NoahThe answer comes to me before I've even finished reading the question.That's the annoying part about the Latimer Scholarship Exam. Three hours, ninety questions, calculus stacked on physics stacked on essay prompts about "civic virtue," and my brain just does it. Numbers line up in my head like they've been waiting for me to notice them. I finish with forty minutes to spare and I don't even feel tired.I glance up. Rows of desks, gray tile floor, the smell of pencil shavings and floor wax. Somebody two rows over is chewing their eraser down to a nub. My own reflection ghosts back at me in the dark window glass beside my desk. Dark hair that's always a little too long no matter how many times Mom threatens to cut it herself. A thin scar above my left eyebrow from a bike wreck when I was seven. Nothing about my face gives away what my head is actually doing.I tap two fingers against my thumb instead, once, twice, the way I do when my head is working faster than my mouth can keep

NoahSomething hot hits me in the face before I even hear the warning.I taste coffee before I understand what's happening, bitter and scalding, running down into my collar while my left eye slams shut against the sting. My knees hit the tile. It's a few days after the exam scores went up, and I'm three hours into my after-school shift at Brewline when it happens. Somewhere above me, laughter, the kind that's been waiting all week for an excuse to happen."Whoops." That's Miles Kessler's voice. Same grade as me, same school, though you'd never guess it from how little time he actually spends in a classroom compared to how much time he spends causing trouble somewhere else. I'd know his voice anywhere by now, three months into working the counter at Brewline, ever since he and his brother decided my shifts here were more entertaining than anything happening back at school. "Guess I tripped."I open my good eye. Miles is standing over me in a jacket that costs more than my mother makes

NoahThe building's heat dies on the coldest night of the year, obviously, because the universe has a sense of humor and it is not a kind one.It's been about two weeks since the party, two weeks of Serena texting just enough to keep me hoping and never enough to mean it, when the heat goes. I hear it before I understand it, a low groaning clank from somewhere in the basement, then silence, then the radiator under our window goes cold to the touch within twenty minutes. By the time Mom gets home from her shift the whole apartment feels like the inside of a refrigerator."Great," she says, breath fogging in our own living room. "Just great."Mr. Alvarez from down the hall bangs on our door around ten, wrapped in two coats, asking if we've called the landlord. We have. The landlord's answering machine picks up like it always does, promising a callback that never comes. By eleven, half the building's crowded in the stairwell in blankets, comparing how cold their apartments are like it's

NoahA week or so goes by, ordinary and forgettable in the way weeks are when nothing's actively falling apart, and by Thursday of that week, the lights aren't just in Europe anymore.I catch it on the little TV above the register at Brewline, sound muted, captions scrolling too fast to read every word. A news anchor with a too-calm voice stands in front of a graphic showing dots scattered across a world map, Berlin, Tokyo, Lagos, a cluster near the Australian coast. Unexplained aerial phenomena, the caption says. Government sources decline to comment."Probably weather balloons," says a customer at the counter, not really talking to me, just talking at the room the way people do when they need to hear a comforting explanation out loud. "Or drones. Some rich kid's drone hobby gone viral."I don't answer. I'm watching the footage instead, another shaky clip, this one from somewhere in Brazil, a line of light crossing the sky slow and steady and dead straight, nothing like a shooting st

Noah Mom's waiting at the door before I even get my key in the lock, and she pulls me inside so hard I stumble."Thank God," she breathes into my hair, arms locked around me tight enough to hurt, and for a second neither of us says anything else, just stand there in our tiny hallway holding on like letting go might undo the fact that I made it home at all.The TV's on in the living room, muted chaos flickering across the cracked screen, split-screen footage from six different cities all showing the same thing, ships hanging silent and enormous over skylines that suddenly look small underneath them. The news anchors have stopped pretending to have answers. One of them is just repeating "please remain calm and stay indoors" over and over like a broken recording, her hands visibly shaking even through the low-quality feed."We should board the windows," Mom says, already moving toward the kitchen, pulling out the roll of duct tape we usually use for the leaky pipe under the sink. "Just