My heart pounds as I ascend the steps, this house's walls are too narrow-- am I even breathing? 'Go on,' she said, 'He's in his room on the second floor'/ But now I'm going to have a heart attack for being in his house without his direct knowledge. It's an odd feeling, to be in a home that isn't mine. Intruding its walls, tainting its carpet with my unfamiliar footsteps. My knuckles tap hesitantly against the white wooden door closest to the landing, waiting impatiently. I feel pale, why must I be forces to wait like this, because it makes me think. What if my visit was too sudden? 'Sorry' he'll say, cool and avoiding all regular human emotion, 'bust with sleeping today, see you at school Monday' But then I'd have to walk through his house alone again. torture. I knock once more, slightly louder this time. That's when a door opens a little further down the hallway, and his head pokes out. It makes me freeze, and yet somehow my face and ears burn red, just to know I was knocking on the wrong door.

"Hey." He says after a minute, taking a step away from his room and towards me. "Looks like you got the wrong door there." He chuckles as he stands so close to me, now, leaning for the knob of the door I'm at. I can smell the fume of his bedroom on his clothes, his hair contradicting it; it's more of a spring dew scent. He swings the door open, revealing a bathroom and now I feel even more stupid.

"S-sorry ..." I mumble at him as he goes back to his room and I follow hopelessly. "Your mom sent me up." Because I feel the need to explain myself. I've never been in the house before, but I've driven him home before, so I knew where his house was. He has yet to have a clue about my house-- maybe I can keep it that way, at least for a while.

"It's okay, it's a big house, there are a lot of rooms." He flops onto his bed, and I fall into a beanbag chair on the other side of his room.

"Yeah, it is." I agree, knowing my own house is far larger and with more rooms, as well. One floor could hold more rooms than all of his house's put together. But I stay quiet about it, of course. I have no intentions of telling him.

"So why'd you come over?" His voice brings me back from thoughts, and it takes me a minute to completely comprehend it.

"Oh well, I thought we could just hand out or ... something." I'm getting nervous again-- he surely won't be bothered by my childish social wants, social needs. Dependency; he’s not dependent … why would he was to have out with me? Dependent, pessimistic, paranoid—

“Sure.” It catches me off guard, “Where’d you want to go? Downtown? Lunch? Something like that?”

“Umm …”

“I’ll just tell my mom I’m leaving and we can hit the road.” At that, he jumps up, grabs his wallet, and leaves the room. Honestly, this is going a lot better than I thought. Not wanting him to leave without me, I hurry to follow him, walking in on a conversation between him and his mother about leaving. “We’ll be back soon, just gonna go hand around for a while.” After much more talk of details, I continue to follow him out the door and down the street. “I’m actually glad you came over. I was bored out of my mind.”

“Really?” I can already tell where we’re going, downtown of course, but he’s leading me down the back roads. The residential area no one ever comes down, and everyone always seems to be trapped in an eternal lifetime of never leaving their homes. Freaks me out.

“Yeah, I know if I stayed any longer, my mom would probably make me do chores or something.” He laughs, I laugh too, but it’s nervous and hesitant. I feel like I’m going to get sick. I stop before he does, which makes me feel guilty, like I’m somehow forcing friendship on him. Our steps are imperfect, so our arms keep hitting each other. Just the smallest thing makes my heart jump dangerously. It’s a daredevil and I hate it. Forcing me to comply to its near-suicide desires. It’s not until I realize he’s no longer brushing me arm that I see he’s stopped; I stop, too.

“What’s wrong?” My heart dares me to ask. Slowly he steps forward, I don’t move. He’s close again. “Des?”

“Sebastian.” He mumbles. I happen to notice we’re alone. No one’s on the street, no one can see us. My heart suddenly decides to attack my ribs. His hair covers his eyes, it’s pretty long. “Thanks for coming today, I could hardly catch you after school and I was too scared to tell you during school.” I hate how sick I feel. “So now I want to tell you something important.”

“Listen, Des, I really don’t think that I—“

“I like you.” He says before I finish my thought. I always thought my first declarations of love would be more romantic, not on the back roads of this crappy city, and actually from me. “I mean .. that sounds like something a kid would say but … Every time we’re at school, I pretend that nothing’s wrong. But things are wrong. I think about you at home, I get overly worried about your opinions … sometimes I think about kissing you.”

My heart radically starts killing me, but it sort of feels like it’s stopped because my whole body’s gone numb. “O-o-o-oh … ?” My voice is trembling, now. I’m not sure what to say. Lucky for me, he continues.

“I don’t want to think about it, anymore.”

Okay maybe it’s not so lucky for me. “What do you mean?” I counter at him, pretending like I have no idea what’s going on. But he knows damn well I know exactly what he means, and I’ve been exactly the same way about him, too. But I don’t want to do this now, honestly. I’m really not ready for this. The look on his face, it looks like he’s going to kiss me, but somehow I turn away from him, denying him.

“I mean I want to kiss you.” He replies stubbornly. That’s all I need. Just like that I take off.

He doesn’t follow me. I don’t see him until Monday.