Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Tinderbox

The rhythmic slap of my shoes against the rainy sidewalk loosely followed the beat of the song blasting in my earbuds. This was the most peaceful part of any given day of the school week for me. The closer I got to the bus stop, the less at ease I felt. The usual suspects were rallied up around the signpost at the corner of Cherry and Dawson. I hung towards the back of the pack and waited for the bus to pull up. I couldn’t wait to have enough saved up to buy my own car so I never had to deal with this ritual again.

The hulk of metal rolled up to the curb and we all shuffled aboard, jockeying for seats. I managed to get a seat somewhere between the pretty, popular kids at the front of the bus, and the rebels without a cause at the back. Watching the city pass by outside the windows was still a surreal sensation. My family moved here two years ago when I was just a freshman, and before then I’d never heard of New Haven, New York. Nobody had. It wasn’t here five years ago, but when you try to tell people that, they look at you like you’re high. There’s kids that claim to have grown up here, and families who were supposedly born and raised here generations ago. There’s businesses that advertise being in operation since the 1900s or even earlier down in the market district… but it’s not possible.

It’s not real.

Not to say that this place is completely unrealistic or anything - it’s just like any other city in the US, except for the things that aren’t. The city has no crime - literally none. The unemployment rate is also basically zero. New Haven bills itself as ‘the safest city on Earth’, and for the most part, it is. 

Unfortunately, minor offenses like bullying seem to escape the notice of whatever is policing everything else here. Case in point? Me. The last two years at this school have been hell. Every day I get shoved around in the halls, pranked, or openly mocked. The teachers have tried to intervene but it never really helps.

As the bus rolls past Kincade tower, I briefly muse that I should talk to the mayor about it. Maybe he’d handle it.

Hah… yeah right.

I peel my eyes away from the window and sink back into my ebook until it’s time to drag myself off the bus to shuffle along with the herd into the waiting arms of Kincade Senior High. It’s hard not to stand out in a crowd when you’re 6’2” and built like a lamp post. A wadded up paper ball bounces off my head and draws me out of my dread-forecasting about the day, and I don’t even bother looking around to see who threw it. Davis and his football goons laughter tells me all I need to know. Whatever.

The day slogs on like every day before it and every day to come, unremarkable except for the only bright spot: lunch. I plop down at my usual table with my lunch tray, greeted by the only friends I have in this school.

Jack, Greg, and Stewart are my best guy friends - my only guy friends, really - and they’re just as big of nerds as I am. We all enjoy tabletop RPGs and RPing online. Most of us are into sci-fi and fantasy movies, and we’re the kind of nerds that get into friendly debates about which Star Wars movie ruined the franchise more, Episode 1 or Episode 7. The answer is all of them, by the way. Lucas completely ruined that series after the initial releases. Don’t @ me.

“Hey, Evan, guess what?” Greg asked, grinning at me.

“Your dad won the lottery and bought a new hairpiece that doesn’t look like roadkill?” I shot back glibly. 

“Psh, no, I wish. But I finally got that account set up, so now all we have to do is test it out!”

The guys had been trying to set up a fake Tinder account that would definitely get one of them a hookup. I had no doubt that it was destined to flop.

“Nice, which one of you is testing it?” I asked, shoveling something the school was passing off as ‘taco pizza’ into my mouth. It was one of the few tolerable meals they served. 

“You are,” Stewart confidently stated.

“What?” I looked at them incredulously.

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“Yeah. You’re the best looking out of all of us, so we used your picture.” Greg slid a piece of paper towards me with the account info written on it. “Just log into the account tonight and give it a shot, let us know how it goes!”

I took the paper and sighed. “Yeah, sure.” It wasn’t like anyone was going to accept a match with me anyway, but I’d humor the guys.

The rest of lunch passed in a haze of them talking about what they’d do with cute girls once they got matches. I’d consider this kinda pathetic, if I wasn’t also thinking of the same things. 

I’m a teenage guy with needs, okay? No judgments here.

“Alright guys, that’s enough,” Valentina said, before steering things away from the extremely raunchy, R rated territory they’d been heading for. Valentina and I’d become fast friends right after I moved here - the cute goth girl who loved the same stuff I did? Yes please. She was also the only girl in our friend group - and the only girl who associated with us at all, really.

Of course we’d all asked her out at least once. She’d politely turned us all down. I couldn’t blame her.

We all parted with waves and promises to talk later online, and that I’d regale them with my escapades.

I used the bus ride home to install the app, and check out how it works. Seemed simple enough. But there was no way anyone was going to match with me - especially not when I realized the guys had heavily photoshopped my picture to make me look older and hotter than I was. 

I tossed the phone in my pocket and started the walk home, looking forward to getting through my homework and relax with some Netflix.

I couldn’t have expected that someone would actually accept a match with me. Much less the absolute hottie that did. She was a total ten in every way imaginable. Normally, I’d have been a staunch believer of ‘too good to be true’, but… I mean… if you’d seen this girl, you’d have risked losing a kidney too. 

So that’s how I came to find myself sitting in a hotel room at 9pm waiting for my date to finish getting ready in the bathroom. The fact that she hadn’t gone running when she saw me and realized I didn’t match my picture should have been some kind of sign but… I was desperate, okay?

As previously mentioned, I’m a teenage boy with a very healthy curiosity about the female body. 

She stepped out of the bathroom in nothing at all, and I was not prepared. My eyes went wide, and as she sauntered towards me… 

 

I sat up in bed. My bed, in my bedroom, at home. 

It had all been a dream. Son of a bitch… and now I had an uncomfortable dampness in my boxers. Double son of a bitch.

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