It was a couple weeks before spring break. My dad and stepmom walked on eggshells around me and stopped talking about their political views completely after I blew up at them.

The school’s populace was on edge for the much-needed break, but the teachers had decided to pile on finals prep work. I breezed through it; well, I mostly breezed through it. Math and, just, science in general was always hard for me. I didn’t like numbers all that much. English, I realized early on in 8th grade, was an extreme waste of time since it made kids not want to read. I abstained from reading too much into the assignments and, admittedly, plagiarized much of what I ended up writing about from the Internet. Then I found that I had the incredible ability to bullshit essays and get good grades on them. The plagiarism stopped in November of my freshman year.

Okay, rant over.

So we were all really excited for spring break. Teachers began handing out the final prep work, which I worked through. I had done plenty of extra credit and had so much spare time that I didn’t have to worry about my grades. Yes, I was that kid.

But one day, I was in the library flipping through the yearbooks when Davis came over to work. Davis was my friend who did theater, except he’s invisible to the student body, and that’s how he preferred it.

“What up, dude?”

I ran my fingers through my hair, sighing loudly through my nose. “I’m trying to find Ryan’s face.”

Davis briefly chuckled before realizing that he had no idea what I was talking about. He flipped open his book on astronomy and replied, “Good luck.” He paused before he asked, legitimately curious, “Do you even know if he goes to this school?”

“No.”

There was a pause again, where I’m sure he was surprised with my replying back to him at all. “Good luck,” he said again, rolling his eyes.

I rolled my eyes sarcastically back at him, and began flipping through the pages again. There were six Ryan’s, but I was looking for those glossy, green eyes. That’s when I realized that the yearbook wasn’t going to be of any help; the school hadn’t printed the yearbook in color for the past seven years. I looked up and turned to last year’s yearbook, which, amazingly, it didn’t help at all either. I dropped the yearbook onto the desk, and began people watching. “Is his name even Ryan?” I wondered. “He could’ve been lying to me to protect his identity or something.”

Which he was. Kinda.

But I got bored of flipping through useless and unimportant faces quickly, so I moved to a table at the far end of the library; Davis moved with me. I was now situated where I could see straight across to the front. It was partially empty.

After the second bell, signifying the end of the passing period, a class suddenly came in and took occupancy of one of the enclosed areas. Mrs. Johnson, who I had when I was learning geoscience, led it. Kendall, a transfer student I had befriended, was in the class, purposefully sitting close to us so we could chat a little while she researched some volcano explosion in the seventeenth century.

There were a few stragglers, but nothing was out of the ordinary, until it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Those green eyes with the vacant, glossy stare. The guy who had those eyes may have been smiling, but those eyes read as voided and angry. Jacket was gone, along with his jester-styled winter hat.

I had found Ryan. Or, at least the person who called himself “Ryan”.

I pretended not to have seen him, as to not raise any alarm about it, but I went and scuttled away into the library’s shelves to hide myself just in case. When class was completely over, I asked Davis who it was.

Kendall was the one who responded, saying, “That’s Ryan Anders. He’s one of the popular techie kids in the theater department. ”

“I don't know him,” replied Davis to her claim. “How do you know him?”

“I’m in geoscience with him.”

“Wait, is this the Ryan that Mr. McCallister talks about all the time?” Apparently, he was a teacher who worked in the theater department. “He’s working on the crew for Beauty and the Beast.” That was 2010’s spring musical.

“Why do you want to know who that is?” she asked.

“N-no reason,” I spluttered, trying to stay nonchalant. It didn’t work.

“What? Do you like him?” asked Kendall, almost surprised.

“No,” I told them bluntly. “I…I think he lives on my street.” They bought it.

But I knew myself well enough that I would be stalking him eventually.

It started when I got home. I stalked his Facebook page, and, true to Ryan’s nature, he didn’t reveal much: just our hometown and high school. I didn’t walk with Ryan that night, because I knew I would blow his cover. Clearly he had told me his name in confidence, and I didn’t want to violate that either.

Walking through school made me horribly self-aware. Knowing Ryan’s voice, I suddenly became frightened of his presence at school, most of the time in the company of his friends. The most awkward encounter being on a Thursday afternoon, when we passed each other in an empty hallway by the library. While my eyes darted quickly back and forth from him to the space in front of me, he didn’t seem to acknowledge my existence. When I nervously looked back, he had disappeared into one of the stairwells.

