A Thousand Perfect Notes
Page 18
She rolls her eyes. ‘Like that is … and … matters.’
‘I tried to capture you in the music,’ he says, feeling like an idiot. He’s not an artist. This isn’t a painting.
‘You caught me,’ she says. ‘And you with the … love it.’
He hopes he didn’t make it up. He hopes she loves it.
‘I’m going to Germany.’ Beck feels the room shrink and wither. August’s body stiffens beside him. ‘Joey and me. I’m going to write a million songs.’
‘For ever?’ She swipes her eyes with her knuckles and keeps her back straight, her posture undefeated. She frowns a little but nods. ‘I always wanted to see Germany.’
His smile is all a mess. ‘I don’t – August. I …’
‘When I finish school, I … backpack the world,’ August says. ‘First stop is apparently Germany.’ She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
I’ll miss you, Beck wants to say.
He stares at her feet.
He doesn’t want this to be the end of August Frey, the girl who prompted him to save his life. He doesn’t want this to be the last song he writes for her or the last time he dusts flour off her cheek with his thumb or the last time he smells her kiwi fruit shampoo or gets lost in her ocean eyes.
‘I think,’ Beck says, ‘that I like you quite a lot, August Frey.’
‘Likewise, Beethoven Keverich,’ she says fiercely.
She slips her small, warm hand into his trembling one and their fingers knot. How come they have to fit so perfectly, so briefly?
Please don’t let her forget him.
Did he say that out loud?
‘Do you think I’m going to forget you?’ she says, her lips close to his ear. ‘I’ll listen to … song on repeat until … demand you write me a sequel.’
‘I’ll write you an entire symphony if you ask.’
He’ll write her enough songs to cover the entire world.
‘A very loud symphony,’ August says. ‘And when a freaking huge German orchestra plays this … a front-row seat.’
‘I’m sorry it’s not perfect, though,’ Beck says. ‘I totally made mistakes—’
‘Oh stop it.’ She faces him, speaking clearly, and he hears her this time. ‘You are worth more than a thousand perfect notes.’
And finally, his hands stop
trembling.
It’s not easy to write acknowledgements when you’re clutching your own book and whispering, ‘Look, it’s a real book!’ which is basically what I’m doing all the time now. I’m so ridiculously pleased my years and years of words and wishes are now book-shaped and I can share them with you instead of hoarding them in a drawer. An overwhelming amount of thanks goes:
To my super agent, Polly Nolan, who is endlessly fantastic and has a magical way of making my stories a hundred times better. Forever grateful to work with you.
To my editors, Megan Larkin and Rosalind McIntosh, champions of my book and a hundred thank-yous are owed! And to the brilliant Orchard team for making A Thousand Perfect Notes absolutely (I can’t help myself) perfect.
To Maraia Bonsignore and Sebastian Lecher for help with my translations. My characters wouldn’t be able to yell in German without you. I’m so grateful. (And Maraia! Thank you for our endless texts and your endless encouragement.)
To Emily Mead, your feedback is invaluable and you’ve survived so many bad drafts and decoded so many typos. You’re truly incredible.
To all those who tirelessly cheered for me through my blog, paperfury.com!
To my parents, for giving me books and then giving me more books because I finished the first ones too fast. You have created a book monster, I hope you’re proud. Thank you for taking my work seriously even back when I was small(er) and stapling my books together myself while listening to Beethoven symphonies on repeat.
I’m so grateful you’re all part of my story.
If it hadn’t been so dark and if his fingers hadn’t been so stiff with dried blood, he could’ve picked the lock in thirty-eight seconds.
Sammy Lou takes pride in that record. It’s one of the few things he can take pride in, considering his life consists of charming locks, pockets full of stolen coins, broken shoelaces, and an ache in his stomach that could be hunger or loneliness.
Probably hunger.
He should be used to being alone by now.
He just needs to crack this freaking lock before someone sees and calls the cops. The house has been empty for days – so says the mouldering newspaper on the driveway, the closed curtains, the lack of lights at night. He knows. He’s watched.
And now he’s been at this lock for over two minutes. His palms go slick with sweat and the dried blood dampens and slips between his knuckles. His lock picks, a gift from his brother and usually an extension of Sam’s thin and nimble fingers, feel too thick. Too slow.
