Midnight Kisses| ✓

Chapter 11

I find mom in the kitchen. It's probably the least coldest room in the winters with the weak rays coming in through the open window. I see Mr Chatteris manicuring his lawn and his wife dressed in a sundress kisses him on the goodbye before handing him a steaming cup of something. They always remind of a 50s movie but more than that they remind me how mom and dad used to be before the fights started.

I glance at the empty chair next to me where dad always sits on whenever he comes around and has breakfast or dinner with us.

"Linda called," mom says stirring my cup of coffee. Linda is Emily's mom "She wants us to come around on Thanksgiving. She is making special dinner."

"Okay," I say looking down on my feet. I am wearing my favorite pair of Chuck Taylors today.

Going to dinner at Emily's home will be a punch to my gut. Whenever I pass it on my way home from school, I always feel my breath knocked out of me. And if I actually walk in there, I have no idea what might actually happen to me.

The living room where Emily and I used to copy the routines of the dancers on 'So You Think You can Dance' o where we accidentally unlocked a X rated channel, her bedroom where we used to have pillow fights, so bad that the pillows tore out on multiple occasions. Her garden where her mom, whenever a new flower came out would give to me to bring back home where my mom would try her level best to cultivate but the plant eventually died. And then mom would sit in the couch all day and not let me watch television, while she dug into her ice-cream.

Or even her mom and dad, Linda and Shang, Emily was the fifty-fifty copy o her parents. I can't imagine myself looking at them. Infact after the funeral, in the last three months I have hardly seen them at all. My mom sneaks off to meet them without telling me but whenever she comes back she has this guilty look which she wears whenever she is hiding something from me and I know.

"Hey," mom reaches out and squeezes my hand. "We don't have to go if you don't feel like it."

"No mom I think we should go. It was nice of them to call us for dinner. Plus it would be really snobbish if we don't go. I am hurting and Emily was just my bestfriend, imagine how much they must be hurting."

"It does not work that way, Kris." Mom says "Pain is not comparable. You feel as much as they do. She was your first best friend. You have been together for eight years."

"Mom you make us sound like a lesbian couple." That finally puts a smile on mom's face.

"Then it's decided. We will all go there on Thanksgiving."

"Dad too?"

Mom pinches her nose. They are not still legally divorced yet and I usually dance around it. Whenever I do bring the word divorce in the household it's almost always guaranteed to be a disaster. "Yeah sure dad too."

There's something wrong at school today and I am almost positive it's not about me. I walk to Arts building for my next class, Painting. I see people walking towards the wrong direction. Instead of going to the classes they are making their way towards unfinished part of the school, towards the open ground. Nobody is allowed back there during the school years. If a teacher spots you, you're bound to get suspended. And now hordes of student are almost sprinting and there's an excited buzz of chatter as they pass me, and there are no teachers to be found.

I have pretty much mastered the art of whispers. I strain to listen if I can figure out what's going there. 'A homeless man?' 'Novahk on the building top'

There's nothing back there except sand and an old building which the school had started to renovate last year along with the auditorium. But there's a rumor that if you want to get high, that's the place to go