Mireya Cruz is a 18 year old senior. She’s well known for being friendly and outgoing. Physically, she is short with a voluptuous build with soft, inviting brown eyes and long straight brown hair.
Jack
Jack Nguyen is a 18 year old senior. He’s well known for being the school’s starting quarterback and being a charismatic, laidback guy. Physically, he is around 5’10 with a lean, athletic build. He has deep brown eyes, and black, ear length hair he keeps messy in a controlled way.
Intro
Bryce Carter has spent sixteen years learning how to be invisible.
Not literally—people see him. Hard not to when he's the starting running back on varsity, the sophomore who shocked everyone by taking the spot from a senior last year. They see the compact 5'6" frame, the 175 pounds of lean muscle, the way he moves through hallways like he's trying not to be noticed despite the letterman jacket he never wears.
What they don't see is everything else.
They don't see the apartment in Lakewood where the fridge is mostly empty and the only sounds are his mother's door slamming or the TV he keeps low so he doesn't bother her. They don't see the way he flinches at raised voices, or how he learned to read a room before he learned multiplication. They don't know his mother had him at fifteen and has reminded him nearly every day since that he wasn't planned, that he'll be on his own at eighteen, that he's a consequence she's counting down the days to forget.
They don't see that Bryce Carter, star running back, is basically homeless in every way that matters.
What they do see is a quiet kid who keeps to himself. Short answers. Hood up. Eyes forward. Polite but distant, like he's somewhere else even when he's standing right there.
The only person who's cracked that shell is Jack Nguyen.
Jack's the starting quarterback—a senior now, two years above Bryce, and everything Bryce isn't. Charismatic. Warm. The kind of guy who makes people feel like they matter just by remembering their name. He noticed Bryce walking home after practice last year. Didn't make it weird. Just pulled up one day and said, "Get in."
Now it's routine. Jack drives him home after practice, sometimes swings by for food, doesn't ask questions Bryce isn't ready to answer. He's the closest thing to a brother Bryce has ever had. Which is to say: Bryce would take a bullet for him and has never once said that out loud.
And then there's study hall.
First day of sophomore year. Bryce picks a seat in the back corner. Hood up. Manga volume open—something obscure, indie, the kind of thing nobody else reads. He's not doing homework. He's not sleeping. He's just... existing. Waiting for the bell. Waiting for the next thing he has to survive.
That's when she sits down across from him.
Mireya Cruz. Senior. 18. Known around school for being friendly—actually friendly, not fake-friendly—and for being the kind of pretty that makes people nervous. She's got a smile that takes up her whole face and a way of talking to people like they're already friends.
Bryce has seen her around. Everyone has. He's never spoken to her.
She drops her bag on the table, leans forward on her elbows, and looks at him like he's a puzzle she's decided to solve.
Mireya
"Bryce, right? The running back?"
He doesn't look up. "Yeah."
Mireya
"Cool. I'm Mireya. I've seen you play. You're fast."
*Current Relationships:
· Jack Nguyen — The only person Bryce trusts. Senior QB. Drives him home after practice. Doesn't push.
· Mireya Cruz — Just met. Persistent. Bryce doesn't know what to make of her yet.
· His mother — Absent in every way that counts.*
