Your Favourite Stranger

The Boy After Midnight Caelis Veyr had loved Elaris Solvane for two years, and in all that time, she had never once looked at him the way she looked at Rhovan Asteric. Elaris was the kind of girl everyone noticed. She was student council president, one of the best pianists the school had ever produced, and the name at the top of every class list pinned to the corridor wall. Teachers praised her, and students watched her walk past as if she carried her own light. Caelis, on the other hand, was the boy by the window. He finished his assignments on time, spent lunch breaks in the library, and was regularly called "that guy" by classmates who had shared a room with him for three years. He wasn't ugly, exactly. He simply had the kind of face that slid out of memory the moment you looked away. There was only one thing about him that people remembered, and that was his voice. Whenever Caelis sang, rooms went quiet. His voice was warm and low, carrying every feeling he could never say in ordinary conversation, and for three minutes everyone within earshot seemed to love him. Then the song ended, and so did the attention. People loved his voice, but very few wondered about the boy behind it. "You're staring again," Nymor said. Caelis snapped his eyes down to his notebook. "I'm not staring." "Of course not. You've simply been looking at the same girl for ten minutes without writing a single word." Nymor Bexley leaned back until his chair creaked dangerously. "I'm an expert in this field, you know. I've watched forty-three romance dramas. Forty-three." "You've never had a girlfriend." "Research doesn't require participation." Nymor was the only person who knew about Elaris. He teased Caelis about it constantly, but never cruelly, and somehow his noise made the loneliness feel lighter. Before Caelis could answer, the classroom door slid open. Rhovan Asteric walked in with a basketball tucked under one arm and sweat still drying at his hairline. Tall, broad-shouldered, and easy in his own skin, he was the captain of the basketball team and the kind of boy people assumed would end up on a poster someday. "Ela!" he called. Elaris's whole face changed. It wasn't a dramatic change. It was just that her smile became real, the way a window looks different when the light finally comes on behind it. Rhovan held out a folded sheet of music and said, "You left this in the gym. Again." "You kept it safe?" "Obviously. You'd blame me for the rest of my life if I lost it." She laughed as he flicked her forehead. They had been neighbors since they were five, and they had the kind of ease that couldn't be built in two years no matter how hard someone tried. Caelis felt the familiar ache settle under his ribs like an old guest who already knew where the furniture was. Beneath his mathematics exercises were several lines he had written the night before, a song about a girl who looked at someone else as though he were the sun, never knowing that another person watched her from the shadows. He had written it for Elaris. Embarrassed by his own honesty, he tore the page out, folded it small, and pushed it into his pocket. Some things were better left unsaid, especially when the person who needed to hear them had already given her heart away. At lunch, the rumor spread that Rhovan had asked Elaris to watch his basketball practice. Girls whispered about it in the corridor, and boys placed bets. Caelis sat beneath the old acacia tree behind the library, picking his sandwich apart, while Nymor sat beside him eating two sandwiches, one of which was Caelis's. "You could talk to her," Nymor said, mouth full. "And say what? That I've loved her for two years and would happily spend another two watching her choose someone else?" "You make everything sound like the final episode of a tragedy." "It is a tragedy." "It's a pending tragedy. There's a difference." Nymor swallowed. "Fine. At least eat the one sandwich I haven't touched." Caelis almost smiled. Elaris had never promised him anything, and he had no right to be hurt by feelings he had never shown her. Besides, he had another life that she knew nothing about. Every evening, Caelis hosted an anonymous school radio program called The Boy After Midnight. It had begun as a tiny club nobody else wanted to run, but over time it became something more, a place where students sent in their worries behind blank names and typed apologies. He read their messages, offered advice, and sometimes sang when words weren't enough. Behind the microphone he wasn't the forgettable boy by the window. He was a voice in the dark, listening to people who needed to be heard. That evening he reached the broadcasting room just before eight. Rain had started tapping at the glass. He checked the equipment, dimmed the lights, and opened the inbox, which held mostly exam panic and friendship drama. One message made him stop. How do you stop loving someone who has never loved you back? He understood that question better than he wanted to. For two years he had tried to convince himself the feeling would fade, yet every time Elaris smiled at Rhovan, it only dug deeper. When the broadcast began, he greeted his listeners in his usual soft voice. After several questions about midterms and one very serious inquiry about whether pineapple belonged on pizza, he returned to the message. "Maybe you can't stop loving someone just because you decide to," he said. "You can avoid them and pretend you don't care, but your heart sometimes takes longer to understand what your mind already knows. Still, don't spend your whole life waiting for someone to notice your worth. Their inability to love you back doesn't mean you're not worth loving." For a moment he forgot anyone was listening. He was only giving a lonely stranger the comfort he wished someone would give him. Before ending the show, he sang an original song about loving from a distance, and his voice filled the small room, soft and aching, while rain traced the window. When the last note faded, he switched off the microphone. A new message appeared almost immediately. The sender thanked him for the song and admitted she had cried. She had loved someone for so long that she had forgotten what it felt like to want something for herself, she wrote. The boy she loved sometimes made her feel special, but he never seemed to realize how much his smallest gestures meant. Caelis read it three times. It felt strangely familiar, as if she had borrowed thoughts he had never said aloud. He replied that she didn't need to stop loving the boy overnight, only to remember that her life was bigger than whether he chose her. Do you think it's possible to fall in love with someone you've never seen? He leaned back in his chair and wrote that it was possible to feel close to someone through their words and voice, but that eventually love meant knowing the person behind them. Her reply came quickly. What if I already love the person behind the voice, even though I don't know who he is? Caelis froze. For one foolish moment he allowed himself to hope. He had always believed that nobody would love him without first wishing his face were different, yet somewhere in this school a girl was admitting that his voice had made her feel something she couldn't name. He typed that her feelings weren't ridiculous, and she answered with a single heart. He saved the message before shutting down. That night he walked home through the rain, and for the first time in a long while he fell asleep believing that someone might love him someday. The next morning, hope turned painful again. Elaris stopped by his desk before first period. Her dark hair was tied back with a white ribbon, and she held the sheet music Rhovan had returned. "Caelis, thank you for agreeing to help with the anniversary performance." He looked up, startled. "It's no problem." "I need someone who understands audio recording, and I heard you're good with the broadcasting equipment. You're a lifesaver!" She smiled at him, and for one second he forgot she was the girl he had loved for two years. He was only a boy being thanked by a girl. Then Rhovan appeared at the door and said, "Ela, ready? I saved you a seat at practice." "Coming!" She turned back to Caelis. "I'll send you the details later. Thank you again!" She hurried toward Rhovan with a smile far brighter than the one she had given Caelis. He reminded himself that kindness was only kindness, and that she needed his skill, not his heart. Just before the first bell, his phone buzzed with a message from the radio inbox. I'm going to confess to the boy I love today. I'm terrified, but I can't keep waiting forever. Can you sing for me tonight? I think I'll need your voice if everything goes wrong. Caelis's chest tightened. He wanted to write good luck. He wanted to say she deserved someone who would choose her without hesitation. Then another message appeared. The boy I'm going to confess to is Rhovan Asteric. Caelis slowly lifted his eyes. Across the classroom, Elaris was laughing with her friends, wholly unaware that the anonymous boy who had comforted her last night sat only a few desks away. The girl he loved had trusted his voice with her deepest secret, and now she was asking that voice to help her give her heart to someone else. For the first time, Caelis wished he had never turned on the microphone. Tonight he would have to sing for her, knowing every beautiful note might carry her toward another boy. And if Rhovan said yes, Caelis might lose the only person who had ever made his voice feel like it mattered.