“God, that one is so good. When they do the instrumental…” He jumps up, doing an air guitar. I jump up too, dropping the papers on the ground and reaching out to grab his arms.
“Yes!”
And then I remember who this is, so I yank my hands back, but I still cannot believe how cool it is to meet another Black Phantom fan. I clutch my head, grabbing my hair.
“The interlude, oh my god, it’s like my own personal soundtrack,” I say.
“She didn’t mean to, she didn’t mean to…”he sings, and I join him.
“But she wrote my murder when she wrote me out of her life.”
We’re both contorted into performance-like positions, half-screaming the lyrics. I’m weightless and warm and I think my chest might burst open.
“Wait, wait.” I interrupt our mini-concert. “What’s your favorite?”
“‘Black Heart.’ Has been for years.”
“Oh my god,” I say, slapping my hands over my heart.
“Could you love me, would you love me…”I start to sing, and he doesn’t hesitate to join.“With your black heart…”
Neither of us is a very good singer, and we don’t sound anywhere near as good as their lead singer Ingrid Jorgenson, but it feels so good to be singing with someone else who knows my favorite songs that I don’t really care.
There’s a profound silence when we’ve stopped singing. We’re both breathing more heavily than normal, mere inches from each other, and when a strange sense of familiarity sweeps over me I step back, clearing my throat and smoothing out my shirt. Deja vu always makes me so uncomfortable.
Self-conscious of my singing and that wild display of excitement, I gather the papers off the floor, kneeling on the ground. Mac kneels to help me, but his proximity sends another wave of deja vu over me. My head spins and I feel nauseous for a brief second, but it’s replaced with an ache in my chest and the eerie sense that I’ve been here before. But I have never knelt on the floor of an observation room with Mac, high from the discovery we share a favorite band.
“Have you been to a concert?” I ask in an attempt to get rid of the deja vu, and also not totally ready to be done with the Black Phantom conversation.
We find our way back to our seats, and I clutch the papers, my body relaxing as the sense of familiarity disappears.
“As many as I could since I found them. You?”
I shake my head, twisting my lips to the side. A luxury in my house was going out to eat at Chili’s, which we only did once a year on my birthday. A concert ticket was so far beyond imagining paying for that the idea still feels as foreign to me as traveling to China.
“Hopefully one day. Are they as amazing as they seem? I’ve seen some clips on YouTube,” I say.
“I have some videos too. You wanna see?”
“Yes!”
Mac digs into his pocket, but at that moment, the door to the observation room opens and Professor Campbell gestures for us to come out and collect the papers. We scramble out of the room, my cheeks heating even though I know I haven’t done anything wrong.
Mac and I collect the sheets as the students trickle out, and after the last one leaves Professor Campbell dismisses us for the day. Mac keeps pace with me as I walk out of the building.
“So I guess you know about their album coming out in, like, three weeks,” he says.
“Obviously.”
“We should listen together.”
“Yes!” I say without thinking. “And you’ll have to show me those concert videos sometime.”
“Definitely.”
We stand outside the science building, neither of us making a move to leave, yet neither of us really having a reason to stay. His brown eyes dance with the same feeling that’s floating around in my chest. When our silence starts to get a little awkward, I open my mouth to say bye, but Mac speaks first.
“Sooo…what are you writing for your Walden Senior Scholarship essay?” he asks.
