With each foot they moved, Thomas felt relieved. They moved the car to an empty parking spot away from the drop-off portion of the lot.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure,” the stranger said. “I can get my truck to try and jump it.”

“Are you sure? Will you be late for class?”

“Aw, it’s fine. Just stay here. Teacher won’t mind me helpin’ someone out.”

“Okay.”

As the big guy moved slowly to go back to the parking lot, someone called out his name.

“Carlos, where’re you going?”

Thomas thought for a moment.

Carlos.

Carlos was surely not a Vic.

It was nice to know that not everybody at the school made outsiders feel like outsiders.

Bah Humbug

As he climbed out of his car, the early morning cold woke Kevin up to the chilling reality he faced.

For a moment he wanted a big snow. A major kind that would shut down the city for a week. Then maybe he could think. Then maybe he could make sense of everything.

He thought of something his father once told him. “There’s a fine line between getting ahead and getting ahead of ourselves.”

Kevin wasn’t sure exactly where that fine line was, but as he stood by his car staring at the building in front of him, he worried that he had passed over the line some time ago.

The handsome brick building was only a few years old. The loft on the third floor belonged to him, to Precision Design. All 1,500 square feet. So did the lease that he had just renewed.

Up in smoke. Poof. Just like that.

He could remember wanting to create ever since he began to store memories in his life’s well. His parents had encouraged him in his drawing, though he learned early on that he wasn’t excited about art itself. Painting for the sake of painting didn’t inspire him. Photography intrigued him more, and for a long time he had aspirations of being some kind of famous photographer. Maybe someone like Annie Leibovitz, who took shots of famous people for magazines like Vanity Fair. Or maybe someone like Anton Corbijn, who was famous for his photos of bands like U2. But through college, Kevin learned that the direction he wanted to go—the direction that actually could earn him a living—would be in marketing and advertising.

Early in his career at a publishing house, he learned that it was one thing to get a paycheck and benefits and climb the corporate ladder. But that drained him. Nothing about it inspired him. He wanted the freedom to do what he loved and he knew that he had the ability to do it like some of the other big players. Kevin just needed a big break.

That big break came in the form of a friendship.

It’s not what you know but who you know. So they say.

Though Kevin didn’t necessarily believe that, he did agree that in this case, it was exactly who he knew.