Acting Normal

The fluorescent light over the kitchen sink has buzzed for as long as Theo Hayes has been alive. When it stops, breakfast becomes a horror scene: the table stretches too long, his dad's empty chair waits at the far end of it, and something upstairs walks to the side of the bed where nobody sleeps anymore.

Then the light buzzes back on. His mom kisses his hair and leaves for work. Everyone acts normal.

Everyone always acts normal. That's the rule.

Theo — broke, tired, quietly holding his family together — has spent seventeen years being the only one who sees the world change genre when feelings get too big to fit inside it. A fight becomes a monster movie. An empty mansion becomes an echo chamber. A college assembly becomes a game show nobody wins.

Then Sofie Ashford, the new girl from the glass house on the bluff, looks at him across a gym mid-nightmare — and doesn't look away.

She sees it too.

She's always seen it. And she knows something about Theo that he doesn't know about himself.

A slow-burn romance about family, money, growing up, and the monsters everyone politely ignores. It will hurt. Then it will hug you.

New chapters on a steady schedule — bring a jacket.