Arms numb. Head throbbing. Hands ice-cold.

  Then, suddenly, a distant shout.

  "Daniel! Your breakfast's ready!"

  I groan as if half-dead, and awaken to a strong musty scent, and as my eyes adjust, I find myself with a comic on my face and my head lying on the cold, hard desk. Underneath the warmth of the cozy, dark grey blanket neatly thrown around my shoulders, most likely by my mother, I detect a sense of pain in my lower back.

  I adjust myself upright and then slowly stand up to take a long stretch.

  "Ow," I announce in pain, as I rub the aching in my back.

  I turn around to face my desk and find myself an unpleasant reminder.

  "Oh, no..." I mumble to myself as I walk closer to what lies on the desk.

  "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Layers upon layers of unfinished homework due today.

  "Crap!" I shout in frustration.

  I throw on my shoes and walk to the kitchen to tell my mother the bad news. After scolding me for not finishing my homework last night, she offers to help me get them done today. At just 7:20, with the help of my mother, I manage to complete the assignments and carry the stacked pile out the door and onto the long walk to school.

  I just know Mrs. Majewska is going to kill me for showing up late, eight days in a row; the part I haven't figured out yet is how.

  As I ponder my long-awaited death, I hear someone yell, "Move it!" from behind me.

  As I slowly turn around to see who it is, I only get a second to catch a glimpse of the figure running toward me. A boy around fifteen, with growing, creamy, white, fluffy, messy hair and emerald green eyes.

  Before I have time to move out of his raging path, the white-haired boy rams past me, resulting in me falling to the ground and dropping all my assignments in the snow. The white-haired boy appears completely oblivious and just keeps on running.

  "You..." I mumble, trembling over my words as I think of what to call him.

  "You... You... You bastard!!"

  I shout, throwing a pebble in the direction where he took off.

  I lift myself off the ground, brush off the snow that now covers my coat, and correct the dropped assignments that are scattered across the snow.

  I finally reach the schoolhouse, and as always, I am the last to arrive. My teacher drags me into the classroom and demands that I hand over my completed assignments.

  As she skims through my work, she notices the tiny pieces of snow still clinging to most of the words. She looks up at me through her oval-shaped glasses that fit loosely around her ears, with a skeptical look on her face that tells me, out of how badly I've been doing at school, especially math, that she doesn't believe I am the one who wrote them.

  "Hmm," she hums quietly. "I'll fully look through these later. In the meantime, take a seat with the other students. I've got a special announcement to make."

  A special announcement? Nothing "special" ever happens in this school, let alone this whole town.

  I take my usual seat by the window, as Mrs. Majewska hushes the chattering class and begins:

  "I have very exciting news. A new student will be attending Szko?a Powszechna nr 1, and I expect you to treat him as though he is your own brother."

  I raise an eyebrow.

  She looks over at the door. "Come here, Gabriel!"

  As the new boy walks into the room, I make out the figure of a fifteen-year-old boy with white hair, and—Oh my gosh! It's him! The boy who ran into me earlier!

  As he enters the room, he must recognize me as the boy he shoved out of his way, as he gives me this quirky smirk.

  "Take a seat, Gabriel!" Mrs. Majewska tells him with a wide, actually kind-looking smile that I've never known she had.

  He sits between two provocative girls who can't stop giving him the come-hither look, and Mrs. Majewska begins with history class.

  "Now," she begins, "Who can tell me the three empires that partitioned in the 18th century?"

  Gabriel raises his hand.

  "Gabriel?"

  "Russia, Prussia, and Austria."

  The girls beside him start to giggle in astonishment, and he leans over to one of them to whisper something in her ear that I can't quite make out, but it clearly makes her swoon over him.

  My teacher backs up as if struck by a heart attack, and shouts in excitement, "Gabriel, that is correct! I'm so proud of you!"

  Obviously hinting at me, she continues, "See, if everyone in class were as knowledgeable as you, this school would be an entirely different place."

  I clench my fists into my wooden pencil, slowly breaking it in half, as I stare intently at the white-haired boy wooing the girls that surround him.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Later, after class ends, the kids run out into the evening air of the schoolyard and immediately start playfully throwing snowballs at each other, as they often do on Wednesday evenings.

  I walk over to join in on all the fun, when suddenly, I look behind me to see Gabriel waving me over, standing next to Jan, a large boy in class who is, to put it gently, not very quick-witted.

  Reluctantly, I slowly walk over to the two boys when Gabriel says to me, "We're gonna be causing some trouble. You wanna come with?"

  This takes me back a little.

  "Cause trouble... How?" I ask, an eyebrow raised.

  "Oh, nothing much," Gabriel replies. "Just gonna be coloring the streets a little, and, well, you know, just boys being boys." He chuckles. "The streets here are so dull..."

  I look down at the four small tins of paint in his hands and ask seriously, "Where did you get those?"

  "What? These?" He snaps one of the tins open just enough for me to glimpse the bright color inside and thrusts it toward my face. "What, don't tell me you're color-blind," he teases as Jan laughs beside him.

  I remain silent, as the two boys laugh in my face, and finally say, nervously, "Um, thanks for the offer, but I'm good, really!"

  As I start to walk off to join the snowball fight, I hear Gabriel say from behind my back, "Why, you a sissy or something?"

  I stop dead in my tracks. My heart begins to race as sweat runs all over me, despite the bitter cold of the air.

  I hesitantly turn around to face him.

  "W-what? No! Why—" I stop to clear my throat from the cracks in my voice, and start over. "Why would you even say that?"

  Gabriel lets out a cruel smirk and says, "Prove it. Come with us, or else I will tell the whole school you're queer. I bet Mrs. Majewska will be just thrilled when I announce the news."

  I clench my fists.

