6 Days Before the Party - Miles

Today had been a rough one. Miles had to skip the first day of highschool because he had gotten food poisoning.

Miles had gotten out of bed to look for any food he might find.

The kitchen had a weird smell.

Not a bad one—just… processed. Artificial. Like something pretending to be food.

Miles stood at the counter, pouring cereal into a chipped bowl with mechanical precision. He hadn’t bothered to check if the milk was expired. Didn’t matter. It was texture, not taste. He chewed, swallowed, and stared out the window while the spoon hung limply from his fingers. His mom said the view was “gorgeous”—a wide lawn, a row of trees, a street that curved out of sight.

It looked like any other place they’d moved to. Dull. Quiet. A new fake stage with new fake props.

He finished eating and washed the bowl because that’s what you’re supposed to do. He didn’t like the way people looked at you if you left dishes in the sink. Their faces got all tight and pinched, like it physically hurt them to see a dirty plate. So he cleaned it, dried it, put it away.

Not because he cared.

Because it kept things moving.

The clock ticked. He waited for it to hit the hour before heading upstairs. Another rule. Don’t get up too fast. Don’t seem anxious.

The stairs groaned under his weight, but he didn’t flinch. Just walked steady, like someone who had a destination and wasn’t just buying time until he could be alone again. The hallway was narrow, lined with framed stock-photo smiles his mom never replaced. Every time she unpacked, she made a home for them before she made one for herself.

His bedroom door clicked shut behind him.

And finally—he could stop pretending.

He leaned back against the door and exhaled, slow and soundless. His room was still mostly in boxes. The bed was made, the blinds were drawn, and there were no posters on the walls. Blank. Clean. Comfortable.

Miles stepped over a half-unpacked duffel and opened his notebook. Not a journal. Nothing emotional. Just notes. Observations. Faces he’d seen at the gas station, people from the moving truck, a grocery store cashier who blinked too much. He wrote it all down—names, colors, patterns, inconsistencies.

They all blended together.

People never surprised him.

They lied. They smiled. They talked too much about nothing.

And when they cried, they looked around to see if anyone was watching first. Like even pain was performative.

He tapped his pen against the paper.

School started tomorrow. Another round. Another place. Another flood of people saying the same things, doing the same dances, running on the same loop.

He didn’t plan to be invisible this time. He was done trying to shadow his way through hallways.

He was going to throw a party.

It was the kind of thing people remembered. It didn’t require intimacy or effort—just noise and alcohol and a bunch of warm bodies crammed into a too-small space. That’s what people liked, right? Noise and light and excuses to touch.

He didn’t get it. But he could do it.

Miles closed the notebook and slid it under his bed.

The sun outside had started to dip low, casting orange streaks through his blinds and cutting hard lines across his walls. He stood there for a moment, watching how the shadows shifted as he tilted his head.

Then, faintly, he smiled. But it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

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