In Your Dreams (Falling #4) (5 page)

“So, what exactly are you looking for?” she asks, folding up the few notepads she had out on the table and tucking them into the bright orange canvas bag slung over the back of her chair.

“Nothing much. An apartment or studio or something simple like that. I could do a house, but I would need to find a roommate…” I trail off as I realize how far I’m taking this lie.

“That’s not what I meant, dear,” she says, sliding a pair of black-rimmed glasses down from her head to the tip of her nose.

“Oh, I guess…you need my price range? Or…” I begin to answer, but stop when the right side of her lip curls.

“Honey, you’re too young to need a realtor. And I saw you drive by the first time. You weren’t dropped off, and you can’t keep this lie going, so how about you tell me what this is really about?”

Witch. That’s it. She’s a witch.

I suck in my bottom lip and nod with a small laugh.

“Okay, my name’s Casey Coffield…”

I don’t need to say anything more, because Jeanie is full-on belly laughing at me now. She lets her laughter go for several seconds, stopping only for a drink of her coffee with her other palm flat on the table, finally regaining her composure after nearly a minute.

“And there he is,” she says, leaning back in her seat, her tongue pressed in the side of her cheek. Her eyes twinkle like a gypsy, and taking her in now completely—her long skirt and silky shirt with sleeves that flow around her arms like she’s a fortuneteller—I’m starting to think my witch theory might hold up. “You know, she said she made you up,” she interrupts my thoughts. “But I knew better. I looked in her old yearbook.”

Her eyes linger on me in a way different from before. I think this expression might just be suspicion.

“Not made up,” I say, eyebrows rising as I adjust myself in my chair. I miss the Jeanie from the phone. This Jeanie, she makes me nervous.

“Not made up indeed,” she chuckles, the sound deep. She stops laughing only to sip her drink again, pulling the lid off when she’s done to add another packet of sugar. I notice all of the empty packets on the table. That must be the sweetest drink on earth.

“I was hoping I could maybe talk…with Murphy?” Even saying her name feels weird. Foreign. I don’t know her. But it seems I’m a very popular topic in the Sullivan house.

“Wouldn’t that be a hoot,” Jeanie laughs, her voice raspy.

“I…guess?” I respond, my hand coming to the back of my neck. I feel like there’s a joke happening, and I’m the victim. I really wish the cameras would come out or someone would yell
surprise
.

“You know, she won’t tell anyone the truth about that song, but damn if that’s not the one that’s a hit,” she says, reaching forward, her fingers grazing my chest with a gentle punch. “I think it pisses her off, that that’s the song people like? What’s your story, Casey? Are you really just
nobody
like she says?”

Fuck…nobody? I mean, yeah…I’m nobody. But the way she says it sounds less like Murphy and I are strangers and more like I’m an asshole.

“I guess that’s something Murphy would have to answer,” I say.

My response makes her hesitate, and she leans forward, letting her glasses slide halfway down her nose, her eyes taking me in above the rims again with a quirk in her brow. Her lip ticks up with a single short laugh.

“You’re just as cagey as she is,” she winks, taking one final swig of her coffee. “So what brings you here then, if it isn’t to solve the mystery of why you’re starring in my moonbeam’s lyrics?”

Moonbeam?

Witch. That’s it. Witch.

“I’m working with a record label,” I start, regretting that beginning and wishing I had a redo. It’s too late, though, because Jeanie has already seized the key words and is standing, her eyes lit up with hopes and dreams for her daughter.

“Oh my god; you’re kidding me? You want to…what? Like…sign her?”

Jeanie’s hands are fumbling in her giant orange bag, searching for her phone, which finally lands in her grasp, one swipe away from a phone call that would probably only make this misunderstanding even more impossible to explain away.

“No,” I say, holding my hand out toward hers. She stops. My heart drops from the shot of adrenaline. Talking to this woman is going to kill me. “I just want to talk with her. Maybe work with her. I do mixing, and sound. Recording and whatnot, and I thought maybe I could help.”

I thought maybe your moonbeam could be my big ticket, actually.

Jeanie nods, then looks at her phone in her palm, I presume to check the time.

“She’s at the school, where she teaches. It’s summer session,” she says.

