Page 26

I sent that to Mr. Mason eight years ago.

I step closer and press the brim of Iris’s cap lower. My nose almost touches the glass.

I didn’t know he kept it. I didn’t know he framed it. I didn’t know he put it in the front window of his shop on the corner of Cottage and Main where every tourist with a stroller would see it. A part of me wants to run in there and jump into Mr. Mason’s arms. He must be so proud of me. I did the thing every kid dreams of: I became famous. But I still think he’d give me the once-over and say, “Darn it rocker, you ain’t happy.” And I would break down, because I don’t know how to explain that fame so young sucks and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

“I would think singing in front of millions of people would make you less of a nervous Nelly,” a voice teases from behind me.

And even after all this time, that voice makes me straighten so fast the brim of Iris’s cap hits the glass, and I spin on the sidewalk, my breath catching halfway up my throat. I haven’t heard that voice in eight years and I’ve been carrying the sound of it in the back of my head every time I sing.

“Miss Flack,” I breathe.

She is standing on the sidewalk in a long, burnt-orange cardigan and the same pair of round wire-rim glasses she has worn since I was eleven, her gray locs piled into a bun on top of her head, a paper tray of coffee balanced in one hand. The lines at the corners of her eyes crease into the smile that put me through every shaky middle school recital I ever sang. And before I can think about it, I throw my arms around her neck, careful of the coffee, my face buried in the side of the cardigan that smells exactly how I remember, like lavender, old paperbacks, and a hint of peppermint oil.

“My girl,” she murmurs into my hair, her free arm wrapping tight around my back. “Oh, my girl, look at you.”

Something inside me breaks a little.

I am twenty-six years old. I have sold out stadiums. I have won awards with my name engraved on them. I have crossed oceans by myself and stood in front of more people than can fit in this entire county.

And for one stupid second, with Miss Flack’s arms around me, I feel thirteen and angry and scared, and I’m sitting in the back row of her classroom afraid to go home because my parents won’t be there.

A ball of salt starts to grow in my throat.

“Hi,” I whisper, my voice already cracking against her shoulder.

She pulls back just far enough to set the coffee tray down on the narrow windowsill of the shop and puts both hands on my shoulders. She looks me up and down the way she used to look at me before a lesson, scanning for posture, for breath, for all the blockage that would keep me from hitting my falsetto notes.

“Mary’s been holding out on me,” she teases, a knowing eyebrow up. “How long you been home, Sienna?”

“Two weeks,” I mumble, my fingers picking at the loose thread on the cuff of my sleeve. “A little over. I’ve been laying low.”

“I can see that.” She chuckles. “You know your daddy would have thrown a fit if he saw you in a Red Sox hat.”

I laugh, scratching the back of my neck. “And I would tell him that marrying a Boston girl when you’re from Brooklyn means you forfeit your team.”

“He would have cussed up a storm if you said that.” Miss Flack chuckles, shaking a finger at me.

I drag the heel of my hand under my eye before anything can spill over and ruin the small amount of dignity I have left from sneaking around my old home. “How are you, Miss Flack?”

“Old, retired, and bored as hell.” She sighs, picking the coffee tray back up. “Three years out of the classroom and I still come by here twice a week to bother Mason. The man hates me for it, but I can’t sit in my chair all day singing hymns. I need real music.”

“I believe someone once said to me,” I say, looking around like I’m trying to find my next words, “all music is real music.”

“Well now that you’re grown, I can tell you that ain’t always true. I can’t spend all my time singing to Jesus. I don’t know if he can hear me.” She flicks her wrist at me, snorting a little as she looks me over. “How long are you staying?”

“A couple weeks.” I shrug, my eyes dropping to the cracked pavement between us. “Maybe the rest of the summer. I’m not sure yet.”

“That sounds an awful lot like you don’t have a plan,” she observes, her voice gentle.

I rock on my heels. “I don’t.”

“Good,” she hums, her mouth curling. “Since you got a bunch of free time, I want you to come by one of my Saturday sessions. Closed group. Six girls. They are eleven, twelve, thirteen, and one of them is so stubborn, yet so talented, it is going to kill me before I finish teaching her, and every single one of them has all your music memorized front to back.”

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper. Six girls. A closed room. Six phones I would have to trust them to not pick up, because all it takes is one slip, one story, one screenshot, and Nicki will have me by sundown. And even if the phones stay locked, I would have to walk in there as Echo, and Echo is the last person I want to be in front of girls who actually look up to her, because there isn’t enough of her left in me right now to fake it for an hour.

“Miss Flack,” I start, shoveling gravel with my foot, “I don’t know if I can. I haven’t been… I’m not really in performance shape right now. I don’t want to disappoint anybody, and the last thing I need is one of them snapping a photo and putting me on the internet before I’ve figured out what I’m even doing here.”

“Closed, baby,” she says firmly, lifting one finger between us. “No phones. No parents in the room. I won’t even tell them you’re coming. You walk in, you sit on the stool, you say hi, you stay as long as you want. Twenty minutes. Five minutes. Whatever you can do. Then I send those girls home swearing on their grandmothers not to tell, and they won’t tell because they know what I’d do to a snitch.”