He opens his mouth to say something else, but then his eyes drift down to his watch. “Shit, I need to get you home. Your fifteen minutes are up.”

My heart warms at the fact that he kept his word. And he gets extra brownie points when he keeps his hands to himself while he walks me to the door. He only touches me when I’m about to head up the stairs, lightly grazing his fingers across my arm.

“So you never answered my question,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“About what?”

“About going on a date with me.”

I feel the briefest pang of disappointment.  “Sorry, but I don’t have time for dates.” I start to turn for the stairs, but he captures my arm.

“I’ll take whatever time you’ll give,” he says, pulling away when I face him again. “Even if it’s just another fifteen minutes.”

I’m about to list off a million reasons why I can’t. My brother needs me. My mother needs to be watched. The bills need paid. The house needs to be taken care of. Plus, I don’t know him so therefore can’t trust him. And I need to trust him. But through the mental list, I find myself nodding, telling myself that I can spare enough time for one date. That I deserve it for all the stuff I do. And despite how hard it is to admit it, I like Conner and can see potential trust there.

“All right, Conner you have a date.” I look up at the stars, seeking a sign, an answer of approval in the only place I can.

But the sun is rising and the stars are no longer in the sky, leaving me to figure out my own answers.

Chapter 2

The beginning of when my life stood still.

Tristan

I’ve become the poster child for disappointment. Sixteen years old and I’ll never amount to anything, something my mother reminds me of every day.  It’s depressing. But life is tragically depressing already. No friends. Failing school. Sucking at sports. Seeing the disappointment in my parents’ eyes every time they look at me. We don’t want you anymore. We never did.  It’s the same look I’m getting now.

“You’re always doing this,” my mother says, looking like she wished I’d just disappear. “Messing stuff up. You’ll never get anywhere in life, if you keep acting like this.”

I’m sitting on my bed, trying to find the will to catch up on the countless assignments I’m behind on. But even if I got straight A’s like I used to in middle school, I’d never be good enough for my parents.

“What do you want from me?” I shut the textbook I’ve been staring at for the last few hours, having accomplished nothing. “I’m doing my best.”

She snorts a laugh as she looks at me with disdain. “Well, that’s just tragic then.” Her words eat away at me but not as much as the next thing she says.  “I’m done with you, Tristan. Seriously, there’s no point in trying anymore. You’ll always screw up.”

“Then why do you keep trying?” I know it’s pointless to argue with her, but I get sick of repeatedly hearing the same thing. In fact, I heard her whispering to my dad a few weeks ago about how grateful she was that she has my older sister Ryder, otherwise she’d be left with me and that would be just tragic. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt though, because she didn’t know I was out in the hallway listening. Still, it stung.

Badly.

“Because I’m a mother, and I have to keep trying.” She shakes her head. “Why can’t you just be more like Ryder and do something with your life?”

“Because I’m not her. And I never can be her.” It’s the truth. My sister is talented at both sports and school. 4.0 GPA. Motivated. On the path to college. To a successful life.

A happy life.

“You don’t have to be her, but I wish you’d be…” She pulls a face at my grungy clothes and general lack of caring about my appearance. “Something at least.” She pauses as if waiting for me to defend myself. But what’d be the point? What she says is true—I’m a lost cause. “I don’t even want to look at you anymore.” She exasperatedly throws up her hands then storms out of my room, the same thing she’s been doing for months.

A little while later, Ryder sticks her head into my room. “You set her off again. Way to go.”

“It’s not that hard to do,” I mutter, staring at my textbook.

“You could try harder, Tristan,” she retorts, “instead of moping around all the time. Life isn’t that bad.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” I look at her and her perfection, briefly loathing her for it. “You’re not completely alone. You have friends and shit.”

“And you’re not alone either,” she replies then walks away.

The house gets really quiet for about twenty minutes before I hear it.

The thing I don’t understand.

Haven’t felt in a while.

Happiness and love.

My mother and father are laughing with Ryder about something, which they do a lot. My father doesn’t necessarily scold me like my mother does, but he always seems disappointed in me for the things I’ll never be. And Ryder, well I barely know her anymore, not since I became the family disappointment and she became the star.

I get up from my bed and head in the direction of the thing I’m unfamiliar with. The three of them are sitting around the table, eating dinner. Laughter fills their conversation. Smiles. Happiness. No one seems to notice that I haven’t joined them, and they haven’t set a place for me at the table. I feel like I’m not a part of their family, but not just because they all seemed happy and content with my absence, it’s my looks too.

My blonde hair and blue eyes in no way resemble their brown hair and green eyes. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I was adopted. Maybe that’s why they don’t like me, because I’m not their flesh and blood. But who exactly am I? Who exactly are they? I’m unsure.

I haven’t been sure since I turned thirteen and everyone decided they didn’t want to be my friend anymore at school. A few months later, I was diagnosed with depression after I stopped doing… Well, everything. Even with medication, I couldn’t quite find my place in the world anymore. Honestly, I don’t know if the diagnosis is right or if the doctor just wanted to find something that would explain my lack of dedication for life and my parents’ general disappointment in it.

I don’t know why, but it just seemed like everyone was suddenly walking forward in a straight line while I was moving against them in an unsteady and crooked path that no one else could see. And the more I stayed on that path, the more my family, and everyone else, didn’t want me around anymore.

I became invisible.

I’m not certain how long I stand in the hallway, observing my family eating dinner but it’s long enough for my mother to glance up and look right through me.

Guess I really am invisible.