I nod in response, as if I know all of this information. Thankfully, she keeps talking.

“She’ll be home a little after one. I’m sure she’d love to see you,” she says, that sly grin showing again for a brief second. I’m not sure what it means. I’m afraid of what it means. It makes me swallow and second-guess this half-hatched plan I’m on.

Jeanie leans toward the table, propping her bag up on the seat she just vacated, and pulling a pen from deep inside. She tugs a napkin loose from the holder on our table and scribbles down an address, folding it in half and handing it to me when she’s done.

“Get there around one thirty, just to make sure she’s there,” she says, closing her hands around mine and the napkin. Our eyes meet and a gentleness paints her face. “So glad to meet you, Casey.”

I thank her and follow her out to the parking lot where she waves me off as she steps into an old pickup truck, the metal bracelets on her arm jangling with her motion. I wave back, and as she pulls from the lot, I realize she’s done it—I’m smiling again, ear-to-ear, and I have no idea why I’m so happy.

Witch.

“Miss Sullivan? I have to pee!”

Sasha, the very loud and very hyper seven-year-old, is bouncing in front of me with her fist stuffed between her legs. She’s gone to the bathroom twice already, but lord help me if I think I can call her bluff. The last time I tried, they had to close down my classroom for two days to disinfect.

“Sasha, there are three minutes left in class. Do you think you can make it?” I ask.

As predicted, she shakes her head
no
emphatically. I hand over the pink pass and she darts out the door. She’ll be back just in time to grab her bag and run to the curb to go home. It doesn’t matter, though, because Sasha will never go anywhere in music. I know I shouldn’t label my students, or limit their dreams, but that girl—she’s completely tone deaf. I thought once that if I could just hold her head still for long enough that maybe she’d be able to pick up on something in the class, but even at her calmest, the sounds she makes are just…well…they’re awful.

“Can I try one more time, Miss S?”

Now Bronwyn, on the other hand, is a musical genius. She is always here when I open early in the morning, and she’s asked to borrow so many instruments over the weekends. She always brings them back, and so far, the only one she hasn’t been able to sort of figure out is the trombone. I think that’s only because her arms are short and her lips are small. In a few more years, I predict she’ll be mastering that one as well.

I nod
yes
to her and let her play the selection from our Mozart for Beginners book on her small keyboard, which she glides through easily, her fingers effortless on the electric keys. I praise her and consider giving the next bar as an assignment to the dozen or so other kids in the summer class before the bell rings; I’m left holding the music book in the air with nobody in the room to talk to. Sasha breezes in quickly, grabbing her bag, and the door slams closed behind her.

I chuckle to myself as I clean up the aftermath of today’s set of classes. The summer school music program doesn’t pay as well as the regular classes taught during the school year. I quickly realized that my role over the summer was more about babysitting and filling in between activities until parents could come pick up their kids. But if working the summer classes keeps my foot in the door for the regular ones in the fall, I’ll manage to endure them.

Teaching isn’t my passion. I love the kids, well…at least the ones who love music, like I do. I get a kick out of seeing them succeed, and even the ones who aren’t dedicated to practicing make strides. It’s inspiring. But it’s not writing my own music and performing on stage. That’s where my heart is. Unfortunately, my confidence has yet to catch up to my heart.

My parents didn’t want me to teach over the summer. They wanted me to head to Nashville instead, to spend the summer with my cousin Corrine, maybe get a taste of what a real music town is like. I thought about it for almost a week, and worked myself into having panic attacks. As soon as I signed the contract to teach over the summer, I could breathe again.

Nope. Not ready.

It seems in the race to personal success, the order goes: heart, parents’ required belief in me, and then my own nerve.

The entire episode did open up my creative side, though. That’s how the song happened. Actually,
the
song is really only one of maybe a dozen that I wrote over two weeks. It was a very Taylor Swift time in my life, minus any real actual breakup. That one song, though, just happened to hit a certain nerve with people. I know it’s the one that gets me added to the list at Paul’s every week. It’s the one people have started shouting when I don’t play it, and, except for last night when I ran into Houston, it’s the one I usually give in and play.

