Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
BY SATURDAY, NOTHING HAD BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.
Rio and Jeremy hadn't pressed Sawyer about Dumbledore's latest discovery. It's been more than half a week, but she still hadn't spoken a word about it to anyone. Nothing miraculous happened. She's still the same. Still hopeless at words. Even though the label's taken some of the weight off her shoulders, even though she knows she's not naturally stupid anymore—never was, according to Dumbledore—she doesn't feel any different. Like, okay, she thinks, so they've found out that I'm dyslexic. What can they do about it? How can they fix my brain and rewire the part that's constantly fucking up the way I see and hear things?
Still, some feeble part of her clings to the useless hope that, someday soon, she'll wake up and everything will fall into place.
At four in the morning, Sawyer wakes to the whine of an electric guitar plucking at the air. Turning over on her bed, Sawyer presses her pillow over her head in an attempt to block out the noise. But her efforts are futile. The screech of the guitar solo punctures the cotton and stabs through her sleep-hazy brain. With a sharp inhale, her teeth gnash together savagely, and her fingers tremble with the urge to throw a punch through the brick wall her bed's pressed up against.
Irritation boils the blood in her veins and her first instinct is to hex the inconsiderate moron who evidently doesn't understand the concepts of time to Hell and back—until she realises she knows the song that's playing. A smokey woman's voice growls through the static silence and with the darkness blanketing the room in pitch and shadows, the grit of the bass guitar digs into her eardrums. When it's quiet, it's easier to filter through her thoughts, when it's quiet the other senses are heightened. Back home, Sawyer used to lie awake at night, past two a.m. listening to her cassette tapes through the Walkman her father had gifted her for Christmas while the rest of Bristol rocked itself to sleep in the darkness. Those nights, the music cut deep into her skin, wove through the threads and sinew of her muscle, the only thing keeping her tethered to Earth. It's different in the daytime, when the sun's up and everyone puts their masks back on.
What was it about two a.m.?
Sawyer had left her Walkman at home by accident. These nights she falls asleep with much difficulty. Too much thinking, too much chasing her own thoughts into exhaustion, too much wishing she wouldn't wake up in the morning. And yet, she wakes up and nothing's changed. Everything is as it was yesterday. Unsolved and frustrating and impossible. She makes a mental note to write to her father later in the day. For now, she rolls out of bed, cracking all of her joints without ceremony, wishing she were dead.
From the other end of the room, the song changes. It's coming from the record player near the window that one of her roommates had brought in, Sawyer realises. True enough, someone is sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the record player, a crate of vinyl records nestled at her side. From the scant slivers of moonlight slanting gin through the glass, Sawyer makes out curly dark hair, brown skin and a slight build outlined by a silver halo as she approaches.
