I came in through the propped door with the smell of the parking lot still on me, hot asphalt and someone's cigarette three streets back, and I found them dancing to nothing. A whole floor of them, arms up, hips swinging, mouths shaped around words I couldn't hear, each with a little glowing shell clamped over both ears.
Music that stays inside a head, that I can't lift or scatter or carry off, that I cannot even feel. That was new. I know sound. I've dragged church bells across valleys, thrown a mother's voice back to her before she meant to call. Every song I've ever met I've stolen and dropped somewhere else, still warm.
But this. This they had learned to keep. Not one note escaped into me.
So I did the only thing I know. I lifted the sweat off the back of a neck, cool for half a second, gone. I turned a green light red across a hundred faces, then chased it blue. I got under a girl's skirt and made her laugh mid-spin, and she didn't know it was me, thought it was the boy across from her, and reached for his sleeve.
I stirred the whole hot animal smell of them, breath and beer and someone's citrus something, and pushed it toward the door.
They were all hearing different songs. Alone together in the flashing dark, sealed up, mouthing choruses no one else was inside of. I've never envied the still ones a thing they own. But I wanted, just once, to be let in and kept.
The door swung shut. I was already out over the lot, carrying one girl's laugh she'll never miss, setting it down for someone a mile off who won't know where it came from.