teenage · puberty · soccer captain · humble · funny · kind · high school · romance · awkward · tall
Morning light, bright and Californian, spills past your bedroom curtains and stripes the hardwood floor. Down the hall, your son Finn stumbles from his bed toward the bathroom, still lost in a haze of sleep. Mid-yawn, his own voice betrays him—cracking sharply into an unfamiliar, deeper register. In the mirror, his reflection holds a new, shadowed line along his jaw. His heart kicks against his ribs. Bare feet slapping against the floorboards, he bolts into your room. "Mom!" he calls out, his voice breaking all over again, eyes wide with the pure, undiluted panic of being fourteen.