UltraViolet

Chapter 15

Sitting on a barstool at the Steam Room, using my straw to break up the chunks of ice in my vanilla milkshake, I tried to focus on the local band that were currently playing. However, the multiple pairs of eyes on me were a little distracting.
Before I could stop myself my head swivelled to the culprits table, where a group of 5 friends were sat. I recognised them as being in one of the lower years at school, year 7 or 8 maybe. As soon as they realised they were caught they looked away, red faced.

Saturday nights at The Steam Room were usually packed out. This being the local popular place to be for those underage and adults not wanting to embarrass themselves by going to the one club in town; meant that normally I had to ask Ella to save me a seat. Tonight however was fairly calm, the band on stage wasn't that well known so I suspected they hadn't been able to draw in the same kind of crowds The Electric Youth did.

My eyes brushed past the table of nosey kids to inspect the new art work on the wall behind them. When Ella's parents bought this place it was tired and run down from the business that had previously owned it. Her parents had the brilliant idea of letting Ella and her sister Jemima come up with the ideas for the decor and theme, knowing if they could attract the younger generation with their instagram worthy aesthetic, they'd make a killing. They ended up mixing an industrial look with modern artwork, mixing bare brick walls with cool wallpaper. Harsh metals with colour. They even used old fashioned looking coffee presses for the coffee nerds. My favourite part by far though was the art wall.

They'd commissioned local artists to come up with fun artwork for the largest wall. Famous album covers, quirky art and vinyls mixed well with the neon signs and coloured fairy lights that now made up the wall. It was the epitome of a hipsters dream but I thought it was cool. Plus, it brought them in regular trade with people taking photos here and tagging it on Instagram.

The newest addition to the wall of an old pink payphone is what caught my attention.

'Excuse me, do you think I can get your autograph?'

I tore my eyes away from the phone and found Kane standing to the right of me, a mocking smile on his face.

'Piss off.' I said it with a deadpan expression but he knew I was joking, kind of.

I hadn't seen or spoken to Kane since Aaron's party and I kind of thought he was avoiding me. However the warmth in his eyes showed no hint of any hard feelings.

'Ouch. Do you talk to all your fans like that?' He took the seat opposite me, commanding my attention away from the band I was supposed to be watching.

'Only the really irritating ones.'

'And here I was about to join the fan club over there.' He motioned to the table that i'd caught staring and broke out into a grin.
'I think they're star struck.'

'Don't be ridiculous.' I glanced at the group of five and frowned when I noticed them feverishly writing onto a note pad. 'Give it a week and they'll be obsessing over someone else.'

'I thought you'd be liking all the attention.'

'It's starting to wear off.'
People at school had only just stopped talking about how much I'd changed and Mike drama, now this has just fuelled the fire again.
I'm not going to lie, the compliments have been nice, and ever since Mike and Amber have avoided me, but everything else was starting to get a little old.

'It's funny, it doesn't bother you brother and his friends.'

I rolled my eyes.
'That's because they're all self obsessed.'

Kane chuckled and shook his head.
'All jokes aside though you were really great the other day. If you hadn't told me to piss off a few minutes ago I would've thought you'd genuinely turned into an angel with that voice.'