Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Unaware that it was the last normal morning of his life.
The morning he met Tristan.
Kyle entered his classroom silently and slumped into his seat, hugging his backpack like a pillow atop the desk. Just the start to another school day. Kyle, with his heavy eyes, slouched shoulders, lonely, no one rushing up to talk to him about their weekend, always tired from football practice, fidgeting with his silver pinky ring, bored.
Until he noticed that the once empty desk two rows over with a lopsided smiley carved on its surface had an occupant.
A new student.
Kyle would come to learn his name was Tristan, the odd and alluring new arrival from a strange town no one knew. Or another country. Or planet. Truth became so twisted by gossip in the halls of the school, no one could hope to untangle it.
Maybe it was Kyle’s frame of mind that day that so easily drew him to Tristan. How he felt so detached from everything, even his brother, his family, his teammates, his life. He felt like a moon orbiting nothing, adrift in space, light years from even the nearest star.
And then Kyle spotted Tristan that morning, who appeared at that empty desk two rows over, like an answer to everything.
Milky skin, smooth, strangely unblemished, like porcelain.
Always wearing a smirk on his pale pink lips.
Long, lean figure with perfect posture, like a dancer, or some kind of prince. Wearing mismatched clothes that seemed perfectly intentional, even if picked blindly from the closet.
A face that reflected unwavering apathy.
It was as if nothing could touch him.
He exuded a kind of strength Kyle wasn’t used to, strength that didn’t come from how hard one could ram their body into a rival, how big their biceps, how loud their voice.
Tristan’s was a subtle strength. Unassuming.
And with just a single glimpse that first day of class, Kyle was spellbound, unable to take his eyes off of the strange new student, to concentrate at all, to think, to even breathe.
It was paralysis at first sight.
Kyle rarely acknowledged feelings he had for other guys. He kept them buried, out of anyone’s reach. His nights were so often spent with his bedroom door locked, bed sheets swishing as he jerked off to the front covers of the sports magazines he’d snatch away from his dad’s collection when no one looked. But over the past summer, an entirely new source of inspiration was discovered in finding grainy images on the family computer and its crawling dialup internet, which he’d then swiftly delete after burning to memory. The imagery later fueled the machine of his mind as he cooked up fantasies behind his squeezed-shut eyelids, fantasies he would never dare admit out loud.
So it was with great care and caution that he snuck glances at the new student two rows over, at Tristan, the boy with short blond hair, adorably messy, and his sleepy, misty blue eyes that seemed uninterested in anyone or anything.
Even the class president when she decided to introduce herself to him one afternoon. “I’m also a devout Christian,” she finished rather pompously, “and believer of God.”
Tristan yawned, twirled a red pen between his long fingers, and said, That’s okay, not all of us can be perfect.
He was fearless. Everything Kyle wished he could be.
Kyle had no real friends anymore. No enemies either. He was a fly on the wall in every scene of his own life. His parents took little interest in him, all of their attention paid to their youngest, to Kaleb. Kyle’s eighteenth birthday came and went, no one said a word. His football games, no one ever attended, everyone always having something else to do.
All he craved was for someone to look at him. To truly see him. Even the dullest of interactions would have been a gift.
“The hell’s with you?” Morning the next day, two of Kyle’s teammates stood over Tristan’s desk like trees. The room had fallen silent. Class hadn’t started yet, the teacher was nowhere. Word got around fast that the new kid had a mouth he liked to use. “You some kinda psycho or somethin’?”
Kyle wasn’t part of this. Just like with everything in life, he only watched from two rows over as Tristan, bored, lifted his sleepy eyes from whatever he was sketching and replied: Do you believe in karma?
“Huh? The fuck you talkin’ about?”
I don’t believe in karma. I believe the most evil person on Earth can live a happy, lovely life and get everything they ever dreamed of. Tristan dragged his eyes up the footballer’s body, then stopped at his chest with a frown. Is your name really Brock? Were your parents mad when they named you?
Everyone in class held their breath.
It was difficult to tell if it was in amazement or fear.
They were all starved for something terrible to happen. It was like a fire in everyone’s eyes, an excited, greedy fire.