Will and Nathaniel walked side by side. Will looked up at the sky, then down at his watch. The edges of the sky were beginning to fade. The sun would rise soon.
His phone chimed with a notification. He’d forgotten all about the video.
He opened the link.
There was a stream of comments on the video he’d posted. Not very nice ones. He couldn’t blame them.
The last one was a video.
A door swung open; a vast dark living room stretched out before the camera, like the set of an abandoned movie.
It was his living room!
There were empty and half-empty red plastic cups scattered across the floor like grass seeds, flipped on their sides, perched on end tables, the mantelpiece, the coffee table, like they were struggling to grow. They were lined up along the hall credenza, single file. A sticky film covered the hardwood floors.
The place was trashed.
On the wall above the couch, someone had written LOSER in something brown and sticky. Will was officially an outcast now. Everything he’d worked so hard for had been for nothing.
He didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved.
“Gross,” Lu said over his shoulder.
“Wow,” said Tiny, on his other side. “I can’t believe people would do that to you. They were supposed to be your friends.”
“People are the worst,” Nathaniel said.
“Wow,” said Will. “My parents are going to kill me dead.”
“They never have to know,” said Nathaniel. “I’ll come over Sunday, help you clean. Just like I was going to come over tonight and help you study.”
“Let’s hope Sunday goes better.”
Will started down the street again, then stopped, and turned around. “Thanks,” he said. “For coming over. Sorry things got so out of hand. Tonight, but also in life, too.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Nathaniel. “We just went separate ways.”
“It was my fault. I should have been there for you after . . .”
Nathaniel looked down and didn’t say anything.
“I just got so wrapped up in my own shit. I don’t know why it was so important for me to join the soccer team. I just wanted to be . . . different than I was.”
“I get it. Trust me.”
Will looked up at Nathaniel. “You know, you’re really brave.”
“I am?”
“Yeah. It’s not just tonight, Nathaniel. You’ve always been braver than I am.”
Nathaniel let that sink in. “Huh.”
“You know,” Will said, huffing as they walked quickly down Chambers Street. “You were really good at explaining that science stuff.”
Nathaniel grinned. “I was really good, wasn’t I? I’ve had a lot of time to study the last three years.”
“I bet you really could have won that same scholarship Tobias did. You deserve it. I think you do, anyway.”
“Thanks. But you know, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking. Maybe it’s a good thing I missed that deadline. Maybe it’s time to find my own path. One thing I realized tonight is I have a choice in all this. I don’t have to be the best just because my brother was. I’m going to be okay with just being myself.”
“Well, if you did apply, obviously you would win. It’d be some bullshit if you didn’t.”
“If I do, just make sure your idiot friends don’t talk too loud in assembly, okay?”
“Eh, I don’t think they’re going to be my friends after tonight. That video’s going viral.”
“I’m glad you don’t want to be someone different anymore,” Nathaniel said. “Welcome back, Will.”
Will was thinking about how Nathaniel was a good friend, and about how you don’t know what the path will look like until you walk down it—or run down it, in the middle of the night. There’s no way to know if the path you choose will be the wrong one. But sometimes you just have to choose, and trust that both paths will lead you back to where you’re supposed to be, eventually.