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The first time you see him, it nearly takes your breath away.
No, not in a romance movie kind of way. There's no golden light descending from the heavens to fall perfectly across his shaggy blond hair. You don't see stars in the edge of his eyes, and you most definitely don't hear some mushy pop song play in your head as he walks into the building, the autumn air tumbling in behind him and flushing his cheeks.
No, it's not like the movies. It's simpler than that. More real.
You take one look, and you know for a fact that you've never seen this boy in your life. You would remember if you had. Because he's different, in a way you can't quite put your finger on, as dumb as that sounds.
You try not to stare. After all, why would you of all people-track star and head of the wrestling team- be ogling some random new kid. Why should you care?
But you do.
You watch him walk into the halls of your high school as if he's not even there at all, like he's going to completely disappear at any second. As if you could blink and he'd be gone, out the doors and back to wherever he came from, with nothing but a breeze left behind.
He clutches the straps of his backpack like a lifeline. His knuckles are white. His eyes glaze right over every human being in his path. You can tell from the set of his jaw that he won't be here for long.
Your breath catches in your throat when he walks by, and he looks right past you. Your friend Thomas prods your back and asks what the hold up is. You shake your head and continue down the hall, deciding to just let it go. Who cares about some random new kid anyways?
But you still can't breathe, and he seems like he's not real at all.
----
The second time you see him, you can't help but clench your fists.
Its been a few weeks now, and you've almost forgotten about him. And yet something jars your insides when you see him now.
He's leaning up against his locker with his books in his hands, smiling half heartedly at someone in front of him. The boy is only a little bit shorter than him, with strong arms and dark skin. You recognize him immediately as Alby, the serious kid whose been in your class since the third grade. They seem to be deep in discussion, and the boy smirks as he speaks. Alby rolls his eyes and gives the boy a friendly shove.
Then the boy flinches a little, a flash of pain criss crossing his face like a comet in the night,there and gone in the blink of an eye. Alby doesn't seem to notice.
But you do. And you notice the way he readjusts his shirt over his shoulders, giving you just enough time to see a scatter plot of old bruises littering his arm. Pink, Purple, Green.
Your nails dig into your palm.
You want to do something. Anything. But you tell yourself that would be almost impossible. You don't even know him. You probably never will.
You close your own locker and turn to leave, but not before your eyes meet his from across the hall. This time, he doesn't look through you. And in that split second you know he can read your face like a book. He knows what you've seen.
Clouds roll into his expression, gray and black and covering every light that may have once filled his eyes. He is thunder and rain and lightning.
He's gone in a flash.
You unclench your fists, but there are sparks in your stomach.
----
You see him again on a Sunday, or rather, you don’t see him.
You're out jogging in the park, as usual. It's hot and you're and generally exhausted, but you keep pushing yourself anyways. The last big meet of the season is coming up and you want to be ready. Everyone's going to be there- your parents, your friends, and most importantly, some college scouts. You keep glancing at your watch to check your time.
Just a little bit faster.
You pick up the pace, and until you can hear your heartbeat in your ears.
Faster, faster, faster, and then...you're on your knees, sliding across gravel and dirt.
Curses spill from your mouth as you try and compose yourself. Tripping has probably ruined your time, and you'll have to restart.
Then, you hear a grunt coming from somewhere behind you. Quickly, you jump to your feet, your eyes falling on the source of the sound, and by the looks of it, the reason you fell in the first place.
He's laying across the path, staring up at you through blond fringe, his mouth twisted in a somewhat pained way, his eyes shooting daggers in your direction as he pulls himself up off of the ground.
“Hey idiot,” He snaps at you, and for the first time you hear his voice, low and heavy with an accent, “Why don't you bloody watch where you're going!”
You say nothing. You still can't get over the way his voice sounds, like honey and chili powder mixed up in one.
You stare at him.
He looks at you like you're insane.
“Hey,” he folds his arms over his chest, he's bleeding slightly and you cringe a little with guilt, “I'm talking to you!” He raises his voice, still looking at you funny. “Are you going to apologize for running me over or...”
You shake your head a little bit, and find your voice, “God, yeah man, I'm sorry I didn't see--” You stop, your mind catching up to you. “Wait, how did I not see you?”
The boy suddenly looks away, “Because you're an complete moron.” He mutters, but his heart's not in it. There's a suspicious red color rising to his cheeks.
Unfortunately for the other boy, now that the initial shock of seeing him has worn off, you're able to form coherent thoughts.
Something clicks.
