There is something nostalgic about sitting at the edge of a lake in the middle of summer. It was hot, I could smell burgers and hot dogs cooking, and it didn’t even matter that none of my friends were there. It was the biggest barbeque of the summer, and they hadn’t been able to make it. But I didn’t really mind. If I wanted someone to talk to, I’d go find someone. I knew some of the other people; I just didn’t want to talk at that moment. It was too calm to talk. On any other day like this, I'd be at home, in an undershirt and a pair of my brother's boxers playing videogames, and teasing my younger brother for getting beaten by a girl.

But today I was out at the lake, sitting around in a pair of board shorts and a bathing-suit top, feeling peaceful and a bit tired. I don't really think the other teens running and laughing around even really noticed me. I mean, no one said 'hi', and a couple of people glanced at me as they passed, but no one stopped to talk. I didn't really care though. I was happy and content to just sit in the warm sand with my feet buried and stare out at the little island that sat in the middle of the large lake with a tall oak in the middle. I was definitely content. For the moment.

I glanced down the beach for a moment, and did a double take.There on the beach sat a kid I'd never seen before. He was probably the strangest looking person I'd ever seen also. I mean, he had that emo haircut that was fairly uncommon around here, and it was dyed dark blue, and littered with clips that looked like they probably lit up. He had a ton a piercings, too. Plugs in the earlobes, and little stars and pill shapes up into the cartilage, along with an eyebrow ring, snake bites, a nose ring, and from what I could tell, a tongue piercing just visible as he talked to the person next to him... who just happened to be my next door neighbor. All of his piercings either had this odd color that told me that they were probably glow-in-dark or were clear looking. Not only that, but he also had a navel piercing. What to know how I know that? Because of the shirt he was wearing. It was a girl-style crop-top, skin tight and with a weird pattern in black and white that reminded me of daggers. And so his bellybutton- as well as thin torso and flat stomach- were shown off like a trophy. Low on his bony hips sat a belt similarly colored to his earrings, holding up a pair of checkerboard patterned cargo shorts. I think he was probably wearing more jewelry than I'd ever seen a girl wear: gummi bracelets covered his lower arms and ankles, while he had a couple of necklaces that wound tight around his neck, and thick, chunky metal rings on each finger. His finger and toenails were even painted a florescent green color.

I was spending so much time staring at his clothes and accessories that I barely even looked at his face before his head turned toward mine. There was a long moment in which our eyes snagged one another's, and I stared into his green and blue eyes before finally resting on his face as a whole. He had a fairly straight nose, and thin lips that parted slightly as he breathed; his lip rings almost making it look as though the boy had fangs. His face was open and straight forward, his eyes bright and honest as though they had nothing to be ashamed of. Something stirred in the back of my head, but I ignored the unfamiliar feeling. A sudden smile broke out onto his lips, and he looked away, laughing presumably at some comment that my neighbor had made.

I tore my gaze away from him, trying to squash the sudden feeling of discontentment that had arisen in my stomach the moment I'd done so. Sighing, I looked back to the island, and then stood, stretching. I took a few quick steps down to the water's edge, and then plunged myself in as fast as I could, pleased to find that the water wasn't nearly as cold as I'd expected. Without a second thought, I swam out past the teens that were splashing and throwing beach balls, out into the calm water, and then kept going. My aim was the oak tree. Soon my feet touched the dirt again, and I started to regain footing, until I was wading onto the island, glancing around for a good grassy patch to sit in.

The grass formed a soft ring around the mossy tree, making for the perfect spot to nest down among the fuzzy roots. I stared up the trunk for a moment, and then closed my eyes, letting all the sounds of the world invade my ears, without the interruption of sight, and just listened. Faintly a few cars could be heard, but mostly laughter and happy shouts echoed from the other side of the water. A wind rustled the leaves of the oak, and with it a tranquil feeling washed over me. Content once more, I let out a yawn, and sunk farther into the grass.

My eyes opened. It was dark. I frowned for a second, and then realized that I must have fallen asleep. I pulled myself into a less slumped position, and gazed back over the water to where I'd been some hours before. Vaguely I wondered if anyone noticed that I was gone, and then I doubted it. It wasn't like I'd actually been hanging out with anyone, and anyone who'd seen me probably just assumed I'd gone home. And even if I wanted to go home, it wasn't like I was about to swim back across the lake in the middle of the night. Even if the summer night was warm, there is no telling what I might not be able to see under the surface at night.

