The night was sticky with rain and our high school smelled of chalk, old paper and cocoa from thermoses. Library Night. Sleeping bags spread between bookcases, torches hidden under blankets, whispered confessions rolling in waves through the library bustle. On Ms Anna's desk was a table microphone plugged into the school's sound system, next to it a mug with the words "I read, so I am" and a plate of biscuits that someone had baked for too long and still smelled of burnt edges. I sat on the floor between the reportage section and the shelf of atlases, cleaning the strings of my guitar with a tissue. In the seconds that my thumb glided along the metal strands, everything around me slowed down; the sound took me away from the crowd, from the stares, from the thoughts that are always one step ahead of me. Maja, my best friend, was filming a roll for the school's Instagram, catching yellow specks of lights and smiles. Igor, as usual with a camera slung over his shoulder, was hunting for stumbles from which he would later glue together tender and funny montages. Garlands of paper stars hung above our heads, and between them - quiet conversations about who we love, what we fear, what we remember. I put my fingers to the thresholds and a warm chord rang out. I mentally prepared myself to maybe, in this safe darkness, play something of my own to someone. At least the chorus. I still remembered the December school concert when my throat clenched after the first verse. The noise in my ears, the jumpers in the front row, my fingers wet with sweat. I walked off stage and for a few weeks even my shadow seemed too loud. Since then, I've been playing in secret - at six in the morning, when the school hadn't yet had time to wake up its corridors, in the storage room next to the gymnasium, where there was an immature keyboard with the H key peeled off. - 'Lena, are you coming on the open mic? - Maja leaned over me, her bracelets chiming like miniature raindrops. - Word of honour, no one will record without permission. I smiled out of the blue, where the corner of my mouth begins. I grunted, but my voice trailed off. Then a slight feedback farted in the speakers and instead of another poetic jam poem, the sounds I knew better than my signature flowed. A straight line traced a motif that I only played when I was alone. Three chords, again and again, and a pause. Then my whisper, uncertainly, almost indistinctly: "If you ever hear me, don't turn your head." I froze, as if someone had pressed a pause on my muscles. Maja looked at me wide-eyed, Igor raised his eyebrows. Someone in the corner raised their head from above their sleeping bag, and for a few seconds the library held its breath. - This... yours? - Maja slid her hand under my palm, as if checking to see if I was trembling too much. I didn't answer. The noise chased my thoughts away like the wind blowing leaves down the corridor. I combed my eyes over the ceiling, the speakers, the faces - looking for someone's smile, a wink, anything to explain how a snippet of my song had found its way into the school sound system. My phone vibrated in my jeans pocket. An unknown sender on the communicator. Account name: Echo. Profile photo missing, just a grey circle. "I hear you." "00:17 Gymnasium backstage." "Don't run away." I swallowed the dryness that suddenly stuck my tongue to my palate. I felt that strange, familiar weight in my stomach - a mixture of shame, curiosity and anger. Someone had touched something that was supposed to be mine. Someone put their hands in the pockets of my silence. - Is everything ok? - Igor crouched down, glancing at my screen. I pushed the phone away too quickly. - I need to... air my head,' I said. - I'll be back in a minute. Maja furrowed her eyebrows. - 'Do you want me to come with you? I shook my head, clumsily picking myself up. I left my guitar leaning against the bookshelf, as if someone would watch it for me. I passed the microphone table, felt the heat of a few curious stares on the back of my neck. Then it was just down the corridor - a long, cool tunnel into the middle of the night. The emergency lights glowed a milky green, a display case reflected my eyes and a row of dust-covered cups from a decade ago. There were posters on the walls with quotes about freedom of speech and a poster about the choice of extensions that wouldn't come down, even though it was long after recruitment. A dark silhouette of an anatomical skeleton flashed through the glass in the doorway of the biology room, which, under the circumstances, had the makings of a giggle. As I passed the chemistry room, I ran my finger over a chalk handprint on the doorframe - a trace of an earlier workshop. My own hands were also in chalk, as if I had so far touched something I was only just beginning to understand. "Are you?" - another message from Echo. "Who are you?" - I wrote, then deleted. I wrote again, "Where did you get this?" I sent before I had time to freak out again. The reply came almost immediately. "Before you say you didn't have the strength for it: you did. I heard. I heard." I paused. That "heard/heard" was strangely double, as if they couldn't make up their minds. As if they were each. "You have no right." - I reflexively bounced on the keyboard. "You have a right to sound too." Rights and sounds. These words collided with each other like two trolleys in a supermarket that someone had let loose on each other. There was a sense of transgression and of being pulled out of the corner I had chosen for myself. Part of me wanted to turn back, to hide in my sleeping bag, in May's laughter, in easy conversations. The other part was already counting the steps, matching my breath to the rhythm of the tiles: four on the inhale, six on the exhale. The entrance to the gymnasium smelled of rubber and dust. The dance floor was silent, smoothed and black at this hour. Nets swayed above the stage, as if catching night dreams. The door to the back room was ajar by a hand's width, and a narrow rectangle of yellow light crawled out from under it. My phone trembled once more. "Are you knocking or coming in?" My fingers went numb. I touched the door handle; it was as cold as the morning windowsill. I listened - first nothing, then a sort of quiet rustle, like papers sliding across the table. And the sound I dreaded most: barely tuned chords, exactly in the order I played when I thought no one could hear. Someone on the other side was touching the keys of an old keyboard, fumbling at the same unstuck letter of sound as me. One memory surged on top of another: a winter's day, freezing cold, my voice shattered against the silence of the auditorium; spring, empty mornings when I counted every step into the storage room; tonight, the speakers, the whisper of my own song pulled from between my ribs. My anger was like a cold fire stubbornly smouldering. "Why?" - I wrote. A shift, a three dot. "Because sometimes you have to hear yourself from afar to believe it." I pressed my lips together so tightly that I felt a metallic taste. Someone was guiding me as if along an invisible path pasted on the floor. And what I felt was no longer just fear. It was also shame that it was affecting me in this way. And something else: a kind of stubborn curiosity, the kind that doesn't let you sleep until you check where the light is coming from. Two images shifted in my head at once: me going in and me going out. Maya asking in the morning: "I?". The me who twists this "I" into a braid of silence. I moved my finger across the screen and surprised myself by recording a brief: "If it's a game, I'm not playing. But if you really want to talk, come out." I sent. I didn't listen to my own voice before sending. I had already disintegrated enough times on autotune in my head. There was a slight crackle on the other end, like a phone being put down on the table. The music fell silent. Through the crack I saw a shadow. Someone came closer and for a second the torchlight flicked on, sweeping over the nails in the wall, the crumpled ball netting, the grey boxes marked 'carnival - dress up'. The phone vibrated again, shorter this time. No words. Just an audio file sent: 0:07 I clicked. I heard my name, spoken slowly, as if someone was tasting the letters. They were in no hurry. They were not afraid. "Lena." I closed my eyelids and counted to five. At six I opened my eyes again. I moved my foot half a centimetre forward and another half. I touched the door handle harder. Everything in me was tense like a string just before impact. I knew that if I went in now, I would have to look back only to realise how nothing was going to go back into place. And - most surprisingly - I didn't feel that this was a bad thing. The light outside the door vibrated. An all too tired alarm wailed somewhere far away. The air stopped between me and the narrow rectangle of glow. Then the door handle moved in my hand from someone's side. One quiet click, as if someone on the other side had just decided for me. My breath caught in my throat and my name shone again in the on-screen neon on my phone, which trembled for the third time, as if trying to anticipate what I was about to see.