Chapter 5: Midnight
The smell of his old laundry detergent, something she’d stopped buying years ago, still clung to the pillows. Dev lay awake as the first grey light of morning seeped around the edges of the blinds. It painted the faded poster of the human muscular system on the opposite wall a watery blue. The motivational quote she’d taped next to it—“Kasht hi kunji hai sapnon ke darwaze ki”—"Struggle is the key to the door of dreams"—was now just a curl of yellowing paper.
His body felt heavy, anchored by a deep, shameful peace. Here, the walls didn’t vibrate with someone else’s music. No one laughed in the hallway. The only sounds were the distant cooing of pigeons and the comforting, intermittent hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen. He had slept the dead, dreamless sleep of a condemned man granted a last-minute reprieve.
The reprieve, he knew, was temporary.
The smell of toasted cumin and ginger filtered under his door. She was making aloo paratha. His favorite. A Sunday breakfast on a Tuesday. The deliberate normalcy of it was both a comfort and a provocation. It was her language. Her way of saying this is home, you are safe, everything is as it was.
But nothing was as it was. Not for him. The hollow ache from the hostel had been replaced by a different kind of thrumming, a low-grade current that had settled in his chest the moment she’d said “because you’re mine.”
He finally pushed off the comforter—still folded with her precise, hospital-corner neatness—and padded out to the living room.
Priya was at the small dining table, setting out two plates. She’d changed into a simple cotton salwar kameez, her hair still damp from a shower. She looked refreshed, purposeful.
“You’re up,” she said, smiling. It didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were carefully assessing him. “Sleep okay?”
“Like a rock,” he said, his voice morning-rough.
“Good. Sit. The tea is just brewed.”
He slid into his usual chair. The familiarity of the action—the same wicker creak, the same view of the balcony garden she nurtured—was surreal after the turmoil of last night. She placed a steaming paratha on his plate, the golden-brown surface glistening with butter.
For a few minutes, they ate in a comfortable silence broken only by the clink of cutlery. He watched her spread a precise dollop of mango pickle on the edge of her plate. She was always so measured.
“You don’t have to rush back,” she said, not looking up. “Stay through the day. Your tutorial isn’t until tomorrow afternoon, right?”
He nodded, mouth full. The spiced potato filling was perfect. “Yeah. I… I should study here. It’s quieter.”
“Of course it is.” She sipped her tea. “That hostel is a zoo. I don’t know how anyone gets a degree there.”
He picked at the flaky layers of his paratha. The question from the car last night echoed in the quiet room. Why are you so good to me? He needed to bridge the gap between the broken creature on the bathroom floor and the son having breakfast. He needed to give her a reason, a tangible problem she could understand. A smaller wound to bandage.
“They have this thing,” he began, his voice tentative. “At the college. Next week.”
“Hmm?” She looked up, attentive.
“It’s stupid. A Halloween party. They call it the ‘Med-School Monster Mash’ or something equally ridiculous.” He forced a dry chuckle. It sounded brittle. “Costumes, a DJ in the anatomy lecture hall. It’s a big deal. Everyone goes.”
Priya’s face softened with understanding. “And you don’t want to go. That’s perfectly fine, Dev. Those things are noisy and overcrowded.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he said, the words coming faster now, tumbling out. “It’s that… the entire lead-up is torture. The groups forming, the costume plans. The guys in my corridor, they’ve been… having fun with it.”
He put his fork down. The paratha suddenly tasted like paste.
“What kind of fun?” Her voice had lost its light breakfast tone.
“Just jokes,” he said, downplaying it even as he wanted her to see. “Asking me what I’m going as. Suggesting things. ‘Hey Sharma, go as a functioning human being!’ Or ‘Just wear a sheet, be a ghost, you’re already half-dead anyway.’” He recited the lines with a flat, detached accuracy that made them sound even crueler. “They call it ‘Sharma’s Spook-tacular.’ They think it’s hilarious.”
Priya’s knuckles were white around her teacup. She set it down gently, too gently. “Those vile little boys.”
“It’s fine,” he muttered, a reflexive lie.
“It is not fine.” She took a steadying breath. “So you’re avoiding it. That’s sensible.”
“I’m not avoiding it, Ma.” He finally met her gaze. The vulnerability there was calculated, a performance of a truth. “I’m just not invited. Not really. No one expects me to show up. They just enjoy the… the preamble. The teasing. The actual event… I’m not a part of that. I wouldn’t even know how to get in.”
The silence that followed was thick. He had handed her a smaller, cleaner sadness to hold: the boy without a prom. It was easier than handing her the corrosive, unspeakable truth of what he actually felt.
Priya looked out at the balcony, where a sparrow was bathing in a saucer she’d left out. Her profile was elegant, still beautiful, but etched with a new helplessness. She could chase bullies from a hostel common room, but she couldn’t fabricate an invitation to a party. She couldn’t manufacture belonging.
“Well,” she said finally, her voice bright with a forced, theatrical cheer that shattered his heart. “Their loss. It sounds tacky anyway. A DJ in the anatomy hall? Morbid. We’ll have a much better night here. We’ll order something decadent, watch one of those terrible horror films you used to love. The ones with the rubber monsters.”
She was building a fortress of an alternative. A we against the them.
“Yeah,” he said, the word barely a whisper. “That sounds… really good, Ma.”
He saw her shoulders relax, just a fraction. She had solved it. She had provided the consolation prize. Mission accomplished.
But as she got up to clear the plates, her hand brushed his shoulder. It was a casual, maternal gesture. A pat.
A current, white-hot and unequivocal, shot through him. It wasn’t gratitude. It wasn’t filial love. It was a jolt of pure, desperate want that stole his breath. He froze, terrified that she’d felt it too.
She hadn’t. She was already at the sink, the water running. “You go, get your books. Set up at the dining table. The light is better here.”
He stood, his legs unsteady. As he passed her on his way to his room, he caught the scent of her shampoo—jasmine and coconut—mixed with the warm, kitchen smell of her skin.
In the safe gloom of his bedroom, he leaned back against the closed door. The faded poster stared back at him. Struggle is the key.
His heart hammered against his ribs. A plan, wild and fully formed, bloomed in his mind’s dark soil. It wasn’t about the party. The party was nothing.
Halloween was about costumes. About pretending to be something you’re not.
She wanted to give him a quiet night in to replace the dance he’d never attend. But what if he didn’t want a replacement? What if he wanted to transform the quiet night itself into the event? His own secret, singular prom. Just the two of them.
He wouldn’t go as a ghost. He would go as himself. Or rather, as the version of himself he was meant to be: confident, attentive, desirable. And she… she wouldn’t be his mother that night. Not in his eyes. He would orchestrate everything—the food, the movie, the ambiance—to feel like something else entirely. A date.
It was a fragile, dangerous fantasy. But as he heard her humming softly in the kitchen, the tune of an old film song, it felt more real, more attainable, than anything in the world outside this apartment.
The key wasn’t struggle. It was deception. And he would use it to unlock a door he was never meant to approach.