Most of what Laurent remembers is staring up at the sky and thinking how pretty the stars looked. He remembers naming the few constellations he learned so far. Ophiuchus. Aquila. Libra. Centarus. Each connected by invisible strings. He also remembers feeling wet. It had been raining most of the day and the ground was still damp. There wasn't so much pain as there was a growing sense of something being wrong.

It becomes a few flashes of images before that, like overexposed polaroids, everything was always too bright and blurry.

He has been a straight-laced kid. The quite overachiever that sat near the front in classes. The stereotypical Asian kid, advanced classes and all. His favorite thing was the violin. The music, the sounds. The notes were a kaleidoscope of colors, each beautiful in their own way.

The kid had been loud, wild. He was always getting pulled into the hall by the teachers, constant scolding for being disruptive. Everyday he would see him. It was by chance that Laurent caught him in one of the bathrooms, tossing lit matches into a trash bin. He hadn't even paused when Laurent had pushed the door open, barely sparing him a glace as he lit match after match. They just fizzled out on the damp paper towels. Even then he had been too tall for his age and he just about towered over the other boy as he approached him. The words spoken were long lost to him, but the trash bin slowly going up in flames, fire catching easily on the addition of dry paper. They were just about clear across the hall before the alarm sounded. Feet thundered down the stairwell with neither stopping until they were outside, having left a mass of confused students in their wake. Laurent had doubled over, panting hard from their escape while the other laughed.

'Lore.'

'Spence.'

Sharp, bright eyes staring up at him defiantly from between strands of too long hair. They were quick friends. His honest face, the other's quick fingers made keys easy to obtain. A rock to break a window for a temporary entrance even easier. He recalls the feeling of always being on the precipice of something more. So close to the edge but too afraid himself of going over. The irony of that kind of feeling was not lost on him the day of the accident. He had gotten numerous burns before, a few cuts and bruises from some of their more creative adventures.

It was the crumbling shell of a renovation project long forgotten. Scrap material that reacted well to the flames were abundant. It was their personal playground and they knew every inch of the place.

There had been a barrel left full of old wooden beams and plaster board. It was the last day of summer break. It had been raining all day. The stairs up to the second floor were shaky, rusty metal screeching under the strain of their feet. They needed the best kind of send off. It was difficult to spend all the time they wanted together during school. It was to be a glorious viking funeral.

It is always a flash of fire, a sound like a gunshot. A can of spray paint. That was his thought when the sound startled him. A few steps backwards in alarm. The slipping of his foot on the slick metal of a window frame.

The stars looked beautiful that night.

Ophiuchus. Aquila. Libra. Centarus.

The blaring red sound of police sirens.

A face looking down into his from above.

The damp earth giving way beneath his fingers.

The rest is lost to him, awakening in a burst of too bright white walls, tubes strewn across his chest, a mask on his face, the steady beep of a monitor somewhere in the sea of white to his side. Recovery was difficult. His body fought him. The voices of doctors and nurses swam in the murky puddle of his mind. A bleed in the brain. Convulsions. He fell under and woke countless times, always to the same sounds. Other voices and faces started to trickle in, the colors of the sounds lost.

Recovery was long. A line of tutors. Transfer to a private school. His grades barely kept above minimum requirements, his hands that had once been so nimble before struggled to complete even the simplest of measures on the violin. Laurent withdrew more. He felt tired every second of the day, wanting nothing more than to sleep for hours at a time. Any other time he had, he spent outside, a hot cut of tea to one side and a book of constellations at his other. He'd learn them all. No one could ever figure out who he kept asking for. He had been the only person there that night. It was just something he had imagined, a result from him cracking his skull. Head traumas were nasty things. Still, he continued to ask about Spence, unable to chase the that ghost himself for years. He spent the time in and out of hospital, always kept under the ever vigilant gaze of his mother. So he turned his eyes skyward, tracing the invisible strings that held the stars together, forming structures that he could see the colors of again.

His chance for freedom at eighteen did not come as some grand declaration. He withdrew himself from school, set aflame the pile of rejection letters, and kept his eyes to the sky.