Trust- Boreo

Snowboarding in Vegas

Las Vegas, 2020

"Ha! Harry Potter!" Theo looked over at the speaker of this line, before scoffing and sitting back. He had curly black locks of hair hanging over his forehead and dipping a bit into the visage of his eyes, accompanied with a rather pale face. Well, right now that face was smirking widely from his apparent ingenious nickname. Theo also noticed a shirt that showed a man snowboarding. A strange shirt design to have in Las Vegas.

"Fuck you...." Theo was tired of hearing this. He knew that thanks to the glasses and the way he dressed in a scorching hot Las Vegas school, he was going to hear this comment even more until he figured out something about his clothing style.

Seated on a school bus, Theo sort of just wanted to get home. Even if there was nothing waiting for him at home. Just a desolate, uncaring household. A father who had to verbally remind Theo daily that he was so. A "mother" who didn't even want a kid. The monotonous, all too familiar, boring dullness of each passing day.

Numbness felt just as awful as pain. Falling into a rhythm, a pattern of living or some kind of routine never could help him forget his mother. Because whether he liked it or not, his father would always be there to remind him of her. No sense of normalcy or difference was in his life, as paradoxical as that sounded. It was an odd feeling to be caught between.

As a consequence of this, he often found himself drifting off into space, thinking about the past in this strange, all too reminiscent and real manner. This drifting often pulled himself away from others in real time as well. It was about to happen again, until...

The boy who had called him 'Harry Potter' was now leaning over his chest, getting his face uncomfortably close to Theo's face. Most likely to provoke Theo in responding. Oh, what the hell. It wasn't like Theo was planning on just sitting there and staring out the window for the rest of the drive home, and since he didn't want to slip into long moments of thinking back on the good o' days... he might as well entertain this overly earnest boy.

"Where's your snowboard? This is Las Vegas." Theo said as he points at his shirt, trying to throw something back at him.

"Don't like the sun." the black haired boy said simply, shrugging as he let his back touch the bus seat again. His simple gestures told Theo that he didn't really care about the conversation, but their proximity and the way that the other kept his eyes fixated on him said otherwise. "I've been around world, too many places." That was obvious for Theo. This boy had a strong mixed accent, sounding Australian, Russian, so many other ethnicities that Theo couldn't quite place. It was almost as if the world left its own imprints on him, in the form of changing his voice, a little bit more about him each time he moved.

"Like where?" Theo said with a huff, not sure what to expect. At least this was better than sitting around in silence pitying himself.  His newfound acquaintance leaned back and began counting off.

"Originally from Ukraine, but...Dubai, Sweden, Russia, Ireland, Texas for.. hmm..2 weeks, New Guinea, Australia.." he would have kept going if Theo didn't speak up.

"Oh. Jesus." Theo said, sensing he had lost this argument. The mention of Texas drudged up his confusing period with Pippa, but he didn't a chance to drift back into memory land. The bus came to a stop, and the blonde boy got a chance to look outside. Desert, desert, and more desert. Las Vegas' residential areas were unimaginably barren. It was as if the casinos and all the tourist attractions had sucked the life out of these areas and left behind a fine white sandy reminder of their true isolation, the part that tourists didn't know about.

"My father moves around, mining. So we're always going around." It looked like Boris had more to say, but he noticed Theo staring out at the desert and cracks a grin towards Theo's neutral looking face. "What do you say, Potter? Have anything you're doing? I can tell you about those places, we watch a movie too." Theo stares at him as he offers this, he didn't miss a beat, especially with that nickname. And even his sentences weren't perfect, he seemed fluent.