Tony S.
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The kitchen at Javier’s restaurant roared with a kind of organized chaos that Kitt had never experienced before. Even on his first day, he could tell this was the heart of the building—loud, warm, frantic, and strangely alive. Steam rose in pale ribbons around the stoves, the music pulsed from a speaker tucked on a shelf, and spatters of oil jumped in the air like sparks. Every metal surface glinted under the overhead lights, every order shouted from the front was met with a flurry of movement b
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The pale light of dawn crept slowly across Riverbend, brushing the tops of the buildings in a muted lavender glow before spilling into the narrow alley where Kitt had curled himself through the night. The cold had seeped so deeply into his body that waking felt like dragging himself up from beneath a sheet of ice. His joints were stiff, fingers numb and swollen, the pads of his fingertips tinged with an alarming shade of red-blue that throbbed when he tried to flex them. For a long moment, he di
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Kitt eased the bedroom window open with trembling hands, the cold night air spilling in like something from another world. The gust hit his face sharply, shocking him out of the numb, stunned panic that had taken root in his chest. He lifted his backpack through the opening, the strap catching briefly on the frame before sliding free. Then he swung his leg over the sill and dropped onto the narrow strip of frozen earth behind the house. The moment his feet hit the ground, a jolt of cold sho
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December moved into Lakehurst without asking if anyone was ready. One week the sky was just a dull, ordinary gray. The next, the clouds sank low and heavy, promising snow that hadn’t fallen yet but already made people walk faster, hunch deeper into their jackets. Christmas lights appeared slowly, strand by strand, as if the neighborhood were trying to convince itself that the cold meant something cheerful. School didn’t care. The hallways smelled like wet wool and cafeteria cocoa.
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The week after Riverbend felt like walking around with sunlight zipped under your jacket. Nothing huge changed. School was still loud and crowded and smelled faintly of disinfectant and fries. Practices were still brutal. Homework still multiplied on every flat surface. But there was a new hum under everything. A good one. Matt rode it hardest. He leaned back in his chair more, tipping onto the back two legs like he wanted gravity to argue with him. He tapped his pencil
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The first real cool morning of the year slid quietly over Lakehurst, brushing the air with a hint of autumn. Not enough to make anyone shiver, just enough to remind them that summer was inching farther away. Kitt woke before his alarm, eyes open in the gray light, nerves humming low in his stomach—half excitement, half the tight kind of tension that always came before a big race. The Riverbend Invitational. Coach Vega had been talking about it for weeks. “Good competition. Hi
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Junior year didn’t slam into them the way everyone older had promised it would. It slid in on cool mornings and warm afternoons, with dew on the grass and the scent of leftover summer still clinging to the metal of the lockers. The hallways at Lakehurst High buzzed with voices Kitt and Matt already knew—same kids, same teachers, same bulletin boards—but everything felt just a little… sharper. Like someone had turned up the contrast on their lives without asking. They fell back into step as
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Summer didn’t explode into brightness the way people romanticized it. It seeped in slowly—warm mornings that arrived earlier each day, long evenings that stretched soft and golden, the air thick with the smell of cut grass and heavy leaves. School ended in the usual blur of slamming lockers, crumpled worksheets, and yearbook signatures that promised keep in touch and never did, but for Matt and Kitt the transition felt quieter, steadier, like stepping from one room into another without shutting
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Summer settled over Lakehurst slowly, like a warm blanket being pulled higher inch by inch. The lake lost its last trace of spring chill and grew dark and inviting, the trees along the shore thickened into lush green, and the air hummed with heat and the lazy rhythm of long afternoons. For Matt and Kitt, the season came with a strange tangle of closeness and distance—so tightly woven together that neither of them could tell where one ended and the other began. Matt and Lindsay were dating n
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Spring didn’t arrive all at once in Lakehurst. It crept in slowly, almost shyly—thin patches of grass appearing under retreating snowbanks, the smell of wet soil rising after the first warm rain, birds returning and singing over bare branches long before the trees remembered how to grow leaves again. By mid-March, the cold had loosened its grip enough that coats unzipped, hats disappeared, and the boys looked up one afternoon and realized the sky had softened without either of them noticing exac
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Fall slid into Lakehurst in small, patient shifts. The air turned sharp in the mornings, the grass glittered with thin frost, and somewhere in the neighborhood, someone started burning wood in their fireplace. Leaves crunched under tires on the way to school, and the sky lost the heavy blue of summer, trading it for something paler, quieter. Matt and Kitt fell into a rhythm they never bothered naming. They met at their lockers most mornings. Sometimes they talked the whole walk to class—abo
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By the time a month had passed, the strange spotlight of being the “new kid” had finally dimmed around Kitt Wellington. Lakehurst no longer felt like a foreign place he had been dropped into; it became a place he was slowly learning the edges of, helped—whether he admitted it or not—by the one boy who insisted on walking beside him every day. Matt Everest didn’t have to try; he simply had a way of folding people into his orbit effortlessly, as though gravity itself shifted around him. Most after
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Kitt Wellington moved into Lakehurst on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of seventh grade—the kind of gray, cool day when the lake smelled like rain and earth, and the neighborhood kids were stuck inside finishing leftover winter homework. Most people didn’t notice the new moving truck on Willow Creek Drive. Matt Everest did. He had just finished tossing a football into the air in his front yard, practicing spirals out of pure muscle memory, when a small blue sedan pulled up to the
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Kitt Wellington learned Lakehurst High by sound long before he could map any of its corners. The building pulsed with noise—lockers slamming like off-beat drums, sneakers squeaking over waxed floors, bursts of laughter ricocheting off walls. The PA system buzzed every time the secretary’s voice tried to claw its way through the static, turning even simple announcements into a low electric hum that threaded through the hall. It wasn’t chaotic to the other students. But to Kitt—raised in a neatly
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Matt Everest and Kitt Wellington have been inseparable since middle school—best friends growing up across the street, sharing summers at the lake and quiet dreams about the future. Matt is the golden quarterback with a clear path ahead; Kitt is thoughtful, driven, and quietly carrying feelings he doesn’t dare name. As they grow older, friendship deepens into something neither of them fully understands—or feels safe enough to confess. Family expectations, small-town pressure, and the fear of losing each other keep them silent, even as the bond between them becomes impossible to ignore.
