Late to the party. Good start. Have to wonder if Bell will reappear.
I’m not sure if it’s a thing, like grammar police, I guess I’m with the numbers police. Apologies if you take this wrong, some oddball things just bug me:
Midsummer of his seventeenth year,
he was also only seventeen.
One would turn seventeen at the end of his seventeenth year. You’re still sixteen during your seventeenth year. Are you one yet during your first year?
Okay, I promise not to be pedantic for the rest of the story.