Hey Stranger

Zaid gazed out the tinted windows of the seedy coffee-shop, watching crowds pass on the street. For just under an hour and a half he had sat listening to Sierra and her friends, bitch about school starting and the outfits they were going to wear. Didn’t they realize they were not the most important thing in this world; no of course these idiots didn’t.
Why the hell had he let Sierra drag him along? Why was he even dating Sierra? He hated these people and their shallow bullshit Zaid would have liked to shove reality down their self-inflated, egotistical throats but instead he said nothing trying to drown out his "friends” chattering. Gods, he just wished he could just find one person who gave a shit about someone other themselves…but in his world nobody lived like that.

~

Arden walked slowly down the crowded street, his black hard-cover journal clutched loosely in his left hand. He didn’t really know where he was going but truthfully he didn’t care, the sky was gorgeous and his ribs weren’t broken, as of right then, life was fucking’ great. He didn’t have anything else to do anyway, so he let his mind drift and impulse lead him as he walked.
His amber eyes scanned the people around him, trying not to make eye contact. He didn’t know why but he hated looking in the eyes of people he didn’t know, almost like if he met their gaze, they would know his secrets. But then again from the looks they gave him, they probably already knew what he went through. He hated the pity he saw when they looked at him. They all felt so bad for the kid who obviously got beat up pretty bad, way too often, but they just walked by with their sad looks and sorry eyes saying nothing. Bastards.
A chill shot up Arden’s spine and made him stop dead in his tracks. What the hell was that? He searched the crowd and his surroundings but no one even gave him a second glance. Then his eyes focused on the coffee shop and the black haired jock who sat behind the colored glass watching him intently. He looked almost as shocked as Arden felt but as there eyes met, a foreign recognition spread in Arden’s chest leaving him with the inability to comprehend what he was feeling.

~

Zaid’s skin tingled as he watched the boy stop, like a gun had gone off and turn to look at him. Something about him enthralled Zaid and no matter how much he wanted to he couldn’t make him self look away. The kid was almost beautiful as stood there in his black jeans and equally black wife beater even as confusion wrinkled his brow.
In that moment Zaid was reminded of the characters in a Botticelli painting. The boy had soft almost childlike features and yet childlike was not at all the word Zaid would use to describe him. His eyes were too tormented, too deep to be a vulnerable like a child. But even with that harsh loneliness that lurked in his whiskey colored eyes, he was captivating with his auburn hair curling around his pale, angelic face and falling into his dark eyes. Except for the light bruising along brow and his split lip, the boy was perfect, like at any moment he could spread his wings and take to the sky.
He wasn’t sure why but he felt like he knew that face, he felt like he knew things about him that couldn’t be possible. He had never met him before but he knew that the auburn haired boy bit his bottom lip when he was nervous and that he could look at something one time and then commit it entirely to memory. Zaid knew that he never went anywhere without the black hard cover journal, and at least three mechanical pencils, and the most disturbing thing of all what that Zaid knew exactly how the boy had gotten the bruises on his face and the fat lip.
“ZAID!” His eyes suddenly snapped away from the boy to Sierra, who glared at him angrily and tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the Formica tabletop. “I was talking to you.” She said slowly as he where a small child and didn’t understand. “And you were saying?” He said shrugging trying hard to hide the irritation in his voice.

~

It suddenly felt like a deep void had opened in Arden’s gut when the dark haired boy finally
looked away from him, and with it came an uncertain sadness. What the hell was going on with him? Taking a deep breath he made himself turn around and start in the opposite direction of the café, but before he had time to reconsider he found himself entering the small shop and sliding into the closest empty booth.
He set the black journal on the table and flipped it open to the first blank page and started to draw the stranger who had caught his attention. He felt like a such a creep watching the boy as he “argued” with the group of girls that surrounded him but no matter how much he wanted to leave he felt like he should stay. So he sat there in the dark corner drawing an exact replica of the boy, making notes on the opposite page every so often. He recorded things like the date, time and where he had seen the boy, and also barely noticeable quarks about the boy as he gestured and spoke. Hell, he even gave the boy a moniker in his annotations: ~Z~, just that one letter.

~

Zaid sighed as Sierra started her ranting and gossip about school once again and fought the urge to bang his forehead on the table. Damn it! The mysterious boy from the street was gone and a sorry longing had settled in him, he had wanted to know the kids name, and strangely he had wanted to become his friend. All because Sierra was a royal bitch and he was fucking pussy, not man enough to tell her to go fuck herself and leave him the hell alone.
It was then that he couldn't help but feel like someone was watching him, but substituting that eerie cold feeling creeping along his skin was a comforting warmth. It was weird, but it actually made him feel less restless. Absently, he lifted his swirling-green eyes to inspect the dim, almost-empty coffee shop, expecting to see only the usual boring crowd of stoners and artsy collage students. Instead his gaze immediately fell on the boy in the darkened booth. The kid hadn’t left; in fact, he had decided to come into the shop. The question was, why.
Zaid smiled inwardly and seriously thought about getting up to casually introduce himself, when the boy looked up from the notebook as if on cue. Their gazes locked instantaneously and Zaid’s breath suddenly caught in his throat. He couldn’t breathe or think beyond the other’s exotic whiskey colored eyes. Even as the skin of his left wrist began to burn and sting like his flesh was being scored open, he couldn’t flinch.

~

SHIT! Arden was incapable of movement or looking away from the raven hair boy as intense pain seared his right wrist. What the fuck? Jesus, he could handle pain, it was nothing new but this…this hurt like hell. It made him want to scream and seethe and recoil and…and pray. What the fuck? He would have done anything to tear his gaze away but he remained immobilized as if he felt nothing and as if nothing where wrong. Then the pain abruptly stopped and oddly, he felt safer then he ever had in his life.
“…Zane…” The name slithered through his mind, raising goose bumps on his arms. “…No…not now…he is Zaid now…” Arden gasped and looked down at his journal, instantly aware of the significance of the monogram he had given the boy. “…Holy Shit…”

~

Zaid sucked in air, and the pain vanished at once. Any aching he had felt a moment before was completely gone. His eyes darted down to his arm to see a white scar in the shape of a stylized “A” on the inside of his wrist. That hadn’t been there before…what had happened... Without thought he touched the new mark, utterly taken aback that the area wasn’t even tender. How was that possible?
He looked up at Sierra and her friends; they weren’t even paying attention to him…they hadn’t noticed…Whoa… Zaid eyes flew back to the boy sitting in his booth looking terrified and so confused. So the boy had felt it too. “He is Adem…was Adem…Arden is his name now.” Zaid jumped as the voice echoed in his head, his voice. It had been his voice, and yet it had been different from his voice. What the fuck was going on? “Go to him.” It said suddenly. Zaid made himself look away. No. “Go, he need you. Arden needs you.”