Page 5 of Before You Fell

He tries again.

The second attempt is less terrible. The third has something in it. Not a song yet. Not properly. But a shape. A beginning. A rough little heartbeat dragged out of wood and strings by a boy who acts as if everything obeys him because he has never admitted how much he needs things to.

His fingers move clumsily at first, then with more confidence. He misses one note, curses under his breath, and tries again. He doesn’t look at me. For once, Phoenix Stone is not performing. He is working.

That does something strange to me. Watching him go quiet. The swagger pulled back just enough for the serious part of him to show.

He hums under his breath, as if the melody is hiding somewhere and he is pissed off that it will not come out when he tells it to.

I sit very still.

Then he sings.

Quiet at first. So quiet I almost don’t hear it over the rush of my own heart.

His voice is not perfect. It is thirteen-year-old rough, scratched at the edges, still growing into itself. But there is something in it already. Something raw. Something that knows how to hurt even before he understands what hurt is going to make of him.

My words leave his mouth and change.

As if they were sitting on that page waiting for him to touch them with his voice and make them dangerous.

If the world gets loud, I’ll be the quiet.

My chest pulls tight. Phoenix sings the line as if he knows exactly what loud feels like. As if he has lived inside slammed doors and raised voices and the kind of silence that comes after someone says something cruel.

Then he sings the next one.

If your hands shake, I’ll hold the song.

His voice dips on the last word.

I feel it.

God, I feel it everywhere.

In my throat. In my ribs. In the stupid soft place beneath my breastbone that has no business waking up for a boy who has been my best friend since I was six.

I forget to breathe.

Phoenix keeps looking at the page, singing my words back to me as if they belong in his mouth.

He trips over one phrase and scowls at the page as if the words personally offended him. Then he goes back and tries again. His voice cracks once, somewhat awkward through the middle.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath.

The word sounds different coming from him. Rougher. Warmer. Phoenix can take anything, even a curse, and make it sound as if it belongs in a song.

I should tell him not to swear because Mom might hear but he keeps going.

The melody is messy, but the feeling is not. That part lands hard. It gets under my skin in a way I don’t understand, twisting through my ribs, dragging something awake in me that is too young and too stupid to have a name yet.

Halfway through the song, he stops.

My stomach drops. “What?”

“That’s wrong.”

I look at the page, heat rushing to my face. “My words are wrong?”