Your Favourite Stranger

Chapter Two

Rain on the Broadcast Room

By lunchtime, Caelis had read the message so many times that the words stopped looking like language. The boy I'm going to confess to is Rhovan Asteric.

"You've gone pale," Nymor announced, setting his tray down so hard that three students looked over. "Pale like a ghost who just saw its own tax bill."

"That's not a thing."

"It is now. What happened?"

Caelis hesitated. The radio show ran on an unspoken rule, that nobody asked who the Boy After Midnight was, and only Nymor knew. Even Nymor had never seen the messages. "A listener asked me to sing for her tonight," Caelis said carefully. "She's confessing to someone. It's complicated. I know both people."

Nymor's eyes widened, and he lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper that carried across three tables. "Is this the plot twist? Is the mystery girl Elaris?"

Caelis nearly dropped his juice box. "What? No. Why would you say that?"

"Because I've watched forty-three romance dramas and the pattern is obvious."

"It's a coincidence."

"Coincidences are just plot devices that haven't been explained yet."

Caelis put his head down on the table, and Nymor patted his shoulder with the gentle sympathy of a man comforting a sinking ship. The truth was that Caelis had already begun to suspect. The message had arrived within a minute of Elaris laughing at her desk. The Stranger had loved someone who sometimes made her feel special without noticing it, and Elaris said Rhovan as though it were a complete sentence. But suspecting and knowing were different countries, and either way he had promised himself he would sing.

After school the corridor outside the gym was loud with squeaking sneakers and shouting. Caelis stood by the water fountain, pretending to check his phone, while Elaris came down the hall in her pressed uniform with nervous steps. She was holding a small paper bag, and her white ribbon was slightly crooked, as if she had retied it three times and then given up.

Rhovan stepped out of the gym with a towel around his neck. "Ela? You're still here? I thought you'd gone home."

"I wanted to give you something." She held out the bag. "Cookies. I made too many."

"You baked? On purpose?" He sniffed the bag. "Okay, who are you and what have you done with the girl who set the chemistry lab on fire?"

"That was one time!"

He laughed, and she laughed, and Caelis thought with bitter clarity, They already look like a couple. Then Elaris took a breath and said, "Rhovan. I need to tell you something."

Caelis should have left. He knew eavesdropping was a small, ugly sin. But his feet stayed rooted to the tile, because a quiet voice in the back of his mind whispered, If it's her, you need to know.

"I've liked you for a long time," Elaris said. Her voice shook but didn't break. "Not like a friend. I like you, a lot. I wanted you to know."

The noise of the hallway seemed to fade. Rhovan's smile disappeared slowly, the way a light dims. He looked at the bag of cookies, then at her ribbon, and for a long moment he said nothing at all. In that silence Caelis felt his own heart stand still.

"Ela," Rhovan said at last, gently. "You're my best friend. I've known you since we were five. You're family, and I can't see you any other way. I'm sorry."

The words weren't cruel, and that was the worst part. They were kind and honest, and they fell into the hallway like stones into still water.

"Oh," Elaris said. She smiled, but only with her mouth. "Okay. That's okay. I just wanted to say it. Please forget I did."

"Ela—"

"I have to go. Student council. I'll see you tomorrow."

She walked away quickly, back straight and chin high, with the perfect posture she always carried. Only when she turned the corner, out of Rhovan's sight, did her shoulders drop. Caelis saw her stop beside the stairwell, pull the ribbon loose, and press it hard against her mouth. He watched the golden girl of the school stand alone in an empty corridor and try very hard not to make a sound.

Caelis did the only thing a boy like him could do. He walked away before she could see him, because comfort from a stranger would only have hurt her more.

That night the rain was heavier. The broadcasting room smelled of old carpet and warm electronics, and Caelis sat before the microphone with his hands pressed between his knees while the red ON AIR light waited like a patient eye. The inbox held one new message, sent seven minutes earlier.

It's me. Stranger. I did it. I told him.

He closed his eyes. The next message was longer.

He said I was like family. He was kind about it, which almost makes it worse. I'm so tired of being the girl who has everything together. Can you please just sing? You don't have to say anything. I only want to hear your voice.

Caelis opened his eyes, and his hands were shaking. There was no more room for doubt. Only Elaris would call herself the girl who has everything together, and only she could make that sentence sound like an apology.

He pressed the button, and the red light glowed. "Good evening," he said softly. "This is The Boy After Midnight. Tonight there are no questions, only a song for someone who was brave today."

He didn't sing the song about distance. He sang the one from his pocket, the page he had torn out of his notebook, the one about a girl who looked at someone else as though he were the sun. He changed a single line so that it sounded less like a confession and more like a lullaby. His voice filled the small room, low and unsteady and utterly honest, while rain slid down the glass. Somewhere in the school, in a dark classroom or under a flickering bus stop lamp, a girl was listening with her ribbon in her hand.

When the song ended, the silence felt like a held breath. A message arrived within seconds.

Thank you.

Then came a second one. I know this is strange, and you can say no. But I feel like you're the only person who has ever seen me without the rest of it. Without the grades and the piano and the council. Would you ever want to meet? Just to talk. I won't ask who you are if you don't want to tell me.

Caelis stared at the screen. Beneath the ache, something stirred. It wasn't hope exactly. It was something more dangerous, the feeling of being wanted for the right reason at the wrong moment. He thought of her ribbon crumpled against her mouth, and of the way she smiled at Rhovan and the way she had smiled at him that morning, both true in different ways. If I say yes, she will look at me, and she will see the boy by the window. And the voice she loves will stop being magic.

His hands hovered over the keyboard for a very long time while the rain kept falling. At last he typed four words, deleted them, typed them again, and sent them before he could lose his nerve.

Give me a little time.

The reply was instant. I'll wait.

Caelis shut down the computer, switched off the lights, and sat in the dark for a while, listening to the rain. For two years he had loved a girl who never looked at him. Now she wanted to meet his voice, and for the first time in his life, Caelis Veyr was afraid of being heard.

(End of Chapter 2)