Midnight In Motion (Mick’s POV)

I don’t remember the last time I was home before midnight. That’s not even a brag. It’s just the truth.

The whole thing started last summer—when my dad grounded me for staying out past curfew with the guys. We were just at the skate park, but he acted like I’d joined a gang. Locked me down for two weeks, no phone, no guitar, no nothing. That’s when I realized something: if I was gonna be treated like a criminal, I might as well have some fun with it.

So I started sneaking out.

I’d wait till Mom went to bed, then count to 600 in my head. By then, Dad would be knocked out on the couch, TV glowing on some old western where the good guy always wins and the world makes too much sense. My world wasn’t like that.

I’d slip my window open—real quiet—and drop down to the grass in socks so the porch light didn’t catch me. And then I’d run. Not like running-away kind of run. Just… the freedom kind. The kind that fills your lungs and makes your heart slam in your chest like it’s yelling, You’re alive, Mick, and no one can stop you now.

The night we saw Baby Driver was electric.

It was me, Joel, and Dorian—my brothers from other mothers. Joel had this clunky old Volvo with a stereo that somehow only played cassette tapes, so we made our own mix: Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys, that one Franz Ferdinand song that makes you feel like you’re robbing a bank. We parked three blocks from the theater ‘cause the security guard there knows my face, thanks to the time we tried to sneak into Deadpool when we were fifteen.

It was a midnight showing, and we were the youngest people there by like ten years. But nobody cared. The lights dimmed, and the screen lit up, and for two hours, I was someone else. Someone fast. Someone smooth. Someone who lived on rhythm and instinct and didn’t wait for permission.

Afterward, we stood in the parking lot under the orange sodium lights, quoting lines and drumming on the roof of Joel’s Volvo like it was our stage.

“You ever think,” I asked, “that we’re wasting our lives just waiting to grow up?”

Joel lit a cigarette. He didn’t smoke it—he just liked the way it made him look. “Nah. I think grown-ups are just us, but with more bills and less guts.”

Dorian chuckled. “And worse taste in music.”

The wall behind the train yard was my canvas.

It was a jagged stretch of concrete hidden behind a row of recycling bins and a boarded-up bar. The trains passed by slowly, like they were trying to get a good look. I tagged it with whatever was in my head—lyrics, sketches, symbols I made up just because no one else would understand them.

Catherine said it was my poetry.

She was… different. Not in the cliché way. I mean, yeah, she wore Doc Martens and read Sylvia Plath and had hair the color of pomegranate seeds, but it wasn’t just that. She saw people. She looked at you like she was taking a picture of your soul. Scared the hell out of me, honestly.

I’d sneak out just to sit on her porch and talk. Not even about deep stuff sometimes—just junk like our favorite albums or how dumb the school mascot looked in that eagle suit.

One night, she handed me a Sharpie and said, “Write something that matters.”

I wrote I see you on her Converse. And she smiled like I’d just given her a diamond.

Of course, Dad found out eventually.

You can only pull the same trick so many times before the universe catches up with you. It was a Tuesday. I’d gone out tagging with Joel and Dorian, nothing major—just a quick piece on a train car that said We’re still here. I even got back before 2 a.m., which for me, was practically early.

But the next morning, I came downstairs and he was sitting at the kitchen table with my backpack in front of him and the look in his eyes. Not anger. Worse. Disappointment.

“Want to explain this?” he asked, and pulled out a black book I kept zipped into the inside pocket of my bag. It was filled with tags and sketches and half-finished thoughts. Stuff that wasn’t for him.

“It’s just art,” I muttered.

He leaned back. “You call defacing property art?”

I looked at him, and for once, didn’t flinch. “I call not having a voice a crime.”

He blinked. I think I surprised him. Heck, I surprised myself.

“You’ve been sneaking out,” he said.

“I had to,” I told him. “You never see me. You just tell me what not to do.”

That’s when it exploded. Him yelling, me yelling louder. Mom cried. My sister hid in her room. By the end, my curfew got rolled back to 9 p.m., phone confiscated, guitar strings clipped. Again.

I didn’t care.

I still went out. Not every night—had to be smart about it. Joel and Dorian started calling me “Mick the Ghost” ‘cause I’d vanish for hours and show up in the most random places. One time I stashed my bike behind a diner so I could meet Catherine on the boardwalk. Another time, I climbed the water tower behind Lincoln High just to tag LISTEN in bright red letters where the whole town could see.

It made the news. Some PTA mom called it “teenage terrorism.” I called it art.

I never told anyone it was me, except Catherine. She just grinned and said, “Good.”

I didn’t expect to get caught that night.

The night I took Catherine to the train yard.

It had just rained, so everything smelled like asphalt and damp metal. We were sitting on the hood of Joel’s car, sharing headphones, when I showed her my latest piece: a spray-painted heart with a thunderbolt through it. Her name was beneath it in silver cursive.

“I’ve never had anyone graffiti my name before,” she whispered.

“Well,” I said, “there’s a first time for everything.”

That’s when the flashlight beam hit us.

“Police!” a voice barked. “Don’t move!”

I grabbed her hand. “Run.”

We sprinted like hell, our shoes skidding on wet pavement, hearts pounding like kick drums. She laughed the whole time, like we were in a movie. But we didn’t make it far.

They caught me. Not her. I told her to keep running.

They took me in, called my parents, made me sit in a room with a metal chair and too much fluorescent light. It felt like a cage. And for once, I didn’t feel free.

My dad didn’t say a word the whole drive home.

Just kept his hands at ten and two like they taught you in driver’s ed. When we pulled into the driveway, he turned the engine off but didn’t move.

“You’re seventeen,” he said finally. “You think that means you know everything.”

I stared out the window. “No. I just know what I don’t want.”

He sighed. “What do you want, Mick?”

I looked at him. “To be heard. To not feel like I’m drowning in a world that tells me to sit still, shut up, and be normal.”

He didn’t answer.

They let me off with a warning. First offense and all that. But my parents grounded me again, this time “indefinitely.”

I tried to stay in. I did.

But after a few days, I started feeling like the walls were closing in. Like my skin didn’t fit right. So I did what I always do.

I ran.

But not away.

Just… out.

To think. To breathe.

I met Catherine behind the coffee shop. She kissed me on the cheek and didn’t ask if I was okay. She knew better.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

We walked two blocks to a building I’d never paid attention to before—a boarded-up print shop with vines crawling up the side. She pulled a key from her jacket.

“Don’t ask,” she said, and opened the door.

Inside, it smelled like dust and ink. The walls were bare. Empty. Waiting.

She handed me a spray can.

“Do your thing.”

So I did.

I painted not for rebellion, but for release. For truth. For the rush of color and shape and feeling. I painted a city swallowing itself, a pair of wings, a boy running across rooftops, a girl holding a cassette tape like a weapon.

She watched me, then painted too. We didn’t talk. We just… created.

When I got home at 3 a.m., I expected my dad to be waiting. But he wasn’t.

Instead, there was a note on my bed:

Mick—

I don’t understand you.

But I’m trying.

Let’s talk tomorrow.

—Dad

So here I am now.

Not perfect. Not safe. But not silent.

They say teenage rebellion is a phase. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe it’s the only way to survive in a world that tells you to fade into the background.

But I won’t.

I am the heartbeat in the quiet.

The rhythm in the noise.

The kid with paint on his fingers and fire in his chest.

And I’m still running. Still riding. Still painting.

Still here.

Always.