Tone Deaf(46)

“Isn’t it like a lifelong thing? Like, once you’re in, you stay in?”

I shrug. “Yeah. I guess.”

“So shouldn’t you say you’re in it, not you were in it?”

“Why are you suddenly so interested in grammar tenses?”

He holds up his hands, as if warding off my sharp tone. Then he signs, “It’s just, most people like to brag about that stuff. And you’re not. I’m just wondering why.”

“I don’t really belong in it anymore,” I sign.

He raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Why not? Did you get a bad grade or something?”

“Just drop it, okay?”

Jace nods. Apparently, he’s one of the few people in the world who can actually drop a subject, because he snags his water bottle off the counter and starts walking out of the room. He pauses at the exit to sign, “I’m heading out to a local studio for the day. They’re doing some promo thing, and I’m supposed to be their poster boy. You stay here and lie low, okay?”

He looks a little hesitant, and I wonder what he’s worried about. “Sure,” I reply.

He flashes me a quick smile, which makes my stomach do one of those little butterfly-dances. I quickly look away, knowing I’m about to blush and not wanting him to see my reaction. Jace just waves at me and quickly signs, “Catch you later.” Then he walks out of the kitchen, and a few moments later, I feel vibrations run through the RV as the front door closes behind him.

My stomach finally quits its tap dancing, but I decide to give up on breakfast. I toss the last of my pancakes and clean up my plate—along with the syrupy mess Killer made on the counter—and then pad into the living area. It’s empty, so I assume Jon left with the others.

I let out a long breath and collapse on the couch, and something hard pokes at my scalp. I snatch up the pillow and find a notebook that looks just like the kind I use at school. On the marble-print cover, someone has scrawled in messy handwriting, THE PERFECT SONG.

I know it’d be rude to read it, but I’m more than a little curious. I like most of Tone Deaf’s lyrics, and if they have a perfect song . . . ? Well, it might be worth being caught snooping to read some perfect lyrics.

I peer around, making sure no one else is in the RV, and crack open the notebook. When no alarms go off, I flip to its first page. There’s a little printed box that says, This notebook belongs to . . . In scrawled handwriting, the line under it reads, Jace B.

I turn to the second page, which is wide-ruled and smudged with pencil lead and eraser marks. Lyrics fill the page, one song repeated over and over again, with little tweaks on every line. Sometimes there’s a different starting sentence, sometimes a different ending word, sometimes different musical notes scribbled above the lyrics. That one song goes on and on, filling almost the whole notebook. I watch as Jace’s handwriting slowly grows different, changing from boyish scrawling to the nearly illegible mess of a professional writer. It’s clear he has been working on this one song for years.

I brush my fingertips over the last page with writing, which is filled with pen smudges and crossed out sections. The lyrics on this page are very similar to the ones from a few pages back, so Jace must be pretty happy with how they turned out. But the pattern of musical notes above the words keeps changing, and I read the line closest to the bottom of the page:

AADDCFG

That doesn’t sound right. But it sounds . . . close. Not quite perfect, but not far away.

I strain my memory, trying to remember the sound of each note and how they work together to create harmonies. It’s been so long since I thought about music in this way, and I wait for the bad memories to come crashing down. Memories of the surgery, of the accident, of the loss.

But, instead, there’s just now. I’m stuck in the present with familiar adrenaline racing through me as the notes play song after song inside my head, trying to find the patterns they like best. I’m not sure how long I sit there, just staring at the page, struggling to figure out this puzzle with no solid answer.

Then it hits me. Not really an answer, but a solution that just might work. Before I can stop myself, I grab a pen from the small stand next to the couch and start scribbling.





21


JACE


I WANT TO punch something. Hard. The studio that hired me as Mr. Promo Boy ended up being a dinky little place with a broken AC and a jackass manager. I spend the entire day in the sweltering Albuquerque heat, sweating through my T-shirt and forcing smiles for all the fans that showed up. Add that to the guilt I feel over leaving Ali alone all day, and my frustration is ready to boil over. I swear, if I hear one more squeal come out of the mouth of a teenage girl, I’m going to dissolve Tone Deaf and move to a secluded island.

I shove open the door to the RV and take a deep breath as a blast of cold air hits me. “Ali?” I call out, and then roll my eyes at myself for forgetting she can’t hear.

Despite that, I can’t help the nervousness that runs through me when she doesn’t respond. After seeing the sheer panic in her eyes last night, I didn’t want to leave her today. I wanted to spend the day with her, apologizing for not being there when she woke up in the morning, making sure she was okay, and assuring her that she’d make it safely to NYC. I wanted to spend the day . . . with her.

As I walk toward the living area, I hear a scratching and a low whine come from my bedroom. Poor Cuddles. My dog is going to disown me if I keep locking her up like this.