He Told Me to Stay Away, So I Left and He Followed novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Play Me in Seattle

The studio near the ferry terminal was exactly as Whitney's cousin had promised.

It was one room with a slanted ceiling, a hot plate, and a window that looked down on the water.

The cousin never appeared. The key was under a flowerpot, and a note on the counter said the radiator knocked.

I decided not to think about who had found me the room.

On my fourth night, I set the old yard-sale recorder on the floor and sat down with the thirteenth tape in my hand.

The ferry horn went off outside, two low notes, and the glass hummed in its frame.

I waited until it faded.

Then I pushed the cassette in and pressed play.

The hiss came first, warm and uneven.

Then a chair creaked, and I knew the chair.

It was the wobbly one at my desk in the apartment at Ridgemont, the one I kept meaning to tape up.

"Okay," Miles said.

His voice was lower than I remembered it from the phone, and tired.

"It's a Tuesday in February. You're at your seminar. Maggie let me in to get the charger."

My stomach dropped.

"I wasn't snooping. There was an envelope on your desk, and it was open, and it had a crest on it."

Paper rustled.

"Dear Ms. Dunning," he read. "We are delighted to offer you a place in the master's program in sound design at Cascade Conservatory in Seattle, Washington."

He read all of it, the dates and the funding and the line asking for her reply.

He read it slowly, without any expression at all.

Then there was a long stretch of nothing but tape hiss.

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