Chapter 6
Felix
Sofia hadn’t been home in three days. I’d never gone three days without seeing her, not since the day she was born, and it gave me a low-level anxious buzz.
We’d talked on the phone and she’d texted, so I knew she was alive and with the band, and that she’d been crashing in Coco’s guest room since they were working late into the night, but our apartment felt wrong without her. Falling asleep in the dark of the living room without knowing she was falling asleep in the bedroom, just a shout away, felt wrong.
She’d officially quit her job at Fordham and gotten her first paycheck as a professional musician. When I’d gone to check our online bank account before I paid rent yesterday, I’d done a double take at what I initially assumed was a bank error very much in our favor until I realized what had happened.
When I was fifteen and talked my way into a job waiting tables at the local diner, I saved up my tips all week. At the end of the week, when I got my paycheck in cash, I put all of it into an envelope and left it on the table for my mom. I’d gone to bed that night with a giddy pride coursing through me at being able to help my family.
It was pride I’d felt every time I picked up some extra shifts, knowing it meant that Sofia could afford the books for her classes or we could buy Mom a Christmas gift she’d like.
Last year the roof on my mom’s house had begun to leak, but repairs were costly, and she hadn’t been able to fix it yet. I hadn’t told her, or Sof, but ever since then I’d been putting a little money aside every week, and I hoped that by next year I’d be able to help her get it fixed.
Sofia’s first paycheck was more than I’d saved the whole year. A lot more.
When she did get home, she was glowing. She had a hundred stories to tell me and a hundred pictures to show me, and songs to sing me.
I sat on the couch and soaked up my sister’s light like a moon.
Riven was going to make the announcement about Sof being their new lead singer in a week, at the same time they surprise-dropped a new single with her on vocals. The track was what they’d been working so hard on.
Sofia had met with a stylist and gotten a dozen new outfits, and she’d gotten her hair cut by someone other than my mom or me for the first time in her life. She’d had professional pictures taken with the band. In the shots, she and Coco grinned at the camera, heads tilted together. She and Ethan, Riven’s drummer, gave thumbs-up signs to the camera with their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. She and Ven, Riven’s bassist, frowned dramatically, holding burgers up to hide their eyes.
I’d never seen her so excited, so alive. She gushed about each detail, and I couldn’t help but get excited right alongside her.
When she was there with me, she was the same Sofia. My sister. My best friend. My confidante. The person who thought I was dependable and hilarious and had always wanted me to come with her to every party.
She was set to leave on tour in three weeks.
* * *
—
The night Riven announced Sofia as their new singer, I woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air, my heart racing so fast I was light-headed. I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming, but the darkness felt like it was pressing in on me from all sides and I scrambled to turn on the bedside lamp.
“Sof?” I choked into the darkness before I realized she wasn’t there.
I pressed my palm to my heart and could feel it trip, hammering in panicked beats. I bent over at the waist, forcing my lungs to fill, and tried to calm my shallow gasping breaths.
Gradually, my pulse slowed and my breathing deepened, but I felt shaky and afraid. It was four a.m. and my alarm was set for six anyway. Instead of going back to sleep, I took a cool shower and put on a mindless, cheery audiobook I’d listened to a dozen times. I sipped coffee and forced my attention avidly on the story until it was the time I’d usually wake up. Then I left the house early, earbuds still firmly in place, as if any intrusion of the real world into the one I was occupying might wound me, and made my way slowly to work.
When I looked at my phone on my lunch break, I had dozens of messages from people I hadn’t talked to in ages, saying they’d seen the news about Sofia and asking questions. I closed the phone without answering any and texted Sof, Literally everyone I’ve ever spoken to has been asking about you today, and an only-eyes emoji. She didn’t respond before the end of my break.