You smile, your eyes crinkling up in the corners and forming little half moons. You try as best you can to hold in the laughter bubbling up in your chest.
“Don't tell me you were laying in the freaking path?” You ask, raising an eyebrow.
One look at the boy and you know you were right. His blush grows even deeper. “I didn't know it was a trail!” He shoots back. “I was just tired and...”
Laughter billows out now. You can't help it. The boy glares at the ground for another second, mourning his injured pride. But after a moment, a smile creeps to his lips, hiding in the corner of his mouth. Anger fades.
“I guess this is kind of my fault then.” He shakes his head, “I'm sorry, I guess-” and then he's laughing too, quietly at first, his shoulders heaving slightly, “Honestly, I don't know how I made that mistake.” He chuckles once again and throws his hands up in defeat, “I guess we're both morons here, eh?”
You talk for a while then, the sun falling behind the trees, golden light casting long shadows across the trail. For a split second you start to ask about the bruises that you saw earlier, but you can't seem to find the words. Something in the way he holds himself is so cautious, so stiff and still. He remembers you, remembers what you saw. If he's not bringing it up, neither should you.
Instead, you find out little things about him, though he never seems to want to give much away. You learn he's from London, but he came to the states when he was a kid. He has a deep love for dogs and chocolate ice cream, and apparently napping in parks. His favorite book is Lord of the Flies and he always keeps a copy in his backpack. He loves monster movies, but zombies scare him to death. You discover that he's incredibly sharp witted, and sometimes too snarky for his own good. You never want to stop talking to him, but it's only after he leaves that you realize he never even told you his name.
Every day you jog the same trail, even after you run your last meet. You tell yourself it's to stay in shape for the next season, but you spend half of the time with your eyes in the field where you last saw him.
He's never there though, but every glimpse of blonde hair makes you turn your head.
Just in case.
----
The next time you see him, theres something wrong.
His head is in his hands, his fingertips tangling in his hair over and over again, pulling.
He's sitting alone at the lunch table, the chair that's usually occupied by Alby empty by his side. A plate of food rests before him cold and untouched.
You waver there a few feet away from him, making up your mind. Eventually though, you decide to sit.
The sound of the chair moving brings the boy's head up from the table. For a second he looks surprised, as if he was expecting someone else. He probably was. After all, who are you to him? The boy who watches him from the hall, or trips over him in the park. You are no more noteworthy than anyone else. You are a face in a crowd, a tree in a forest.
He stares at you for a second and then looks away. He doesn't snap at you or smile for that matter. Maybe, you think, he expects you to leave. That, or he simply doesn't care at all.
You do not exist.
And yet, you speak, somehow pulling words from the depths of your mind.
“Hey.”
You are King of the English language, a true master of linguistics, a weaver of words. Not really. You kind of suck. You resist the urge to groan at your lack of creativity.
He turns toward you again, this time meeting your eyes “You're the park kid.” His voice is quiet and he doesn't smile. It's not a question, and there's something more lingering behind his words. You saw my bruises in the hallway.
You lean back in your chair, and smile at him, trying to ignore the fact that he obviously doesn't want to talk.
“You remember me.” You sound a little surprised, though to be honest, you're just glad he's talking to you.
He cracks a half-hearted smile, nodding at a small pink scar running across his knuckles. “How can I forget?”
Despite the small pinch of guilt you feel, you laugh, try and brush it too. “Don't be such a baby,” you tell him with a grin to show you don't really mean it. “I’ve had way worse” The smile slips off your face in an instant. You know he’s had worse too. You bite your tongue and look away, mentally kicking yourself for being such a jerk.
Silence falls between you. Your words lingering in the air, cold and harsh.
You have no idea what to say now. Luckily, he speaks first.
“Is there some reason you're here?” He asks, his fingers drumming on the table, “Or do ya just enjoy following people around?”
In an attempt to regain your composure, you shrug and grab a bread roll off of his plate, stuffing a piece in your mouth. “I need a reason?” You ask, mostly to keep the conversation going. He doesn't seem to notice you've taken his food at all. For the moment, he still looks somewhat detached, like he's just woken up.
“Generally, yeah.” He looks mostly confused, but his fingers have stopped their anxious tapping, “Unless you want to come off as some sort of infatuated stalker.” He raises an eyebrow, the most reaction you've seen from him so far.
You shrug again, casually stretching your arms behind your head. “It's not my fault that you just happen to go to the same places as me.” You take another bite of the roll and chew thoughtfully. He snatches it from your hand with annoyance and stuffs the rest of it in his mouth. At least, you think, he's eating.