  "Uhhh, you better do what the man says, Daniel," Jan advises, after he finally finds the words from that pigeon brain of his.

  I turn to see how much fun everyone else is having with their snowball fight, sigh, and turn back to Gabriel, fighting back tears.

  "Fine," I tell him. "I'll go."

  Gabriel laughs and throws me a tin of paint.

  "I thought so."

  He motions us along and says playfully, "After you, my fine gentlemen," as we leave the school district.

  Gabriel leads us from there into a dark alleyway between two run-down businesses. As we walk through the alley, I look down in disgust at two mice running back into the shadows at the sight of three intimidating figures. Two, to be more precise, as I am just as scared of mice as they are of me.

  Finally, Gabriel comes to a stop as we face an old stone wall that is connected to a warehouse that the Wehrmacht now uses.

  Gabriel and Jan grin at one another and start vandalizing the wall, smearing anti-German slurs and shouting curses directed toward the Germans' mothers.

  I stand stiff in the middle of the alley, still holding onto my can, but not knowing what to do with it.

  I sigh. I could be winning that snowball fight by now, and yet here I am, with these two morons.

  Gabriel laughs and looks at me. "C'mon, pup! Join in the fun!"

  I nervously laugh. "Um, I'd rather just stand back and enjoy the show."

  Gabriel persists. "Nah, rubbish, come join us!"

  "I really would prefer not to."

  "Why, you scared?"

  "No."

  "You ARE scared, aren't you?"

  "No."

  "You're scared of revealing your secret."

  "No!"

  "You're scared of hanging out with guys."

  "No!!"

  "You're scared of ACTING like a guy! And you know why? Because you're a sissy!!"

  "NO!!!!"

  I scream as loud as I possibly can, push Gabriel and Jan out of the way, and start destroying their artwork on the wall, cursing in every language I know as the two boys watch in complete awe.

  As soon as I restrain myself, everyone remains quiet, and then, out of nowhere, the three of us burst out laughing in absolute lunacy.

  Just then, we hear a gunshot fired from above, loud enough to burst an eardrum.

  My heart immediately starts racing, and the figure of a man with a rifle in hand dressed in an official German uniform becomes quite clear as we all look up at the rooftop of the four-story building that served as the right side of the alley's walls.

  "Lausbuben!" the man yells in German.

  "Scram, scram!" Gabriel orders.

  Jan recklessly darts towards the entrance through which we came, clumsily knocking over trash cans and tripping over cardboard boxes as he goes, while I just stand paralyzed in fear, clueless about what to do.

  Gabriel abruptly grabs my hand and leads me to a narrow passageway to the left, and motions for me to duck to fit through.

  We dash through the exit, backs bent uncomfortably, stumbling upon junk and trash as we go, and finally reach the light at the end of the tunnel.

  I gasp the fresh air of the evening and begin to feel safer already, but Gabriel doesn't let go of my hand and instead keeps running until he is sure we are in the clear.

  We run, and run, and run, until we reach a park opposite one of the middle-class neighborhoods.

  Gabriel lets go of my hand and begins to relax a little, as we both catch our breath and slowly walk down a pleasant trail through the park.

  I try to comprehend what just happened, and immediately act out on Gabriel.

  "You could have gotten us killed!" I shout, unleashing my blame.

  Gabriel laughs. "Nah, I've gotten out of trouble countless times."

  He begins to climb a long white fence and practice balancing himself, as we now walk opposite each other.

  "And what about Jan?" I ask. "He could be dead for all you know!"

  "What, that fellow? Oh, he's one man who can certainly take care of himself."

  I scoff, unamused. "Where did you even come from anyway?"

  Gabriel, still steadying himself on top of the white fence that matches his hair, looks down at me and teases, "Oh, a little kid like you is just gonna be scared if I tell you..."

  I instantly look up at him, obviously offended.

  "I am not a little kid! I am thirteen years old!"

  Gabriel's eyes widen, as if he was truly shocked, and he looked over my still very youthful appearance.

  "You could have fooled me."

  He keeps on walking a little ways, and finally says, "Well, if you really wanna know, I came from Mother Nature herself, left to the mercy of a family of wolves as a wee babe, and instead of merely eating me whole, they raised me as their own so that one day, when I got old enough, they would send me to infiltrate a human school and learn all of their dirty secrets."

  I raise my eyebrow, once again unamused.

  "That is simply ridiculous."

  "And what about you, pup?"

  "What about me?" I ask.

  "Where did you come from?"

  I think for a second. Is this a trick question?

  "Well," I begin, "I came from my mother and my American father."

  "Your father's American?" Gabriel asks.

  "Well, yeah," I respond. "I've never met him, but it's been my lifelong dream to one day live in the United States and be a hero, like he was. I even have my own collection of American comics in my room," I anxiously tell him, expecting him to be impressed.

  Instead, he scoffs. "Comics are for ten-year-olds," he says. "Like, man up!"

  These words cut like a knife, slowly stabbing into my heart.

  "Oh..." I say quietly.

  For the next few minutes, we both walk in silence, with the only sounds coming from the evening breeze, until I finally find the courage to say, "Um, I-I better go."

  I run off to my house before he can respond.

  Once I get to my room, I sit down on the edge of my bed, reflecting on everything that has happened today.

  I glance down at a Flash Gordon comic lying on my bed, which used to be my favorite when I was little.

  I stare intensely at the book as the words of Gabriel flood through my mind: "Man up!” “Comics are for ten-year-olds.” “Why, you a sissy or something?"

  I clench my fists around the covers of my bed and suddenly go into an outrage, grabbing the comic and aggressively throwing it against my wall, causing the pages to tear slightly.

  Before I start to regret what I had just done, I fall into bed, throw my pillow over my head, and cry myself to sleep.