Prologue Glass Houses #2
She looks at it a little strangely, but puts it in her ear like I did. “Whoa. It’s like a tiny radio.”
“It’s cool, huh? The best songs scream the loudest, because everything else disappears. Watch.”
I put the volume up and switch to one of my favorite songs, watching her expression as she hears it for the first time. It goes from shocked to confused to curious, but she smiles for the first time.
It changes her whole face.
I force my eyes to stay open and not blink so I don’t miss it. This is why I love music so much. Whatever Alaina is going through at home has to be terrible, and yet hearing someone else scream out their pain into a microphone is helping her smile, telling her she isn’t alone.
I’m only twelve. I don’t know much about the world outside my own struggles, but I’m old enough to know that if I need this type of music, so do other people. Maybe even more than me.
When the song ends, she looks a little wild. “Do you have more?”
“There’s only like twelve songs on this, but it’s all kind of like that. I think I stole it too soon, my teacher didn’t have a chance to put more music on it.”
I press play on the next song, realizing a second too late that I said the quiet part out loud.
“You stole it?”
“Oh. Um... no, I didn’t mean to say that.”
Crap. She’s not going to want to be around me anymore like all the kids at school.
They all act scared of me, and look at me the way she’s looking at me right now.
I could tell her how mean my teacher is to all of us, and how his music taste is the only good thing about him, but I don’t think that would make a difference.
Bad kids are bad kids, and mom and dad have always told me I’m the worst of them.
“It’s okay. I have to steal most things too, I just... thought you wouldn’t let me come here anymore if you knew that. I won’t take anything from you, I promise.”
I meet her gaze for too long, neither of us knowing what to say about what we just accidentally confessed to each other, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel awkward.
“Unlike my parents, I’m not a hypocrite.
You can always come here and use whatever you need.
There’s blankets in that box right there since you never have a jacket. ”
Alaina glances at it and takes one with slow movements so she doesn’t dislodge her earbud. “So how come you have to steal stuff? It seems like you have everything.”
“I’m sure it does seem that way,” I admit a little sharply.
“I have the necessities, because dad says that’s all he legally has to give me, but I’m not allowed to listen to music or watch TV.
I know I seem spoiled to you, but they don’t believe me when I say I need music.
It’s not the Devil’s work like they say.
When it’s quiet, I just want to scream or. .. jump off a building. I need it.”
I can’t tell if she understands what I’m saying, and I don’t have it in me to look at her face.
She thinks I’m rich and stealing for attention, but I’m not.
I don’t want to live in a world without music, and every time they find out I’ve been listening to something, they make me burn it.
They don’t care that it makes me want to leap into the flames, too.
Instead, she nods. “My parents give me some stuff too, but I don’t know why.
They give me fancy watches that slide right off my wrist and sparkly earrings and stuff, but I don’t even have the holes for them.
Sometimes they send me into a stinky shop and the man at the counter trades me money for stuff, but I don’t get to keep it.
I wish they’d give me stuff I like too.”
“That’s weird,” I mutter to myself, frowning as I try to understand what all of that means. “What school do you go to?”
She shrugs. “Daddy teaches me some things, like how to add and how to spell. He says they can’t afford to let me go. I really want to though, is it fun? It seems fun.”
“Not really, but it’s better than being in there.” I nod toward my house and lean back to brace on my hands. “My mom said I might get kicked out of my school if I get in another fight. I was thinking it would be cool if I ended up at your school, and maybe then it could be fun.”
“I wish. They thought about letting me go when we were at our old house. We were there for a long time, almost a year. But Daddy said it wouldn’t be good and we moved again anyway.”
“Why do you guys move so much?”
She shrugs, grabbing a Snickers. “I don’t know. Every few months, my mom says it’s getting too hot even if it’s the middle of winter, so we move somewhere else. And it’s almost always warmer where we end up, it’s so dumb.”
I thought my family was strange, but hers is making me think mine is normal. Maybe normal is what I hate. “Weird. So how long will you live here?”
“Sebastian!” my mother shouts, making me flinch and hold my finger to my lips so Alaina doesn’t speak.
“What?”
“Don’t what me.” Her voice moves closer. “Get in the house. Your father is going to pray with you.”
“Why?” I hear her feet stomping on the grass and rush over to climb down before she peeks inside. “Okay, I’m coming.”
She tugs my ear all the way inside for giving her attitude, but my mind is still on the girl hiding in my treehouse and the fact that I didn’t get to say goodbye.
I just have to hope she comes back, because somehow... she makes me feel less alone.