In the time that I'd slept, a bonfire had been lit, and I could see a group of silhouettes standing around it, the occasional bout of laughter floating over the water to me. That, however, wasn't what caught my attention.

On the shore was a glowing figure- and I mean glowing. Little dots, circles and lines of colored light reflected off of the figure and into the dark water before it. Glowing colored rings made up legs, only to be overtaken by glowing squares that vaguely resembled shorts, and then a dark patch interrupted only by one single blue dot, after that, there were sharp swirls of glowing white, and arms formed by more glowing bands. Above the white there was almost a constellation of colored dots, forming what I took to be a head and neck. For a moment I wondered whether the person on shore could see me.

A tickling sensation distracted me for a moment, and I glanced down to brush off a bug, and then flicked at it for a minute or two, since the small bug refused to leave my arm. When the small creature finally opened its wings and flew off, I turned back towards the shore, almost hoping to see the glowing figure. There was nothing but a dark beach and large bonfire with normal, non-glowing silhouettes around it. Sighing, I felt a familiar discontentment starting to creep into my chest, and pushed it away, instead looking up at the stars. They were out, with a bit full moon shining down among them. I tried not to think about that figure, even though it had looked really cool from out here. I tried not to look around to find the figure again, because when I did, there was no one there. I told myself that I didn't really care. That person's coming and going had noting to do with me. At the same time, I did care. There was something special about that figure; I just couldn't tell what it was. My eyes kept to the stars, looking for something familiar- some constellation that I knew. I didn't find one. I never can.

Minutes passed- I don't know how many. It was enough to make it seem quite a while, but not enough for me to fall asleep again. My mind suddenly clicked back to reality from where it had been up in the stars. At first I wasn't sure why, but I figured it out really quickly: there was a splashing noise coming from the dark water. It was quiet, but there. I was glad, at that moment, that I hadn't swum back: who knew what was in the water. For all I know, there could be some weird, carnivorous fish that had a taste for virgin girls. I was probably the only virgin teen for at least a mile radius, which is kind of saying something, since that meant I was the only 18-year-old who hadn't had sex yet. It didn't really matter though. I could stay out here. It's not like whatever it was had legs and could come into the shallows and climb onto the beach and-

It took only a small thought and some splashing to send me haphazardly pulling myself into the old oak, hoping whatever it was couldn't climb trees. What if it was a badger? Badgers are vicious! It could eat me, and then no one would find my body because it would be all the way out here and half eaten... I was sitting on the lowest branch, arms and legs clinging around the large oak when I realized what I'd just done: gotten myself stuck six feet off the ground in a tree on an island in the middle of a lake in the middle of the night. Great. I hate heights. I'm afraid of them to the point that being six feet off the ground makes me freeze up. Not only that, but the splashing was getting louder... closer.

With the hopes that not being able to see the height would let me not be frozen up, and that whatever it was wouldn't see me if I didn't move, I buried my face into the mossy wood and tried to breathe steadily. Breathe in and breathe out. Like that, I tried to ignore the splashing, tried to ignore the height, and just concentrated on breathing. While I sat there, I sunk into myself, blocking out everything, be it sight or sound or feeling. I floated, feeling weightless in the darkness of my mind. Peacefulness returned, and time passed, though I couldn't tell how long. I've always been bad at estimating time. After what felt like a good amount of time, I realized, slowly, that the splashing had stopped. Mustering up my courage, I opened one eye and then the other, and turned my head to look out across the lake- only to have my attention drawn by something much closer.

There, standing on the shore of my little island, stood someone with his hand reaching out toward me. I recognized him immediately: the blue hair with side-swept bangs and crop top gave him away. And the moment I saw him my jaw dropped because... well... he glowed. And unless there were two weird, glowing people running around in the middle of the night, he'd been the one looking out here from the beach. All his clips and jewelry was aglow, either lit by LED lights or by glow-in-the-dark phosphorescent material. His clothing too. It was as if he were a multi-colored firefly. The way, though, he stood just below the oak with his right hand outstretched, grinning up at me as though he knew something I didn't, told me otherwise. He was, in fact, a knight in glowing armor. Not shining. Glowing.

Finally, after a few moments of reveling in his strange beauty, I finally worked up the courage to extend one of my arms from around the tree and take his wet hand. When I was still hesitating, the boy extended his other arm, and waited as I nervously pulled my other arm away from the tree and thrust at his hand as fast as I could, as to not loose my balance. It didn't work. I missed, and slid off the branch onto him, knocking both of us back onto the grass. My forehead smacked into his chest, and the boy let out a grunt, before bursting into laughter.

