Rather than listening to a bunch of grand declarations, it probably made more sense to actually hear Ethan out on this business idea. After all, the kid was practically the only reader in the family. Sure, he wasn't exactly a star student, but he'd gone through a mountain of random books over the years.And he was basically an adult now, seventeen, pretty much the backbone of the household at this point. In moments like this, Ethan's opinion actually carried some weight."Okay, here's the thing, Mom, Dad. Let's figure out what you two can actually do. You've got connections over at Halvorsen, right? Could we use those somehow? Dad, is there any way to go around Halvorsen directly, talk to their clients about production lines, raw materials, maybe act as the middleman?""How would that even work? That'd cost a fortune!" Halvorsen made TV picture tubes, a brutal mix of technology-heavy, labor-heavy, and capital-heavy all at once. Without serious resources behind you, there wasn't much r

Ethan hadn't exactly expected this twist out of what was supposed to be a straightforward conversation.So. Walter had discovered Vanessa, and Vanessa had developed feelings for him while they worked together. Later, after Walter's wife left, Vanessa had seen her opening and made a real effort to get closer to him, but he'd turned her down.Danny had been close to Vanessa back then too, in his own way, so his feelings about her were obviously different. After her murder, he'd just buried the whole history between her and his dad, never once bringing it up with Ethan, let alone with Walter himself.Walter had kept his distance from her after that, and her career had only taken off from there, until she became basically a household name around Riverton. Which meant he'd had even less contact with her as time went on.Ethan nodded along.He wasn't totally sure of the exact date of the murder, but he knew it wasn't anytime soon, definitely not in the next few weeks. He remembered it falli

A lot of people had seen the whole thing, and more than a few felt a weird, surreal jolt watching it happen.Jenna's jaw actually dropped. "Nora, did you see that? She is unbelievably good at this..."Camille walked straight out into the rain and disappeared into the dark.Ethan was left holding a folding umbrella, a small one, honestly more of a women's parasol, lace trim and everything.He paused, feeling something shift, like his whole memory of Camille had suddenly gone a little blurry. He realized, standing there, that maybe he'd never really understood her at all.Maybe he never had.Actions over intentions, even for someone like her. She'd handed him her only umbrella and walked out into the rain herself. However complicated things were between them, that deserved some real gratitude.She really was a kind person, underneath everything.Thump.The umbrella snapped open under the lamplight, rain tapping softly against it."Let's go."Ethan headed out into the rain with the umbre

"Oh, by the way, let's talk through our class's placement for the assessment exam." In the office, Mr. Hoffman, the homeroom teacher, slid a list across to Mrs. Patterson."Oh, sure, let me take a look," she said, grabbing it quickly.The junior-year assessment exam, officially the Teaching Quality Assessment, was a standardized test set by the District Office. It mainly measured how well each school was actually teaching. Afterward, every exam got graded centrally, and schools were ranked against each other. It was basically a school's lifeline, the one competition everyone took dead seriously every single year.Half of what made the city's so-called "Big Five" schools what they were traced straight back to this exam and the reputations built around it.Every high school obsessed over it, scrambling for ranking, even though technically the real college entrance exam was the actual final word on everything. This assessment still shaped how the District Office rated each school, how in

Finals ran three days, after which students got sent home to rest before coming back to collect their scores and move into the next stretch.Ethan spent those three days spread across three different spots. The first day, he showed up at Danny's place. Danny's family had real money, a computer loaded up with games, including his favorite, Open Seas. Seeing it on screen hit Ethan with a wave of nostalgia. That game had basically let him live out a whole sailing fantasy once upon a time. The graphics looked laughably blocky now, sure, but the overall 2D art style still held up, genuinely ahead of its time in terms of pure visual design.If Ethan were still playing computer games these days, this would absolutely be one of them. There was still real gameplay buried in that pixelated style, which honestly explained a lot about why Nintendo had been in no hurry to chase better graphics.But Ethan hadn't come over to play games. He turned on Danny's computer, and it immediately started beep