He can’t get caught.
He’s been breaking into houses for over a year now.
He can’t get caught.
One of his lock picks gets jammed and he whispers a curse. He wriggles it free, but his heart thunders and seconds tick by too fast, so he abandons the lock and melts back into the shadows. There’s always another way.
He slips around the house, undone shoelaces slapping his ankles. The house is old bricks, the windows cloistered with drawn blinds. It’s harder to see back here, with a tall fence blocking the moonlight. But a woodpile sits under a small window – no security screens – and it whispers welcome.
Sam dumps his backpack on the grass and scales the woodpile, placing each foot and hand gingerly so he doesn’t end up underneath an avalanche of split logs. He’s sore enough as is, thanks. His hands trace the small bathroom window and for once he’s pleased he skipped out on the growth spurts regular fifteen-year-old boys encounter. He’s a year off for his age. Maybe two. Looking small and pathetic usually works to his advantage though, plus it turns tight windows and poky corners into opportunities.
Half balancing, half hugging the wall, Sam fiddles with the lock while the woodpile gives an ominous groan and shifts beneath him.
Things this family is good at: locking their house.
Things they suck at: stacking wood into a sturdy pile.
If this doesn’t work, he’ll have to—
‘You could always break it.’
Sam’s heart leaps about forty feet in the air – and unfortunately his feet follow. For a second he scrabbles to grip the wall, bricks ripping his fingertips, and then he loses balance and tumbles backwards. The lock picks go flying into the darkness.
At least there’s not far to fall.
At least the woodpile doesn’t tip over too.
At least, Sam thinks, still on his back and staring up at a silhouette smudged against the stars, it’s only his brother.
For a second Sam just lies there while the dewy grass soaks his back and he waits for his heart to migrate back down from his throat.
‘Dammit, Avery,’ Sam says.
‘I didn’t bring a hammer.’ Avery pulls his phone out of his pocket and flips the torch app on and shines it straight in Sam’s eyes. ‘But we could use a rock or, like, your head since it’s hard and ugly enough.’ He gives the tiniest breath of a laugh, but follows quickly with, ‘That was a joke. I was joking. You can tell it’s a joke, right?’
Sam wasn’t prepared for this tonight. Interruptions and complications and—
Avery.
And Avery wouldn’t show up unless—
‘Is something wrong?’ Sam says, shielding his eyes from the glare. ‘Are you hurt or in trouble or …’ His pulse quickens. ‘You’re OK?’
‘What?’ Avery blinks, confused. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
Sam didn’t realise, until the I’m fine comes, how tight his chest is. How shaky his hands suddenly are. He has to close his eyes a minute and fumble for a thin grip on calm. It’s fine. Avery’s fine. Sam scrambles up and snaps, ‘Turn that light off.’
He doesn’t mean to snap
. It’s just that rush of panic for nothing.
‘You’re mad?’ Avery tries to hold the phone out of Sam’s reach, but it’s a wasted effort since he’s all elbows and sharp jawlines and a pointy elfish face like he skipped the effort of growing too, and Sam could just snatch it off him.
‘I’m about to be really mad.’ Sam’s teeth clench. ‘Turn it off or I’ll smack you into the middle of next week.’
Avery frowns but turns the light off.
Sam’s lost his night vision now. His ears strain, but doesn’t catch any movement or whispers. Or sirens. He’s not caught.
‘I could get you a phone.’ Avery rocks on his heels. ‘That would fix everything.’
Of course it would, Avery. A phone would fix the fact that Sam is a house thief in clothes he stole from a bin at a second-hand store, who needed a haircut months ago, with skin tight against his ribs like a tally of all the meals he’s missed.
His fingers curl into fists. Sticky with blood. It’s all bluff anyway because he’d never hit Avery. In fact it’s the opposite. Sam spends his life hitting the world and smoothing over the rusty corners so Avery won’t fall and hurt himself.
‘I wouldn’t need you to fix stuff,’ Sam says, the barest frustrated tremble in his voice, ‘if you’d stop ruining everything.’
ORCHARD BOOKS
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by The Watts Publishing Group
This eBook edition published in 2018
Text copyright © C.G. Drews, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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ISBN 978 1 40834 991 5
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