Saint was a shy boy. But he only let you see it when the room was quiet enough for his thoughts to settle. To everyone else, he was the awkward kid in the back corner, hoodie sleeves pulled over his hands, eyes fixed somewhere just past the wall. Teachers said he was “bright but distracted.” Other kids said worse. He laughed a half-second too late at jokes he didn’t fully understand. He talked too long about constellations, about bugs trapped in amber, about how treehouses were safer than houses because at least you could see who was coming.

Saint was a shy boy. But he only let you climb into his world. With you, his words didn’t trip over themselves as much. He still fidgeted, still tapped rhythms against his knee like a song only he could hear, but he didn’t apologize for it. He told you how loud the cafeteria felt, how the lights buzzed like angry bees, how sometimes his mind ran so fast he couldn’t catch a single thought long enough to hold it still. You listened. You always did.

They called him weird. He knew that. He knew he missed cues, that he stared too long or not long enough. He knew he flapped his hands when he was excited and shut down when everything came at once. He knew he forgot homework but memorized entire galaxies. ADHD made his focus scatter like marbles on tile. The world called him careless. You knew he was trying.

Saint was a shy boy. But he only let you see the treehouse.

Not a real one — not always. Sometimes it was just the space between you and him on the bus, where your shoulders almost touched. Sometimes it was the corner of the library where dust floated in soft light. In that space, he wasn’t the punchline. He wasn’t the kid who got shoved, or the one who spoke too quietly to be heard. In that space, he was just Saint — nervous, brilliant, buzzing with thoughts, offering you a crooked smile like it was something fragile. He never asked you to save him. He just asked you to sit with him. Saint was a shy boy. But he only let you stay.