Caleb woke up from a sleep he hadn’t been aware he was in. It was nightfall now, and he could see a milky full moon shining down on him and countless golden stars twinkling merrily. He looked to his right and saw that Isaiah was sleeping peacefully beside him, snoring softly.

The sight of Isaiah resting on the ground right beside him made Caleb smile. He couldn’t believe the situation he was in: stolen at birth and raised by robots on a planet he had never known existed, infatuated with a boy who wasn’t who he said he was, and trapped with that boy on that planet with multitudes of shut-down robots.

More had happened in that one day than any of the other exciting events in his life combined. Caleb could barely take all of it in. But somehow he managed to. He cuddled up against Isaiah and tried to fall back asleep, but to no avail.

He sighed, taking another peek at the gorgeous boy beside him. Caleb had developed crushes on other people before he met Isaiah, but he had never once thought of any of them as gorgeous. Handsome or cute sure, but he hadn’t realized that there was such a thing as a gorgeous boy before he first laid eyes on Isaiah.

Caleb recalled the first time he met who he then knew as Mark. He had been in 8th grade when suddenly a new kid who introduced himself as Mark Baker moved into town. It had been love at first sight.

Before Isaiah moved into town--or rather, planet--Caleb had been deeply infatuated with Gregory Abraham. He shuddered, realizing that his middle school crush had been a robot. But then Isaiah waltzed into Caleb’s history class, flashed a smile at Caleb, and suddenly Gregory was tossed out the window, for there was a new love of his life.

Everything had seemed so complicated back then, when all he was worried about was what others thought of him, not making a complete fool out of himself in front of his crush, and passing middle school without being labelled as a total loser.

If only things were that simple now. Everything had seemed so terrible and unattainable then, but now he wished he could go back. Back to when his main concerns were what to wear to school that day, how to be more social, how to not die. He may have been in deep water then, but now he was sinking like a stone with no way to get back up.