At exactly 12:14 a.m., Alex Dunphy lay in bed with the lights off, earbuds in, and a blank expression on her face as the same fifteen seconds of sound played on loop inside her head.
There was no actual file. No saved recording.
Just memory.
And her memory was too good.
Every note. Every syllable. Every line of Elias's song — etched like a permanent tattoo across her neurons. The way his voice cracked in the third verse. The way the final piano chord didn't resolve. The way he sang like he was scared someone would hear, and like he didn't care if he broke in the process.
Alex had heard talent before.
She'd studied genius.
She'd been the smartest person in every room she entered since she could talk.
But this?
This wasn't smart.
This was something else entirely.
Something she couldn't define.
And that made it worse.
She rolled over and groaned into her pillow, jamming the volume up on a random YouTube lo-fi playlist. It didn't help. Every other voice sounded fake now. Like someone pretending to feel things Elias had actually felt.
Ugh.
Morning came too fast.
And it came with Haley.
"Hey, Dark Academia," Haley said, standing in Alex's doorway with a cup of yogurt. "You've been listening to sad music all night or crying over a math textbook?"
"Neither."
"You have music-bruise face."
"That's not a thing."
"It is. I get it whenever The 1975 releases an acoustic version of anything."
Alex sat up, hair sticking out in several directions. "What do you want?"
"To know who the mystery boy is."
"There's no mystery boy."
Haley gave her a long, knowing look. "Sure."
Alex scowled.
At school, things got worse.
She missed a question in AP Bio.
Alex Dunphy missed a question.
The teacher raised an eyebrow. "You okay?"
"Fine," she muttered, flipping the page too hard.
Even Luke noticed at lunch.
"Why are you blinking like you're buffering?"
"I'm not."
"You look like someone who discovered empathy and isn't handling it well."
"I swear to God—"
But she trailed off.
Because across the quad, she saw Elias, sitting alone on a bench, headphones on, head tilted slightly back.
Still.
Completely still.
Like someone who didn't need to be part of the world around him to understand it.
Alex turned away.
But later, in the library, she googled: "How do people with perfect pitch learn to compose original music?"
Then: "Can memory be too accurate?"
Then: "Can someone's voice change your mood chemically?"
She didn't know what she was looking for.
Only that she hadn't stopped hearing him, and she wasn't sure if that was terrifying or thrilling.