I stared at the spiral bound pack of paper in his hands, finding myself completely frozen. I couldn't budge. Dylan seemed to notice this and tilted his heads to the side awkwardly.

"Uh...this is yours... right? It says Atticus on the inside of the cover."

I snapped out of it, and snatched it back from him a little rougher than I intended. I just felt so, exposed, venerable. Dylan opened his mouth as I flicked the pages offhandedly, mostly because the thought of him looking through this stressed me out.

"Um... I would like to apologize." Dylan rubbed the back of his head nervously. "I might have uh... skimmed through it a bit."

It was like being impaled with a stake. The edges of the paper dugs into my fingers I clutched onto my sketchbook. I didn't want to look him in the face but one glance up told me that he knew. He knew.

We know you're only doing this because you're still mad dad left us. Grow up and get over it.

"God, Att. I'm sorry I didn't mean to pry. At first I was just trying to figure out who it belonged and then... I just, I got a little carried away."

He called me Att. We'd been friend for like three minutes and we were already on nickname level? That wasn't even relevant because he reached out a hand for my shoulder. I didn't see it coming, or wanted it for that matter, so I flinched heavily. He must have thought he startled me because he withdrew his hand slightly. It hovered awkwardly in the air between us.

"If it's any consolation, I won't judge for any of the stuff in there. I mean it's my fault I pried."

"You-You won't?" I was a little less scared now, still it was just a horrible situation I found myself in. "I'm...I'm going to go...now."

It came out broken and uncomfortable, and when I stood up, so did Dylan. It starters me and I stood there like a deer in headlight until he talked.

"Can I walk you home? It's the least I can do." He offered, pulling his bag around his shoulder and picking up his ukulele.

"I guess..." I shut my eyes tight, wishing I could just be alone instead of suffering through this conversation.

This was going all wrong, just like this morning (or yesterday when I looked at the time) with Mom and Janet. Tears were holding knives to my amygdala and threatening the spill. I couldn't cry in front of him, I just couldn't. I'd already cried to much today, I wasn't allowed to humiliate myself anymore.

"You know." Dylan started as we stumbled down the mountain with our phones as flashlights. "Um... if it makes you feel any better. I understand where you're coming from."

The statement took me off guard and I stared at him for a bit. What had we been talking about before hand? I had been to preoccupied with staring at my feet and every step they took as a method of distracting myself from breaking down in front of him. I had no idea what he was talking about. The anxiety? Depression? It seemed unlikely that another queer kids went to my school and he seemed way too cis anyway.

"Wh-what?" I forced out.

"I can relate, to you. On a lot of levels actually. Since it's just the two of us, walking through the woods in the middle of the night, where we could both still very likely be attacked by a high old man who's also a murderer, I think I'm going to tell you about it. This could very likely be the last night of our lives, you know?" He rambled on.

I noticed he was picking as his ukulele strings again. His left hand was clamped down over the neck, dampening the strings. His right hands strummed up and down, making no noise.

"Okay..." I replied as smoothly as I possibly could, I'm not sure if I did okay.

"Yeah...so you're trans right?" He glanced at me quickly.

"Yeah." It felt weird hearing that out loud in positive situation.

"Well...I am too actually."

He seemed so transfixed on his ukulele I wasn't sure I heard him right. He looked like someone who was born biologically male, so while I was ecstatic, I was also confused.

"Trans girl?"

He laughed nervously. "No, I appreciate the compliment. When I said earlier that my pronouns were he/him I meant it. We're both trying to fix our bodies."

I cringed slightly when he referenced my cave art from today. Yesterday. Then the realization that he was trans, just like me, and we managed to bump into each other was amazing. It was like...for once something was going my way.

"Atticus?" He leaned forward to look at me. "I don't mean to be rude, but your lack of reply is kinda freaking me out."

There it was again. My real name.

"Sorry I just...I just." I wasn't sure what I was even trying to say. "It's not you, you're fine, great even. I just..."

