Page 81 of The Backtrack
“The CD player I brought with me?”
“Yes.” He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin.
“It’s umm...” She scratched her forehead and realized there was no easy way to say this. “When I play the songs from your CD, I see things.”
She waited for him to say something.
“You see things?” he repeated. “What do you see?”
“Like, memories of us from high school.” Her eye was on the verge of twitching from lack of sleep, the sugary syrup and having to make this confession. “But an alternate version of high school where you and I dated each other.”
His gaze went off to a corner of the room as he thought about this. “So you fantasize about that?”
“No.” She scratched at her forehead again. “I think the CD player is magic and it’s showing me how our lives would’ve been if we hooked up. But I don’t knowwhyit’s showing me these things. At first, the visions were really cute and sweet. Like, you were a very doting boyfriend, and I seemed happy. But then they got darker, and I didn’t go to flight school, and you never got to start the bar with your sister. The one I saw last night—”
“Last night?” he said, apparently not interested in the magic CD part and instead fixated on her sneaking out of his room.
“I got up in the middle of the night and listened to a song on your couch.” She let out a big breath and waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. “Say something,” she warily said.
Damon studied her. “I can’t tell if you’re just making a joke, like you said.”
“It’s not a joke.” Sam stood up from the stool, walked to the living room where her bag was and pulled out the CD player. She brought it back to Damon.
“See this?” She held the player in front of her, hit the next button, but nothing happened. It stayed locked on track thirteen. “I can’t hit Skip. I can’t rewind. I can’t replay. Any time I listen to a song, it queues up the next one. When I found the CD player, it didn’t work. Then you touched it and suddenly it started to play. Explain this to me, Damon. Areyoua witch?”
She was talking very quickly, and her eye had officially started to twitch. Her index finger gently touched her lid to stop it, but that only seemed to make it worse. And Damon must’ve realized that this was all a bit too much, because he grabbed her shoulders and said, “Let’s just take a breath.”
So she did.
“I believe you,” he said. “I’m just digesting all of this. It’s a lot.”
“I know.” She put the player down on the counter and sipped her coffee. “I should probably stop drinking that.”
He slid his water toward her, and she sipped from that instead.
“Can I listen to a song?” he asked.
She cocked her head and considered that he would either see a vision just as she had, or nothing at all; which would be worse was debatable. The CD player hadn’t worked when Rachel tried to listen. What would happen if Damon tried?
“Go ahead,” she eventually said. “But right now it won’t play anything except for the last track.”
Damon picked up the player and the screen changed to track one. Sam blinked hard to make sure she was seeing clearly and, yup, things were getting weirder.
“Oh, my fucking God.” She steadied herself with a hand on the counter. “You saw that, right?”
She might as well have asked Damon if he’d seen a ghost, but as he looked at her, even he seemed to tense. “I did,” he hesitantly said.
Then he hit the next button, and Rewind, but the screen was locked on track one, just waiting for him to press Play.
“Should I take a listen?” he asked.
“Okay, based on my experience with this, you should be on the couch, or your bed. There’s this kind of fall that happens and it’s hard to explain.” She stood up and signaled for him to do the same. Damon got up and she led him to the couch, where they sat side by side.
“If you feel scared, don’t worry,” Sam said. “The visions only last as long as the song.”
“Let me just...” And he put the headphones on, readjusting the sides so it fit to his head. He gave her a look so warm and accepting that her anxious breathing slowed. “We’ll be okay, Sam-Sam.”
“Yeah.” She smiled back.We’ll be okay, she repeated to herself. And most of her believed him. “Ready?”
