Magic by Midnight
By Joseph Friesen
October 15, 2023
October 15, 2023
The sun had set over Lake Erie, the flaming orange sky giving way to an expansive ocean blue. The class of eighth graders sat around their lakeside bonfire, settling in for a quiet night after a once-raucous rendition of “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” had fizzled out after only three refrains. The waves lapped peacefully, the fire crackled sporadically, and Thomas knew this was the best opportunity he would receive. If he did not confess his love by midnight, when the counselors beckoned all the campers back to their cabins, then Katie would be lost forever. In the fall she would be off to another high school where she would surely be swept off by some football-playing, part-time job-possessing eleventh grader with a car. Thomas didn’t have much. But he had an opportunity tonight, and with just a bit of courage, this end-of-year field trip could be the magical night he’d prayed for.
She was, for the moment, all alone. She sat cross-legged on an upturned log, face glowing from the screen of her phone. Perfect, he thought. Now or never. He took a deep breath, stood himself up on two shaking legs, and walked around the fire to where she sat. Remember, active listening, just like Mom said. Eye contact and nodding your head.
“Hiya Katie,” he said. One could be mistaken in simply interpreting those words as a greeting from one hormonal adolescent boy to a girl he fancied. But Thomas had not had eyes for any other girl ever since Katie had humored him with a full, one-on-one conversation about his Star Wars expertise while on a bus ride in the sixth grade. He had planned this confession of love since that day, and each seemingly ideal opportunity fell just short of his requirements to get the job done. He had brought flowers to their graduation ceremony, and yet in the end he decided those flowers were meant for his mother. On his own graduation day! No, this greeting was bold indeed. And even more boldly, he took a seat on the log next to her.
“Oh hey, Tom!”
She slipped her phone into the pocket of her white shorts. Time froze for the boy as he understood he was holding onto something special: her undivided attention. Bashfully, he looked down to the fingers he couldn’t stop from fidgeting on his lap.
“Are you… are you excited for high school?” he finally uttered.
A short pause. “My big sister told me that high school can be the best years of your life or the worst years of your life. I think they will be the best years of my life.”
He nodded deeply at this incontestable truth. Clearly his beloved possessed both beauty and wisdom in equal measure. But wait… I’m looking at my hands! Eye contact! He lifted his head and met her gaze. It was spellbinding.
“I think I’ll like high school too…” he trailed off. Silence lingered. Panic rose.
She giggled to break the silence and put her hand on his shoulder. “So how come you aren’t coming to my school? That makes me sad.”
“Oh, well, my parents said I couldn’t go. I really wanted to, but they wouldn’t let me.” The truth was that they couldn’t afford private school, but he didn’t want to tell Katie that. Trust me, I tried, my love. Oh, how I tried! He even told his parents that he’d work all summer to pay for tuition, that he’d pack his own lunch and ensure he had a ride there and back. He did everything short of begging.
“Parents can be the worst.”
“Yeah, my parents can be so annoying sometimes. Sometimes, it’s like they just don’t get it.”
Thomas could feel the tension in his body ease. This felt like a conversation. They were agreeing on something and having some back and forth. He was a ways from a confession of love, but this was a good start. And midnight was still a ways off.
He missed some of the next bit of what she was saying, but heard something about how she hoped they could still keep in touch over the summer, and that she’d wave if he was to ride his bike by her house. These comments made his head light, his chest tighten. He said something in response, not even bothering to overthink the words before they left his mouth. Was it something awful and embarrassing? Apparently not, because Katie smiled and nodded and said something in agreement once again.
They were now in their own small bubble, Thomas thought, detached from the rest of the class. Initially he had feared his walk over to Katie would be too obvious, that someone would call out and mention it and humiliate him. Now he hoped they all saw. What he and Katie were having was a special conversation and the onlooking class was simply there to witness the beginning of a great love story. But were they even visible, even perceptible to the human eye? No, Thomas concluded, they were separate from the physical world entirely. They were the only two people alive, their souls intertwining. She said some things to him. He said some things back. It was a flow state of natural verbalization, and it was only a matter of time when, in old age, they would finish one another’s sentences and then, at an even older age, words wouldn’t even be needed for them to communicate. Thomas had never felt so alive, so full of vigour and youth and existence. He was on the beach of Lake Erie, loving and being loved by another, marking his place in the great poems and ballads of the past.