"What?" I groaned, pulling my head off his chest and looking up at the boy. He stopped laughing for a moment, tilted his head up to look at me with his mouth open to speak, and then started laughing again. His laugh was strong and made his whole chest move, in turn making me move on top of him. The feeling was odd, and kind of tickled, in turn making me laugh. It took us both a while to stop laughing completely, and when we finally did, we were laying next to each other in the grass with our heads laying within reach of rippling lake water.

"Hey, my name is Garreth. Sorry for laughing there... it's just, you had the most shocked face when you were falling, and it was priceless."

"Frankie Rune Madrigal. Sorry for falling on you there. I kind of don't like heights." He raised an eyebrow at me, and I answered the two most likely things he was curious about. "My mom thought I was going to be a boy... and maybe 'kind of' was an understatement."

"I think the name Frankie fits you, really. I mean, the name isn't too common, and from what I've seen of you, you aren't either." He grinned again, and I felt myself smiling.

"What can I say? You aren't too common either." I shot back, turning my head to face him at the same time that he turned his head. This brought our foreheads together and our eyes meet. In that moment, I realized something that almost amazed me: We'd settled into talk as though we'd been friends forever. It was something that I'd never been able to do before, and yet felt so... right with Garreth. Either way, it was comfortable, and I let my forehead rest against his with a smile and a little bit of a blush in my cheeks, seeing as I'd never been this close to a boy outside of my family before. I could feel his breath against my cheeks and nose, and his bony shoulder pressed against my softer one.

"Yeah, but I'm more common in the sense that getting stuck in a tree on an island in the middle of a lake at night is less common than swimming out to help the stuck person down." His comeback was smooth, effortless. I laughed in return and agreed with him.

"Frankie?" A few moments had passed in which neither of us spoke, and Garreth finally broke the silence. "Do you believe in past lives and reincarnation?" I took a moment or two to think about his question before answering.

"Yeah. why?"

"Because... Sorry if this seems weird, but my heart tells me I've met you before, but my mind tells me I haven't." I choked on the spit that was pooling in my cheek, and he gave me a pat on the back to help. The boy, in all his glowing glory, had just put what I'd been feeling to words. I nodded as I tried to think of something to say. "You... know what I mean?" I nodded again, and he sighed. "Good, because I was kind of afraid that you would think I was some weirdo trying to hit on you or something. But that's... not entirely what my heart is telling me..."

"What else is it telling you?" I asked, and continued when he raised an eyebrow. "No, I really want to know. Tell me."

"Only if you promise you won't think I'm weird for it. Promise?" I nodded, and he kept talking. "I kind of get the feeling that it was more than just meeting... like in a past life we were... together, or something." his face hinted a blush, and I stared into his eyes to find out that he was right. That feeling was there. The comfort, acceptance, all of it was just as he'd said. A grin suddenly broke out onto my face, and I was glad I'd swum out here, fallen asleep, gotten stuck in a tree, and fallen on someone while getting down. And I knew he was right. We had been together. We'd been in love, and we still were. It shown through even in our several minute long reunion.

Garreth sat up, and then took my hand and hauled me to my feet as he stood, immediately leaning back against the tree, pulling my body against his in the same motion. He brushed my slightly mussed hair out of my face, and cupped my cheek with one hand. His lips, almost on top of mine, formed words, and my heart fluttered as he spoke them. "Frankie... can we be together again?" My answer for him was my lips on his. For a moment, I think he was surprised that I'd taken the initiative, but he barely showed it, instead winding his fingers into my messy hair, and pulling our lips together further. My eyes, long since closed, fluttered open as Garreth's lips left mine to see a huge grin spread across his face.

"What?" He kissed me again, and shook his head, commenting on how I was beautiful. I laughed, and kissed him. "Thank you."

"For what? Being weird and superstitious?"

"No." I shook my head. "For swimming out here in the middle of the night to get me down from that tree." Laughing, Garreth kissed me again, a playful peck on the lips.

"Well, thank you for getting stuck out here. I never would have come out here otherwise." Laughing, I hugged the boy close and laid my head on his chest. "Frankie?" I raised my head and looked up at him. "Frankie, I think I love you. No, I know I love you."

"I love you too, Garreth." And I meant every word of it.