It started with a crash.

Not a dangerous crash, but the kind that comes from a shopping cart veering off the curb at full speed while someone screams-laughs and another person yells in an accent no one can quite place.

Boris Pavlikovsky, shirt half-untucked and sunglasses perched crookedly on his nose, had just rammed a rusted shopping cart into the edge of a water fountain. Theo Decker was in the cart, arms thrown wide like he was on a roller coaster, a stolen pretzel clutched in one hand, grinning like he didn’t care about anything—not time, not money, not the way the front wheel had already started to wobble.

They were, by all accounts, ridiculous.

Across the plaza, a group of high school students paused. They were herded in tight rows by two exhausted teachers, wearing matching “Greenhill Academy” T-shirts and whispering to each other about headcounts and itineraries.

“Are they with our group?” one girl asked, eyes locked on the cart-riding boy.

“No,” her friend muttered, watching Boris shake his fists at the cart like he was delivering a Shakespearean monologue in Russian. “But I wish they were.”

The teachers definitely noticed, too. One of them—Mr. Evans, mid-40s, khakis, extremely not amused—cleared his throat in the direction of the spectacle, then made a weak attempt at ignoring it. The other, Ms. Patel, tried to stifle a laugh and failed miserably.

“They’re gonna break their necks,” Mr. Evans muttered.

“They look like they’d die smiling,” Ms. Patel replied.

Boris was now holding a dripping ice cream cone and trying to balance a pigeon on his shoulder like it was some kind of pirate sidekick. Theo was out of the cart, arms crossed, watching him with amused judgment.

“You look like a lunatic,” Theo said.

“Is not my fault!” Boris yelled, his accent curling around every word, too loud for the plaza. “Bird likes me. Maybe I am pigeon whisperer. I have energy, no?”

“Yeah, feral energy.”

Theo was trying not to smile. Failing.

They looked like something out of a book that didn’t end with loss. With Boris’s wild eyes and sharp cheekbones, and Theo’s too-thin frame and disaster curls and museum-boy beauty. People watched not because they were causing a scene—though they were—but because they looked free. Stupid, maybe. But alive in the kind of way that made the world feel brighter for a second.

A few students pulled out their phones, trying to be discreet. One whispered, “That one with the accent? He’s definitely not from here.”

“He looks like he belongs in a movie.”

The teachers gave up trying to herd anyone. They let the class stare. It wasn’t hurting anyone.

Across the plaza, Boris threw his arms around Theo’s neck dramatically and declared, “We are unstoppable, malchik! You and me, kings of the city!”

Theo groaned, but didn’t pull away.

And somewhere, in the middle of the chaos, a few of the Greenhill Academy kids started quietly rooting for them. For the beautiful disaster boys who had clearly run away from something, but also looked like they might’ve finally run toward something, too.