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Kamila likes sitting in the park, and looking at the stars. Her Mom used to tell her the constellations, and draw them out in the sky. She can try from the apartment, but the stars do not shine bright there, too many city lights and smoke which blocks out the shine.
So she likes to go to the park and wrap herself in old memories like a warm and familiar blanket.
In the quiet of the park, she hears someone approaching. She tenses, until the coo of his pigeon alerts her to his identity.
"Pigeon man."
"You could at least call me by my title, young lady."
She looks back up at the sky instead of responding.
"You like Rube Goldberg machines, don't you?"
"Not anymore."
"Not anymore? What do you mean by that?"
"I don't want anything to do with them anymore?"
"Oh? So what do you do with your time?"
"I listen to music."
"What do you listen to?"
She listens to Linkin Park. She heard his new song- waiting for the end- and looked up their entire discography. It feels very relatable to her life at the moment. Like, someone out there understands what she's feeling and put it into words.
Her mother is dead, and everyone thinks her father killed her. But Kamila knows the truth.
Instead of answering that, she asks a question of her own.
"Why are you trying to trick me?"
"What do you mean, young lady?"
"You don't really care about what music I am listening to, it's just a distraction until you ask what you really want to know. "
He sighs. " Rather, I was hoping you would show me the trick of this."
He brings out her old blueprints.
She doesn't have to look closely. She knows this device by touch. Remembers the giddy excitement of setting it up for her mother's birthday.
"I don't want to talk about it. So if I talk about it, I want something in return."
"What is it?"
"I want new headphones." Her old ones, ones her Dad had gotten her, had gotten crushed in her pocket when she tripped.
He hands her the blueprints, and she starts talking about a topic she once loved, and now can't bear to look at. She feels a wall come up, and it feels like someone else is talking and internally she is far away.
It's a new feeling, feeling so disconnected from her body. She can't say she likes it- it makes her clumsy and slow- but she doesn't know how to stop.
That's why she needs new headphones
At some point Pigeon Man leaves, and Kamila wraps her arms around herself and breathes until she feels like she is mostly back to herself.
When she walks home, her tears fall beneath the starlit sky.
The next day she could almost believe she dreamt it.
But there's a box with her name on it. And inside are new headphones.