Alex Vance felt like he was straddling two entirely different timelines—two realities stacked imperfectly on top of each other. At any given moment, he wasn't sure if he was living in the present or remembering something from a future he wasn't supposed to have seen. The world hadn't broken apart in some dramatic, cinematic way; instead, it had begun to hum at two frequencies, and Alex was the only one who could hear both.
Tuesday morning. Third period Chemistry. The classroom smelled faintly of sulfur, whiteboard markers, and teenage boredom. Mr. Henderson was at the front of the room, lecturing in his usual slow drone, his words drifting over the heads of students more focused on staying awake than understanding valence electrons.
Alex was doing his best to concentrate. There was a test on Friday, and he needed the grade. But his phone, tucked between his thigh and the underside of the lab table, kept vibrating like a nervous heartbeat. He risked a glance down.
Buzz.
A message from Claire—his publicist, fast-talking and sharper than the Manhattan skyline.
SPIN Magazine locked for Friday. We need a new shoot. Can you make it?
Buzz.
Also, they're asking about the "Lost Boy" origin story again. What's our official line?
Alex's thumb moved across the screen with practiced efficiency, his reply short and half-true.
Wrote a song about being lost. People connected. That's the story.
He hesitated a second before hitting send. He wasn't lying—but he wasn't telling the truth, either. The real story was complicated. Impossible to explain in a pitch-friendly blurb. So he gave them the easy version. The version the world could digest.
"Alex?"
He flinched. His head snapped up. Mr. Henderson was looking at him expectantly.
"What's the charge of a chloride ion?"
Alex's mouth moved before his brain could catch up. "Negative one," he answered, voice flat.
The teacher gave a satisfied nod and turned back to his diagram, unaware that Alex had just reentered the room from somewhere else entirely. He exhaled slowly, trying to force his body to relax, but the tension had already settled in his shoulders.
By the time the weekend rolled around, he was no closer to rest.
Backstage at a local morning show, he sat in a too-small chair in a beige room with no windows and a lingering smell of hairspray and reheated coffee. A history textbook lay open on his lap, the pages smudged with pencil notes and last-minute anxiety. His final exam was tomorrow—European theatre, WWII, key battles, dates and names—but none of it was sticking.
A woman with a headset adjusted the mic clipped to his shirt, not even glancing up as she spoke.
"Just the acoustic version, right? Two and a half minutes. You're after the celebrity chef demo. Try not to touch the mic."
He nodded without looking away from his book.
The contrast was jarring. One moment, he was expected to be a student. The next, "the talent." It wasn't just a matter of double-booking his calendar. It was like living two separate lives and switching between them every time he blinked. And no one—not the producer with the clipboard, not his teachers or friends—seemed to understand how much that constant flipping was wearing him down.
His bedroom didn't offer relief. It was no longer a place of rest—it had become a command center.
At night, he paced with his phone pressed to his ear, talking through music video concepts with a team in LA. The only light came from his laptop, which displayed his calendar, his to-do list, and a dozen unopened emails from his dad about LLC forms and quarterly filings.
The director on the line was enthusiastic. Too enthusiastic.
"We end with a massive glitter cannon during the final chorus—just boom, full color burst. It'll look amazing on TikTok. Total viral potential, man."
Alex stopped mid-step. For a second, the younger version of himself—the kid who used to film music videos in his backyard with a borrowed camcorder—thought it sounded kind of cool. But that thought flickered and vanished, replaced by the weariness of someone who'd already seen too many half-baked ideas dressed up in glitter.
"No," he said. Calm. Steady. Not mean, just certain.
The director stammered. "No glitter cannon?"
"No. The song's not about fireworks. It's about defiant hope. It's about finding your people when you feel like no one sees you. I want it to feel real—handheld cameras, actual kids, no models. Like a memory, not a commercial."
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
"Okay," the director finally said, his voice more subdued. "Yeah. Okay. I can work with that."
Alex hung up and sat down on the edge of his bed. His eyes burned from staring at screens. His voice felt like it belonged to someone twice his age. He didn't feel victorious. Just… tired.
At school, the difference between him and everyone else had started to become impossible to ignore.
He still walked the same halls, sat at the same desks, and turned in the same assignments. But something had shifted. People noticed. The glances were subtle but persistent. Classmates who used to greet him with casual jokes now offered hesitant nods, as if unsure what version of Alex they were speaking to.
Are you famous now?
Do you still need to take finals?
Are you going to leave?
The questions never came out loud, but he could hear them anyway.
Lunchtime became the only opportunity to catch up on emails. Instead of eating with his friends, he sat in a corner of the cafeteria, phone in one hand, sandwich in the other, reviewing spreadsheets and approving merch samples. At some point, he stopped trying to explain himself.
It came to a head on a Thursday afternoon, during English.
The class was supposed to be reading The Great Gatsby in silence. The room was calm, pages rustling softly in the warm hush of late-day fatigue. Then, Alex's phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw the call was international.
Germany.
He stood up quietly and stepped out into the hallway, mouthing a quiet apology to Mrs. Davison as he passed.
The call was short but intense—his distributor was panicking about a delay getting Youth onto a major Scandinavian platform. Alex talked them through it, offering concise directions, calendar adjustments, and a revised rollout plan.
When he reentered the classroom five minutes later, the atmosphere had shifted. The silence was no longer peaceful. It was dense, judgmental.
Mrs. Davison stood beside his desk. Her arms were crossed. Her voice was soft, but sharp enough to cut.
"Alex," she said, "we have a rule about phones. Who exactly were you speaking to that was more important than your education?"
He met her eyes. She was a good teacher. She had known him since his freshman year. She had once written "promising" in red ink on one of his essays. And yet, standing there, he felt worlds apart from her.
There were answers he could've given. A lie about a family emergency. Something simple. Something easy.
But he was done making it easier for everyone else to understand.
"I was on a call with my distributor," he said. "In Germany."
It wasn't said with arrogance. There was no defiance in his voice. Just tired honesty.
The silence that followed was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. His classmates stared, not out of malice, but confusion—like he'd spoken a different language. Even Mrs. Davison looked as if she didn't know how to respond.
He returned to his seat and picked up his copy of Gatsby, but the words blurred together. The green light at the end of the dock—once a distant symbol of hope—now felt impossibly far away.
He had everything he used to dream about. And somehow, in gaining it all, he had never felt more profoundly alone.