Boy Robot

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  I wrote the dedication below in early 2016 and wanted to make sure it remained intact. However, after the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando on June 12, it is necessary that I add forty-nine new names to the list of people whose lives this book is dedicated to.

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  One of my dearest friends was one of the first people to read this book. Halfway through, he told me he felt overwhelmed by how sad some of the stories were. He said he felt as though some of the characters’ origins were almost too tragic, too gutting.

  There is a story that has haunted me since I read about it in the news, just before I started drafting this book in earnest. It was a story of a girl who’d lived her entire life reaching out for acceptance, compassion, and understanding. Who needed, more than anything, just a bit of empathy, and love. She lived her life bearing the weight of a world that told her it didn’t want her, and ultimately, it crushed her.

  I thought of her often while writing this book, thought of the stories of people like her. People like myself: young gay kids, kicked out of their homes, as I was, for simply being who they are. I thought of so many others who have faced horrible, unfathomable things because they simply dared to be born differently.

  I feel so incredibly lucky to be who I am today. To have found reconciliation, and genuine, true love in this world—with my family, my parents, and my loved ones. But so many others have not been so lucky. I’ve compiled a brief list below—a list that I’m sure only begins to scratch the surface—of names you can research and learn more about should it ever cross your mind that someone’s origin story might be “too tragic, too gutting.” Names of real people who lived, and died, bearing the weight of a world that told them it didn’t want them.

  This book is dedicated to Leelah Alcorn, Jess Shipps, and every single young soul who has ever been made to feel less than she is because of who she is. May you shine bright, stand tall, love proudly, and above all else, live.

  —S. C.

  Papi Edwards

  Lamia Beard

  Ty Underwood

  Yazmin Vash Payne

  Taja Gabrielle DeJesus

  Penny Proud

  Bri Golec

  Kristina Infiniti

  Keyshia Blige

  London Chanel

  Mercedes Williamson

  Jasmine Collins

  Ashton O’Hara

  India Clarke

  K.C. Haggard

  Shade Schuler

  Amber Monroe

  Kandis Capri

  Elisha Walker

  Tamara Dominguez

  Kiesha Jenkins

  Zella Ziona

  Eylul Cansin

  Melonie Rose

  Zander Mahaffey

  Aubrey Mariko Shine

  Ash Haffner

  Sage David

  Taylor Wells

  Blake Brockington

  Ezra Page

  Taylor Alesana

  Sam Taub

  Rachel Bryk

  Cameron Lagrell

  Kyler Prescott

  Sam Ehly

  Skylar Marcus Lee

  Ryley Courchene

  Emmett Castle

  Ashley Hallstrom

  Stanley Almodovar III

  Amanda Alvear

  Oscar A. Aracena-Montero

  Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala

  Antonio Davon Brown

  Darryl Roman Burt II

  Angel L. Candelario-Padro

  Juan Chevez-Martinez

  Luis Daniel Conde

  Cory James Connell

  Tevin Eugene Crosby

  Deonka Deidra Drayton

  Leroy Valentin Fernandez

  Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez

  Mercedez Marisol Flores

  Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz

  Juan Ramon Guerrero

  Paul Terrell Henry

  Frank Hernandez

  Miguel Angel Honorato

  Javier Jorge-Reyes

  Jason Benjamin Josaphat

  Eddie Jamoldroy Justice

  Anthony Luis Laureanodisla

  Christopher Andrew Leinonen

  Alejandro Barrios Martinez

  Brenda Lee Marquez McCool

  Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez

  Kimberly Morris

  Akyra Monet Murray

  Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo

  Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez

  Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera

  Joel Rayon Paniagua

  Jean Carlos Mendez Perez

  Enrique L. Rios Jr.

  Jean C. Nives Rodriguez

  Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado

  Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz

  Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan

  Edward Sotomayor Jr.

  Shane Evan Tomlinson

  Martin Benitez Torres

  Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega

  Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez

  Juan P. Rivera Velazquez

  Luis S. Vielma

  Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon

  Jerald Arthur Wright

  The blood in our veins

  The stars in our eyes

  The push of a seed

  Toward the sun, till it dies

  The unwhispered dreams

  And hope in our lungs

  We breathe it

  And vibrate

  The bell has been rung

  Though who is to say

  Who can, and can’t hear

  The sound of our souls

  Crying out to closed ears

  But once in a lifetime

  One moment that matters

  Shoots through the heart of the world

  And then shatters

  Every illusion

  Every facade

  Dispels the confusion, and

  Clears the mirage

  That we build in our heads,

  In our hearts,

  And our minds

  That somehow we differ,

  And vary in kinds

  Fantasies held

  So deep and so dear

  Our fingers go numb

  Clinging on to our fear

  But once all is broken

  And dust in the wind

  It’s time that we realize

  Without and within

  We all are no more

  Than motes in the air

  All beat with one heart

  The pulse

  We all share.

