It was three weeks later when Tate finally decided that it was time to visit Angela's school. Everyday he saw her it seemed she was nursing some new wound. For the most part they seemed small and insignificant a few scratches here and there but Tate noticed things. Things like the way Angela would wince if she stretched her torso too far. Or the way she'd make a face when he boxed her shoulder playfully. It was in every move she made; it was in written into her very essence. Someone was hurting her and Tate wouldn't stand it anymore.

1:47 pm was when he spotted her. She had a slight limp and on her right leg was another white bandage. Tate frowned at that, a deep disturbing frown that was too dark for someone so young.

He waited until she limped her way through double doors then checked to make sure the hallways were clear before following her. He was quiet as he opened the doors. Angela didn't even turn around when he stepped into the room.

The room was large with a very high ceiling. The walls were plain and smooth with very few obstructions; they were made for bouncing sound. In the middle of the large room sat a small brown up right piano at which Anglea had seated herself.

"How'd you get past security?"

"Wha-huh?" Tate gasped.

He thought he'd been so sly. For a moment Tate just stood wide-eyed at her back then came quickly back to his senses.

"Fool-hardy luck and a immense charm," was his dazed response.

That got Angela to chuckle; was a surprisingly deep dark sound. Tate imagined if he could taste that sound it would be like sip of his mother's red wine, the one she kept locked in a cabinet that Tate could pick the lock to since he was 8.

"Do you want to hear a song?" Angela said so calm it was eerie.

Tate could only nod but then he realized she couldn't see him nod. He felt silly his pale cheeks flushing pink. So he shuffled grudgingly to the small girl at the piano who had made him feel so stupid with just a few phrases.

"Where can I sit?" Tate asked.

"Hmmm," Angela hummed thoughtfully, "you can sit on the ground I suppose."

"The ground!" Tate said like a spoilt child.

He had expected a place besides her on the piano bench.

"Of course," she said simply, "you can't sit besides me; I need the room to play."

Tate made a face of discontent. He had walked all the way from Westfield, dodged about five security guards jumped a fence and scaled a wall to see her and she wanted him to sit on the floor. He moved to sit against the bench so he could be close to her but she stopped him.

"No not there," she said, "against the piano."

Tate would have been upset but then he realized something was wrong. Angela had her eyes glued to the keys of the piano. He had done so much to visit her and she hadn't even said a proper "hullo". Something had to be wrong but instead of asking what it was Tate obeyed her command without any further comment.

When the two were finally in their proper positions, the song could begin. It was a song that Angela had become obsessed with. It was a song that haunted both her sleeping and waking mind. The notes were carved on the pink fleshy insides of her eyelids. Every sound, every beat even her own breathing seemed to fall into sync with that song.

Tate pressed the back of his skull into the wood of the instrument trying his very best to hear what it was trying to tell him. He was sure if he could disentangle all those chords or interpret those note then they would tell him where she really got that shiner. They would tell him who gave her that cut on her cheek and that limp. That song would tell him who had to pay.

The song was soft and sad like the whisper of a blonde woman with red lips and a dress that would catch fire in the light. It was deep and warm like the bright red hair of a woman in black who used to bring Tate sweets and smile when he said his thanks. Then it was violent like the screams of a child torn apart then sown back together only to find it had naught the heart of a boy but of swine. Angela's fingers hit the keys down and down like a knife into the back of a young sweet nurse named Maria, then there were hiccups like splashes of a drowning woman too slow and scared to survive.

It was a song that Tate had never heard before but he could have sworn it had been written on his heart since as long as he could remember. It had been his lullaby and as it went on and he began to drift off until

APOWIEHAPOIGN;LKN;IJ:KLVJZIOWEHPIU BHPGZ;KLEGJ!

Angela slammed her fits down onto the keys as if to punish them for being wrong. Everything was wrong.

"It's not right," Angela screamed as loud as her little voice would allow, "it's all wrong, all wrong."

Tate's ears were ringing and his head was spinning but he was by her side immediately. She sobbed and her little body shook so violently Tate was sure she would break. He didn't understand. The song hadn't told him her secrets. It had only given him memories of a past that was obscured and strange to him.

"Shhh," Tate said whispered desperate to calm her, "it's okay, everybody is wrong, everything is wrong."

He tried to gather her in his arm but she wouldn't let him. She raged against him, scratching at his skin and putting her fists to whatever flesh they could find. Her elbows were smudges in the air banging against the keys and wood of the stand up piano.

"Don't touch me," she screamed, "don't touch me."

"Shhhh," Tate said cooing now the sound of it hoarse and shaking, "it's me. I'm here. I'm here."

At the sound of his reassurance she calmed more from exhaustion than acceptance. She breathed in heavy sobs and gasped for air. Her limbs no longer flailed and her though her chest was heaving she didn't scream. She let herself be held. Her head pressed against Tate's sternum.

"It's all wrong, Tate," Angela muttered delirious into his chest, "I keep trying to get it down but nothing works, it won't leave me alone."

The sound of her ranting scared Tate. Angela was sweet and calm. She was cool breeze and twinkle eyes not smudging elbows and violent phalanges. She was all wrong. She wasn't Angela but he held on nonetheless. He cooed at her and stroked her hair. She looked like Angela and smelled like her too. She was just a little lost.

"Everything is wrong, Ang, everything is broken," he said trying his best to comfort her, "it's just the way of the world."

This seemed to still her. Her sobbing ceased and only sniffles remained. Her breathing calmed save for a few hitches here and there. Then she spoke her voice calm and cool.

"I can hear your heart Tate," she mumbled into his damp Nirvana t-shirt, "it's talkin' to me."

"What does it say?" Tate replied closing his eyes at the sound of her voice.

It was Angela again.

"It says," she said her voice getting soft; she couldn't bring herself to say what she heard, "I'm tired, I'm very very tired."

"It shouldn't be telling my secrets like that," Tate mumbled his voice growing soft and small.

"It can't help it Tate," Angela said, "internal organs don't lie, they can't."

He knew what she was saying. She was saying sorry, because he knew that she knew that he knew she had lied to him. She had been lying about the bike incident. She had been lying about everything. What a tedious web they had woven.

A/N: And so the fall begins.