By track four, “Notepad,” Leo had tears on his cheeks. But for the first time, he didn’t feel weird about it. The album wasn’t sad—it was honest. It was someone saying, Yeah, I’m a mess. But I’m not running from it.

Leo’s throat tightened. He thought about the locked door in his own mind—the one where he kept the memory of his grandfather’s funeral, the sound of his mother crying in the kitchen, the report card he’d hidden under his bed. NF wasn’t rapping about mansions with pools and gold. He was rapping about a mind with too many rooms, some of them filled with monsters.

He found a site with a bright green “DOWNLOAD MP3 (ZIP)” button. His finger pressed the screen. For a second, a spinning wheel. Then, a small checkmark: Saved to device.

Then he hit download on the deluxe edition.

Track two: “Mansion.”

Outside, the rain started to fall. Inside his earbuds, NF kept rapping about keys, and doors, and the slow, painful work of letting someone in.

He typed: download NF mansion album.

Leo stared at the cracked screen of his phone, the glow the only light in his bedroom at 2:17 a.m. His thumb hovered over the search bar. The house was silent—too silent. His parents had been fighting again, their muffled words like dull thunder through the walls. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t cry this time.