Page 28 of A Ballad of Betrayal and Beauty

The muscles in my face relax. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Are you sure? It sounds like a grown up wrote it.”

Heat flares in my cheeks. “I wrote it. I swear.”

She examines me carefully. “Well, it’s amazing.”

Something sticks in my throat. “You really think so?”

She nods. “Absolutely. Totally groovy. People should call you Key. Like piano keys.”

I grin so wide my cheeks pinch. I’ve never had a nickname before. “I like it. Don’t think my parents will though.”

“We can use it just between us then.”

“Okay.”

“I think if you had some guitar and drums,” she continues, “it could be on the radio someday.”

I tear the page from my notebook and hand it to her. “Here.”

Her smile fades. “What?”

“I want you to have this,” I say, holding the paper out to her.

“But, you need it. To turn it into a real song.”

I shake my head. “No need. I’ve got it locked tight up here,” I say, tapping at my forehead. “Come on, I want you to have it. You’re the first person I’ve ever told about it.”

“Me?”

Nodding, I take her hand and press the paper into her palm. She stares at it for a long moment, and I start to think maybe she doesn’t want it. That she’s just being nice. That she’s just spying on me, and will end up telling my parents about what I’ve been doing in secret.

“Why are some of these letters mixed up?”

My stomach drops like a lead balloon, hurtles through the floor to drag me down under the earth. What was I thinking? Giving her something I wrote? I’m such an idiot. Now she’s going to think I’m stupid just like everyone else does. She’ll never want to talk to me again. I reach for the page and try to take it back.

“Actually, I need that back?—”

But she holds it out of my reach. “And some of these words are . . .” She looks at me and tilts her head. “But your songs. They sound?—”

I lower my head into my hands and sigh. “I swear I wrote them.”

“I believe you,” she insists. “You sometimes talk like a grown up. You sound smart.”

“No one else thinks I am. All they see is this . . .”

She twists her lips. “It’s not so bad. Yeah, some of the letters are in the wrong places, but it’s still?—”

“It’s terrible! I know, trust me, I know!” I blurt out. “And I try so hard but I don’t know why, my brain just gets jumbled up sometimes. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. I tried to explain to my parents. I study every day but my marks are always so bad they don’t believe me, and then . . .” I hold out my hands and turn them over, showing her my palms. The red scars criss-cross my skin. “My dad, he—well . . . he says this will help me learn.”

She lowers her outstretched arm and places the page on her lap. Her hand takes one of mine, her finger gently brushing over the jagged lines. I flinch away as she traces a particularly rough ridge.

“Don’t be ashamed,” she tells me, low.

I shake my head. “They’re ugly.”

“No, they’re part of you. That makes them beautiful. Also,” she says, looking at me through her long eyelashes, “no one who composes songs like that can be stupid.”

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