“Besides,” you say, meeting his eyes, “ you don't need to worry too much.” You grin, flashing him your teeth. “I’m only a little infatuated with you.”
The boy almost chokes on his roll. His eyes grow wide.
It's the best reaction you've seen all day.
You throw your hands up in surrender and laugh again, the sound filling the room. Some students look your way and you ignore them. “I'm kidding man,” you say, “I'm kidding.” But something in your stomach flips at those words. You push it aside.
He looks at you through the corner of his eye and finally cracks a grin, breaking his silence with a quick “I doubt it,” his grin growing even wider, “I'm downright lovable.” he replies sharply, without much of a hesitation, and you can't help but wonder just what goes on in his head.
He is cold and jittery one moment, and calm and collected the next. He is ice and fire and storm and sun. And you don't know how that can be. Which one is the real him? The boy with his head in his hands or the one who shoots back wit like a machine gun?
You don't know yet, but you'll find out.
Maybe he is both.
When the lunch bell rings, you get up to leave, but not before remembering the reason you sat down in the first place. “Hey, uhm...” you search for words, but these types of things don't come easy to you, “is everything...okay?” He purses his lips, obviously confused, “I mean...are you okay?”
Something dawns on him, and clouds roll into his expression again. He doesn't meet your eyes. He forces a smile. “I'm perfect.”
You roll your eyes, and shoot him a look that clearly calls BS, but he isn't looking at you. You allow your expression to soften.
He turns to leave, muttering something under his breath. You barely catch it, but somehow put it together.
“I just don't like being alone.”
You decide and you try and talk to him the next day, but he's gone. You don't see him again for a month.
-----
The next time you see him, he is surrounded by whispers and words that follow him like a funeral procession.
He trudges on, slower this time, and he leans on a crutch. His eyes are glazing over all of the crowd as he walks by, reminding you of the first time you saw him. He's looking through everyone, but something tells you that he is more than aware of their stares.
Brenda, one of Thomas' friends, comes up to you in the hall, her eyes glued on the boy.
“Did you hear?” She whispers, her forehead crinkling up as she brings her dark eyebrows together. “The new kid tried to kill himself.”
The words seem strangely loud in your ears.
For a second time, he's the reason you stop breathing.
Something tears inside of you. You're being ripped apart. You are being ripped from everything.
Without another thought you turn from Brenda and speed down the hallway, sliding around corners and through groups of freshman. No matter where you go, you can their whispers, low and serious, as if they are speaking of the dead.
“I heard he jumped off of his dads office building.”
“No, I heard it was a window.”
“What type of person does something like that?”
“I'm not too surprised.”
“He was a freak anyways.”
“Too bad it didn't work.”
When you finally find a vacant classroom, you can still hear their words in your head. You breathe loudly, your chest heaving. You bend over, feeling sick. Hands shake. Eyes burn.
Why?
You don't know him. And in no way was he ever yours. And yet, you're horrified by the idea of losing him.
Him. The boy with no name. The boy who walks into rooms as if he's always supposed to be somewhere else, who sleeps on trails and yells when he gets in the way. The boy with a voice like sugar and fire and far off places, who makes you forget to breathe when he walks by. A boy with scars that go so much deeper than you would have ever known.
You remember the way you felt the day you saw his bruises. There were sparks in your stomach then. Now, there is a fire.
You are alight. You are burning up.
----
You do not wait to see him again.
You go to him. You go to him because you are suddenly and urgently aware of him. Now, it's different than before. Now, it seems, there is no time to simply wait for him to pass by your path. You must pass by his, while you still have him.
Maybe, a part of you hopes, you will be the glue to put him back together. Maybe if you listen and show him that you care, it will be enough. He is parched and you are water. He is starving and you will sustain him.
You will do anything-anything at all-to keep him from feeling this way ever again. This you swear.
But when you do find him, you know you cannot keep that promise.
You spot the nameless boy sitting in the back lot behind the school, smoking a cigarette you didn't even know he had. His hands shake as he looks up, dark eyes meeting yours, and your plans crumble down.
One look is all it takes to know that you cannot be his savior.
This is not a simple break and you are not a cast. It's not a sickness to which you are the cure. He is not a drowning child in need of a lifeguard.
No. He is a ship tossed at sea in the midst of a tempest, with no hope but to hope to sail through, and through, until light breaks on the horizon.
You don't have the power to calm storms.
So instead of trying to fix him, instead of watching him from afar or hovering over him as if a single touch would shatter him completely, you go and talk to him.