I love that song. I wrote it as a way to clean out a lot of crap left over in my head, old feelings and frustrations from high school. It’s been four years, and really—I’m over most of it. But there are still those days where a thought penetrates my daily routine, and I think about how I never quite fit in. It’s partly my fault; I didn’t want to fit in. That was my thing, being…
different.
But then I realized I’d put up this strange caution tape around me by being that way, and breaking out of it was impossible.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’ve stepped through some weird time-travel portal because what the fuck is Casey Coffield doing standing next to my car? And why is he kneeling next to it, running a finger along the driver’s side door? And motherfucking hell…

“Did you…seriously just hit my car?” I ask, stopped at the front driver’s tire, my hand slung forward, my fingers pointing at the deep gash that runs about four feet along my car. My guitar strap slides from my other shoulder, and I manage to catch it before my guitar case gets cracked too.

“Ah…uh, no. No, I didn’t,” he says, standing and folding his arms around his body, his feet shuffling as he tucks his chin into his chest. He’s either nervous with guilt, or he’s a tweaker. I glance to the side, to the matching scrape tinted with the red paint of my car on the front passenger side of his. I point to it.

“Uh, there’s a matching mark on your car,” I say, my eyebrows in my hairline as my sight shifts slowly from the evidence to his shaking head.

“Yeah, I mean so weird right? I wonder if there’s someone who hit both of us? We should check other cars,” he says, releasing his arms from his body so he can run his hands nervously through his hair and lift his hat from his head.

He seriously just said that. Out loud.

“That’s the kind of lie one of my second graders tells. No…actually…even they wouldn’t lie so blatantly and poorly,” I say, stepping closer to touch the damage he left behind. I hear his feet move backward as I come closer. Good. He should be afraid. I kind of want to punch him right now. “Dude. You wrecked my car!”

My blood pressure rises with my voice, and I start to think about everything wrong with this scene: Casey Coffield is here—at the place I work—and he’s dented my freaking car! How the fuck did that happen?

“It was really only a tap. I don’t think all of this was me…” he starts.

“Are you serious? Oh my god, you’re serious,” I laugh. I start to pace a little, because this is a nightmare.

I bend down and reach into my purse to pull out my phone and begin taking pictures of both cars. I get about four snaps in before Casey completely folds.

“Shit, yeah. Okay, all right? I hit your car. There was a guy parked next to me, and he was all jacked in his spot, on the line and shit. It’s Houston’s car, and his car is tiny, so I thought maybe I could fit in the space and…”

“And you couldn’t fit in the space!” I shout, pointing once again at the evidence.

He stops fidgeting and lets his body slump, pulling his hat from his head and running his hand through his hair, pausing at the top of his head, the strands all pulled from his face and poking through his fingers.

“I might have misjudged it a little,” he winces, letting go of his hair and holding up his thumb and forefinger, pinching the air.

And with one look, he’s seventeen and angling to get out of every ounce of trouble he’d ever buried himself in. He hasn’t changed one single bit. Only that act, it doesn’t work with me. It never has, and it’s the reason I was maybe the only girl in our town who was actually disgusted by Casey Coffield.

I step back and hold my head in my hand, my phone pressed against the bridge of my nose. Think…

“That’s Houston’s car?” I ask, working through this unbelievable scenario.

“Yep,” he says. His mouth is tight, and he looks like a kid holding his breath, praying to get out of trouble. I’m so pissed I could throat-punch him. At least the asshole looks scared.

I stand still, and so does he. I’m pretty sure he’s staring at the top of my head while I shut my eyes to think, but I don’t care. I might stand like this long enough for him to count every stupid hair. And if he’s holding his breath still…he’ll turn blue. And pass out. God, what I wouldn’t give for a rewind button for life. I would park somewhere else. Or…maybe I’d walk today.

“It’s fine,” I say, holding a hand up and moving to the back door. He steps slightly out of my way, and I hear him breathe out in relief. That’s right, Casey—you’re off the hook, because I like Houston. I slide my guitar into the seat, shutting the door behind it. “I have to go. I’m late.”

I work the keys in my hand and open the driver’s door, cringing at the scraping sound it makes where the metal is bent at the hinge. I could throw a bigger fit until he paid to fix the car, but then I’d have to deal with him. The dent—I can live with it if it means he’ll go away.