I hear a knock on the door of my room.

My mother hasn't come to visit me for the past three days. Either she's hiding or she's dead. I haven't seen my stepfather, Kevin, in almost two weeks. I don't talk much with the kids at school. I don't know who it could possibly be. 

I approach the door. My hand grabs onto the cold knob. I yank.

Daniel Kang.

Daniel is a classmate of mine, a friend. He and I met when my mother and I moved to the base to be with Kevin. He was the boy I sat next to on the first day of class. He is interesting, serious. I don't know much about him. There's so much I like about him already, but there's also so much I don't know about him. He keeps a lot of things hidden away. His body is his own four walls.

I love Daniel's facial beauty marks. Three of them, he has three. I always questioned why the marks were called 'beauty marks' until met Daniel. It suddenly made sense to me. Every inch of him is blindly, mortifyingly beautiful. 

"Daniel?" I ask. He says nothing. He looks at me with his wild, cold, protective eyes. I'm speechless. Without hesitation, Daniel pushed through me and shuts the door with a slam. I'm shaking.

Suddenly I hear sirens and a marching parade running through the halls. Daniel grabs me by the wrist and dashes towards my small closet. We enter the tiny space. It's dark. Darker than the sky at night. Daniel is holding me close. I can't breathe. I can't think. His arms are tightly around me like a mass of ropes. 

My door swings open.

Military men in dark, stretchy uniforms enter my room. I see them through the holes of my white closet panel. Daniel pushed my face into his chest. 

"Don't look," he whispers so inaudibly that it's almos