Demi sat in the hard wooden chair. Her fingers hovered over the keys of her machine. To anyone else, it looked like a tiny piano. To her, it was a trap. She lived in the space between sounds. She could hear the way a person’s breath hitched before they told a lie. She could hear the dust hitting the floor.
She needed this noise. At home, the silence was too loud. It had been two years since she lost her daughter, Sarah, to a car that didn’t stop. The silence in Sarah’s bedroom was a physical weight that pressed against Demi’s chest until she couldn’t breathe. In this courtroom, the words of criminals and victims acted like a blanket. They covered the sound of her own heart breaking.
Omar sat on the witness stand. He was a small man with eyes that moved like nervous flies. He was supposed to be talking about a money deal. But as he spoke, Demi felt the hair on her arms stand up. Omar wasn’t just talking. He was performing.
“The **S**un **I**s **G**oing **H**ome,” Omar said.
Demi’s fingers flew. On her screen, the words looked normal. But she heard the rhythm. He stressed the first letter of every word. S. I. G. H.
“**T**oday **H**e **E**ats **B**read,” Omar continued. “The **A**pples **I**n **L**ondon **I**nside **F**our **F**rames.”
T-H-E B-A-I-L-I-F-F.
Demi felt a cold spike of ice go down her spine. Omar was spelling it out. He was signaling something. She looked up, her eyes scanning the room. In the very back row sat a man named Troy. He was wearing a grey suit that fit him like a second skin. He wasn’t looking at Omar. He was staring at Demi’s hands.
Troy knew. He knew she was the only one who could hear the code in the phonetics. He was watching her fingers move on the keys. If she stopped typing, or if she reached for her phone, he would know she had figured it out. He kept one hand inside his jacket. The grip of a gun showed for a split second, a dull metal tooth biting into the light.
“**H**as **A**nyone **S**een **A** **G**un?” Omar asked the room. He made it sound like a joke. The lawyers laughed.
Demi’s throat went dry. Her tongue felt like a piece of sandpaper. She looked at the bailiff, Jax. He was standing near the judge. Jax was a good man. He had been the one who held Demi’s hand at the funeral when her own husband was too drunk to stand. Jax was looking out the window, bored. He didn’t see the wolf in the back row.
Omar started a new sentence. “**N**ow **O**ver **W**est. **G**o **U**nder **N**ow.”
NOW GUN.
Demi’s heart hammered against her ribs like a bird in a cage. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t run. Troy was leaning forward now. He was reading her hands like a book. If her fingers hit the keys for “HELP,” the movement would be different. The chords on a stenography machine are specific. He was a pro. He knew the shapes of the words.
She had to save Jax. She had to save everyone.
She thought of Sarah. She thought of the day she had seen that car speeding down the street and said nothing because she thought it would turn. She wouldn’t be silent this time. But she had to be smart.
She began to type the transcript, but she added a “drift” to her left hand. She began to make mistakes. This was unheard of for Demi. She was the best in the state. She struck the keys for “STET,” which meant *let it stand*, but she hit them with a rhythmic thud.
*Thump. Thump-thump. Thump.*
It was the heartbeat of a panic attack. She looked at the judge’s monitor. The judge, a tired man with heavy eyes, noticed the screen flickering with errors. He frowned. He looked at Demi.
She didn’t look back. She kept her eyes on her keys, but she let a single tear fall. It hit the “A” key with a soft splash. She made her fingers dance in a pattern that made no sense for the words Omar was saying. She was typing a poem she had written for Sarah, but she was using the phonetic sounds for “Back row gun” over and over.
*B-R-G. B-R-G. B-R-G.*
Jax finally looked over. He saw Demi’s hands shaking. He saw the way her face was white as a ghost. He knew Demi. He knew she didn’t shake. He followed her line of sight, not to the witness, but to the screen.
The screen was a mess of nonsense letters. But Jax saw the pattern. He looked at the back row. He saw Troy.
Troy realized the shift in the room. The air became heavy, like it does right before a lightning strike. Troy started to pull his hand from his jacket.
Demi didn’t stop typing. She slammed her hands down on the final keys, the sound cracking through the quiet room like a gunshot. It was the code for “End of Session.”
“Get down!” Jax screamed.
The room exploded. Jax tackled the judge. Lawyers scrambled under tables. Demi dove beneath her small desk as a bullet shattered the marble wall where her head had been a second before. The sound was deafening. It was the loudest thing she had ever heard.
She curled into a ball. Her fingers were still moving, ghost-typing on the carpet. She could smell the gunpowder. It smelled like burnt matches and old pennies.
She heard the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor. She heard the grunt of a man being cuffed.
“I got him,” Jax’s voice broke through the ringing in her ears. “Demi, I got him.”
She crawled out from under the desk. Her dress was covered in white marble dust. She looked at the back of the room. Troy was pinned to the floor, his face pressed against the wood. Omar was weeping on the stand, his secret code finally over.
Jax walked over to her. He was breathing hard. He reached out and touched her shoulder. “How did you know?”
Demi looked at her hands. They were still trembling. For the first time in two years, the silence in her head didn’t feel like a monster. It felt like a clean slate. She reached out and took Jax’s hand. Her voice was a small, broken thing, but it was there.
“I finally listened,” she said.
She walked out of the courtroom. The sun was hitting the lobby floor in long, golden strips. It looked like the keys of her machine. She realized she would never go back inside. She didn’t need the noise anymore. She had found her voice by typing the words of a killer, and now, she was ready to speak her daughter’s name out loud again.