What possessed her to do anything? Ideas filled her up from head to toe and then she was doing the idea. She had no idea what possessed other people to not do things when they had ideas like that.

“If I was your bandmate,” he said. “I’d want to kill you, heh.”

She felt a stab of fear.

“If I was your teacher, at an event this important? I’d want to beat your ass until the crack stuck out and the cheeks pointed in.”

The fear transformed into something else. She had a hard time picturing what he described, but even trying to imagine that scene left her filled with a restless kind of uncomfortableness, one that wormed its way into the center of her head and belly, and made that stab of fear something less stabby and more constant.

She was afraid to ask, but—

“What about my mom?”

“I bet she’s regretting paying for the drum set and lessons, child.”

She wasn’t going to pay anymore. The drumset? Would she send it back? This was the opposite of what she wanted.

What would she even do?

Choked with fear, to the point it was hard to breathe, she fidgeted with her sticks.

They would take away her drumsticks when they took the drums.

She heaved in another breath before she’d even fully exhaled the other. Feeling a panicked edge, she looked around, searching for something. She had no idea what. It wasn’t like there was a magic switch she could throw that would make everything better or undo what had just happened.

“Hey, you okay?”

She wasn’t okay. If she didn’t have drums she’d have nothing and nobody. She’d have nothing she was great at anymore. She’d—she’d have day after day of waiting for the day to be over so she could drum all the stress away, but without the drumming the stress away. Just waiting and hating every moment.

If they didn’t kill her. Or cave in her butt, or whatever.

But the drums most of all.

“Kid, I wasn’t being serious. Can you look at me?”

She struggled, pulling away. If she ran—

And in the process, she saw the students from her music school filing into the hallway. Mrs. Wall was there.

“Oh my god, you loser!”

“What were you thinking?”

“Children, please, quiet!”

“She’s not listening,” the man said.

“She has issues, delays. If you’ll just—” Mrs. Wall struggled to wade through the group of kids. “Let me through!”

“Idiot!” Jeremy jeered. Even he didn’t think it was hilarious.

And behind the group, at the very end of the hallway, moving forward like a dark storm, was her mom.

Bella looked away, squeezing her eyes shut.

The thump in her chest became a THOOM like none other, and she could see out of that thoom like she could see out of her mind’s eye.