“The Quarterback Shoved My Little Sister — He Didn’t Know Her Brother Had Just Returned From a Black Ops Deployment”

and the kind of loud, performative laughter that seems mandatory for survival in the American high school ecosystem. The air smells like exhaust fumes mixed with body spray and teenage anxiety, an oddly specific scent that takes me back to my own high school days before the world got complicated. I stay low in my seat, baseball cap pulled down to continue reading …