In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(54)

“And Helen Keller…” I say, looking up at her with that page open in her scrapbook.

“Yeah, she didn’t talk. Kinda perfect role for me!” she grins.

I laugh lightly, my eyes falling back down to the photo—it’s the same one in the yearbook, the same one I stole from Houston and look at almost every night. It’s her eyes. Those unbelievable eyes.

“I bet you were great in it,” I say, glancing up again.

She tilts her head to the side and takes in the picture, leaning forward and twisting the book in my lap so she can get a better view. She falls back to her bed, sitting on the edge, and lets a full smile stretch her lips.

“I was f*cking phenomenal,” she says.

I laugh without sound and shut my eyes, shaking my head.

“You seem to have found your voice just fine…and your modesty,” I say.

“It just about kills me every day,” she says, her smile falling into a more serious expression. She leans back on her hands and takes in a deep breath before letting her head tilt back, her hair fall down her arms and her eyes close at the coolness of her ceiling fan.

I don’t ask her, instead waiting patiently for her to tell me. Whatever it is, it’s personal—one of those deep scars. And for the first time since knowing this Murphy, since wishing I knew the one in the photo, I see the exhaustion on her body and face.

“It’s like acting,” she says, her head falling forward and her eyes meeting mine.

“What is?” I ask.

“When I sing. When I talk. When I…when I anything really. I’m constantly acting. It’s a performance,” she says.

I tilt my head, not understanding.

“That’s how the music started,” she says, leaning back again, this time falling flat against her bed and pulling her knees up, turning and lying on her side to face me. She’s beautiful this way.

“Before my freshman year, I went to see a specialist who suggested I try singing as a form of therapy,” she says. “I’d already played the guitar since I was nine, so he thought it might come easier that way.”

“And did it?” I ask.

“Not at first,” she says, pulling the familiar black notebook from her night table where she had set it and flipping through a few pages before stopping and tossing the open booklet to me. It’s the song I heard her sing to her brother the other day. It’s quirky and sweet, nothing but rhymes—almost like something my sisters used to sing in the street playing jump rope.

“This is Lane’s song,” I say, giving her a half smile. She reflects my expression and closes her eyes in fondness.

“It is,” she says. “That one came so easy. I think because it’s about him, and it made me think of him and these silly words he and I like to say. I wrote it to help him with bad dreams, stringing together all of our favorite things. And then I played it with my guitar, and for the first time ever—for as long I can remember speaking words—everything came out fluid. It was like water. So easy.”

“That’s amazing,” I say, the nagging feeling triggering thoughts…memories.

Murphy lays flat against her hand, her other arm falling over the edge of the bed, tickling the strands of carpet below, her fingers delicate just as she is with her guitar.

“My therapist said it’s common—for stutterers. When you’re trying to just say what’s in your head, it’s too much. It’s like the intersections in your brain that work on forming sentences and actually speaking them get overloaded, a kind of traffic jam. It causes all of these misfires in your brain and your mouth just mimics it,” she says.

“You said it’s exhausting. And sometimes…” I don’t finish, because I don’t want her to think I notice. It isn’t noticeable, really. It’s only that now that I know…I see it.

“When I get nervous. Like…really nervous. Which…being on stage makes me, like, way nervous,” she says, closing her eyes and tucking her chin. I watch her lashes open slowly, blinking, before the grays open fully on me. “You make me nervous.”

I don’t react. I work hard not to react. After a second or two, I offer a crooked smile and lean my head.

“I shouldn’t make you nervous,” I say.

She shrugs.

“You do,” she says, her eyes piercing me. She makes me nervous, too.

I swallow, and I know she sees it.

“So, what’s exhausting?” I ask, wanting to get us both off the hook. She’s not so anxious though. She seems comfortable with the silence. This is one of those moments where she’s in charge. I pull my knees up and prop her book against my legs, flipping through more pages because I’m the one folding.

“The performance of it all,” she says. “It’s not like you can sing all the time. I mean…I guess you could. But then you’d be like one of those people in musicals that gets dropped into the real world and only knows how to function while singing, but everyone looks at you weird because…duh! There really isn’t singing in the real world.”

I laugh at her, closing her book and sliding it in front of me on the floor.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Her smile while lying down is better than the one she gives while standing. I lock the vision of it away and pray to see it closer one day.