In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(5)

Who is this girl?

I text Eli: Where’d you get this?

Thank god he writes back immediately, because I have a lot going on with the phone now, and I can’t juggle this much. Just Google searched your name and this came up. Weird, huh?

Weird.

Yes, weird. I’m not even going to touch the fact that my roommate is Google searching me now, but this is what comes up?

I hit PLAY again and for several seconds listen to the guitar break. There’s nothing but she and some guy playing a snare with brushes. It’s soft and understated. Almost jazz, but not quite. Almost country, but not quite that either. These are real musicians. I’m a hack. I learned the shit I learned because I want to make riffs to fill in mixes. This girl—whoever the hell she is—she’s an artist.

I lean forward and cup my hands around the phone wanting to get a better view, trying to block out some of the light. Everything is still too dark though. All I can see is the rapid movement of her arm moving along the body of the guitar balanced on one leg. I can also tell when she’s about to sing again, because her form leans in toward the mic.

“In your dreams…Casey Coffield.”

Pause.

I play that last line again just to make sure I heard it correctly. I play it four more times. Then a fifth. And then, I turn it down and press the phone to my ear to play it once more, but quietly, because now there are people pulling into the mini mart and that line doesn’t sound like this girl likes me very much. Not that anyone knows my name, but it feels like they should with the bite in her verse.

After about the seventh play through, I let the music keep going and listen to the rest of the song. It sways back and forth…from sad lines about being invisible and liking life that way…to more defiant tones where her voice almost speaks the words. Those spoken things, I really pay attention to. It’s like the entire song is about how much better her life was before some guy showed up—before I showed up. Only…I didn’t. I have no idea who the hell this chick is!

“Are you watching porn in the mini-mart parking lot?” Houston kicks my feet.

“Dude, you have to see this,” I say, standing up and dragging the PLAY button back.

He quirks a brow at me, and I halt my stare on him, waiting.

“It’s not porn,” I sigh, shaking the phone. I guess I do show him a lot of porn.

Houston purses his lips, but takes my phone in his hands.

“Start it from the beginning,” I say, but he’s already waving a hand at me like he’s got it and understands.

I stand to look over his shoulder, and just when my friend is about to lose interest it comes—my name.

“Holy shit, who is this?” he chuckles.

“No f*cking clue!” I respond, my eyebrows almost in my hairline.

He plays it through the rest of the verse as I watch his expression shift from wincing to awe, just like mine did the first time I listened. He hands the phone back to me finally, and I rewind and pause when the lighting is at its brightest—still unable to make out the singer’s features.

“Dude, that is absolutely some chick you’ve screwed over. No way it isn’t,” he laughs.

I roll my eyes in his direction, but I keep my mouth shut, because I’m thinking the same damn thing. I follow Houston to his trunk and help him load my things from my car to his, then get in the passenger seat next to him. I prop my feet up on his dashboard and push the seat way back, but he smacks my legs to the floor just before he turns the motor over.

“Not your living room,” he says, looking over his shoulder and pulling out of the mini-mart lot.

I shake my head and mimic him, but pull my attention right back to the video on my phone. I text Eli and ask him what he searched, since somehow he found this video looking for my name. He says it was just the first thing that came up with my name and Oklahoma. Awesome—hundreds in advertising for my sound mixing and deejaying, and this comes up first. I check out the video stats and quickly learn why—more than sixty thousand views. Not bad for a poor-quality video from a dive bar in…shit…I don’t know where.

It doesn’t take long to get to the grocery store where Houston works, and rather than harass him for once, I turn to investigating the source of this video, sitting quietly in the back of the store with the laptop I usually use for gigs. I log into the store Wi-Fi. It would probably send Chuck—the store’s owner—into a fit if he knew I had the password, so I position myself to see his office door just in case.

My sister Christina calls in the middle of my search, so I let it go to voicemail. She probably wants to scold me for bolting from our parents’ house. This mystery is more enticing than rehashing a rerun of my family’s favorite argument. I put in the same search, get to the video, and open up the keywords—making a note of anything that might help. After about an hour of hunting online, I narrow it down to two possible “Paul’s” locations. I call the first one and ask about open-mic nights. The woman tells me they don’t host those, so I move on to my last option. I’m actually nervous when I call—I’ve made this into something important.

An older man answers, and his gruffness throws me off my game a little.

“Uh yeah, I was wondering…do you have open-mic nights or something called Singer Songwriter—” I start, but he cuts into me quickly.