After another couple of laughs, I decide it’s time to leave. I backtrack to my room to grab my wallet and car keys then head for the front door.

“Be back by ten,” my mother calls out without looking in my direction. “I mean it, Tristan. If you’re late this time then…”

Then what?

She never finishes.

I jerk open the door and walk outside. Then I drive and drive and drive until I end up in a town over an hour away. I’m not even sure what compels me to go there. I know why other people go there—to get high. I used to fear places like these but my fear’s been dwindling lately.

I can’t feel very much fear anymore.

In fact, I don’t really feel anything.

I end up parking at a gas station and climbing out of the car when a few guys stroll by, heading inside. One of them I know from school. I say hi and they wave back. And just like that, everything changes.

“I know you, right?” A guy named Clayson says it. He’s in the same grade as me, but the other two are older I think.

I shove my hands into my pockets. “Yeah, I go to school with you. We’re in the same English class.”

“Oh, right,” He nods his head, but clearly he doesn’t remember who I am.

One of the older guys reaches into his jacket and retrieves a bottle of alcohol. He twists off the lid, takes a swig, then passes it to the next guy. When they‘ve all drank from the bottle, Clayson offers me a drink.

“You cool?” he asks as he extends the bottle to me.

I’ve been drunk a couple of times and have gotten high on my mom’s pills she keeps stashed in her purse, so I barely hesitate before grabbing the bottle and sipping from it. I fight not to gag from the burn as I hand the bottle back. Things start moving in a different direction after that.

We end up going to a party out in the middle of a dilapidated neighborhood. I’m drunk by the time we arrive and am more chatty than usual. The night seems to get darker the later it gets, alcohol turning to drugs.

“You want a hit?” the guy having the party asks me as he holds a joint in my direction, the pungent smoke funneling through the air.

I haven’t caught his name yet and I’m so drunk I can barely tell what he looks like, let alone where I am or what’s going on around me. I should hate the feeling. I really should.

But I don’t.

Hate it.

Just like I don’t feel.

Anything.

I end up taking my first hit without too much thought. For the briefest moment, when the smoke singes my lungs, I swear my life stands still. There is no future, no past, no worry, no hate, just motionless darkness and me in the center of it, like a star in the universe.

I just took my very first hit.

I’ve officially done drugs.

What does that make me?

Bad?

Good?

Nothing?

Rowdy music plays from a stereo, shrieking lyrics that mix with my thoughts.

Why can’t I figure out who I am?

Another toke then another, wishing I could stop feeling the damn emptiness and loneliness eating away at me. Maybe that’s why I keep going, keep taking hit after hit. Maybe I’m searching for a way to fill the void. Or maybe I’m just trying to speed up the dying process. Who really knows at this point since my mind is too far gone.

Suddenly, the music stops and cursing takes its place.

But I don’t move.

Why am I here?

Time is endless.

I am endless.

Life is endless.

I’m an endless disappointment.

Where am I even going in life?

“Dude, did you hear anything I just said?” The voice jolts me out of my thoughts.

I’m sprawled out on a tattered plaid sofa, straight out of the seventies, with the hood of my jacket pulled over my head and my eyes fixed on the stained ceiling. Smoke filters the room and saturates my lungs and the drugs burn deep inside my chest and veins. I’m not sure how long I’ve been there, how many minutes have ticked by since I’ve dazed off, but nothing seems to have changed since then.

“No.” My voice is an echo and I wonder if I even said it aloud. Maybe it’s just me having a conversation with myself.

But then a guy with bloodshot, bleary eyes and shaggy hair appears in my vision. He has a smile on his face that says his life just stood still for a moment too. “You’ve been lying there for like three hours.”

“What?” Through the haziness inside my brain, I realize there’s a fuller meaning. It’s been three hours. I glance at the clock and then jump from the sofa. “Shit, I was supposed to be home like two hours ago.”

The guy laughs at me. I don’t get what’s so funny, just like I can’t remember his name.

“Just chill, okay,” he says. “You’re already late, so you might as well make the most of it.”

I should care. Why don’t I care? What does that say about me as a person? 

I check my phone for messages and see that there’s not so much as a missed call from anyone. As the loneliness crawls under my skin again, I sit back down, deciding to stay.

The first call or text from my parents is when I’ll rush home.

The guy sinks down on the sofa across from mine as I put my phone away and blink around at the room crammed with people. Beer bottles litter the floor and from somewhere in the house, I hear people shouting about turning the music back on.

“I wish you’d have just let me stay in my daze,” I tell the guy. Then his name comes back to me—Zack, the person who lives here and offered me the joint. “I was enjoying myself.” But now I’m not. Now reality is creeping back in and there’s a ton of noise.

“Well, here then.” Zack picks up a joint from an ashtray on the cracked coffee table then he takes a hit and roams to the corner of the room to open the window. “Come take another hit and you should drift off again.”

I hesitate.  I know drugs are bad, know that I’m not supposed to be doing them, know better. It’s the same thoughts I had when I took the first hit. But then comes another stream of thoughts. What does it matter? No one cares. Just check your phone. Besides, you’re welcome here.

I stand up and join Zack in the corner, gazing out the window at the stars as I put the joint up to my lips. I practically hack up my lungs with the first inhale just like I did the first time. It’s not quite as intense the second time around, though.

Zack laughs at me, but then takes another drag himself. The cycle continues again, until I’m so far gone I can barely feel the people in the room around me. There’s a ton of them, I know that, but it feels like I’m the only one. That no one can see me. That I barely exist again.

Maybe I do.

Maybe the last few hours were just a façade.