All In My Head (First Tracks Book 1) by Kristen James

small table by the window, away from two men in
business clothes at another table and a group of women eating lunch together.
After glancing through the menu, I caught up on texts.
    So …   Nash really wants to get together tonight.
    You could tell him you have to catch up on homework. Which you
do. You’ve been slacking a lot lately.
    Whatever, Mr. Let’s-take-off-for-the-day.
    I ordered fish and chips and a Shirley Temple. Marcus was
jonsing for a beer. I was still twenty so legally I couldn’t order him one,
even if I wanted to.
    Did you like that song, the one without words yet? I’ve been
working on it a long time. It’s called “Sweet Night.”
    Yeah, I did. It was … it had a longing to it.
    I opened the novel and tried to read a few lines, but my
mind was buzzing. He remembered something!
    “So, Marcus, we know you like snowboarding, running and
playing guitar. Oh, and drawing. You can remember a song you’ve been writing...
Can’t you remember what inspired it? If it’s about someone?”
    I noticed a woman across the restaurant watching me. Oops.
I’d said that out loud, but I didn’t think she could hear me …
    Marcus was quiet, thinking. I didn’t want to interrupt in
case something was forming. I read a couple pages; I was dying to get lost in a
book again. I hadn’t gotten back to Goldfinch since this whole thing
started. Sighing, I opened Google on my phone and searched, “Marcus, guitar
player.” I followed several links: a guy’s Facebook page but he was sixteen and
didn’t look right at all.
    Uh … how’s that?
    The guy in the picture was too skinny for one thing, and his
face looked mean to me for some reason. What do you think?
    Okay, sorry. No.
    He laughed and I checked out several other results. It
didn’t look like there was some famous Marcus in a band.
    You know … there’s a few things that have popped up, like a
memory, but I don’t know what they mean.
    Okay, share.
    So different words and phrases have come to me in a foreign
language. It’s clear in my mind for a second and then gone again before I can
really pick it apart. I think some are French and German, maybe even Russian.
    Russian? Whoa. Well … interesting. What could that mean?
That you traveled a lot, maybe for work?
    Could be. I have seen a lot of airport scenes. And then snow,
but that’s a part of snowboarding. Then I’ve been dying for some good micro
brew and a Swiss mushroom steak, which doesn’t tell me anything because that’s
so typically male.
    My food arrived. While eating, I got another text from Nash …
and I went ahead and said he could come over that evening to hang out. It was
just my luck that he was finally interested when things were so messed up for
me. That might be partly why I decided to see him, to feel normal again.
    Oh, Avery. Normal is boring.

Chapter Ten
     
    Halfway home, something in the engine went thump. I
listened, wondering if I’d hit something, then black smoked puffed out of the
edges of the hood and flew back and over the windshield.
    I pushed the brake and put on my hazards—but now what? Marcus?
    A car honked because it had to swerve around me. Jerk! I pulled
off onto the shoulder, making the car jostle over the edge and wind down to a
stop. I turned the key off even though it sounded like the engine had died
already. Traffic zoomed by while I stared, open-mouthed, at the smoke.
    I asked Marcus, “Do you know anything about cars?”
    I know to put gas in the gas tank and get the oil changed.
    Terrific. The smoke caught up into the air and whiffed
around, swirling one way and then the other. A semi-truck blared by, making
wind push against the car, and more cars zoomed behind that. The clouds from
earlier had cleared out, leaving a pristine blue sky that contrasted against
the vibrant green hills. Out in the distance, it looked like a perfect, sunny
day, until the black engine smoke got in the way.
    “What am I going to do?” I picked up my phone, wondering