Page 247 of Every Almost

"I don't see a damn reason why not."

Charlie let the thought swim around in her head. Tavi had said it with such conviction that she felt the tendrils of hope and excitement appear at the edges of this idea. It was a strange thing, watching someone else pick up what you thought was an impossibility, look it over, and hand it back to you fully solved with an easy solution.

"I mean, I guess Icouldrequest the DJ to play a specific song in dedication to her," she said, bumping Tavi's shoulder with hers.

"Ha ha." Tavi bumped back. "Not like you haven't told everyone on this ship that you use music to say the words you can't say, Spark Plug." He shrugged. "Don't you think it would be better coming directly from you? Not from a song you just play through the sound system?"

Charlie opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out because he was right, and they both knew it.

Tavi's face lit up as he suddenly laughed. "It's too bad you don't play an instrument or sing or something!"

Charlie stopped dead.

"Sing?"

She waited for her brain to hand her all the reasons it was a stupid idea. She could usually count on it to have a full list ready when it was.

But it didn't have one now.

Suddenly, her heart was hammering in her chest as if she'd run up three decks, considering the plan forming in her head.

"... Charlie?"

"Tavi," she said, her voice rough but excited. "Have I ever told you the one thing Katie would always say to me that I never wanted to listen to?"

Tavi blinked at the turn in topic. "Um, I don't think you have, Charlie, no."

Suddenly, Charlie was surrounded by absolute quiet. She wasn't in the annex anymore, instead transported to a kitchen in Shelbyville, Illinois, the radio on in the background and her little sister at the yellow table, saying what she never once got Charlie to believe.

"What is it that Katie told you?" Tavi pressed.

And that's when Charlie realized, all in the same second, that she was going to do this. She suddenly found the nerve, and she'd probably had it the whole time. Not like when she was younger, making Katie hold her compliments. Not like how she’d been too shy most of her life to ever let anyone hear her voice except Katie.

The reason she had this sudden flood of courage was because what she wanted to say was true. It was so pristine and pure, an ultimate truth she'd never known the feeling of before. And Charlie could feel it ripping through her veins right now, as it became a part of her whole body in one single instance.

And this truth, this bright, perfect, beautiful truth, was something Reyna undoubtedly deserved to hear.

"She told me I can sing pretty damn well," Charlie said, a lopsided smile crossing her face as she looked at Tavi.

Tavi's eyes went wide. And then he grinned, the whole, big, enormous thing he kept for special occasions only, and she watched it spread all the way across his face.

"Well, I'll be damned, Spark Plug." He sat back on his heels. "I do believe you've got yourself a plan."

Charlie laughed. And even though the laugh came out a little shaky, she realized, God help her, that she wasexcited.

"I just have one question for you," Tavi said.

"And what's that, Tav?"

His eyes shone bright as the words formed on his lips. "What are you going to sing?"

The hardest partabout a surprise birthday party on a spaceship turned out to be teaching a room full of aliens how to yell.

"It has to be all at once," Charlie said, for the third time. "That's the whole point. If it's staggered, it's not a surprise, it's a... wave."

"Please clarifyall at once," Torvax said.

"Charlie pinched the bridge of her nose. "All at once, Torvax. Like, one cohesive sound. I'm not sure how much more clear I can be."