Stephen knew the answer before the question was even finished.
Mrs. Lehman, his science teacher, was drawing a diagram on the whiteboard, explaining how energy moved through a system—thermal, mechanical, potential. Her voice was bright and bouncy, the kind meant to keep attention, like a game show host pretending to care.
Stephen sat perfectly still at his desk.
Not fidgeting. Not doodling. Not taking notes.
Just… thinking.
"Now, who can tell me what happens to the energy when a ball rolls to a stop?" Mrs. Lehman asked, drawing a sad little circle with motion lines.
Several hands went up. Not Stephen's.
He'd already answered two questions today, and that was his self-imposed limit. Any more and the other kids would start giving him looks again.
The girl next to him leaned over. "is it friction?," she whispered, uncertain.
Stephen gave her a soft smile and a thumbs up.
She got it right. The class clapped. Mrs. Lehman beamed.
Stephen looked down at his notebook. He hadn't written anything.
He was already four pages deep into a diagram of a heat engine redesign. Not that anyone could tell.
_ _ ♛ _ _
School was easy.
Painfully, frustratingly easy.
He cruised through math. Cruised through reading. Finished worksheets in half the time and then sat patiently while the rest of the class struggled over things he'd mastered years ago.
And he liked his classmates. He really did.
But most of them still said things like "library" and giggled when the substitute read aloud from a book with the word "butt" in it.
There were moments—small ones—where the disconnect tugged at him.
When he raised his hand too fast.
When someone said, "Stop showing off."
When the teacher paused after calling on him, just long enough for everyone to realize they already knew what he'd say.
He never got picked for group work unless the teacher forced someone to include him.
And when he tried to joke around like the others—talk about cartoons or the newest viral dance or whatever was on TikTok—he always got it slightly wrong.
He could memorize all of it, but he couldn't make it feel right.
So, mostly, he stayed quiet. Friendly. Helpful.
But quiet.
_ _ ♛ _ _
It wasn't all bad.
Stephen had his own kind of fun.
Mrs. Lehman was sweet, but she got nervous when Stephen asked questions that wandered too far off the lesson plan.
"If energy's never destroyed, does that mean the heat from a single fire could eventually reach the edge of the universe, even if it's too small to measure?"
She blinked. "Um… Let's focus on the worksheet for now, okay?"
Stephen had smiled and said "Okay." He always did.
But he still wrote the question down in his red notebook later that night, along with his own theory. And a doodle of a marshmallow melting from star radiation.
He titled the page:
Entropy: The Universe's Slowest Marshmallow Roast
_ _ ♛ _ _
Recess was mostly just him walking laps.
He could've joined the other kids at the soccer field or played wall ball by the dumpsters, but there was a rhythm in moving. In pacing. In thinking.
The sun warmed his hoodie. The breeze pulled at his hair.
He liked watching. The movement. The mess of kids in motion.
From a distance, it all looked like noise.
But if you really watched—really watched—you could see patterns. The kid who always passed left. The girl who ran the farthest before getting tired. The one who only joined the game when her friends were already winning.
Stephen noticed all of it. He didn't know why. He just did.
And maybe that was part of the problem.
_ _ ♛ _ _
After school, he met Mark by the flagpole. They walked home together most days.
Stephen kicked a rock along the sidewalk. Mark was talking about something—homework, maybe, or a pop quiz—but Stephen wasn't fully listening.
He was too busy watching the way Mark's shoulders moved. The way his hands curled when he was frustrated.
He looked at Mark's reflection in the store window they passed. Not just to see his face, but to see how much space he took up.
He was getting taller again. Stronger.
Stephen walked faster to keep up.
_ _ ♛ _ _
At home, Mark dumped his backpack onto the couch and went straight for the fridge.
Stephen peeled off his shoes, set them neatly by the door, and followed.
"How was school?" Mark asked, pulling out leftover pizza and a juice box.
Stephen shrugged. "Same."
"Dunst still hate you?"
"Does the moon still orbit the Earth?"
Mark snorted and tossed him the juice box. Stephen caught it without looking.
They flopped onto the couch. Mark turned on the TV. Something loud and animated.
Stephen sipped his juice and let the noise wash over him.
These were the best moments.
No pretending. No teachers. No "Stop showing off."
Just the two of them. Quiet. Together.
_ _ ♛ _ _
After dinner, Stephen retreated to his room.
He didn't turn on the overhead light—just the lamp on his desk. It cast long shadows across the floor and made his walls look like a planetarium.
The solar system model above his bed spun lazily, a leftover from when he was younger.
He never took it down.
He sat cross-legged on his chair and opened his red notebook.
He flipped past equations. Past sketches. Past the page where he'd drawn himself in a superhero costume and then crossed it out in thick black ink.
He stopped on a blank page and wrote:
Sometimes I feel like I'm pretending to be someone my age.
Then below that:
I wonder if anyone else is pretending too.
He didn't write anything else. Just stared at the words for a long time.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Later, when the house was quiet, Stephen climbed out onto the roof.
The shingles were still warm from the day. The stars blinked above him like they were trying to remember something.
He looked up.
Somewhere out there was the truth about who he was. What he was becoming.
He didn't feel scared. Not really.
But he did feel…
Small.
Not weak. Not helpless.
Just… tiny. Like someone who didn't quite belong to the world he was standing in.
Like someone built for another story that hadn't started yet.
_ _ ♛ _ _
He closed his eyes.
Listened to the wind.
Felt the stars.
And waited for the sun.
End of Chapter 19
(A/N: started boxing, so chapters will be posted in a weird timing, but worry not it is still 2 chapters a week, AND I GOT MY MONITOR BACK, so i can finally revise some chapters and make more chapters! and worry not, this whole arc is the calm before the storm, so I suggest you all enjoy it while you can, cause I have been COOKING!)