“You again?”
He sounds annoyed.
But he's not. He doesn't like being alone.
He's guarded at first, afraid that you're only speaking to him out of pity. But once he sees that you treat him less like a glass doll and more like a friend, he lets a little bit of his guard down.
He'll let a little more down every day.
You learn that his father hits him and that his mother still lives across the sea. You learn that he likes boys and sometimes he feels like he doesn’t always want to be one. You learn that he's sick, at least that's how he puts it. And he doesn't know when it might go away.
But you never know if he jumped. You never ask. But maybe one day he'll tell you.
And until then, you'll just listen.
-----
You see him every day after that.
You sit by him after class as he smokes in the back lot. He laughs when you tell him that you still don't know his name. “After all we've been through?” he says with feigned hurt , “You got to second bloody base with me at the park that day!”
He cracks a grin and the sun shines brighter.
“Dude,” you shoot back, “I learned what your favorite book is,” sarcasm hangs from your words, but you smile “I think that's a little more important anyways.”
He laughs again, and you realize that it's probably the first time he’s laughed in weeks.
He refuses to tell you his name, and he makes you swear you won't ask around. Every day he lets you guess. You hate the game, but play it anyways, and he taunts you with the fact that he knew your name right from the start.
It takes all of your willpower not to grin like an idiot when throws your name into the air. Minho.
You'll learn his name soon though. You'll repeat it so often, it becomes an anthem, singing, calling, filling the air.
Newt.
You love the way it sounds rolling off of your lips.
You use it freely, at first, with insults tagged on. Idiot, moron, loser, and more are always added after his name, as if to hide the way you smile whenever you say it. You yell it across the hall or into the phone. But later, it's yelled differently, screamed into pillows or whispered into scarred shoulders.
You are not the only one who loves the way his name sounds coming from your lips.
----
You see him through the good and the bad.
You're with him the day he finally decides to move out, leaving the broken home that gave him so many broken bones. He cries when he leaves. But something tells you it's not because he'll miss the place where he grew up. Maybe he just wished he had grown up somewhere different in the first place. Maybe he's mourning the life he never had.
And how you wish you could have somehow given that to him. How you wish you could have turned back time and built him a tree-house to escape to, or maybe simply whisked him away to live with a normal family-one with a mom who was always home and a father who loved him more than anything in the world. Maybe he'd have learned to play baseball or gone vacationing to the beach every summer.
But Newt didn't get a life like that. He's scared of baseball bats and he's never set foot in a pool, much less an ocean. It's not fair. It's almost disgustingly not fair.
You hope that this will be a new start.
And it is.
He moves into a small apartment only a half a mile from your house. It's pretty shabby, but he makes it feel like a home. He covers the walls with pictures of you and him and all of your friends, who are now his friends.
Alby tutors him in history, the only class he seems to do poorly in, and Teresa is closer to him than you would have ever predicted. She's always over at his place, helping make dinner or studying with him. She tells him that if he keeps it up, he might be able to get a full ride to college next year. Newt looks at her like she's crazy, but studies harder every day.
Thomas comes over often too, as he seems to have taken a liking to Newt right away. The talk about books together, especially Lord of the Flies. Apparently, it's his favorite too. Newt shows him the copy he keeps in his backpack and Thomas laughs and turns to look at you. “I love this guy,” He says and you smile. Me too.
Even Brenda likes him, and she can be picky about who she hangs out with. She spends time teaching him self defense and kick boxing, often wrestling with him and Gally until they knock over something important or the downstairs neighbors complain. Then, they just lie there, sprawled out on the floor, laughing their lungs out.
Some days they all come over at once. Teresa brings horror movies and Thomas brings popcorn, and they all gather around on the floor with blankets wrapped around their shoulders and watch films until the sun comes up. Almost everyone falls asleep well before morning, but sometimes you and Newt and Thomas last the night. You talk and talk and then surprise the others by making them breakfast. It quickly becomes a weekend tradition.
Finally one day, when you're sitting in his tiny living room, eating dinner on the floor, surrounded by the people you love most in this world, it hits you.
This is Newt's family. This is your family. And you can't imagine it any differently. For a second, it takes your breath away, in the best of ways.
You graduate together this summer and he smiles at the empty space in the crowd where his parents should be. He did this without them. But he didn't have to do it alone.
Now, he smiles at least once a day, and throws the windows open even when it's raining. His bruises are fading. He's not healed completely, but at least he's free.
And you see him in a way that's entirely new. Again, you forget to breathe.