I would later learn that he would watch me pass on occasion.

But then it got weird. At 7:15 on Saturday, when I opted for a night in, he stopped by my house and waited. He could see me in the windows of the reading room, and I could see him, but I ultimately decided to stay away.

Finally, on the Tuesday before spring break, Alyssa returned home from school and handed me a note with Ryan’s handwriting, given to her by an “Elizabeth Anders”. I didn’t have to read the note; I knew this was his way of getting my attention.

That night, I decided to wait for him at the park, but I wasn’t aware of the time and caught him well before that happened. And since subtlety isn’t my strong suit, Ryan wrote his Post-It. It said:

Sometimes the worst of knowing something isn’t letting it be known.

At first, the note made no sense. I literally had to stop walking and think it through. He wrote the message as “The bad stuff we know sometimes can be made lighter by the people you trust”. I’m sure he would’ve written that, but he ultimately decided to write it cryptically.

 He just…wrote it that way. Purposefully cryptic or whatever.

But he was right, though I couldn’t necessarily walk up to him at school and say, “Oh, hi! I know who you are, even though you haven’t really spoken to me in four months!” If he wanted to open up to me, wouldn’t he have done that already?

He wrote the same note ten minutes later and I caved in.

“I know your full name. I know who you are.” He didn’t stop walking. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him back, grounding his feet. Ryan didn’t look at me. “But…I don’t understand why…talking to me was so hard for you. Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” He didn’t answer, nor did he look at me, but a pained look encompassed his face. “I realize that this isn’t easy for you to hear, and I wish that I wasn’t there when I saw you in the flesh, but I know who you are now.” He flinched. “You’re Ryan Anders.”

His glossy stare, which had been fixated on the ground for the longest time, rose and redirected itself at me. Ryan smiled slightly, and drew his hands out of his pockets. He took off his hat, which revealed an unkempt bundle of hair. Ryan looked down at his hat, and began twisting it in his hands. He looked visibly distraught. “Stop, stop. Please. Don’t cry,” I said.

“You’re right.”

I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. “I wish I wasn’t. I’m sorry. Because I know how…badly you didn’t want to tell me who you were.”

We walked over towards the park, and he sat down on a bench. “So, what do you want to make of this, Adrian?”

“Make of what?”

He began twisting his hat again. “I’ve built this whole ‘not-talking’ thing for the past four months. It was unfair when you got me to speak. And, and now, you know who I am. I just…I feel so conflicted.” He sighed.

“Why?” He didn’t, or refused, to answer. I suddenly took his hat from his hands. “Don’t twist this, you’re going to ruin it.” He looked down, and I put his hat back on him. “Why did you never say anything?”

“It was mainly just to get away from my family at first. Then, it was to get away from school, and, and then it turned into this, ‘I need to get away from everything’.” He pulled his hat over his eyes, possibly to wipe away the tears. Had he always been this sad or had I never noticed before? He pulled his hat back and looked at me. “Then you began walking with me, and it was nice to have the company. And I didn’t want it to mix at all because I knew that it would just complicate things.”

I sat down next to him, and began playing with my thumbs. Ryan pulled on his coat. “Do you want to take off your coat?” He shook his head and began playing with the zipper. “Listen, why do you walk?”

Ryan took out his Post-Its and the Sharpie. In his neat, perfect writing, he wrote:

We all need to get away from something, even if it’s temporary.

I sighed; this was among the first notes he ever written me. “Why do you want to get away from your family?” I asked, revising my question.

He turned his head and smiled. It was that kind of soft, genuine smile that would’ve charmed anyone, but his common fixated stare while walking convinced me otherwise. I frowned. “If you want, you don’t have to walk with me anymore,” I said, getting up from the bench.

“No!” he said, a little too hastily.

“It’s just that…” I lost my train of thought. I started over. “Do you want me to go? Because I know how you want to keep walking and school apart.” It wasn’t that I wanted to stop walking with him. But if he didn’t want to do it with me anymore, it was an entirely different scenario.

But there was a moment of silence. Ryan cleared his throat and said, “No, I don’t want you to go. I like walking with you.” I inhaled slowly and sat back down.

“Why do you want get away from your family?”

He exhaled quickly though his nose, and changed his gaze to a spot across the park. He got up, and took my arm, smiling. “Come on, I need to show you something.” 

