Page 137 of The Sound of Him

Nights are blue. Nights are music and weird snacks and silly rambling and quiet moments and Ace. Nights are safe.

Nights are thesafest.

I know the sign for it, for ‘safe’, but it’s sticky in my mind, not letting me remember. I want to tell him, though. It’s important. So, I lift my head and move my knees and lean over to write it instead.

I write the letters, finishing the word off with a bigE, but then I… can’t stop. It gets stuck in my head, looping. Over and over.

SAFE. SAFE. SAFE. SAFE. SAFE.

I finally manage to stop, gripping the pencil tight. The last group of letters are jagged, deep.

I’m crying again, but there’s a smile in my chest.

He’s still smiling when I look up at him again.

“That’s very safe. I am so glad you’ve found that, Matt. I think your blue nights with Ace are beautiful.”

I bite down on my bottom lip as it starts to wobble.

“Ace has interesting taste in music, depending on who you ask.” I almost laugh. The breath that leaves me shakes like a laugh, at least, coming out in little puffs. He chuckles. “Do you get to pick the songs sometimes?”

I shrug before grabbing another piece of paper. I write,SONGon it, then ball it up and pretend to throw it. His eyebrows dart up, his smile growing. “You write song requests down and then throw them at him?”

He doesn’t sound upset. He looks like he might laugh again, actually.

I smile. Just a little bit. And nod.

He beams at me, way brighter than before, like I just told him something amazing.

“How did that feel? Not throwing something at Ace, I mean, but making noise in the world?”

I… don’t understand.

I shake my head, pointing at myself, then tapping the paper where the computer is and trailing my finger up to one of the music notes in the air.

“It was you, though, wasn’t it? Just because it wasn’t your voice, it was still you.”

But it wasn’t. I wasn’t even the one controlling the music. That was Ace. I was all the way across the room. I tap whereACEis already written.

“Was Ace playing the music from his computer?” I nod. “Alright, so you worked together then. That means it was theboth of you making sound. You’re who chose what to play, though. Without you, that particular sound wouldn’t have hit the air. Without you, that song would have gone unheard. You wouldn’t have heard it. Ace wouldn’t have heard it. That’s making noise, Matt. You just used music to do it instead of your vocal chords. You used music to make the world hear you. To make Ace hear you. We’ve talked about how using a tool doesn’t make your communication any lesser, right? Well, using music, and having Ace’s help, doesn’t make that noise you made any lesser either.”

It’s not about that, though. I don’t think.Maybe it is?

It’s just… ghosts don’t make noise.

But I did.

I didn’t see it like that when I’d asked for the song. I’d just wanted Ace to stop playing that awful song and - and I guess - I mean, yeah - yeah, I chose a song and wrote it on the paper and threw it and - and he played it.

Ace filled the air with noise that I asked for. Then he sat there and listened to it. He sat there and heard what I wanted him to.

I made noise and Aceheardme.

Ace heard me.

He heard me.

Heheardme.