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)
He lowered his head then, and I could tell he was thinking about it.
He nodded.
As he handed over his notebook, I pointed at the acoustic guitar he had propped up on a guitar boat at his side, and he passed that over too, along with a guitar pick. I ignored the raised eyebrow he was shooting at me. This child never believed.
Beside me, Yuki threaded her fingers together. “Oh, I love it when you sing!”
I groaned, propping the lightweight guitar across my lap and sighed. “I’m not that great at singing and playing at the same time,” I warned the two teenagers, one of whom was staring at me intently and the other who I was pretty sure hadn’t heard a single word out of my mouth because she was too busy still staring at Yuki. “So it’s just an idea,” I said, even though we’d worked together enough to know that everything was just an idea until it had been tweaked to the second.
“You’re gonna sing?” Amos asked slowly.
I wiggled my eyebrows. “Unless you want to?”
That got him to stop talking, but it didn’t get him to look any less dubious.
“What about you, Jackie? You want to?” I asked my coworker.
That got her to snap out of it. She looked at me too and shook her head. “In front of Yuki? No.”
With the notebook propped on my knee, I closed an eye and whispered the words under my breath to get the timing of them okay. Clearing my throat, I heard the distinct sound of tires on the driveway.
I remembered the chords he played along with the lyrics the day his dad and I had overheard him and was going to stick to them. They were simple enough for me to follow since I wasn’t specifically talented enough to play difficult things and sing at the same time; it had to be one or the other. Figuring it was as good as it was going to get, I started. There wasn’t a nervous bone in my body. Yuki knew I wasn’t Whitney or Christina. Then again, no one was Whitney or Christina. I wasn’t Lady Yuki either.
I found a book yesterday
with stories I cannot speak
empty and hollow
the words are nothing but bleak
Okay, this was going well. I smiled a little at Am, whose mouth was slightly gaped, before I kept going. There wasn’t much left.
Maybe there is a map
To find the happiness in me
Don’t let me be
Left to sink into the debris
I dipped straight into the chorus because it was what he had written since I hadn’t convinced him to save it for a little later.
We rise and fall with the tide
I cannot be led
Nowhere left to hide
The fire must be fed
Yuki caught on to the rhythm and started tapping her foot, smiling wide. “Do it again!” she cheered.
I smiled back at her and nodded, doing the chorus once more and then starting from the beginning, doing it a little easier, tapping my foot to keep the time. My friend gestured me to sing it once more, but this time, her sweet voice joined in, clearer, higher, and more piercing than mine.
Some people in life just had it, this talent embedded into their DNAs that made them extra special, and Yuki Young was one of them.
And it was the same vibe I’d gotten from Amos. This ability to make me break out in goose bumps.
So I smiled as she sang along the parts she’d memorized and eyed the two teenagers sitting on the floor, staring at us. And when I got to the end of the chorus, I grinned at my friend and said, “Good, right?”
Yuki was already nodding and smiling so wide, I couldn’t have loved her more for being so sweet to my new friend. “He wrote that? You wrote that, Amos?”
He nodded quickly, gaze going from her to me.
“Great job, teddy bear. Just great, great job. That line about being left to sink into the debris…” She nodded again. “That was really good. Memorable. I loved it.”
Amos’s eyes swept to me, and just as he opened his mouth, another much deeper voice spoke up from behind me.
“Wow.”
I turned to look over my shoulder to find Mr. Rhodes standing just inside the garage. Dressed in that incredible uniform with his arms crossed over his chest, feet wide apart, he was smiling. Faintly, but it was definitely there.
Probably because of Yuki’s beautiful voice.
But it was me he was looking at. Me that he was focusing that slim smile on.
I smiled right back at him.
“I didn’t know you sang!” Jackie shouted out of nowhere.
I turned my attention back to her. “I’ve sat through a lot of voice lessons. I’m not bad, but I’m not good.”
Beside me, Yuki snorted. I didn’t even spare her a glance. “What? I wish my voice was as husky as yours.”