Splash! Katie was soaked. She wiped the water from her eyes.
“Hah! Gotcha!” came Johnny’s voice from behind where the two sat. He had poured much of the contents of his open water bottle over Katie’s head.
Oh, how Thomas hated Johnny. He was a full head taller than he and his voice had already deepened when he returned from summer break in the sixth grade. He had a full, dark mustache and an endless supply of t-shirts from the travel basketball tournaments he had attended. Every girl wants him, every boy wants to be him, Thomas thought.
“You… you idiot!” Katie shouted. But as Thomas looked to her, ready to offer comfort, he noticed she wasn’t crying or scowling, and didn’t appear to be one bit annoyed. She was smiling. She had a wider grin than she’d had at any point during their conversation.
“Whatcha gonna do?” Johnny said, readying his bottle for another assault.
“Don’t you dare!” she said, lifting up a finger non-threateningly. “Or I’ll get you just as bad!”
Johnny sprayed her again and she shrieked with laughter. She leapt up, wrapping her arms and legs around him, clinging to his body. “There! How do you like having your shirt all wet!”
“Hey…” a disinterested camp counselor intoned mildly from somewhere in the distance. “Settle down…”
“Yeah, Katie,” Johnny said with a smirk. “Settle down!” He turned and ran off towards the tents and the forest, giggling like an idiot.
“Oh you!” Katie cried, and dashed after him. “I’ll get you for that!”
Thomas sat on his tree stump alone. He could feel any remaining semblance of liveliness, vigour, and youth leaving his body. He sighed and looked around the fire. Everyone had resumed their conversations from where they had trailed off at the interruption. Mercifully, nobody was looking at him.
He needed some distance. He took off his shoes, then his socks, and rolled the bottoms of his jeans up past his ankles. He walked towards the lake, some thirty paces from the fire, hoping the darkness would conceal him from his classmates. Each step into the cold sand took him further from the heat of the fire and of his embarrassment. He reached the water and plopped himself into a lifeless sitting position in the sand. He let the lake lick his feet when cool, slow-moving waves approached him.
He felt tears welling up in his eyes, so he shut them hard to prevent them from escaping. He did not succeed, and two tears ran down his warm cheeks.
He let out a deep breath and let his back slump into the sand. With bleary eyes he looked up.
Outer Space. Beautiful. Thomas was no expert on the things beyond his world. He enjoyed watching old science fiction VHS tapes with his father and in a trivia contest could tell you how fast Han Solo made the Kessel run. But identifying the Big Dipper? No, real space was a mystery to the boy.
And yet the sense of mystery and unknown was exactly what had made outer space so fascinating to him. He wiped his eyes and stared into the endless distance. He knew from science class that every star in space was like the Earth’s sun, and that each sun likely had its own planets and those planets perhaps had their own moons. He tried to picture all of it in his mind: the sheer number, the sheer volume, the sheer mass. He allowed his mind to be broken, taking pleasure in the incomprehensibility of it all, the limitations of his own imagination.
He considered the vastness, and how long it would take him to run the distance to an arbitrarily chosen speck of light in the swirling, magical night sky. A million years? A billion? Do those numbers have any meaning at all?
He chased the high of being awestruck. Now and again the feeling would sink in and he would become dizzy with the realization all over. The heavens! An endless expanse! The universe as a whole, all within my field of vision! He wondered how he let so many nights pass him by without choosing to look up and see it all. Every night this is available to me. I will never again take this for granted.
Finally the novelty wore off and Thomas looked contentedly into the blue and black bespeckled tapestry. Even when it wasn’t providing a perspective-shattering experience, it was beautiful to behold, and the boy took comfort in that. He put his arms behind his head and smiled. The warm wind on the beach brushed his face. He closed his eyes.
“There you are, Sleepy!”
It was Katie.
“It’s almost midnight,” she said, standing over him. “Come and sit by the fire.”
