Chapter 8: How I Died

Hudson didn't laugh.

He didn't do the careful face people do when they think you're having a breakdown.

He just took his hand off the mouse and turned his chair all the way toward me.

"Okay," he said. "Tell me."

So I told him.

All of it, in order, the way I had never told anyone.

My voice stayed steady until I got to the bridge.

Then it didn't, and he waited, and I finished.

The studio was very quiet.

The meters had all gone still.

"I know how it sounds," I said.

"It sounds like the eleven songs you just sang," Hudson said. "Which nobody has ever heard. Which are better than anything on the radio."

"You believe me."

"I believe you know the last verses and won't sing them," he said.

"Nobody holds back a verse like that unless they've already paid for it."

My eyes stung.

I looked down at my hands.

"Can I ask one thing?" he said.

"Okay."

"Was I there?"

I nodded.

"What did I do?"

I almost didn't tell him.

It felt like handing somebody a letter they'd written and forgotten.

"You said my name into a microphone," I said. "Nobody listened but me."

He looked at me like I'd hit him.

His jaw worked.

"I'm glad I did that," he said finally, rough. "I'm sorry it was all I did."

"You didn't know me."

"I knew your voice," he said. "Since February."

"I should have said it the day that demo came in. In March. Not at a party seven years too late."

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