The three miles seemed a lot longer when there was a warm, fast ride at my fingertips. “Yeah, thanks.”

Ten minutes later, we climbed the hill to my house.

“Is that The New Girl?” The defensive lineman stared out his window.

Bay? I shot to the window.

She rode down the street headed away from her house.

I checked the time. Where the hell was she going on her bike at one am? Not to the party I’d just left.

She’d never even driven by a party I’d been to since she moved to Greenwood.

Her coat flapped behind her. The pink gloves stood out against the pitch-black night.

The question swirled even after I got home. The stillness of the house comforted me. No Sports Central blaring from the TV. No rattling liquor bottles or house-rumbling snores. Even the smell of grain alcohol was dissipating from the broken-down recliner. I threw open the windows to air the place out. Only blissful silence.

The melody from earlier came back to me. The one that had been easy to drown out with thumping bass and drunk seniors doing their best to recreate every teen movie they’d ever seen in one night.

I stared out my window at the dark house behind mine. Had she snuck out her window?

A girl like Bay should’ve closed her school books and turned in without giving a thought to the alcohol-induced havoc happening across town.

A girl like Bay had a voice that could tap into emotions I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling and make me crave them like an addict looking for his next fix.

A girl like Bay would want nothing to do with someone like me. And I needed to keep my distance from a girl like that.

So, what the hell was a girl like her doing riding her bike away from home this late at night? I lay in my bed, staring up at my ceiling.

She faded into the background, never wanting anyone to pay attention, but there was a voice inside of her. Not only the one she sang with, but the melody that thudded in my chest like the perfect 50-yard pass. She might try to blend in, but if anyone else heard her sing a single note they’d never forget her. In less than three minutes she’d made me feel scary things I should run from.

Why did the need to know what other secrets she was hiding have me twisted up in knots after a single song?

3

Bay

Closing the backdoor behind me, leaving the warmth of our overtaxed heater behind, I sat and rested my dad’s Martin guitar on my lap. Wasn’t it supposed to be April?

The first hint of not-absolute-crap weather and I needed to get outside. Freak snow storms, icy rain, hail, blistering winds and pelting rain had stretched deep winter far beyond when I’d have hoped for a ray of warm sunlight.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers. At least the ground wasn’t sopping wet.