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Thank you for pointing out. Fixed!
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65 Days Later... “Hey, Evan! Heading home already?” Toby called out across the quad. “Yeah,” I held up the gift bag in my hand, “Thanks for the present, guys.” “Come on, man, it’s your birthday! You’re not gonna hang out a bit longer?” Ryan chimed in, with a chorus of agreement from the rest of the group. “Can’t. I promised my family I’d have dinner with them tonight.” “Boo! Family over friends, huh?” Mike teased, and everyone joined in with laughter and playful j
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“Technically, it’s not what we’d call a ‘vegetative state,’” the doctor explained. “The brainstem suffered severe trauma. He might remain unconscious like this permanently—not in a semi-responsive condition where patients can blink or yawn or show minimal awareness. In this case, there is no consciousness at all. He’ll require a ventilator indefinitely. The chances of recovery are almost zero.” Whatever hope we’d just been given moments ago was crushed again—obliterated like it had been sla
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From the moment I got home at 11 p.m. until well past 1 a.m., I sat there waiting for Nate. No matter how tired I was, I couldn’t close my eyes. He was taking too long. Way too long. I kept trying to call him, but every time—it just wouldn’t go through. I didn’t want to jump to the worst-case scenario. Maybe he just got lost. But… it didn’t really make sense. And thinking he might’ve gotten into an accident felt too dark. Too much. Then, at exactly 2 a.m., my phone rang. It w
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“I’ll hurry back!” Nate called out. “No need!” I cut in. “Don’t rush or there may be an accident. I’ll be fine.” “But…” “Just quickly get out of there, but take your time. Ride safely—that’s all I’m asking.” I know it sounds contradictory, but I meant it. “All right, wait for me—I’ll head over as fast as I can.” “I already told you—no need to rush. I’ll be okay.” “Okay, okay, I know. I won’t speed, I’ll be careful, but I’ll still get there as quickly as possible, ok
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I sat on the bed, my mind in turmoil, sweat pouring down my face. My hands clenched together, trembling uncontrollably. I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, veins throbbing at my temples. I couldn’t just sit there any longer. I sprang up, went to the door, gripped the knob—then let go and returned to the sofa. But I still couldn’t stay put. I moved to the window, drew back the curtain, and looked down to see Nate’s dad’s pickup truck parked below. Why am I such an idiot?! I couldn
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The next morning when we woke up, Nate’s dad had already prepared breakfast for us. As we ate together, he filled Nate in on the situation at the repair shop, which seemed to be smoothing over. He told us he’d have to head back there today and probably wouldn’t be home until evening—so if Evan and I planned to go anywhere, we could; otherwise, he said, we should feel free to fix our own dinner. “I guess we’re not going anywhere today?” I asked Nate while we were clearing the dishes in the k
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In the evening, Nate’s older brother Matt and his wife Alice stopped by for dinner at the house. Matt’s personality was completely different from Nate’s—both his build and his face were worlds apart. Although Matt was tall and big, he was good-natured and outgoing, a bit cheeky, and not at all shy like his younger brother. Alice was equally cheerful, and both of them were so warm and easygoing that I quickly felt comfortable and at ease around them. What surprised me, though, was learning that A
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I thought things would get better once Connor was ready—we’d clear the air, just like Toby said he didn’t hold a grudge, and I didn’t either. But it didn’t turn out that way. Connor barely showed up to class anymore, and when we did see him, he wouldn’t talk to me or anyone else. He kept to himself, saying he had family problems. But Toby and I knew it was more than that. Eventually, he even dropped out before midterms. “Everyone has their own way of dealing with things,” Nate told me. “Don
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Nate and I usually have something to talk about—university life, classes, friends, movies, music, TV shows, the news, family, life, the past, the future, our dreams—endless topics. Even though we stayed up chatting until nearly 1 AM last night, here we were again over breakfast, still finding things to discuss. Nate makes me feel like there’s always more to learn about each other. We share attitudes, thoughts, likes, and dislikes—and I think that’s why he’s more than just my partner. He’s my bes
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