I didn't see him coming, not in the long run. One second I'm walking briskly—my head down, glaring at the fraying carpet beneath my freshly polished loafers, with hands clenched at my sides—and the next, my stiff face as collided with his chest. His fabric bearing chest.

The shirt is made of cotton, a soft fabric that I would wear everyday if it weren't for my school uniform. Crimson red dye makes his emerald eyes stand out gloriously, like the north star against the quilted Galaxy. His hair plays the role of the planets. Every fiber, every filament, appears to be silky, and I can't help but wonder what it would feel like to run my long fingers through those precious brown locks.

His hands on my shoulders are what keep me from falling back. He steadies me, a calming, concerning stare pouring into my eyes. I could gaze at him forever.

"Are you alright?" His words are creamy and sweet, an effortless enticement, by the looks of it.

I nod, feeling sheepish. Blood rushes to my face.

He underlines my response with a sleek smirk. I like the way his face glows.

More words follow, but I don't process them, because I'm watching his faultless body bend down to lift a backpack out from beneath a chair beside me. I'm left hoping it wasn't a question he asked.

When he straightens his posture, I get a real good look at him. I quickly pick up on his muscles—the broad curves of his biceps, his elegantly sculpted calves. Only about two inches taller than me, I come to wonder just how it was that I face planted into the face of his chest, rather than us bonking heads. His hurried manner is an excuse enough for me to believe that he was running, his feet lifted off of the ground as he sprinted. He was flying, his angel wings outstretched; and I ran into him, disrupting his grace entirely. I want to say that I am sorry, but I'm not sure where the words have gone. There's nothing in my mind but him and the voices.

Three voices. One more than there were two minutes ago.

As usual, they scream at me, three voices shouting in menacing, frightful tones. Their calls fill me with dread and even though I am aware that this is all just my imagination. I dare not believe what my loved ones have told me.

My therapist, Dr. Chet Allen, and my parents both repeatedly tell me, on a daily basis, with persistence flooding their words, "It's not real, it's all in your head."

It doesn't feel like it's in my head, though. It feels certain, an undeniable truth.

The voices convince me that the people I pass on the street are out to get me, that they want me dead. In the halls at school, when my peers are trailing behind me, the voices say that they're following me as a way of getting to my parents, so they can kill my family.

Just picture what it would be like to have a thousand people shouting at you all at once. They block out the rest of the world, they distract you from your every day tasks, and they hurt you in ways you never expected possible.

Hardly anyone understands the lonesome battle I pursue on a daily basis.

For the red cladded boy in front of me, the one I've just barely met, the one with eyes painted with more emotion in a mere glimpse than I've ever felt in my entire 17 years of living, the voices are surprisingly calm. Like the wind after a storm, smooth, and silent.

There's three voices; two of which are male, one female. Right now their words are slurred, coming out all at once. I can't hear anything else, they won't shut up.

"Who is he?" The first voice is the one I'm most used to; and probably, the one I like best. He speaks with a vast amount of curiosity, asking questions I find to be valid. He doesn't overwhelm me with the anxiety the other two voices feed me.

"I bet he's part of the government, here to finish you off!" Voices number two. She's enthusiastic, to say the least. Constantly yelling over and over, coming to quick assumptions with the little mind I suppose she doesn't have. Her continuous statements are brutal.

"Run, boy. Run far away from him—be safe." The third voice is a whisper, but that doesn't make it better. He hisses sharply, and it sounds as if someone had sharpened his rolling tongue with a dagger.

The boy scares the voices away—thank god—when he places a large, delicate hand just between my shoulder blades. "You look a little panicked, would you be willing to let me walk you home?"

I nod my head and clear my throat. "No, I would not mind at all."

He guides me outside of the therapist's office, onto the sidewalk. Together, we set a brisk pace. He doesn't speak for a while, and neither do I. Every few moments, though, I can feel his emerald green eyes sneak over to me. They travel up and down my body, studying me like a painter does his model. Like Da Vinci had Mona Lisa.

"You don't talk much, do you?" He teases me, gazing at me with a tilted head and a puzzled expression.

He earns a smile for that card, a bright one, too. The edges of my thin lips defy gravity, floating upwards until I'm practically grinning. "I find that people prefer when I don't speak."

"Well, that isn't very kind," he says it like it's a shame, though, I pick up on the slight annoyance in his voice, as if he would rather play a part in real conversation, one with a beginning, middle, and end. So, he asks more questions. "How old are you?"

"17. And you?"

"Same age." Well isn't that a coincidence.

He asks many questions; where do I go to school? What are my hobbies? What is my family like? I answer them all with utter honesty, and then I repeat the inquiry.

The voices in my head begin to speak once more, but this time, with an alternate tone than before. Calmly, they murmur all together, all at once, in perfect synchronization, "Trust him, he will do you good. Trust him, he will protect you from the ones who desire you gone."

I find this to be strange, for more than one reason. First off, the voices are never so kind to people, not even my parents and therapist. Especially not my parents and therapist. Second, I barely know this guy. I don't even know his name, and the voices are speaking as though we met years ago, and have been best friends since. That isn't the case.