Ryan led me across the park towards the sheltered area. Smiling, he let go of my arm and turned to me. “I like coming here sometimes. Its like it’s hidden from the world, you know?”

I nodded, not having the heart to tell him that this was where I came to hide. I pretended to peer through the trees back towards the park. “Yeah, it seems like a good place to hide away.”

He looked at me, almost like he was displeased with my response. “Adrian, I know you come here.”

“How do you – ”

“I found this place when I was seven. I came here by accident. But I keep coming back here because it was my safe haven.”

I was trespassing on his safe haven? Is that why he wasn’t talking to me? “I, I didn’t mean to intrude on your – ”

“No. You didn’t intrude.”

I looked at him, a little lost, frightened, and worried. “What?”

“You never intruded. Yes, I walked my walk for two years by your house.” He kicked a loose twig. “And yes, I saw the curiosity that you had for me when I walked passed.”

I looked away, slightly embarrassed. “You make it sound so – ”

“But then you claimed this spot, which I didn’t really mind. I-I mean, it isn’t my spot, that I own, either.” Ryan looked down, his face hidden by the branches’ shadows. “Adrian, I overheard what they were saying about you at school.” He sounded so ashamed of himself.

I glanced down. “So what?” I asked harshly. “If you’ve brought me out here to ridicule me, then – ”

“No!” he answered too quickly. “I-I just meant that y…that you were brave and stuff, for telling your sister.”

“St-stepsister,” I corrected with a sigh. “I’m not brave. I like being in the shadows, going unnoticed. How, is telling my stepsister how suckish school is, brave?”

Ryan stepped forward once and stopped. “It just is,” he whispered back. He didn’t say anything further for about a minute; he just glanced around, possibly trying to change the subject. “You know,” he said, “if you look in the right place, you can see straight to the stars.”

I looked through the branches and saw the clusters of specked lights stuck against the blackened sky. The half moon was in the other direction, but it was nevertheless a pretty night, especially with the night silhouetting the town. I looked back to Ryan, whose eyes were clearly switching between me and the stars.

Suddenly I was shaking; this didn’t feel right. The atmosphere, the light, the tone – it just didn’t feel right at all. “Why are we here?” I asked. Ryan turned towards me, shyly smiling.

Oh, God. No, no. No, no, no, no. “Oh, please don’t tell me that you like me because I might just throw up.”

Ryan looked horrified. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I’m not going to lie to you either.”

I put my face in my hands. “Oh, dear God. I feel sick.”

“Actually sick?” he asked, stepping towards me.

I flung myself backwards against a tree, a sickening lump forming in my throat. “Ryan, please, just…just stay there. Let…let me calm down.”

See, when I get nervous, I feel like I’m going to throw up. This was the most he had ever spoken to me, ever, so I didn’t want to inadvertently mess up. Neither did I want a crush on me to be proclaimed in a goddamn park.

But then I threw up. Probably food poisoning.

I had finished watching my dinner come back up and calmed down enough, and by that time, Ryan had decided to sit on the swings and wait for me. I went over and joined him, but couldn’t bring myself to listen to him try again and say how he felt about me. I looked down, slightly embarrassed. “Why do you get away from your family,” I asked again.

Ryan frowned, and spoke softly. “My parents aren’t completely accepting of me. It’s a little difficult sometimes.”

Oh, good. He was in a similar situation that I was in. “Yeah, I know the feeling. My dad and my stepmom really aren’t on the most accepting – ”

“I like you,” he whispered. And I knew he meant it too because, well, I smelled like vomit.

I closed my eyes and began to shake. Those words hurt. They really did. I sighed and tried to compose myself; I failed. “Ryan, I…I’m just not ready for something like this. I’m not ready to completely take…” I trailed off.

He grabbed my wrist, trying to be comforting. “I understand.”

I got up, pulling myself away from his touch. I couldn’t look at him. “No, no, it’s not that. It’s not that I’m not ready for a relationship.” I paused. “Actually, it is a little. But I guess I’m not ready to, make it known to the world that, I like guys.”

Ryan nodded, and he sat there and I stood there awkwardly in a few moments of silence. Ryan turned his head towards the sky. “Are you out to your parents?” he asked.

“No. Are you?” I asked stupidly.

“Yeah. They thought it was me getting back at them for something, bad parenting? I don’t know. But, they’re starting to come around. Or, at least, I’m hoping they are.”

“Okay.” I was shaking horribly, and I still felt sick.