The Note Between the Pages
The alarm went off at 6:15, exactly, the way it always did, a thin electronic bleat that Emily silenced before it could sound twice. She had learned years ago that a second ring meant her father's footsteps in the hallway, meant his knuckles against her door, meant the day beginning on the wrong foot before her feet had even touched the floor.
She lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling where a water stain had bloomed into the rough shape of a bird, wings spread as if it might lift off the plaster and fly straight through the roof. She used to make up stories about that stain when she was small — a phoenix, a dove, once even a dragon during a particularly imaginative phase — but lately it just looked like a stain. Some things lost their magic. She was starting to understand that.
The house was quiet in the particular way her father liked it: no radio drifting up from the kitchen, no television murmuring in the background, no music at all. Music, according to Mr. Johnson, was a distraction, something that scattered the mind instead of sharpening it. He'd said as much the one time Emily had dared to hum along to a song on her phone during breakfast, and she'd never made…