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“Is it at your house?” Jase asks.

“Yeah, but we can’t go there. My mom doesn’t have work today. I can’t just go back now when she expects me to be at an exam that starts in twenty minutes. And we have to check in no later than fifteen minutes.”

I clasp my face into my hands. My head’s spiraling so fast I can’t think about the practice exams or the presentation. Suddenly, I feel a hand cup around my arm, the callouses rough and familiar. My head’s spiraling less, slowly calming down.

“We’ll figure something out,” Jase says.

It seems impossible, but hearing him say this, knowing that he wants to help, I have a little more hope.

****

I’m so stressed about my photo that each SAT reading question just looks like words to me. When Mr. Daniels announces only five minutes remain, I still have ten questions left, so I circle the first answer I see.

Once we leave for our lunch break, I ask Jase, “Think you can drive me to my school?”

All the nearby places that develop photos don’t have the paper length that the competition requires. Since Jase drove us to breakfast—I told my parents Nora was driving me to the exam—we have to take his car. Is the school open right now, I have no clue. The least I can do is try.

There’s an hour left to kill, and luckily, my school isn’t a far drive. Though getting there would be a lot more pleasant if Jase chose another band to play in his car. I grit my teeth as a scream-singing of lyrics erupt from his speakers like a monster garbling threats, an aggressive mix of electric guitar and heavy drums amplifying the sound. It’s more screaming than singing. In fact, I wouldn’t consider this singing at all.

Jase side-glances me and snorts. “Real relaxing, isn’t it?”

I shoot him a glare. “What are we even listening to?”

“Light Whispers,” he replies, the way someone would tell you their favorite color.

“That’s quite an ironic name.”

“Pretty sure that’s the point.” He turns up the volume, the screaming now building to an actual shriek. I shoot him another glare, and he grins like we’re listening to the happiest song ever.

“This isn’t even music.”

“It’s called screamo, it’s a subgenre.”

“He’s just screaming.”

“It’s a skill, and not everyone can master it.”

“You’d probably lose your voice.”

“I’m telling you, it takes skill.” He sweeps his hand over his stereo. “Gotta give props to the guy.”

“I just hope he still has his voice.” I tell Jase to make a right turn, and he follows. We pass by a barbed-wire fence, where, behind it, are a few oil machines across a stretch of white dirt. “I don’t know how he can scream like that for three to four minutes. I don’t know how you can listen to it for three to four minutes.”

“I appreciate talent when I hear it.”

Mercifully, midway through screamo song three, we arrive at my school.

The front gate, navy blue with the paint chipped along the rails, looks like my window if it were turned vertically, except instead of opened blinds there are bars and, through them, instead of the sky, it’s the inside of my school. The biggest similarity, though, is that the gate is closed, just like my window 24/7 because I don’t have the guts to sneak through it. Freedom High is an outdoor campus with yellow buildings encircled like sunflower petals. To get from one class to another, you have to walk outside and cross through campus, passing by stone planters popcorned with flowers and thin trees, all while enduring whatever sun or rain hits you.

Jase and I hurry around the outside, the sun baking us in one-hundred-degree heat, only to find every gate closed. It’s like constantly seeing my window turned vertically around, barricading me from where I want to go. I’d go home to get my photo, but my mom is the barricade there. She’ll get suspicious if she sees me home when I have a math exam in less than an hour.

“Any other way we get in?” Jase asks.

“Not that I know of,” I say.

He cups his hand around my arm again, giving me warmth the sun can never give. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”

I like that he can tell how I’m feeling just by listening to my voice. A trained musician indeed. “Right, we will.”