I wrote the book.I wrote the songs.I play Xavier.

The eviction notice arrived on a Tuesday.

Xavier Jones found it wedged in the door frame of apartment 4C when he returned from his shift at Pete's Auto Shop, the orange paper bright as a warning flare against the peeling green paint. He pulled it free and read it twice, his oil-stained fingers leaving dark smudges on the margins.

FINAL NOTICE: Rent payment 90 days overdue. Vacate premises within 30 days or face legal action.

Inside, Mama Ruth sat in her duct-taped recliner, watching a game show with the volume too loud. She didn't look up when he entered, but her hands were folded tight in her lap—the way they always were when she was pretending everything was fine.

"They came by today," she said during a commercial break. Her voice was carefully neutral. "The manager. Said we need to pay something by Friday or they'll start the process."

Xavier set the notice on the kitchen counter, on top of the other bills they couldn't pay. Electric company. Water department. A collections letter from the hospital after Mama Ruth's fall last winter. The stack had grown thick enough to serve as a coaster.

"How much do we have?"

"Hundred and forty-three dollars. Not near enough."

He did the math quickly. His paycheck Friday would be three hundred and twelve dollars after taxes. Rent was eight hundred. They were still four hundred short, and that was before they bought food or paid anything else.

"I'll figure something out," he said.

"Baby, you been saying that for three months."

Xavier didn't have an answer for that. He walked to his corner of the living room—the space he'd claimed years ago, marked off by milk crates holding his secondhand keyboard, an ancient desktop computer, and a tangle of cables connecting equipment that should've stopped working years ago.

He powered on the keyboard. The action was automatic, habitual, the same thing he did every evening after work. Music was the only thing that made sense when everything else was falling apart.

His fingers found the keys before his mind caught up. A minor chord progression, something melancholy that matched his mood. Then his left hand started walking a bassline—nothing he'd planned, just muscle memory searching for something to say.

"Not tonight, Xavier." Mama Ruth's voice cut through. "Mrs. Johnson already complained twice this week."

"I'll keep it low."

"That's what you said yesterday. Woman banged on the wall for twenty minutes."

Xavier's hands hovered over the keys. The music was still in his head, a melody that needed to come out or it would eat him alive from the inside. But Mama Ruth was right. Mrs. Johnson had already threatened to talk to the building manager, and they couldn't afford any more problems.

He powered down the keyboard.

The silence that followed felt oppressive, thick with everything they weren't saying. Mama Ruth returned her attention to the television. Xavier stared at his equipment setup, at the keyboard that had cost him two months of savings five years ago, at the computer he'd bought broken and taught himself to repair.

Ten years of this. Ten years of practicing until his fingers cramped, of learning music theory from YouTube videos, of teaching himself piano and guitar and production while working forty hours a week at jobs that left him smelling like motor oil and desperation. And what did he have to show for it?

Seven hundred songs that nobody had heard. A SoundCloud account with forty-three followers. Equipment that barely functioned. And an eviction notice on the kitchen counter.

His phone buzzed. Text from Jerome: "Session tonight at my place. You coming?"

Xavier looked at Mama Ruth, at the exhaustion carved into her face, at hands that had worked factory jobs for forty years before arthritis made it impossible to continue.

"Can't. Money's tight."

"When is it not? Come anyway. Bring that new track you were working on."

Xavier turned off his phone. Jerome didn't understand—couldn't understand—what it meant to be this broke. Jerome's family had money. Not rich, but comfortable. His home studio had equipment Xavier could only dream about, purchased by parents who saw music as a nice hobby for their son before he got a real job.