Chapter Text
The cardboard boxes stacked in the living room smelled faintly of damp baseline and the exhaust fumes of Route 9.
Thomas wiped a streak of gray dust from his forehead, leaving a smudge that probably matched the ones on his chin. He leaned against the windowsill of their third-floor apartment, watching the endless, rhythmic crawl of yellow cabs down below.
Queens wasn’t New York like the movies showed it—there were no soaring chrome skyscrapers outside his window, just a tangled web of power lines, brick facades, and the distant, metallic shriek of the elevated train.
"Thomas! Where’s the blue binder? The one with the whale on it?"
Thomas sighed, letting his forehead rest against the cool glass for a fraction of a second before turning around.
"Check the box on the kitchen counter, Chuck. Mom packed it, so it’s definitely not where it’s supposed to be."
Chuck, currently resembling a ball of curly hair and oversized sweatpants, was sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor, surrounded by a sea of crumpled packing paper. At twelve years old, Chuck had an uncanny ability to turn any room into an immediate disaster zone within five minutes of entering it.
"Found it!" Chuck yelled, dragging a mangled notebook out from beneath a stack of frying pans.
"But I don't get the math. Mr. Stewson said we had to finish the prep-work before the first day or we’d get detention. Can you get detention before school even starts?"
"No, Chuck. And don't call him Mr. Stewson, he's just the student teacher," Thomas said, walking over and dropping onto the floor next to his brother.
The smell of frying onions and garlic drifted in from the kitchen, where his mother was aggressively trying to figure out how the old gas stove worked, while his dad’s muffled voice echoed from the hallway as he argued with the internet provider on the phone.
It was the classic family chaos, but here, packed into five hundred square feet less than they used to have, it felt loud. Suffocating, almost.
"Look," Thomas said, pulling the binder toward him and staring at the fractions. His brain felt like mush. The move had taken three days of driving, lifting, and listening to his parents argue about GPS directions. And tomorrow morning, at exactly seven-thirty, he had to walk through the front gates of W.I.C.K.E.D. High.
Just the name made his stomach twist into an uncomfortable knot. *World In-Catastrophe: Kept-Education Department.* A ridiculous, pretentious name for a specialized magnet school that his parents had been thrilled he’d gotten into.
*“A life-changing opportunity, Tom,”* his dad had said, clapping him on the shoulder.
*“The kind of school that sets you up for everything.”*
Thomas didn't want to be set up for everything. He just wanted his old bedroom back, the one where the floorboards didn't creak and he actually knew the names of the kids next door.
"You're staring," Chuck muttered, poking Thomas in the arm with a blunt pencil. "You do that when you're freaking out."
"I'm not freaking out."
"You totally are. Your eyebrows go all weird and close together." Chuck leaned in, squinting.
"Is it because of the new school? I heard the seniors there make the freshmen eat chalk."
"I'm a sophomore, Chuck. Nobody is making me eat chalk," Thomas said, though a small, irrational part of his brain immediately added *but what if they do?* to his mental list of worries. He pointed at the notebook.
"Anyway, look at the denominator. You can't add them until they match. Multiply the top and the bottom by three."
"Oh." Chuck scribbled something down, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.
"Hey, Tom? Do you think we'll fit in here?"
The question was sudden, stripped of Chuck’s usual hyperactive shielding. Thomas looked at his little brother’s dirt-streaked face and felt a sudden, heavy wave of protectiveness. Chuck had left all his friends behind, too. He was just putting up a louder front about it.
"Yeah," Thomas said softly, reaching out to ruffle Chuck's hair, ignoring the groan of protest he got in response.
"We will. You'll find some kids to terrorize with your stupid jokes, and I'll... I don't know. Find a corner in the library where nobody notices me."
"Boys! Dinner's as ready as it's ever going to be!" their mother called out from the kitchen, followed by the sharp *clank* of a metal pot hitting the counter.
"Tom, tell your father to hang up that phone or I'm throwing his plate out the window!"
Thomas stood up, stretching his aching back. The anxiety was still there, a cold weight sitting right behind his ribs, pulsing every time he thought about the morning alarm.
New hallways. New lockers. Hundreds of faces he’d never seen before, all of them already belonging somewhere, while he was just the blank slate from out of town.
He walked toward the kitchen, pausing by the hallway mirror to push his dark, unruly hair out of his eyes.
"Just keep a low profile," he muttered to his reflection. "One year. Just blend into the background."
He had no idea that tomorrow, a single clumsy misstep in a crowded cafeteria would make that completely impossible.