I waved my hand back and forth, grinning as I looked between Joel and Sebastian. 

“What is up with you guys?” I asked. “It’s time to blow out the candles.”

There was a sudden screeching sound, and I jumped, screaming and stumbling back toward the table. I looked around the room to determine where the sound had come from. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Emily looking around too.

The screech came again, and I saw Emily cover her ears as a gust of wind blew across the room, causing her birthday candles to sputter out. Joel and Sebastian were still standing there looking entranced. I ran up to Sebastian, and shoved him, trying to get him to snap out of whatever strange joke this was. He didn’t move. I reached up and slapped him in the face, and suddenly he came back, blinking, looking at me in shock. 

“What…what happened?” he asked. 

I looked at Joel, who was still out of it, and ran over to slap him back to reality too. He touched a hand to his cheek in stunned surprise, looking from me, to Emily, to the cake where the candles had all blown out. 

“What’s going on?” Joel asked. 

“Calista sang, and it was so strange. I could see it,” Emily said, “like waves. And it touched you both, and you were frozen.”

Sebastian and Joel glanced at each other, but I couldn’t quite read the expressions on their faces. 

“And then there was a scream, from somewhere I couldn’t see,” Emily said. “Like, something was there, but just…”

“At the edge of your vision,” I muttered. I’d seen it. A flash of it. Something dark, lingering at the corner of my eye, but when I turned to look, it was gone. The memory of its shriek still sent shivers down my spine. 

“I think maybe our driver, Curtis, might be playing a prank on us,” Joel said, shaking off the strange moment and planting a smile on his face. “What a silly thing. Let me relight the candles so you can make a proper wish, okay?”

Emily looked at me with her wide terrified gaze, and my fingers instinctively went to my throat, brushing absently over the area where my vocal cords would be. I had felt them. The waves that Emily claimed to have seen. I had felt them before in the past. I always imagined them as a manifestation of my vocal chords, but now I realized they were something more visceral. I couldn’t explain it. 

“Calista, are you okay?” Sebastian asked quietly. 

I nodded, as much to reassure him as to reassure myself. 

Joel clapped once after he had relit the candles. 

“Alright, Ms. Emily,” Joel said, “Time to make a proper wish.”

I realized that Emily was staring at me, her eyes huge behind her glasses. It was hard to look back at her, to acknowledge what had just happened, whatever it was. 

“C’mon, Em,” Sebastian said, gesturing toward the cake as Emily continued to look at me, “Maybe you can wish to meet Bangbang in person.”

“BangCHAN!” Emily exclaimed, seeming to snap out of her reverie as she finally turned to blow out the candles.