Great, I was crying now. I was just... overwhelmed by how easy this was. I hadn't had to work that hard to get him to be my friend, open up, and all in one night too. This just happened. It was almost too good to be true.

"Hey?" He said softly. "It's alright, why are you crying?"

"God, no I'm not... It's just... cold." I sniffed and wiped my face.

"Are you sure? I mean it is cold. You just... are you okay?"

I looked away and wiped the tears that were definitely not caused by the cold away. Was I okay? No. Not in the slightest. Nothing was ever okay. We had stopped walking and Dylan was looking at me, extremely concerned.

"I just... I've never...." This was a whole new level of awkward that I didn't know how to deal with.

"You can talk to me about it, if you want." He shrugged. "Do you have anyone you usually talk too?"

"No." I admitted, even though it felt like I had to drag my nails on the tile just to get it out of my mouth.

"Well I'm here." He gave me a gentle pat on the back. "In fact... you want to go back to my place? There's no one there to wake up, and I've got time to kill."

I didn't know. I shrugged absentmindedly, not trusting anything to come out of my mouth.

"I don't really know what to say to make you trust me, but it's your choice. I promise I'm not some high old man, who's also a murderer, taking spray paint to boulders at 1:00 AM."

A small laugh escaped my in spite of myself and I shrugged again. Dylan took that as a yes and started walking along, I followed.

"Don't worry, I don't live too far from here, so if it turns out I am a serial killer you can make a run for it." He promised. "You want to hear a song?"

I nodded gently and he excitedly pulled out his ukulele again. He strummed a few rapid chords and it didn't take my long to recognize Vance Joy's Riptide.

"I was scared of dentists and the dark...."

He continued and it was kind of surreal. Just the two of us, walking in the middle of the night. With the steady beat of Dylan's fingers on the tiny instrument. It was soothing and I finally stopped crying, good riddance. This was a side observation but I would lying if I said he didn't have a nice voice. It wasn't too high, despite the fact was he was trans, and it suited him.

"This is my place." Dylan stopped playing all of a sudden.

I was standing in front of a generally unkempt little ranch-style house. The grass was dry as bone, that was obvious even in the darkness. Some windows had boards on them where the glass had cracked and hadn't been repaired. It probably needed another paint job too. It was a curious place, it wasn't very inviting at all but Dylan gesturing in front of an open ripped-screen door drew me in.

"I know what you're going to say, Dylan, the murderer vibes are coming back to me, yeah I don't blame you. See I don't own the house, my stepdad does, and I'm getting out of here as soon as I turn eighteen so I mean, I'm not going to fix it up." He explained, welcoming me inside. "You are very trusting for a guy I just met."

I shrugged. "You've been very earning of my trust, so far, and we haven't just met, it's been a few hours."

Dylan snorted, opening a fridge and suddenly, bathing the room in stale light. It was kind of cluttered but I could tell someone was at least trying to keep things clean. I felt an uncomfortable twist wrought my stomach as the light fell briefly upon a group of amber bottle.

"A toast to our 'few-hours-long-friendship'?" Dylan asked, holding up a similar bottle, except this one was full of liquid. Alcohol.

"Uh, I don't drink." I said quickly.

Dylan shrugged a smiled. "I'm just joking, I can't take them anyway. My stepdad, his name is John, he would notice and then I would be in trouble."

Instead he handed me a soda, which I took gratefully.

"Depending on how old this soda is though, I bet we could still get drunk." Dylan smirked as he took a long sip from his own bottle.

I sat there in the bar uncomfortable for a few seconds, not really sure how to answer that.

"Bad joke? Sorry. So, what's up?"

"I tried to uh... come out today." The condensation from the soda can make my fingers only colder, which was okay because the number they got the less I noticed the shaking.

Dylan's face immediately shed it's playful features and he took on a much more serious expression. "Did they kick you out?"

