Page 9 of The Backtrack
The CD player still worked. Over a decade later, she’d have a chance to hear the thirteen songs that reminded him of her. When she’d left Tybee, she’d also left behind the music she and Damon had so fervently loved. Listening to any of her emo anthems made her think of him and what might have been. Now, though, she pressed her back against the wall and, as she always used to, slid down until she was seated on the floor with her knees tucked into her chest.
She put on the headphones, and the warm, nostalgic feeling she’d missed when she first arrived finally hit her. Her room and the CD player in her hands—thiswas home. Her shoulders relaxed as she hit Play and wrapped her arms tightly around her shins.
The unmistakable haunting piano notes of Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” began to tinkle out. She couldn’t help but grin, because she and Damon had been obsessed with the ethereal feel of the melody. Of course he’d pick this song for her—he knew how transported she felt whenever they’d listen. And she remembered the story of how frontwoman Amy Lee wrote the song about being vulnerable with her now husband.
As Sam’s eyes shut, the music surrounded her and she relaxed back into the bedroom wall. Except, just as Amy Lee sang the first lyrics, the space around Sam grew cold. Goose bumps erupted over her arms. Maybe the AC had kicked in. But then an enormous gust of wind nearly knocked her over.
“Oh, my God,” Sam screeched as she caught herself with the palm of her hand.
Though she wasn’t touching soft carpet anymore; her hand was on top of something hard. Sam’s heart pounded as her eyes quickly snapped open. And then she stilled in a kind of confused horror because, she realized, she was no longer in her bedroom.
3
“What is happening?” Sam’s voice was high and tight as her gaze frantically darted around the unfamiliar space. The sky was a wide black canvas dotted with stars.
She turned, but hit her head on the bumper of a car. In fact, she was surrounded by parked cars. And when she looked up, she saw an Islands High School Soccer Champ sticker.
I’m dreaming.She’d put on her headphones, fallen asleep from her long day of travel and now she was in the middle of a dream. Which was actually annoying, because the last thing she wanted to think about was high school. How could she make herself snap out of this?
The CD player rested in her lap, and Amy Lee sang about being numb and needing someone to wake her up.Yeah, well, you and me both, Amy, Sam nearly shouted. She tore the headphones off but could still hear the faint piano notes floating up from them. This wasdefinitelya dream.
Except, as her chest tightened from her rapid breathing, it didn’tfeellike she was asleep. The way she was aware of her twitching fingers at her side, the rub of the ground beneath her and the welt forming on the back of her head, made it all seem like she was wide-awake and somewhere else.
Sam screamed, a kind of guttural cry for help, so loud that by the time she was done, her throat was sore. When had she ever had a dream where she actually felt pain? Other than when she’d flown free of charge by riding in the jump seat, fallen asleep and cracked her head on the coffee cart when they’d hit unexpected turbulence. But this was different, because as she rubbed her stinging throat with her fingers, she wasn’t waking up.
Footsteps across the pavement snapped her back to attention, and she hid behind the car, but not so much that she couldn’t see who was coming. And as it turned out,shewas the person coming. More specifically, heryoungerself—fifteen years old—with shoulders slightly hunched, her Converse sneakers dragging, wearing baggy jeans and a skull tee from Hot Topic. It was the same outfit she’d worn in the marching band photo above her desk. And, to hit the point home, teen Sam—alternative Sam—carried a clarinet case covered in band stickers. She wasn’t scowling, exactly, but most definitely brooding.
“What the—” Sam was sure her frown was so intense it might end up stuck there. She pinched herself to wake up, but the spot on her forearm hurt. She ducked lower behind the car, and her heart raced with dread of the unknown.
Is this a concussion?
Can you die from vegan pralines?
Shit. It’s cold. Why didn’t dream-me wear a sweater?
The thoughts stopped, though, as she discovered that trailing behind fifteen-year-old Sam was fifteen-year-old Damon, with his spiky hair and shiny black button-up shirt. Sam almost gasped but covered her mouth as she watched Damon pull her high school self in close for warmth. Damon, with his liner-rimmed eyes, looked down at Alt-Sam with the most genuinely sweet smile she’d ever seen. Sam blinked hard, willing the images to end, but she was still stuck.
Maybe the CD player was so old that it’d leaked battery fluid and now she was lucid dreaming? Did battery fluid do that? Clearly, she was passed out in her childhood bedroom and hallucinating; how else to explain why she was seeing the night that changed everything and nothing?
Still, there she and Damon were. Sam’s stomach sank, because she’d burned this moment into her memory and relived it so many times already. Seeing it again, and so sharply, didn’t exactly give her a happy feeling.
She watched as Damon’s mouth quirked up and how, when they got to the Ford Explorer, he brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
As he did, her earring fell to the ground. Adult Sam instinctively reached up to her own earlobe, but she wasn’t wearing earrings. She hadn’t worn that set—moonstone studs, her mom’s—since that night. She’d kept the one remaining earring but had never recovered the fallen one. Now she watched as Alt-Sam bent to search for it on the ground. But it was Damon who picked it up and tucked it into the front zippered pocket of her clarinet case. Alt-Sam didn’t seem to notice at all.
Was that where her earring had been all these years?
And before Alt-Sam could find out, Damon closed the gap between him and her younger self. Sam knew what he was about to say.
“Hope you don’t hate Fall Out Boy too much, because I put one of their songs on this.”
Damon reached into his back pocket and pulled out a white CD sleeve. He handed it over, but Sam knew which CD this was—the exact mix she was now listening to.
Sam moved closer to hear the conversation clearly, but they didn’t notice.
“What is happening!?” she shouted.
Sam threw her hands up and sighed in exasperation. Fine.Fine.She was stuck watching this incredibly strong hallucination-dream-memory. Sam crossed her arms and hugged herself. Staring at her old marching band photo had probably brought this on. She should’ve known better than to pilot a long-distance flight and drive straight over to Grandma Pearl’s without any rest.
