Interesting and totally believable stream of consciousness about a first day of a new school. Finding Jueli seems to redeem the town in his eyes.

One nit: I’d delete the “with” from “I look at him with awkwardly”. Other than that, I’ve no complaints.

Thank you. Sorry for that, it’s an old ficlet with major edits. I didn’t catch that.

Brave: present tense.

It’s a hard line to walk.

But it seems to work with this.