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A MOMENT OF CLARITY
IN LIFE, THERE IS ALWAYS a moment of clarity. For Skye, the moment in which a boy she had stolen glances at for years showed up in her hospital room exuding confidence while being simultaneously decked in a leather jacket, was not one of those moments. Truly, she couldn't wrap her head around anything but the initial shock of confusion she felt.
Clearly, something had changed—and she wasn't able to decipher the origin of this change or even the cause of it since she was confined to three white walls, a wall of glass, a hospital bed, heavy duty bandages, a tangle of chords and IVs, and a flimsy frock of fabric—but the boy staring back at her was not familiar in any war.
He looked just like the boy who quietly suffered in pain, but something had changed. No longer was his skin littered with the scars and splotches of darkened skin; no longer did his galaxy eyes fill with sadness—instead, they were teeming with anger, aggression, and a need to prove others wrong. That boy in the leather jacket looked just like Isaac Lahey, but he wasn't just Isaac Lahey anymore.
How could that fragile boy be this now? How could it become a chiseled yet quivering statue of clenched jaws and razor sharp cheekbones? How could it be a mirage of a person it feigned to be? How could it no longer be the boy who was afraid to utter the wrong words and strike a nerve and become the boy with confidence under his tongue? How could it even be Isaac anymore? How could it be the Isaac she knew?
Skye couldn't explain it, but even the sight of his sandy curls and his sharp eyes could only challenge the conclusion in her mind: Isaac Lahey wasn't the person she knew and he would never be.
Then again, neither was Skylar McCall.
Obviously, if anything, the two of them had never encountered each other in all their glory. They had barely shared words over the years. Their glances were never moments in which they connected as anything other than strangers—small gazes into each others' souls that meant nothing because nothing would come out of it, small moments of clarity that were muddy and filled with all the things that went unshared elsewhere, small moments in which two people connected like puzzle pieces for seconds at a time and then fell apart.
That didn't change the fact that in this moment, their hearts pounded in their chests inexplicably.
It didn't change the fact that in any moment, the two had never really known each other at all. They had always been simply relying on the bits and pieces of information they once gathered and scrounged for and pretended as if they held the same regard as the truth. They had always painted pictures of each other and lauded at the false idols they had been brandishing as likable human beings and ignoring as imperfect people.
The thing about people is that you never really know them at all—you see these bits and pieces as truth because of who you are, you idolize and fantasize about perfection while casting aside reality, you fall in lust and believe vehemently that it is love—because you see what facades are presented to the world and what you perceive those facades to be.
That is the tidbit of information that Skye's mind decides to dwell on: the sliver of reality that has always shadowed her in her actions.
It is that reality that makes Skye so unsure of the boy in front of her—this mirage of ever-changing faces was reality staring her in the eyes and daring her to accept it.
Of course, Skye isn't sure what to think of the stranger in front of her, but for once, she ignores the pull of her heart and doesn't question what her eyes perceive with what her mind believes.
It's uncomfortable for the both of them, but the silence condensing around them is real. The simple gesture of one human being to look at another human being without forcing their own perceptions is what instills the most important change that had occurred among the two of them.
Skye admires him in that moment, but not as the boy her heart has drummed rashly for. She sees him, and not just the quiet and mellow boy she trusts as real.
It's when Isaac starts talking that she sees the familiarity of her own beliefs and the contradictions of them.
He's timid—almost retracting away from her physically in order to shield himself—the second he begins to speak. He looks like a deer caught in the headlights of a trained hunter, afraid to trigger something in her that will lead to his destruction. His words come to him slowly, as if they had been tasted on his tongue years before—however, they don't taste bitter and confronting any longer, but more like the hot chocolate his mother used to brew up when sleepless nights plagued his childhood—and just finally aged to perfection. He's hesitant, almost afraid to let loose his words, but he finds a moment of clarity in the sight before him.
He can't help but cower away from three white walls and a glass cage; he can't ignore his primal instincts to fight his way out of the Coliseum to his own victory. He can't find solace in his newly chiseled facade when he enters a room without masks; he can't pretend to be the same person he once was or even the person he wanted to be. He can't be anything more than the person he is in that moment—and for a single second, he thinks he sees a flicker of that in the lion's eyes as it stares him down.
He can't be anything more than Isaac Lahey—the boy with the fading scars and the now brightening future—and the lion ready to pounce on him can't be anything more than Skylar McCall—the girl with death haunting her every breath and bits of humanity searching for solace—so he figures that it can't hurt to be completely and utterly human in that moment.
[PUBLISHED] JULY 29, 2017
okay this one took a long time! but i ran out of inspiration and couldn't figure out what to say about the two strangers i've just truly introduced to each other after 34 chapters of sadness.
but i think i summed up my thoughts on this relationship perfectly and how i wanted to write this story.
this isn't a relationship. this isn't anything but a girl crushing on a guy she doesn't know well enough and a guy discovering himself. this is a story of pain, trials, change, and reality. this isn't slowburn but it is meant to be that way—what relationship is built upon something small and completely falsified? what kind of author would i be if i reduced my characters to mere love interests and not people?
isaac is a complex character. he has love to give but he has been denied love for a long time until something changes in his life. skye is just as complex. she has a crush on a boy she doesn't know and believes that the image of him in her head is a perfect person, but perfection is not human—and i wanted to show that in a looking for alaska/paper towns/existentialist way lmao. but they're both flawed in those aspects and that's what makes them lovable and attractive. they're people, and you can't expect anything more or anything less.
*mic drop receives silence because i've been losing reads and votes and comments on this because i can't update regularly lmao*
also i changed the cover (and i was gonna put the old one here in this chapter but it's on my laptop at home so rip) and i don't like this cover that much but i'm literally out of the country so i probably won't be able to make another one until right before school starts ://
