Echoes of Silence (Unquiet Mind Book 1) by Anne Malcom Read Free Book Online Page A

needed music. If I could find a way to make a living out of that, great.
    But the amount of talented, passionate artists that made a living were few and far between, so I had to work hard. My mom had such unwavering belief in me, and she had worked so hard to give me the opportunity to be anything and everything. I didn’t want to let her down. I couldn’t let her down. So I worked hard at school. Hard.
    I didn’t trouble myself with boys mostly because I was too busy to worry about them. Partly because I’d never met any who I thought were worth venturing out of my books for, untangling myself from music for. And another part, one that I was unlikely to verbalize, knew I’d never find one to measure up to the kind of love I’d grown up with. That Jane Austen, Margaret Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, and The Beatles had made so beautiful.
    That fricking Walt Disney had tricked me into thinking was real.
    I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted a love as deep as the ocean, as unyielding as the wind, stronger than diamonds, and as unpredictable as a volcano. I wanted a love that made me crazy and sane at the same time. The feeling that the world slipped into place the moment you laid eyes on that person. Your person. The one meant for you.
    I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that most likely didn’t exist.
    And if by some miracle it did, I didn’t think I’d find it at sixteen.
    I didn’t want to find it at sixteen. I wanted to make it. Figure out where my life would take me first. I wanted to travel. I wanted to live first.
    But here I was, at sixteen, no idea what I wanted to do and having seen only two cities in my life, and I had this wondrous elation that I found it. Ridiculous and stupid was what most people would say if I verbalized it.
    Which was why I hadn’t. Not even to my mom. I’d hardly admitted it to myself.
    I had a cocktail of emotions threatening to explode, so I needed this empty room. The one I’d found when I was lost a couple of days ago. The one with the stage and the old piano in the middle of it.
    It wasn’t a guitar, but it was something. It offered me the solace, the quiet that music offered me.
    I sat down and lightly traced my hands along the keys. I wasn’t as good on the piano as I was with the guitar. With the guitar, I barely knew where my hands ended and the instrument began. But the moment I touched the keys, instinct took over and my entire body relaxed. I got lost in the music.
    I started to sing “Breathe” by Pearl Jam softly at first, the words running through me like a river. Everything fell away but the music, and I was able to silence my unquiet mind.
    As the last note of music flew off into the air, and my voice softly trailed off, I immediately heard all of the noise rush back in.
    Literally and figuratively.
    “Holy shit! You’re like... fucking amazing ,” an excited voice yelled.
    I jumped, nearly completely off the stool, my eyes snapping open.
    “Good one, scare the living shit out of the girl. She’ll run before we even get to talk to her,” another, quieter voice scolded.
    I watched a boy with spiky blond hair punch the one who yelled in the shoulder. He was wearing all black and had shoulder-length black hair. Despite being scared out of my wits, I appreciated his Joy Division tee. They were walking up the stairs to join me on stage, another with a beanie and who was seriously good looking followed silently, though he was grinning at me. They all were.
    “Please don’t say you’ve come here to murder me,” I joked lightly.
    All three of them chuckled. The one in the tee came to sit right next to me on the piano seat, not worrying about things like personal space with virtual strangers.
    “If we murdered you, what good would you be to our band?” he asked. “We need you alive, kicking, and preferably singing.” He furrowed his brows, looking at my hands resting on the keys of the piano. “We’ve already got a keyboardist,” he mused, frowning at the