The phone rang and Keira’s mom hurried across the room. She glanced at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil,” she muttered.
“Hello? Dennis?” Her mother headed into the kitchen. “Yeah, she’s fine.” She dropped her voice, but it didn’t stop Keira from hearing. “What I want to know is where the hell you’ve been all afternoon.”
While her mother banged pots and cracked open cans, Keira sneaked back over to the piano. Nothing hurt, and she knew that the visions had nothing to do with hitting her head. Not when they’d started before the accident.
Slowly, quietly, she started to play the Goldberg Variations. It was calm. Logical. It was good music for thinking and she had so much to think about—like the possibility that she was losing her mind. Or whether Walker could have seen the same visions, which seemed even crazier. Superimposed over all of it was the thrill that went through her every time she thought of Walker—the feeling that something had begun between the two of them that Keira wasn’t going to be able to stop.
She stayed at the piano while her parents argued over the phone and dinner simmered on the stove. The music soothed her, but no matter how long she played, it didn’t answer any of her questions.
? ? ?
Later that night, when she was supposed to be in bed, Keira called Susan.
Susan answered, sounding vaguely out of breath.
“Hey,” Keira said. “You busy?”
“Nah. I just got home. I was literally one minute past curfew.”
“Did your mom freak?”
“A hundred percent. I’m actually not allowed to see Tommy alone anymore. Which is completely ridiculous. Oh—there was one good thing, though. My flute teacher loved ‘Syrinx.’ She was—and I quote—‘impressed’ with me for picking it.”
Susan’s flute lesson sounded so normal—so impossibly normal and far away from everything that Keira had been worrying about with Walker and the accident and the strange things she was seeing. It took her a minute to remember picking out the music in the first place, which startled her. Music was always the first thing on her mind. It was supposed to be the first thing on her mind. And now it wasn’t.
“Oh—oh, good,” Keira stammered.
“You sound kind of weird,” Susan observed. “Did everything go okay with Walker? Because I was really hoping the two of you would go to dinner with me and Tommy next weekend, what with the whole no-more-solo-dates dictum my parents just handed me.”
“It’s not Walker—I wrecked my car. Some moron in an SUV slammed into my door like I was invisible.” Absentmindedly, Keira ran a hand down her left side, feeling her impossibly intact ribs.
Susan’s gasp crackled through the phone. “Oh, my God! Are you hurt? Is your car okay?”
“I’m fine, which is kind of a miracle, because my car was—is—totally smashed up. Walker thinks the insurance company’s going to total it.” She sighed, wondering if the payout would be enough to buy her another car, or if she’d be stuck begging rides and catching the bus.
“Wait—this was before or after you met Walker?”
“After. I was actually leaving the diner when it happened. He stayed while I waited for the tow truck. I think he wanted to make sure my brain wasn’t going to start leaking out of my ears or something.”
“That’s totally sweet.” Susan sounded pleased.
“It was pretty helpful,” Keira admitted. “He saved me from having to get a ride home with the creepy tow truck guy.”
“So you got a ride with the helpful hot guy instead?” Susan asked pointedly. “He rescued you, Keira. You have to see him again after that, right?”
The desire to pretend that Walker didn’t mean anything to her rose up in Keira, curling around her like some sort of fast-growing vine. Still, the way she’d felt when they touched, and how he’d stared at her after she’d played for him—she couldn’t act like those things hadn’t meant something.
“He didn’t ‘rescue’ me. He gave me a ride home. Which actually isn’t all that uncommon at the end of a date.”
“So it was a date!” Susan crowed. “And you like him enough to see him again next week. Just once. For me?” It wasn’t really a question. “I’ll plan it all. Dinner and a movie. You won’t have to do anything except call and tell him when and where.”
“I’m not sure I can give up that much practice time,” Keira hedged.
Susan ignored her. “I’ll check with Tommy about what day, and then I’ll call you back.”
“I’d rather make plans just with you,” Keira insisted. “Speaking of which, do you want to come over this weekend? I could accompany you on ‘Syrinx,’ if you want to practice.”