Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Back then, I’d still woken up in the middle of the night with strings of words on my tongue.
Except for the one album I’d written with Yuki, while I’d been grieving the loss of my relationship, with the emptiness of accepting that some things weren’t forever so fresh, I’d pulled even more words out of myself. We’d gotten that album done in a month while both of us had broken hearts.
It was some of my favorite work.
Nori had written some of it with us, but she was a machine of music who pushed hits out like she shit out rainbows; she took words and brought them to life. I was the bones, and she was the sinews and pink fingernail beds. It was amazing. A gift from God.
But I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell Amos any of this. Not yet. It didn’t matter anymore.
All I had left anyway was a box full of old notebooks.
“I was thinking about taking a class…,” he started to say, and it was hard for me not to scrunch up my nose.
I didn’t want to talk him out of doing anything he wanted to do, even if I thought it was pointless. Writing songs wasn’t math or science; there wasn’t a formula in the world for it. You either had it or you didn’t.
And I knew Amos did because the two songs he had shown me, humming them quietly during our last session, were beautiful and had so, so much potential.
“Why not?” I said instead, plastering a smile onto my face so he couldn’t read my mind. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”
He gave me another one of his dubious looks. “Do you think I should?”
“If you really want to.”
“Would you?”
I was busy trying to come up with some polite way of saying no when Amos sat up straight and his eyes went wide.
He was looking at something behind me.
“What is it?”
His mouth barely moved. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”
I wanted to get up and run, his face was that serious. “Why?” Should I turn around? I should turn around.
“There’s a hawk behind you,” he said before I got a chance to.
I sat up even straighter. “A what?”
“A hawk,” he kept on whispering. “It’s right there. Right behind you.”
“A hawk? Like a bird?”
Bless Amos’s sweet soul, he didn’t make a sarcastic comment. He said, calmly, sounding very much like his dad from how serious he was speaking, “Yes, a hawk like a bird. I don’t know them like my dad does.” His throat bobbed. “He’s huge.”
Slowly, I tried to look behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small figure just right outside the garage. Even more slowly, I turned the rest of my body—and the chair—around. Like Amos had warned, there was a hawk right there. On the ground. Hanging out. He was looking at us. Maybe just at me but probably both of us.
I squinted. “Am, is he bleeding?”
There was a squeaking sound before I felt him crawl over to sit on the floor beside me. He whispered, “I think so. His eye looks kinda swollen.”
One eye did look bigger than the other one. “Yeah. Do you think he’s hurt? I mean, he shouldn’t be hanging out like that, right? Just standing there?”
“I don’t think so.”
We sat there quietly together, watching the bird watch us. Minutes passed, and he didn’t fly away. He didn’t do anything.
“Should we see if we can get it to fly away?” I asked quietly. “So we can tell if it’s hurt?”
“I guess.”
We both started to get up, and reasoning hit me. I patted him on the shoulder to get him to stay down. “No, let me. Maybe he’s a Navy SEAL hawk that doesn’t give a fuck, and if we scare him, he’ll attack. You can drive me to the hospital if he gets me.” I thought about it. “Do you know how to drive?”
“Dad taught me a long time ago.”
I eyed him. “Do you have a permit?”
The expression on his face said it all. He didn’t.
“Oh well.”
I was pretty sure Amos snickered a little bit, and it made me smile.
Not going too fast or too slowly, I got to my feet. I took a step forward, and the bird didn’t give a shit.
Another and then another step and still, he refused to do anything.
“He should’ve flown off by now,” Am whispered.
That’s what I was worried about. Ready to cover my face if he decided to go crazy on me, I kept going closer and closer to the bird, but he didn’t care. His eye was definitely swollen, and I could see the discoloration of blood on his head. “He is hurt.”
“Yeah?”
I got two feet away from the hawk. “Yeah, he’s got a gash on his head. Aww, poor little baby. Maybe his wing is hurt too since he’s not going away.”