Page 39 of The Sound of Him

It’s nice.

Different, but nice.

A good thing.

My eyes fall closed, a fresh wave of exhaustion washing over me.

Mamá never could keep her lavender plants alive.

I wonder if she managed to when they made her go back to Venezuela.

I wonder if all she needed was soil from her home.

The next time I wake up, it’s dark outside and I’m all alone.

I roll over.

I…startto roll over.

There’s something hard and uncomfortable between my stomach and the mattress. Not my bunny, who was beside me last time I awoke and still is. Not my notebook, either. Someone - possibly me, possibly Nolan - put that on the nightstand. This is… an apple.

Ace’s apple.

Still pretty pink-red. Still, miraculously, not bruised. Still with that subtle, sweet smell.

My hand shakes as I hold it.

I grab my bunny by one little arm and scoot to the corner where the bed meets the wall. My body feels too heavy and weak to get up and go crawl beneath the bed, but this is a good compromise.

The first bite is a head rush. The outside is so crispy, crunching beneath my teeth, tart juice filling my mouth before I can even start to chew. It sweetens with every grind of my teeth, but doesn’t turn mushy or get candy-sweet.

It’s perfect.

I eat every last bite, until all that’s left is the little twig from the top and the seeds I spat into my hand. I pocket the seeds and lay back down, bunny tucked against my chest, the twig between my finger and thumb as I lazily roll it back and forth across the pads.

It’s not until I’m almost asleep that I realize why my face feels a little sore.

I’m smiling.

Chapter Six

Ace

I knew the call was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier to answer the phone when it does.

I let myself stare at Kellan’s name for two vibrations before ripping it off like a band-aid. “Hello?”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, where is he?”

Well, at least he didn’t start it off by yelling at me.

Not that Kellan yells very often, but when he does, it’s almost always because he’s worried about Keaton. And this is most certainly about Keaton.

“I’d put him at a 4. Maybe a 3 and a half.”

“Maybe?”

“Well, last time I spoke to him he was running on very little sleep and spinning out about Ellis Woods. I left him in a better place, though. So… yeah. Started out around a 6, but he went down to at least a 4, maybe a 3 and a half, by the end.”