Staring up at me were a pair of eyes I hadn’t seen in over ten years. My mom’s sad gaze met mine through the shattered glass in the splintered picture frame.

I dropped the helmet and slid down the workbench to the floor. My sides were screaming, aching, burning.

I flipped the mangled frame over and rescued the picture. Shame ripped through my chest. The dull throb of the bruise on my ribs didn’t compare to the lump in my throat.

Shaking off the haze and standing, like I’d broken through roots that had sprouted from my feet, I surveyed the rest of the damage. The glass glittered in the swinging overhead garage light and tinked to the concrete floor.

Even in a blind rage, my car had been spared the brunt of my anger. A couple scratches, but no real damage I couldn’t fix on my own. I grabbed the broom and cleaned up the glass, pieces of splintered wood, and bent and twisted metal. Unlike my old man, I cleaned up my own messes. The scrape and shower of glass into the trash can were the only sounds in the garage. What had I heard before?

No one was hurt. I repeated the mantra in my head. My dad didn’t care about the outlet for his frustrations for his fucked-up life—namely me. It’s what happens when you’re the reason someone’s wife was taken from them.

At least I only took my shit out on inanimate objects. They didn’t bruise or bleed, not that he cared.

I could make it out now. Music.

The sound started over, louder this time. It wasn’t someone’s radio. The melody started and stopped like a car that hadn’t had a key in the ignition in a long time. Drawn by a tug in the center of my chest, pulling me with a string I didn’t know I had, I walked to the back of the garage.

I opened the door leading to the back yard. Shielding my eyes from the last gasps of the setting sun, I searched for the source. It was coming from my back yard. Correction—her back yard.

Bay Bishop sat on her back steps with her eyes closed swaying as her fingers plucked and strummed the strings like nothing could rush her through the melody. But it wasn’t her guitar playing that drew me out of the fog of rage.

With her chin tilted toward the sky, her voice carried across our two back yards. Her hair was down, not like the ponytail she always wore. Inky waves of hair spilled down her back. A massive sweatshirt swallowed up half her body. The guitar was in her denim-covered lap.

Her left foot tapped to the beat and she rocked along to the melody.

The lyrics were lost in the wind, but the power of her voice, sweet and strong, powerful and vulnerable, hit me hard. Although she’d come to town a few years ago, her move into the vacant house behind mine was new, right before the beginning of our senior year.