In Your Dreams (Falling #4) Read Free Page A

I can see tables with drinks on them, and the viewpoint keeps moving around. The motion is making me a little sick, but eventually, I can make out just enough of a form to tell there’s someone sitting on a stool on a backlit stage.
    “This one’s called ‘In Your Dreams, Casey Coffield,’” a chick’s voice says suddenly over the uneven background noise.
    What the fucking hell?
    I hit the pause button out of panic and pull my feet in closer to my body while my fingers push into the volume tab on the side, turning it up as high as it goes. I look around, and nobody’s near me, so I slide the video back to the beginning and hit PLAY again.
    The same background sounds of laughter, talking, and clanking glass; then, there she is again. “This one’s called ‘In Your Dreams, Casey Coffield,’” she says again. I don’t know why I thought it would be different. Though, I do have vivid fantasies. But still…
    A few people applaud, and the lights go even dimmer. I can’t see her face, only a vague form. I think she’s in a dress, but I’m not even sure of that much. She could be just about anyone, but I swear I don’t know this girl.
    The strumming of the guitar starts soft, and then her voice comes in.
    “Shadow of a girl, lurking in other people’s shadows…let her go by, let her dance all alone…”
    I hit pause, and play that first part back a few times, trying to get a hint of familiarity in her tone—some clue with the lyrics, anything. The info under the link just says: WEDNESDAY SINGER SONGWRITER NIGHT AT PAUL’S. Where the fuck is Paul’s? I need to be on a computer, because now I’m opening more windows—Google searching for “Paul’s” and sifting through a list of seventy-some-odd options of places in Oklahoma, one a feed store, so I eliminate that right away. Shit…this might not even be in Oklahoma.
    I go back to the video and play from where I stopped.
    “Wonder what she sounds like, wonder if anyone’s ever seen her...would they watch her in a spotlight, or bother casting stone.”
    Goddamn she can sing. It’s like that quirky kind of style—her voice a little soft and jazzy, but with these raspy breaks that sound like crying, even though she’s not. She isn’t crying, but damn does this song feel sad. And it shares my name.
    Who is this girl?
    I text Eli: Where’d you get this?
    Thank god he writes back immediately, because I have a lot going on with the phone now, and I can’t juggle this much. Just Google searched your name and this came up. Weird, huh?
    Weird.
    Yes, weird. I’m not even going to touch the fact that my roommate is Google searching me now, but this is what comes up?
    I hit PLAY again and for several seconds listen to the guitar break. There’s nothing but she and some guy playing a snare with brushes. It’s soft and understated. Almost jazz, but not quite. Almost country, but not quite that either. These are real musicians. I’m a hack. I learned the shit I learned because I want to make riffs to fill in mixes. This girl—whoever the hell she is—she’s an artist.
    I lean forward and cup my hands around the phone wanting to get a better view, trying to block out some of the light. Everything is still too dark though. All I can see is the rapid movement of her arm moving along the body of the guitar balanced on one leg. I can also tell when she’s about to sing again, because her form leans in toward the mic.
    “In your dreams…Casey Coffield.”
    Pause.
    I play that last line again just to make sure I heard it correctly. I play it four more times. Then a fifth. And then, I turn it down and press the phone to my ear to play it once more, but quietly, because now there are people pulling into the mini mart and that line doesn’t sound like this girl likes me very much. Not that anyone knows my name, but it feels like they should with the bite in her verse.
    After about the seventh play through, I let the music keep going and listen to the rest of the