mylacinth, despite his exotic name, was your regular teenage boy. he wore tortoiseshell glasses, stayed relatively quite unless spoken to, and tried desperately every morning to tame his messy light brown hair into something resembling normal but could never figure it out. pretty... normal, he'd say. he never had any interesting stories, and he usually kept to himself. nobody had come up to him in his entire life, unless you counted that one single mom who wanted a photo of her and her daughter — which he definitely counted.

mylacinth — myles — had continued on his lifelong streak of regular days, including today. his mother had booked for the family to stay in a cheap hotel for spring break; relenting and letting his three best friends come along. lily, warren, and junior. myles had known junior since the two practically came out the womb, and the two girls, lily and warren, slowly fell into place.

he quite enjoyed his normal life.

that is, until it all came crashing down in the lobby of that cheap hotel. the concierge gave myles a dirty look while his mother asked him incessant questions about the hotel, and as myles managed to usher her away to check out the room, that left just him, warren, lily and junior. perfect — a little peace and quiet from his mother.

the peace and quiet didn't last long.

"hey! how old are you guys?"

first, myles turned around to see who that peppy, unfamiliar voice was, and he couldn't see anything. tilting his jaw down a little, he finally made eye contact with quite possibly the prettiest girl he'd ever seen in his sixteen years of living. who was he kidding? she was definitely the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, and as a little boy he used to watch runway models with his mom while she worked out.

myles spares a glance towards his friends, slightly confused but more on the pleasantly surprised side. "...i'm sixteen, how about you?"

"i'm sixteen! why'd you say it like a question?" myles doesn't have an answer to that. he's not the best at talking, so all the end of his statements usually have a natural pitch increase at the end — which usually sounds like a question. he's not about to explain all that to her, so, he just shrugs. "well, i'm deifnitely sixteen. my birthday's november seventeenth."

he lets out a chuckle that surprises both himself, his friends, but not the girl. she smiles, all proud of herself like she's aa regular john mulaney. the minute the words leave his mouth, he internally cringes, but they escape him anyway — "oh, and is your name november also?"

and to his surprise? "yup!"