"What are you obsessed with?" The boy asks the question casually, as if it were completely normal to ask a stranger what they loved.

"Like, a fandom?" I seek clarification to the odd inquiry spoken by my companion.

"Not just a fandom, just whatever. We all have that one guilty pleasure," mischief highlights the last two words.

Chuckling, I reply, "Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a guilty pleasure, but I do really like Space Heroes." Sheepish, my face is flustered. Once pale, now pink. "What about you?" Taking the spotlight off of me in a most courteous way.

His face is expressionless, a mere flat lined mouth and dull eyes as he states, "Words," plain and simple. Words.

There's something awfully curious about this boy, perhaps from the calmness in his voice while mine shakes and quivers. Or it could be the contradiction between his erect posture and hands lazily stuffed in the pockets of his dark, denim jeans that I find to be peculiar. Yet, it isn't either of these oddities that send me into an ocean of bemusement, but rather, his response; words. Crystal clear, he'd announced it. This boy is obsessed with words.

My brow furrows and I fixate my gaze into the sidewalk, not wanting to offend him with my startled expression. "Words? Is that a book or movie?"

He shakes his head, and, despite the vigorous motion, his hair doesn't get messed up, it stays perfect. Obedience. "No. Just words. Like what we speak, what we read. They fascinate me."

"How so?" Now I'm intrigued, eating at his words like a famished wold.

We're nearing my apartment building, in defiance of my longing to stay and talk longer. This is the longest conversation I've held with someone my age in a while, I'm not sure I'm prepared to let it go, especially considering I'll most likely never see this boy again.

"I guess it amazes me how you can build somebody up, make their day, give them a reason to get out of bed every morning, or, you can burn their bridges, and hurt them with scars no person should bare, with only a short collection of syllables." I've never thought of it that way, up until now, when I'm walking down the unusually empty streets of Manhattan. Props to the stranger pacing beside me.

I don't have to tell him that this is my apartment building, he clearly understands when I halt just before we reach the parking lot. "Okay, wait. So I know that you're 17, obsessed with space heroes, go to Roosevelt Academy—the best Christian private school in the city—and you're an only child who has no body to hang out with, but, I don't know your name." There's a hint of tease in his voice. It compliments his small, genuine smile nicely, like a flower crown on a teenage girl wearing a flowy dress.

I realize, as I comprehend these words, that we didn't properly introduce ourselves. We were so caught up in crafting a conversation, making for names to be unimportant. Either that, or he didn't care who I was up until now. I'll go with the former, for my own sanity.

"Leo. And you are . . ?"

He fills in the blank, where my sentence is left empty, while backing away, down the street, most likely, on his way home; "Raphael."


Raphael. The name stuck with me all through the night, like gum on an old tennis shoe. I couldn't get him out of my mind, the boy who scared the isolation away so he could offer me a sweet slice of friendship pie. Well, not friendship exactly, more like an acquaintanceship, but we'll just say that on that day, we were standing on the thin line dividing the two statuses.

If I recall correctly, all through the evening, and well into the night, my mother asked me if I was alright. "You seem a little distant," She'd chimed, her painted lips parting with every syllable, coming back together only to reinforce the bittersweet silence of our penthouse. My father was in his office, and his voice was muffled by the thick walls as he talked business through the phone.

Contempt on working in peace, with as minimum conversation possible, I responded with a short suggestion, "I'm just tired." It wasn't a lie, no, I have never lied to my parents, and I was not about to start now. Though, I shall admit, I was very vague as to what I was tired of.

My mother thought I was filled with exhaustion, earned from a long day at school. It wasn't as simple as that, it's never been straightforward in my life. Everything about me is so complex, so draining. Usually, by this time, I'd be laying in my bed, staring blankly at the wall across from me, listening to the voices in my head wail, thinking to myself, "Another long night without a drop of sleep." Tonight is different though, for I haven't heard the voices since I was on the sidewalk earlier this afternoon, when they told me to trust the boy I now can refer to as Raphael.

I'm not filled with exhaustion, no, I'm filled with life. For once. For once. For once.

"Maybe you should go lay down in bed, that always helps, doesn't it?" It never helps, no, but right now I'm looking for any excuse the be alone, so I pick up my laptop and cross the threshold.

In my bedroom, I turn on the lights and ceiling fan, and take a seat at my desk. Wasting no time at all, I google the name "Raphael."

The first results are the famous Renaissance artist, and I begin to wonder if his parents had named their son after the well-known painter.

Scrolling down more, I read that the name means, "God is Healed," resulting in my thinking that his name could easily be translated to, "Proof that God Exists," which is silly of me, but true. He looked like a god, walked and talked like a god, to me, he was a god.

And for a while, I would think of him as just that; a god. Slowly, though, I would realize that he isn't as picture perfect as I'd originally thought. Though, that was good, that I realized his flaws, that he made mistake, that he was, in fact, human. Because even with this knowledge, I accepted him into my life. And god, would I regret that.