She pulls him inside.
The dogs are all over him – her parents aren’t home – and the house gives him a welcome hug of baking cinnamon biscuits and woodsmoke from their fire. August licks icing off her wrist as she scampers for her room, CD clutched desperately to her chest. Beck pauses to pat a dog, or nine.
He follows August slowly, half because he’s drinking in her house for the last time and half because he doesn’t want to see her face as she listens.
She sits cross-legged on her bed, battered laptop open before her as the song loads. She turns it up as loud as it can go and three of her cats leave the room. Beck is mildly offended.
Beck can feel the bass through the floorboards. Did he really play it that loud? He remembers the white piano and the blue room and Jan’s excitement over discovering this is what Beck’s good at. This is what he’s made for.
It doesn’t matter if it’s nearly freezing outside, August’s smile is lime and summer.
She’s crying.
‘That bad, huh?’ he says.
She shoves his arm, always as physical and violent as a kitten.
Her lips open and don’t pause and he can’t get in a word edgewise until he leans across the bed and covers her mouth with his for the briefest heartbeat of a second. Then he scoots so he sits beside her, their thighs touching, and he tilts his right ear towards her.
He has to stop pretending. He has to talk normally. He can’t let the tremor into his voice. This is August and he doesn’t have to pretend, but he’d like her last memory of him to be a creator of dancing notes not a crying boy.
‘If you talk really loud to my right side,’ he says, husky, ‘I’ll be able to hear.’
At least the Maestro didn’t break his hands.
The Maestro took his hearing. Not all of it. And a specialist says there are options to look into and Jan promises they will in Germany. And for now? Beck doesn’t even mind that much. He’s not missing anything. He has a ridiculous amount of music in his head now that it’s all he can hear.
‘… no … how can … Beck …’ is all he gets from August.
He tells her to slow down, lean in, speak clearly. She has to stop crying for that, so she takes a second to swallow and straighten her shoulders and tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
‘The song says it all,’ Beck says, his voice a garble to him but hopefully clear for her. ‘Everything I ever thought about you. And more.’ Like what you mean to me. ‘And a bit of an apology. I missed your birthday.’
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.