Midnight Kisses| ✓

Chapter 13

Me and Novahk, we come up with a plan. He's here again tonight in my room, glancing around and trying to be comfortable on my green bean bag and glancing around, looking for something.

Today he didn't ask for my phone though. "You play the synthesizer," he asks me.

"Used to." I correct. It's all in the past like half my things. Though if I met fifteen ear old me through space-time continuum she wouldn't have believed I am standing here after all of it, with a boy in my bedroom in the dead of the night.

"Can't your parents tell when you sneak out?"

A shadow appears on his face. He hasn't shaved today and there's the hint of a stubble. It makes his Hook–esque image more prominent than his Peter Pan boyishness. But then he smiles. He always smiles despite everything. Life the relief after a storm. "I wear silent shoes," he says.

I can imagine flickering him in and out, out of focus and in again everytime I blink. Like something that doesn't actually exist, but you are made to believe it does.

"There's no such thing as silent shoes," I roll my eyes. There are two types of rolling eyes. One due to exasperation which usually happens with my parents and when you hear something really cheesy yet it just wants make you roll your eyes, like in amusement or something. I can't really name it.

"So about your synthesizer? What can you play on it?"

"Nothing much." Back when playing synthesizer was cool, I was in the school band. I used to sit there with the other instrumentalists and churn out our school song during games held in the gym, mostly basketball. And then sometimes just to fool around, me and Emily used to make up songs about people using music from the karaoke app and tweaking it in bits and parts. Voila DJ Krishna. Now it just sits there, above my closet gathering dust.

"Who's your favourite singer?" he asks.

"Nobody."

"That's impossible. That's like saying sun does not rise in the east. Even if you don't have a favorite, you will listen to some ones in the radio or MTV or Vh1 and think hey that sounds pretty cool. Lo and behold you have your song."

"It doesn't work that way. Listening to music is not mechanics," I counter.

"On the contrary it is. You listen to the stuff and your brain breaks it down into pieces and there's one part which when comes on, you can feel all your atoms tuning to it, like they are coming alive, like they are in a soda fizz bottle."

"What bits and pieces do you make out when you're listening to Hatebreed? And what kind of name is it? Do all the hard core metal rock bands have to be so pessimistic."

Novahk laughs, "Well you know about Hatebreed so it's a start. And how exactly do you know that listen to Hatebreed?" I googled it. But I can't help it. Music makes me curious be it hard rock or reggae it's the voice I can't stand, but behind that, when you scrap away everything there's the soul left and that's what I love. Music is lot like human kind if you think about it. If you open my laptop, you'll find mostly the instrumentals instead of the actual lyrics.

"Along with Nirvana, the Stones, Lamb of God and Metallica? Well you kind of make it hard to miss blasting the music at ungodly hours."

"That's supposed to be the purpose," he mutters under his breath but I catch it all the same. But something makes me think that it isn't meant for me so I don't pursue it.

"So how are we getting to Wilmington exactly," I ask.

"My car. I'll drive. You just think of a good date."

I think about it. School's not going to be closed till Christmas so if we have to make the trip, we have to do it within on weekends. "Next Saturday." By then I will have to come up with a perfect excuse for mom.