  THE RUNNING GIRL

  Run.

  Her heart pounded in her ears. The muscles in her legs burned, but the adrenaline wouldn’t let her mind acknowledge the pain. Her feet slammed into the pavement and her eyes frantically, instinctively, scanned for a way out. Any way out. The night air hung thick with the remnants of a scorchingly hot day, and the humidity was slowing her down. It wouldn’t slow down the others though.

  The others . . . It won’t affect them, and they’re all that matters. Don’t let it affect you either. Run.

  But they were closing in, the men dressed in black. No matter which turn she took, which alley she went down, the pursuing footsteps were always just behind. Unshakable. Relentless. She needed to get to the canal, with the people in the little boats, tourists seeing the city, and restaurants with the patios. People, people everywhere, enjoying their carefree summer evening. The men dressed in black wouldn’t follow where there were so many people. Or would they? They w
ere getting more ruthless and less careful in their efforts to be inconspicuous. But still, the men dressed in black wouldn’t take her on in front of all of those people, especially not when she had three with her now. No. They couldn’t.

  The three of them ran just behind her, despite the fact that they could have easily outdistanced her. She was guiding them to safety. She’d led dozens, if not hundreds, to the Underground already. She was to be trusted, and had more than proven herself.

  The youngest had just turned eighteen last night and was still weakened from the excruciating headache. She knew his brain felt like a balloon that had been filled triple, quadruple, a hundred times its normal capacity. It was hard for him to run; his reflexes weren’t quite as sharp as the others yet.

  And he was the first to go down. The whizzing sound of the single Taserifle shot was all she needed to hear to know time was running out and that they were about to be overtaken. She turned slightly and saw the men approach her fallen lamb, thrusting a thin metal shaft through his temple, right into his brain. He didn’t even have time to scream. One by one, the cells in his body disintegrated, then exploded in a brilliant flash. How many times had she seen this same light from her periphery?

  Another young life exploded as she fled.

  A million little lights flared up behind her, floated into the sky and melted into oblivion. For just a moment they illuminated the street, revealing an alleyway just behind a brick building. She spun as quickly as she could and raced into the blackness.

  Faster. Faster!

  She couldn’t feel her legs anymore. Her lungs ached, and sweat was beginning to sting her eyes. The men dressed in black were still closing in.

  A shot from one of the Taserifles ricocheted off a dumpster beside her with a flurry of sparks.

  Just a little farther. He’s waiting on the next block. Just a little farther.

  If the loss of the youngest one affected the other two, they didn’t let it show. Neither spoke. They just ran. She’d picked up the girl in a town just outside of Dallas earlier that week. Girl . . . She’s only a few years younger than me. But she herself didn’t feel like a girl anymore. Ushering this lost soul of an early-twentysomething misfit from Nowhere, Texas, to a place where she would belong, while still somehow managing to evade the Sheriffs, made her feel more than a few years older despite their true ages.

  She was pretty too, this girl, with strawberry-blond hair, bright cherry lips, and an impeccable, athletic frame. She was so shy, working in an old diner where she rarely had to see anyone she hadn’t known since birth and most certainly never had to deal with any modern electronic devices like computers or cell phones. She was nice and quiet. Without even asking, she had known that this girl from just outside of Dallas had probably cried herself to sleep almost every night of her life, not understanding what she was, not understanding what was wrong with her, or why she existed in the first place.

  It was the same with all of them: orphans, walking the world with nowhere to go and no one to confide in.

  The girl hit the ground like a rag doll as the Tasershot hit the back of her neck, almost like it worked before making impact. She landed facedown on the pavement, red-gold silk strewn all about her shoulders.

  Another flash of a million little lights floated up into the sky and melted into oblivion.

  Run! Run!

  The guy, the last still running, had been with them for a while now. She’d found him in Houston, living on the street and working as a prostitute and a drug dealer while somehow managing to avoid the Sheriffs. He was twenty-six. She had no idea how he’d managed so long. They almost never found any over the age of twenty-one who’d survived on their own and evaded the Sheriffs all that time, but here he was, running beside her, running for his life . . . and for hers.

  She could see lights on the other side of the redbrick building now. They were close to safety.

  They hurtled around the last corner and stopped.

  Dead end.

  There was no turning around. Footsteps were already rounding the corner behind them. The only escape was a tiny, rusted metal ladder scaling the side of the building to their left, but there was no way to climb it without giving the men ample time to take them down and kill them, just like they had the others.

  Without a pause, the lost boy from Houston grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes. Knowing, and death and hope and gratitude, passed between them. He turned to face the Sheriffs coming down the alleyway, lowered his hands, and let the light start to glow within his eyes.