Thomas had magic balled up in his fists. It leaked through his fingers and vanished into the night.
She was, for the moment, all alone. She sat cross-legged on an upturned log, face glowing from the screen of her phone. Perfect, he thought. Now or never. He took a deep breath, stood himself up on two shaking legs, and walked around the fire to where she sat. Remember, active listening, just like Mom said. Eye contact and nodding your head.
“Hiya Katie,” he said. One could be mistaken in simply interpreting those words as a greeting from one hormonal adolescent boy to a girl he fancied. But Thomas had not had eyes for any other girl ever since Katie had humored him with a full, one-on-one conversation about his Star Wars expertise while on a bus ride in the sixth grade. He had planned this confession of love since that day, and each seemingly ideal opportunity fell just short of his requirements to get the job done. He had brought flowers to their graduation ceremony, and yet in the end he decided those flowers were meant for his mother. On his own graduation day! No, this greeting was bold indeed. And even more boldly, he took a seat on the log next to her.
“Oh hey, Tom!”
She slipped her phone into the pocket of her white shorts. Time froze for the boy as he understood he was holding onto something special: her undivided attention. Bashfully, he looked down to the fingers he couldn’t stop from fidgeting on his lap.
“Are you… are you excited for high school?” he finally uttered.
A short pause. “My big sister told me that high school can be the best years of your life or the worst years of your life. I think they will be the best years of my life.”
He nodded deeply at this incontestable truth. Clearly his beloved possessed both beauty and wisdom in equal measure. But wait… I’m looking at my hands! Eye contact! He lifted his head and met her gaze. It was spellbinding.
“I think I’ll like high school too…” he trailed off. Silence lingered. Panic rose.
She giggled to break the silence and put her hand on his shoulder. “So how come you aren’t coming to my school? That makes me sad.”
“Oh, well, my parents said I couldn’t go. I really wanted to, but they wouldn’t let me.” The truth was that they couldn’t afford private school, but he didn’t want to tell Katie that. Trust me, I tried, my love. Oh, how I tried! He even told his parents that he’d work all summer to pay for tuition, that he’d pack his own lunch and ensure he had a ride there and back. He did everything short of begging.
“Parents can be the worst.”
“Yeah, my parents can be so annoying sometimes. Sometimes, it’s like they just don’t get it.”
Thomas could feel the tension in his body ease. This felt like a conversation. They were agreeing on something and having some back and forth. He was a ways from a confession of love, but this was a good start. And midnight was still a ways off.
He missed some of the next bit of what she was saying, but heard something about how she hoped they could still keep in touch over the summer, and that she’d wave if he was to ride his bike by her house. These comments made his head light, his chest tighten. He said something in response, not even bothering to overthink the words before they left his mouth. Was it something awful and embarrassing? Apparently not, because Katie smiled and nodded and said something in agreement once again.
They were now in their own small bubble, Thomas thought, detached from the rest of the class. Initially he had feared his walk over to Katie would be too obvious, that someone would call out and mention it and humiliate him. Now he hoped they all saw. What he and Katie were having was a special conversation and the onlooking class was simply there to witness the beginning of a great love story. But were they even visible, even perceptible to the human eye? No, Thomas concluded, they were separate from the physical world entirely. They were the only two people alive, their souls intertwining. She said some things to him. He said some things back. It was a flow state of natural verbalization, and it was only a matter of time when, in old age, they would finish one another’s sentences and then, at an even older age, words wouldn’t even be needed for them to communicate. Thomas had never felt so alive, so full of vigour and youth and existence. He was on the beach of Lake Erie, loving and being loved by another, marking his place in the great poems and ballads of the past.
Splash! Katie was soaked. She wiped the water from her eyes.
“Hah! Gotcha!” came Johnny’s voice from behind where the two sat. He had poured much of the contents of his open water bottle over Katie’s head.
Oh, how Thomas hated Johnny. He was a full head taller than he and his voice had already deepened when he returned from summer break in the sixth grade. He had a full, dark mustache and an endless supply of t-shirts from the travel basketball tournaments he had attended. Every girl wants him, every boy wants to be him, Thomas thought.
