering and making any kind of sound. It all just…stopped.
Except for Jinx.
She was right there in front of me,right thereyet a world away. Close enough so that I could see her freckles, darker thanmine, blurred at the edges, a painting on her face like Time had used her skin as a canvas. Close enough to see the way her hair fell across her forehead, always across, never behind the ear because she refused to tie it back. Close enough to hear the humming perfectly, and every breath she took in between.
She was in our living room, the old one, before Mother decided to rearrange everything. Before she and Father pushed her piano against the back wall, put a bookshelf where it used to be, and pretended the room had always looked like that.
The window behind Jinx was open, and sunlight poured through it like it was indeed made of golden glitter. She was wearing a pale purple shirt and a black skirt that spilled around her chair like it was made of liquid. My eyes burned harder now. My whole body burned with so much longing, so much guilt, so muchfeeling.The distance between me and her was a gap in my chest that no amount of breathing was ever going to fill.
And Jinx continued to play.
I cried there in the nothing all by myself. I smiled and I laughed and I even danced a little when she played a faster melody, a happier one. She’d stop, then start again, and I absorbed every movement of her body with my eyes andforeverbecame perfectly possible.
Thiswas indeed where I was meant to be all along.This. Here, with Jinx.
Just like it was always supposed to be.
I’d stay. Right here, for real, for good.
My eyes closed at one point, and my thoughts drifted. The imperfect melody and that humming washome.My very soul rested in it, and I let go, completely. No inhibitions.
I let go.
Sometimes I’d open my eyes to see her, sometimes I’d smile, and sometimes a tear or two would slide down mycheeks. I knew I couldn’t touch her if I tried, so I didn’t even reach out my hand in her direction. I was more than happy to exist there anyway.
Eventually, Jinx’s fingers hit a wrong note. She laughed—that bright, sharp laugh that always sounded like it surprised even her—then shook her head and started the passage again from the beginning. Never angry. Never impatient. Just…content. Happy.
And just when I thought I was standing still, I found myself reaching for her anyway. Knowing I couldn’t touch her, but there was no harm in trying, was there? I knew she wasn’t real. I knew she wasn’t reallyhere, but I was, and as long as I could keep my heart still, she wasn’t going anywhere. She wouldn’t know I was watching, and she would?—
Jinx looked up.
Not at the piano or the doorway or even the sheet music she never even glanced at while she played.
No, she looked up and turned her head to the side a little bit, and her eyes locked directly on mine.
Through layers and layers of time.
Two years had passed since she was gone, and I hadn’t moved smoothly through a single day. I did now, while I looked at her eyes—blue, like mine. Wide, like mine.Full.
My heart wanted to come right out of me.This, this, this is it,went the thoughts in my head, and I would do anything, anything at all to reach her, and maybe because she was looking right at me, Icould.
It made sense in my head, it really did. That’s why I shot forward with all my strength, both arms raised, determined to get to her no matter how long it took.
Instead, I hit a wall.
An invisible wall that wasn’t a wall at all, but…a face. Reddish eyes and curly hair and a smile that must have beenmade for me, if the way I reacted to it was anything to go by.
