Author's Note:

There will only be two Author's notes, one here and then one at the very end of the last chapter.

ALSO this is work is ALREADY completed. I do not start posting any chapters until the entire work is complete, so rest assured that you will not get invested in the story and then have the author give up half way through.

I would like to say that this is all original work and characters copyrighted to moi, any resemblance to real people is purely coincidence and what not.

I am an aspiring novelist, so any CONSTRUCTIVE criticism (or praise, praise is good too) is completely welcome.

Please let me know what you think of the story by REVIEWING.

Thanks… Go on then, have a read.

Chapter One

Before I get started with my story let me first warn you that this is so full of clichés that you may want to find a bucket. Now that's done, let me introduce myself. I'm Tyler Evans, 17 and I'm a nerd. I'm a band geek, member of the math club and I work part time for my schools' IT department. Really, I'm not very interesting but maybe I can peak your curiosity with someone who is, John Stevenson.

Now, those clichés I told you about here's where they come into play. He's a senior, gorgeous, the quarterback, the captain of the football team and the senior class president. He's smart, rich, popular and totally straight. So straight, in fact, he's lived up to his stereotype as captain of the football team and is dating the head cheerleader, Tara Young.

Me? I'm just the kid everyone assumes is gay. I am, but that's not the point! The point is, this guy is everyone I want to be and everything I want but I'm the scholarship kid that watches the football team practice every week but never seems to know anything about football.

Now usually in these situations I would be the bullying target of a guy like John Stevenson and really, that would probably be better than not existing in his universe at all. But no, I didn't get picked on really; no one cared enough to bother. Don't get me wrong though, it's not like I hate myself, in fact I'm pretty happy with my life but I can't help but wish to be noticed once in a while from people who don't care about my academic prowess.

So a few weeks ago my Mom got a major promotion with her job that allowed us to move from our pretty nice two bedroom apartment in a bad neighborhood to a rundown crap hole of a house in a really good neighborhood. Our new home was literally the stain on the glass of this suburb. But nonetheless I was happy to be much closer to my school – The Saint Helena Academy. (which is actually quite exclusive, I was super lucky to get a scholarship there) But what I hadn't anticipated when I moved into this little home were the neighbors that came with it.

It took me a good two weeks to notice who lived in the mansion that sat back-to-back with our humble abode, what with the moving and all that. I was absent-mindedly staring out the window of my new room (which is really the attic) and saw the light click on in the opposing room. At first I didn't think anything of it (after all, people usually lived in houses) but then I saw that the blinds had, for the first time, been left up and the bay window seat was taken by a sobbing, blonde perfection.

"Fuck me dead," I whispered aloud when I realized who it was.

You guessed it, John Stevenson – the embodiment of most gay teenagers wet dreams.

I'd always held some kind of contempt for this guy, even if I would realistically fall to my knees in a second if he asked. He was perfect on the outside which generally meant he was a total asshole.

But here he was sobbing in front of his window and it was breaking my heart.

I had the urge to help the guy but what could I do? I took a cowards approach to the situation and simply closed my curtains. I reasoned that any kind of approach I could make would be met with resistance at the very least but more likely with disdain.

I went to bed early that night but inevitably spent most of it tossing and turning in my bed.

The next day at school I kept a special eye out for John, at lunch I watched him for a good five minutes whilst my best friend Damian yabbered on about some stupid horror movie that I'd refused to see with him. He didn't notice at first that I wasn't paying attention but stopped abruptly when he saw what had caught my eye.

"Please don't tell me you have a thing for John fucking Stevenson"

"No, of course not." I paused deciding whether or not to tell him the whole truth of the situation, "Funny thing actually. Turns out he lives right behind me in this huge house with his room directly opposite mine"

I decided to keep the whole crying thing to myself - none of my business anyway.

"That's convenient" Damon sleazed with a cocked eyebrow.

"Shut your dirty mind, as if I would ever be interested in him. He's probably a complete asshole"

"Actually, he's not so bad" My other best friend, Jen, chimed in as she said down with her lunch tray.