“You… you idiot!” Katie shouted. But as Thomas looked to her, ready to offer comfort, he noticed she wasn’t crying or scowling, and didn’t appear to be one bit annoyed. She was smiling. She had a wider grin than she’d had at any point during their conversation.
“Whatcha gonna do?” Johnny said, readying his bottle for another assault.
“Don’t you dare!” she said, lifting up a finger non-threateningly. “Or I’ll get you just as bad!”
Johnny sprayed her again and she shrieked with laughter. She leapt up, wrapping her arms and legs around him, clinging to his body. “There! How do you like having your shirt all wet!”
“Hey…” a disinterested camp counselor intoned mildly from somewhere in the distance. “Settle down…”
“Yeah, Katie,” Johnny said with a smirk. “Settle down!” He turned and ran off towards the tents and the forest, giggling like an idiot.
“Oh you!” Katie cried, and dashed after him. “I’ll get you for that!”
Thomas sat on his tree stump alone. He could feel any remaining semblance of liveliness, vigour, and youth leaving his body. He sighed and looked around the fire. Everyone had resumed their conversations from where they had trailed off at the interruption. Mercifully, nobody was looking at him.
He needed some distance. He took off his shoes, then his socks, and rolled the bottoms of his jeans up past his ankles. He walked towards the lake, some thirty paces from the fire, hoping the darkness would conceal him from his classmates. Each step into the cold sand took him further from the heat of the fire and of his embarrassment. He reached the water and plopped himself into a lifeless sitting position in the sand. He let the lake lick his feet when cool, slow-moving waves approached him.
He felt tears welling up in his eyes, so he shut them hard to prevent them from escaping. He did not succeed, and two tears ran down his warm cheeks.
He let out a deep breath and let his back slump into the sand. With bleary eyes he looked up.
Outer Space. Beautiful. Thomas was no expert on the things beyond his world. He enjoyed watching old science fiction VHS tapes with his father and in a trivia contest could tell you how fast Han Solo made the Kessel run. But identifying the Big Dipper? No, real space was a mystery to the boy.
And yet the sense of mystery and unknown was exactly what had made outer space so fascinating to him. He wiped his eyes and stared into the endless distance. He knew from science class that every star in space was like the Earth’s sun, and that each sun likely had its own planets and those planets perhaps had their own moons. He tried to picture all of it in his mind: the sheer number, the sheer volume, the sheer mass. He allowed his mind to be broken, taking pleasure in the incomprehensibility of it all, the limitations of his own imagination.
He considered the vastness, and how long it would take him to run the distance to an arbitrarily chosen speck of light in the swirling, magical night sky. A million years? A billion? Do those numbers have any meaning at all?
He chased the high of being awestruck. Now and again the feeling would sink in and he would become dizzy with the realization all over. The heavens! An endless expanse! The universe as a whole, all within my field of vision! He wondered how he let so many nights pass him by without choosing to look up and see it all. Every night this is available to me. I will never again take this for granted.
Finally the novelty wore off and Thomas looked contentedly into the blue and black bespeckled tapestry. Even when it wasn’t providing a perspective-shattering experience, it was beautiful to behold, and the boy took comfort in that. He put his arms behind his head and smiled. The warm wind on the beach brushed his face. He closed his eyes.
“There you are, Sleepy!”
It was Katie.
“It’s almost midnight,” she said, standing over him. “Come and sit by the fire.”
Thomas had magic balled up in his fists. It leaked through his fingers and vanished into the night.
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Joseph Friesen is an emerging writer from Toronto, Ontario. He has a social work background and often writes about his experiences within a housing and homelessness context. He also writes fantasy stories, and has a small business called Life and Legacy Publishing in which he writes short biographies “for everyday people.” He won the Letter Review writing contest in Spring 2023. He is always looking to connect with readers and writers. You can find him on Twitter/X @josephfriesen1 and on Instagram/Threads @liljoeshow. You can also follow his writing page Life and Legacy Publishing on Instagram and Facebook, or visit his site lifeandlegacypublishing.com.
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