He Thought I Was Deaf, I Heard Everything novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Terms

I played the call three times, and then I took off the headphones and went downstairs.

Peter sat on the bottom step with his elbows on his knees.

The cut on his lip had dried dark.

He held a small black fob in one hand and a folded page in the other.

"I'm not here to explain," he said.

"Good."

"This isn't the log. The log says when I listened. This says what I heard."

He held the page out, and I took it.

His handwriting was small and square, the way it had been on our lab reports.

The ninth, two a.m.: you cried in the bathroom for ten minutes with the tap running.

The fourteenth: you said Junie's name in your sleep, twice, and then you said mine.

The sixteenth: you sang to the kettle, badly, and I laughed alone in my car.

The nineteenth: you practiced your own voice in the mirror, whispering, because you were afraid it was gone.

There were nine lines in all.

Not one of them was a secret I had told him.

I read to the end and folded the page small.

"You wrote this so I would know what you're holding," I said.

"So you'd know I'm not hiding any of it."

"That doesn't make it better."

"No."

I held out my hand.

He put the fob in my palm.

It was warm from his grip, black plastic with one red button under a sliding cover.

"The live channel runs through a radio chip behind your ear," he said. "That cuts its power. I made it this afternoon while you were reading."

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