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The similarities between them are like night and day. Opposite sides of the same coin. Noah always reminded me of a painting I once saw at an art exhibit downtown of the towheaded Lucifer before the fall. Blindingly beautiful—yet distinctively masculine. He has enviably high cheekbones, and a straight-bladed nose that gives way to a kind, smiling mouth. Thick, dark hair frames his face, skimming just past his angular jawline. He’s tall. They’re both equally tall in fact, but Noah has a slight advantage over his brother, but it’s not by much. If I had to guess at their height, I’d put them somewhere between 6’2 and 6’3. Noah has been on the cross-country team since freshman year, a year before I joined track and field as a sprinter. I’ve seen his body from far away, studied him as an artist would a subject, and so I know beneath the dark blue jeans and burgundy sweater he’s wearing, there’s the body of a long distance runner. Lean muscles, long legs and arms built for speed and endurance. I also knew him from art class, held every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, fifth period in Mr. Kauffman’s class.
    I follow the slight shift of Noah’s head as he looks to his left to say something to his brother. They’re too far away for me to hear the conversation, but the rich sound of his laughter cuts across the cemetery. His twin fails to share in his humor and seemingly unaffected, Noah shrugs a shoulder before retuning his gaze to Bria. But unlike Noah, I’m incapable of dismissing Maddox so easily. Noah is beautiful. Maddox—Maddox is something else altogether.
    He’s covered in tattoos. That’s the first thing you notice about Maddox Moore. Under the white T-shirt he’s wearing is stylized pieces of artwork, each one probably telling a story of their own, covering both his arms down to the knuckles of both hands. There’s a geometric star that’s set at the base of his throat. It’s a pentagram within a pentagram enclosed around a red eye situated at the center. The points of the larger pentagram trail up the length of his neck, over his Adam’s apple, stopping just beneath earlobes that have been stretched to the size of nickels with hollow, black O-rings. The blood-red of the eye is the only shot of color in the otherwise black ink canvasing his pale skin. I’ve watched him from a distance. Studied him with the keen eye of an artist consumed by a muse. He rarely ever came to school, but when he did, I instinctively knew where he was. Watching him from my shadowy corner—I will never admit it out loud to anyone that he’s become my obsession. I’ve sketched him numerous times, dusted charcoal-covered fingers down the blade of his nose and across the fullness of his unsmiling mouth. I have a sketchpad filled with his likeness. I know how that makes me sound. Like a stalker. But my obsession stems from the need to capture his image to paper. I’ve never been able to get it right. His image in my memories never quite did him justice.
    Though I know most by memory, the white V-neck T-shirt he’s wearing makes it possible to see the tattoos on both his arms. There’s a skeletal tree on the left, branches snaking down his forearm into an explosion of black birds that stop at the dark band around his wrist. From this angle, I can’t make out the images on his right arm because it appears to be a mesh of faces. Aside from the white T-shirt, he’s wearing a pair of slim-fit, black jeans that stop over beat-up, black VANS.
    I take in the partially empty beer case he carries in one hand, while the other is wrapped around a bottle he brings to his mouth. He tips it back and guzzles it down like it’s water.
    There’s no time for me to do anything but close my eyes and flinch in the span it takes him to drink and hurl the bottle in my direction. I jump, and a squeak makes its way out of my mouth when it slams and shatters against a tombstone a few yards from where I’m sitting. The small fear that it