"How would you know?" I scoffed.

"He's my biology partner – I'm not saying he's in the running for a Nobel prize in being the greatest person in the world, but he's nice enough and he doesn't make me do all the work"

"And you never mentioned this before because...?"

"What does it matter Ty? I thought you said you could never be interested in him?" Damian mocked.

"I'm not! It's just, you know, he's my neighbor now...I should know something about him"

Jen frowned, "he's your neighbor?"

"Try to keep up, Jen" Damon said.

The rest of the week flew by in a flurry of band rehearsals, club meetings and two afternoons of work. It wasn't until Friday night came along that I finally had a second to relax in my room. My life was like this every week though, I needed the extra curricular activities to put on my record in order to be in for a better chance for a scholarship to a good college.

However my weekends were usually stress free, only homework and assignments had to be done and I usually knocked them out of the way pretty quickly in order to enjoy the rest of my time off.

So here I was on Friday night alone – my Mom was on the night shift at the Hospital where she worked as a nurse – and I was bored. I had already tried Jen and Damian to see if they'd come over but Jen was working at her family's restaurant and Damon was at his Mom's house, over an hour away in the middle of Seattle.

By 11:00pm I'd finished my homework, re-watched my favorite movie for the 31st time and masturbated, twice. There was simply nothing left to do, I mused to myself as I sat in my computer chair looking through the window that faced John Stevenson's house. For the past week, this had been a new hobby, just sitting at my window hoping in abject anticipation to see if he would be crying at his window again. I knew it was a little morbid, but it was also fascinating – I wondered if him sobbing like that was a onetime thing or if it was more regular than any one at my school could realize.

So my staring continued, more daydreaming really, as I listened to music through earphones and thought about what I was going to do for the rest of the weekend. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the light flick on in John's room, the blinds were still closed but I could see his shadow moving about. The shadow came to the window and appeared to sit beside it. At first I thought he was just sitting, doing nothing but then I concentrated and saw that his upper body was heaving slightly, like he was crying again, but trying to hold it back.

I suddenly felt terribly about wanting this to happen again, and felt the need to at least try and make him feel a little better. I grabbed a sketch pad, NICO marker and a flashlight, on the pad I wrote in huge letters:

'R U OK?'

I threw open my windows to let in the early autumn air and held it up. I flicked my flashlight on and off repeatedly to get his attention. It took a little while but eventually he pulled the blinds up to see what was going on outside his window. He stared for a moment at me, then at the paper I was holding. No physical reaction, nothing except curiosity and possibly a touch of mortification at the fact that a geek like me saw him in his moment of weakness. I was right, his brow furrowed and the next second the binds had dropped again and his shadow had disappeared from the window.

I felt a little sad, I had tried to help or at least extend some friendly concern but I was shut down completely.

The rest of the weekend drudged by slowly, I read way too many bad fan-fiction stories and spent too much time alone in my room thinking about John Stevenson. I didn't see him again on Saturday or Sunday, not even his shadow and I had thought up a hundred and one different scenarios that would lead to a guy like him to be crying like that twice in about a week.

It was almost a relief from boredom to go back to school on Monday morning, but with the weekday return also came the recommencement of my crushingly busy school life. I'd barely taken two steps into the school gates before some kid in my AP Algebra class was asking for my help in tutoring him, I turned him down citing that I was much too busy but I felt bad so I gave him the name of someone in the grade above that might be willing to help him.

I'd managed to lock my bike up and get to my locker just as the warning bell rang, every morning at school was like this – a race against the clock to get to class on time and it always seemed that I was almost a step behind. The bell had rung and I'd gotten my books for my first class but I really needed to pee. I decided to risk being late to AP History, Mr. Barnes thought I was amazing anyway, I could get away with being a minute or two late.

