Ariana's POV
The silence of my bedroom was a lie.
To Mom and Dad, I was just a girl sitting on her bed with her eyes closed. They saw a peaceful house in Oakhaven. But to me, the world was a screaming, tangled web of vibrations.
Every refrigerator hum in the neighborhood sounded like a jet engine. Every heartbeat in the house next door sounded like a drum.
I leaned my head against the cool glass window, trying to find the one thread I'd hooked into earlier.
Six hundred miles away.
I let my breath out slowly, visualizing the sound as a silver wire stretching across the dark heart of the country. I bypassed the static of the local radio towers and the white noise of the highway traffic. I searched for the specific, filtered resonance of an air-conditioned room and the hushed, arrogant tones of men who thought they were invisible.
