See You Again

Chapter 1: Karaoke

"Harry, you're gonna be late for karaoke!" My mum called from downstairs. I jumped and wiped the few tears that were on my cheeks away, putting the photo of Louis back down on my nightstand. Today hadn't been the best of days, and the only thing I could think of was that, if Louis were here, he would be there to help me. But he wasn't, and that got me more upset. Niall and Liam, my best friends, tried to help, but they knew that, when it came to Louis, there was nothing they could do. They knew all about him, and were the only ones, other than the kids who had gone to our middle school. But none of them had been my friends, so they didn't really matter. I fiddled with my bracelet again and grabbed my sweatshirt, heading down the stairs. My mum was waiting by the front door, smiling.

"Have fun tonight, love," she said sweetly, pecking me on the cheek. I kissed her cheek back and smiled tightly, tugging at my bracelet. She looked down and smiled sadly.

"I know you miss him. But he might not be-"

"Don't, mum, please. He would have called if he wasn't. He's gone." I said flatly, distancing myself from the emotions that welled up in my chest. I couldn't afford to be upset right now.

"OK, honey, whatever you say. Love you, dear."

"Love you too, mum. See you later tonight."

I huddled down at the back of the crowd, ready to listen to the karaoke singers, like I did every Friday night. I had been coming to karaoke night for as long as I could remember, and normally I dragged Niall or Liam with me, but they both were busy tonight. I never actually went up to sing, but I did like to hear the talent that others had to offer. I hadn't actually sang a song since Louis left. He had given me confidence, and now that he was gone, I had lost that.

The leader of the karaoke, Nick Grimshaw, climbed up on stage to applause

"OK, tonight we are gonna do something a little different. We are going to do blind duets. We will be picking several people randomly from the crowd and blindfolding them. Then we will have a curtain separating them and they will have to sing a song as a duet. At the end, we will raise the curtain and they will get to see who they sang with. Sound good?" The crowd cheered again, and I just clapped appreciatively. I felt horrible for the poor people that were gonna be pulled up on stage. What if they had stage fright?

I looked down and opened twitter, scrolling through it slowly and retweeting a few things. And then my vision went dark. For one crazy second, I thought I had gone blind, maybe passed out, or possibly died. But I could feel hands on me and could hear all the noise in the room. I lifted a hand to my eyes and felt a piece of material. I was blindfolded...fuck, I was being pulled up for karaoke. I struggled furiously. I couldn't do this, I really couldn't. But there were too many of them, and they held me fast, leading me to what I assumed was next to the stage. I was shaking from head to foot and I wasn't even on the stage yet. I felt like throwing up, but there was nothing I could do. It had been random, after all, so I just had to suck it up and do it. It was one song, what would be the harm? After it was over I could just run home and hide in my room and pretend it didn't happen.

"OK, mate, you're up first," said a voice, and someone led me up onto the stage. They took off the blindfold and I blinked, squinting into the bright lights. There was a curtain to my left, and a screen in front of me. I twisted my hands together, tugging on my leather bracelet, and bit my lip as my eyes adjusted, and I saw how many people were out there. Granted, it was a small restaurant, but there were at least 100 people here tonight.

"Alright, you two, you are gonna sing See You Again by Wiz Khafika. You don't have to do the rap, that would make it too long, we don't have the version without the rap on us, and we want to do as many of these as possible. So we will just be doing the singing parts. You ready?" Nick turned from the crowd and looked at me and whomever was on the other side of that curtain. I nodded, because I knew if I opened my mouth, I would throw up.