  The air in the alley began to prickle, and the thick moisture that clung so deeply to her lungs seemed to wick itself right out of the atmosphere. Tiny red particles of light drew into his fingertips and gathered like fireflies in a jar. They rapidly swelled, then flared up into a blinding light. At the same moment, a giant wall of fire severed her from the boy and the men pursuing them. She could still make out his silhouette on the other side of the massive blaze—a solid wall that reached the roof of the buildings on either side—standing still, standing tall. Completely isolated behind the towering inferno and completely unable to help him face the men, she turned and raced up the rusty ladder.

  A crack of lightning and a deep, drumming roll of thunder pealed across the sky.

  Each rung was slick with her own sweat, and she could feel blisters forming. The muscles in her arms now burned just as much as those in her legs, and when she thrust herself onto the roof of the three-story brick building, she staggered backward, overcome. Every ounce of her fought to turn and look, to peer down into the alley and see if the boy was still alive, but she couldn’t. One untrained twenty-six-year-old Unreclaimed versus two dozen Sheriffs?

  She knew the outcome without looking.

  She raced over the roof as the tiniest of raindrops began to pelt the earth, heading for a fire escape at the far corner, and hurtled down the steps until she slammed onto the street below.

  There was the canal. There were the people eating, laughing, and walking. Some twangy song about losing love in a drunken stupor blared from a country singer’s restaurant across the way. All were blissfully unaware of the storm that was coming.

  She ripped off her hat and tossed it, letting her long black hair fall onto her sweaty face as she attempted to walk the length of the canal just fast enough so she wasn’t quite running. Tornado sirens began to blare, and the loud crescendo of a thousand howling ghosts now echoed across the city. She just had to make it to the other end. Quickly.

  She could see the car. He was waiting.

  She bolted down the street, away from the people and the lights and the loud music, and scrambled inside the black Jeep just as the storm unleashed its deluge. The air-conditioning was instantly cool and dry to her pallid, sweat-soaked skin. Her body collapsed into the seat as her muscles relaxed. She closed her eyes and let out the long, deep breath she’d been holding all night.

  “They didn’t make it.” It wasn’t a question.

  She looked out the window, back toward the people scrambling to find shelter. “Just go. We need to get out of here.”

  He put the car into drive and sped off into the night. They would have to leave the city tonight. The increasing presence of Sheriffs in this part of the country was disconcerting enough, but this many in a city this size meant it would be that much harder from here on out.

  They had to find more. They’d been tasked with a mission so important that only a few within the Underground even knew it existed, and they needed more in order to achieve it. How would it be possible if they were now being ferreted out and killed the day after their eighteenth birthdays? The Sheriffs were getting too good at this. Too efficient.

  They would need a significant amount of help very soon, but they both knew that help would never come.

  He didn’t take his eyes off the road as he put his hand gently on her leg. “You did everything you could.”

  She squeezed his hand in reply as a heavy, single tear welled up in each
of her eyes.

  She closed her eyelids and tried to halt the gathering tears that had fallen for so many others before. Before the young boy, before the girl with the bright cherry lips, and before the young man with so much hope in his eyes who’d been so lost for so much of his life and never knew why. She tried to save them, tried to help them all, tried to bring them to a place where they could be safe and not hunted like wild beasts. So much weighed on her shoulders now. The fate of how many? Thousands? Tens of thousands? She didn’t know.

  She let the two teardrops fall and took a deep breath . . . and all she could see were a million little lights that floated up into the sky and melted into oblivion.

  CHAPTER 1

  ISAAK

  Another running dream.

  They happen more frequently these days. For a few moments I lie in bed, stare up at the ceiling, and try to grasp at the last remaining fragments. The more I try to recollect it all, the more it pours right out of me. Such is the way of dreams: enveloping your entire being through the most vulnerable parts of your unconsciousness, but attempt to illuminate the shadowy transpirings and even the most significant plot points become shapeless craters where mountains once stood.

  I’m scrambling around the edge of one of those craters now. This time someone died. I can still feel the loss, like an explosion within me. My cheeks are still wet with tears.

  I throw off my covers and step onto the thin brownish green carpet. The floorboards creak beneath my feet, the sound of another morning getting underway. Mary, Mother of God, watches from her plastic perch above my dresser as I open it and get dressed for the day. It’s one of the many chintzy Catholic relics strewn about a room that isn’t mine to redecorate. A gilded, bloody Jesus, who more closely resembles an oatsy, white, folk-music artist from the sixties, stares up toward the ceiling in a cry of perpetual agony. I spare a moment to read the words scrawled below him.

  Pro Omnibus Hominibus.

  That painting, hanging above the dresser, used to terrify me and keep me up at night as a child, but now I just find it bizarre.

  Black jeans and a red hoodie will do—my standard uniform.

  All these years spent in this house—all of my years, period—and I still feel like a guest. An unwelcome guest. It isn’t that my parents don’t love me, since I’m sure they do, but they’ve never wanted me. There is a difference.