I shrugged. "They didn't understand it and refused to listen to me. My mom mentioned something about getting me a therapist but if I know her, she's just going to try and get someone to convert me, and the thought is... scary."

"Yeah." Dylan agreed. "Is anyone in your family look like they might be supporting?"

I shook my head. "It's only me, my mom, and my older sister. Her name is Janet and... she has a tendency to use a lot of slurs. She thinks it makes her look cool or something."

Dylan frowned, like he found that deeply disturbing. "That's disgusting."

"Yeah." I took a sip from the soda nonchalantly.

He ran his hands through his hair, and leaned against the sink, deep in thought. I watched him carefully, trying to figure out what was going through his head and willing myself not to cry, again.

"Well now I feel bad about sending you back there." He sighed, obviously torn between some decision. "God... I just... I've heard stories of hate crimes that start out just like this. You know, a trans kid in a small town comes out and then three days later they're found floating face down in a ditch, or were beaten to death by class mates."

A lump welled up in my throat. He was right, this happened all the time. I read an articles all the time about another transwoman murdered as she walked home alone in the dark, or a transboy who killed himself because his parents were horrible people who tried to choke his identity out of him, and each time a little part of me died with them because it was all too real. This was my reality.

"I really don't want to be that person, but also I don't want to send you back home this late by yourself." He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "But I mean I understand if-"

"I don't want to go back." I cut him off.

Immediately I realized exactly what had just come out of my mouth and stressed over what's exactly that entitled. What was I saying? I wasn't sure. Dylan seemed as equally surprised as I was. For a moment none of us said anything.

"You want to stay over?" He titled his head.

You know what? Screw it. "Uh... I mean if that's okay with you."

"Oh yeah, definitely. You just surprise me Atticus." He put down his soda can and walk deeper into the house. "C'mon let's go find you a sleeping bag."

There it was again, my real name. Was this a good idea? I'd stopped. Craving at this point. I didn't want to go home and wake up to Janet trying to force me back into the closet and my mom trying to convert me. Sure, it was a shaky decision but Dylan was already infinitely better than any of that.

His room was in better shape than the rest of the house. He just slept on a mattress on the floor it looked like, but it was well put together. There was a desk with his school books stacked up and little lamp that made the room a dim yellow. Dylan was many things, so I had learned in the short time that I had known him, but yellow was not one of those things. He was wild, had the impulse of someone yellow, but not the drive. There was no diehard determination. At least form what I had seen. He came off as blue, I didn't really know why. It was probably the hair.

"Here you go." Dylan patted the rolled out sleeping bad.

"Thanks." I said gratefully.

"No problem." He shot me a thumbs up, trademark of someone blue.

I climbed into the sleeping bag and Dylan turned off the light. The darkness was serene and it struck me that despite having met about three hours I already felt pretty comfortable.

"You feel it too, right?" Dylan whispered under his breath.

"What?"

"We just met, but I feel like we've known each other for years."

I thought about that for a moment. "Yeah."

He sat up. "Yeah?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Man we should do something."

"Sleep?" I pushed myself up on my elbows.

He looked up at his ceiling. "No, like something big, you know?"

I did know. I felt that same buzz in my finger tips. Vandalizing rock out in the woods wasn't enough. I wanted in on whatever he was thinking because I felt it too.

"Let's run away." It came out of my mouth without so much of a second thought.

Dylan's silence spoke volumes. "You really think we could?"

"Why not? We're both sick of this town and our crap parents. Let's just... get out of here."

Dylan laid back down, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "You never cease to surprise me Atticus."

He talked like we had grown up together. Like we hadn't just been thrown together by unlikely circumstances and my dumb emo sketchbook. I would say he talked like we were brothers, but there was more there, something deep. Something more powerful than brotherhood, like old lovers. Part of me didn't mind. The other part was overcome with what kind of feelings that entailed. The last part, and by far the most powerful one, just wanted me to go to sleep. My eyes closed before I could really register what that meant, and I soon forget all about as I drifted off.