Upon opening Kyle's sketchbook, you will know him. A prodigy whose artistic style falls within the 'photo-realism' category, Kyle's art is what I imagine a young Carl Brenders or Robert Bateman would have created when they were just teens. Kyle's sketchbook contains, (with the exception of two distinct portraits), study after study of wildlife and mountain geography. Kyle has been raised far more by his environment than by his parents, and the proof is in his sketchbook, for his pictures are crafted with near-worshipful detail and devotion. Whenever I wrote a scene within which Kyle shares his art, I imagined him (looking a whole lot like actor Liam James, pictured above), a quiet, solitary child immersed in his sketchbook and kept company by the magnificent flora and fauna around him.
And by The Dead Boy.
For while Kyle may be the innocent antithesis to his hedonistic family, he is by no means sheltered...or stupid. "Why can you see The Dead Boy?" Andrew asks him, at one point, and Kyle replies: "Because I'm an artist, so I'm sensitive."
Yes. Sensitive in a way that makes him open to possibilities others would be inclined to dismiss (or be blind to altogether). Sensitive in a way that allows him to understand nuances in expression, tone, and emotion that other, insensitive people, are often oblivious to. Kyle's sensitivity attunes him to Elizabeth and Andrew's true feelings for each other (even though they try to hide it), and sensitivity is also the underpinning for how Kyle knows that The Dead Boy would never hurt Elizabeth.
Yet whether the spirit would harm Andrew is nothing Kyle is willing to take a chance on, and as such he moves mountains - pun intended - to try to keep The Dead Boy and Andrew apart.
Elizabeth and Andrew, however, try to move those same mountains to keep Kyle alive, because the one thing they - and The Dead Boy - agree on (yet which sensitive Kyle is, ironically, oblivious to) is that this sweet kid, so fragile and gentle that Andrew, upon meeting him, immediately nicknames him 'Fawn', is tragically, yet obviously, dying....
Meet Kyle HERE:
