I kind of lucked out on my first story I read here. The whole thing caught me and sent me on this emotional roller coaster because one of the main characters was me at that age almost to a T.
The story was Comsie's Billy Chase Chronicle.
The Brandon character is, well...he was me at 15. He is so much like me at that age that I'm actually doing a writing exercise where I am responding with Brandon's side of that story. As I write to fit with Comsie's narrative as Billy, it becomes eerily autobiographical. The shyness, the fear, the overwhelming emotion, the agony of betrayal, the grudge. Themes that we can all relate to, to be sure, but framed in this way, its like Comsie pulled my young self and cast him in his story almost bodily. I vicerally felt Brandon's anger and betrayal when Billy did what did. I seriously became grief-stricken! I'll leave the details to the few that may not have read this incredible story.
I probably won't be able to release my response as Brandon here since I haven't been able to talk with Comsie about it, but I've found that this writing exercise has exorcised some old demons I had from my younger days. If nothing else it has energized my imagination to write some original stories that i'll be passing through beta readers and editors fairly soon.
I can't wait to read other works by other authors on here. Everyone is so talented!