I walked into the closest boys' bathroom and stopped short when I saw who was standing at the urinal, back facing me. I tried to tiptoe into a stall to avoid being seen or heard but just-my-clumsy luck, my backpack got caught between on the door handle and I managed to launch myself back towards the now-closed door as I was trying to sneak in, and hit my elbow on the door frame. John's head immediately whipped around at the sound of my intrusion and I squeaked as I picked my 5' 9" body up off the floor and trundled into the nearest stall and quickly turned the lock.
I don't think I've ever been more embarrassed in my life, I thought as I took a few deep breaths and heard John trying to suppress fits of laugher as he zipped up, washed his hands and left the bathroom.

I hope he didn't recognize me from Friday night; I'd never be able to look out of my window in safety again otherwise.

I basically couldn't think of anything but the humiliation of falling on my butt in front of John Stevenson for the rest of the day, whenever I saw him around school I blushed beet red and ran the other direction.

It was past seven o'clock by the time I made it home on Tuesday night, I flicked my lights on and dumped my stuff on the floor next to my desk before toeing off my shoes. I was about to rip off my school uniform before my modesty kicked in and realized my curtains were open, I went over to close them but immediately noticed that John's shadow seemed to be at his window again, definitely crying.

I chewed my lip in thought, should I try again? I didn't know if I had the guts after my blunder the previous morning in the boys' bathroom but I asked myself that if I was crying would I want someone to care? Probably, yes.

"Fuck it" I said aloud as I grabbed the notebook, still open to the page from Friday and held it up as I did the same trick with my flashlight to get his attention again. I saw a finger pull down a single piece of the blinds and an eye take a peek through the gap. His shadow suddenly disappeared from the window and I was instantly dismayed again but a couple of seconds later he reappeared, pulled up the blinds and sat next to his window writing with a pad of notepaper and a black marker.

Relief flooded through me when I saw this, perhaps I hadn't made a complete ass out of myself trying to extend some empathy towards this man.

I was still holding up my sign saying:

'R U OK?'

And he finally held up his reply:

'I'LL B FINE. THX'

I quickly scribbled back:

'OK, FEEL BETTER.'

I winced a little at the overwhelming lame of my last correspondence but really, what else could I have said? I may know who he is and various details about his school life but I don't actually know him or anything deeper than the superficial about him. I can't simply ask details about what was upsetting him, could I?

Though to my amazement he replied again, with:

'WHO R U?'

The fact that he was continuing to talk to me proved that he didn't know who I was in any sense of the word - didn't know me from school or as the stupid kid that fell over in the toilets yesterday morning. Either that or he was desperately lonely for any kind of company because frankly, in regards to high school, I'm a loser. I'm a big boy and can admit it – I have all of two friends in the world, am a renowned geek and am a scholarship student who has NO family money to speak of. This all equates to being at the bottom of the food chain at St. Helena's Academy.

Regardless, I penned in return:

'TYLER, I GO 2 SCHOOL W U.'

I watched his face as he read this, he seemed surprised not to recognize me. I certainly wasn't.

'SO U NO WHO I AM…' John wrote back quickly before flicking to a new page and writing something else.

'WHAT GRADE?' He also asked.

'11' I returned.

I heard a knock at my door and quickly hid my sketch pad.

"Come in" I shouted and turned to see my Mom enter, comfortably rugged up in some flannel pyjamas and a matching robe. My Mother is a fairly small woman, a little over five foot and barely making 100 pounds, and she looked like she was drowning in fabric.

I smiled at the sight of her.

"Tyler honey, what did you want for lunch tomorrow?"

I sighed a little, she was seriously interrupted my 'getting to know the school sex God' session to ask what I wanted for lunch.

"Um, peanut butter sandwich is fine thanks Mom"

"Ok then, night little boy"

"Night Mom"

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that she does little things for me like making my lunch every day but sometimes I wonder if she'll ever let me grow up and move out of this house before I turn 40. I'm seriously worried about the commute when I go to college.

After I shut the door I rushed back over to the window.

"Damnit!" John was gone. However, he left the note pad on my side of the blinds saying:

'NIGHT TYLER. C U ROUND.'