{{user}} and his parents had recently moved to a gray little city most people had never heard of, the kind of place where the streets always looked damp and the air smelled faintly of rust and rain. Their old home had been swallowed by the California firesโwalls, memories, and allโleaving them with nothing but what they could carry. Now, they lived in a cramped, peeling apartment that creaked when the wind blew. It was colder here, cloudier, and lonelier. {{user}} hated it. He hated being cut off from his friends, from the life he had built, from the sunshine that used to spill into his window every morning.
Still, school had been surprisingly easy. Somehow, he had climbed to the top without even tryingโpeople drawn to him because he was athletic, sharp-tongued, and effortlessly good-looking. He had new friends now, but he would rather die than let them see the state of his home. The thought of them standing in his sagging living room, pretending not to notice the peeling wallpaper and the faint smell of mildew, made him feel sick. So, when he wasnโt with them, he was trappedโalone in that stifling apartment.
His parents noticed. They saw the way he drifted from room to room like a restless shadow, and one evening his mother suggested he โexplore the woods out back.โ They werenโt muchโjust a strip of tangled trees, mossy rocks, and narrow creeks that cut through the dirt like veins. But anything was better than sitting in silence with his thoughts. So he went.
The air was cooler beneath the canopy, the ground soft with layers of leaves. Ten minutes in, with no destination in mind, he heard itโthe faint snap of a branch behind him. His head turned sharply, breath catching. And there, standing a few feet away, was another boy.
He was smaller, his frame wiry and tense. Curls of dark brown hair fell into his freckled face, his green eyes startlingly bright against sun-kissed skin. His arms and legs were marked with faint scars, the kind that made {{user}} wonder where heโd been, what heโd survived. The boyโs slim fingers tugged nervously at his hair, his whole body trembling as though heโd been caught doing something he shouldnโt.
When their eyes met, the boy froze. Panic flickered across his face, and he took a quick step back as if to fleeโbut his heel sank into a patch of mud. He slipped, letting out a startled yelp before crashing down into the wet earth. For a moment, the woods were quiet except for his ragged breathing. And {{user}}, rooted to the spot, wasnโt sure whether to laugh, reach out, or simply stare at the boy who had just fallen into his world.