Nate West woke up with the disorienting feeling that his body wasn't his.
Not in the horror movie sense. Not like something foreign had taken over. But in the way your hands feel strange after falling asleep on your arm too long—numb, light, disconnected from their usual weight.
The ceiling above him was off-white, the paint cracked in the corner, with the familiar slanted line that curled like a faint lightning bolt toward the light fixture. A ceiling he hadn't seen in over a decade. A ceiling he had once spent hours staring at, daydreaming about the future—about guitars, stages, movie deals, bestsellers, love. About escape.
A familiar hum filled the room. Low, steady, mechanical.
The old radiator.
It still whined and vibrated like an asthmatic beast.
Slowly, he sat up.
The sheets tangled at his waist were patterned with old Star Wars characters—Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Vader, faded to pastel tones from years of washing. His hoodie sleeves covered hands that were thinner than they should be. His legs were spindly, his ankles narrow. His knees hadn't gone through puberty's second round yet.
No tattoos.
No writing calluses.
No muscle tone from last year's gym routine.
He stood—half-stumbled—and shuffled over to the mirror above his dresser.
There he was.
Thirteen years old.
Pale. Freckled. Still growing into his jaw. Hair a mess. Eyes too wide, too aware.
He stared at himself like he'd never seen the face before.
And then he laughed.
It escaped him—one hard breath of disbelief that broke into a sound somewhere between a gasp and a chuckle. Then he grabbed the edge of the dresser to steady himself as the memory surged forward.
The crash.
The cold.
The silence.
The end.
And then—this.
He wandered the room like a time traveler with amnesia. Everything was familiar, but not in the glossy, filtered way you remember childhood. It was vivid, textured. Lived-in. His room wasn't clean. Not obsessively messy either—just realistically cluttered. Books stacked horizontally in a shelf too small for them. A guitar case shoved under the bed. A cracked iPod dock. Three ballpoint pens tucked behind an old action figure on his desk.
He reached for the drawer beside the bed, half-expecting it to be empty.
Instead, he found:
Two candy wrappers
An old DS with a Pikachu sticker on it
A tiny notebook labeled SONG FRAGMENTS – DO NOT STEAL
A folded note that read "From Haley (don't read in class)"
He stared at the handwriting.
She was here too.
And Jade.
They were both here.
In this world—wherever or whenever he was now—they weren't actresses or fictional personalities. They were real.
And they'd grown up with him.
A voice echoed from downstairs.
"Nate! I'm leaving in five and you're walking with Haley and Jade, so get your hoodie on and your head in the game!"
He turned toward the door. His chest tightened.
That voice.
Elena West.
His mom.
She was downstairs, making breakfast and yelling about punctuality. She wasn't gone. She wasn't a folded flag and an empty house and a year of grief therapy. She was here.
He moved quickly, stepping into the hallway barefoot, heart pounding in his chest like a ticking bomb.
The hallway walls were still covered in framed pictures. Him at age six in a dinosaur hoodie. Him holding a summer reading trophy. A polaroid of Elena in her uniform, sunglasses half-off, grinning at the camera with a paper cup of gas station coffee in one hand and a traffic baton in the other.
Nate walked downstairs slowly, one hand dragging along the wooden banister as if it might dissolve if he moved too fast.
The kitchen came into view.
The same tile. The same old black coffee maker. The same stack of mail clipped to the fridge with a novelty magnet that said DO NOT ANGER THE COOK.
Elena was at the stove, flipping pancakes and scrolling through the Canvas news feed on her tablet. She looked exactly like she used to. Ponytail pulled tight. Sleeves rolled up. Badge on her belt. Tired eyes, but sharp as ever.
"You're walking to school, by the way," she said, not looking up. "And yes, I already called Claire to make sure she didn't forget. Jade's probably already waiting with that don't-talk-to-me expression, and if you make Haley stand outside in this drizzle for more than five minutes, I will personally shame you over breakfast in front of your future children."
Nate didn't answer.
She finally looked up.
Then frowned.
"...You okay?"
"Yeah," he said softly. "Just. Dreamed weird."
"Well, shake it off, poet boy. You've got twenty minutes to be ready and three pancakes to finish."
She flipped one onto his plate without missing a beat.
Nate sat at the table. He stared at the plate. At the swirled syrup. At the steam rising into the air.
He blinked twice, hard.
Then picked up his fork.
Nate stood in the doorway, watching the drizzle thicken just slightly into something between a mist and a proper rain. Not the downpour kind. The soaking kind. The kind that clung to your hoodie, darkened the cuffs of your jeans, and made sidewalks shimmer with that soft gray-blue hue.
He zipped his hoodie halfway and stepped outside.
The air hit him with a breath of wet pavement, faint eucalyptus from the neighbor's overzealous front hedge, and the metallic tang of ozone. The scent of a city suburb not yet awake. A world paused mid-thought.
His sneakers sank slightly into the soft edge of the lawn as he cut across the grass toward the Dunphy house.
It looked exactly as it always had in this timeline. Slightly too much white trim. Porch swing with a missing screw. Wind chime tangled. One rain boot abandoned near the steps like a fallen soldier of the morning rush.
And then the door opened.
"About time," came Haley's voice.
She was standing just inside the threshold, arms crossed over a bubblegum-pink hoodie that hung off one shoulder. Her hair was pulled into a side braid, just messy enough to be intentional. She had on jeans that looked too new and a look that said she had already decided she was right about something.
"You're, like, two minutes late," she said. "I timed it. Jade's on edge. She threatened to draw an angry portrait of you."
"That would be a flattering improvement," Jade said, stepping out from behind her. "With fangs."
She had her hood up, black eyeliner sharp enough to be weaponized, and a black-and-gray backpack slung over one shoulder. Her sketchbook was tucked under her arm like always.
Nate stopped a few feet away and just stared for a moment.
They were so real.
So... themselves.
Haley, practically vibrating with unearned confidence and caffeinated charm. Jade, quietly acidic but watchful, her wit always loaded before she even spoke.
In his old world, they had been characters on screens. Personas crafted for laughs and romantic subplots. Here, they were just... people. Messy, stubborn, funny, alive.
"Are you okay?" Haley asked, noticing the look on his face.
"You look like someone handed you a puppy and then took it away again," Jade said.
Nate blinked, then smiled. "I'm good. Just... deja vu."
"Get used to it," Haley said, stepping down from the porch and nudging him in the shoulder. "Middle school is the land of eternal repetition."
"I don't even remember what I wore yesterday," Jade muttered, falling in beside them.
"You wore that exact hoodie," Haley said without looking.
"Stalker."
"Icon."
They walked in comfortable silence for a while. The sound of their footsteps on wet pavement mixed with the faint swish of passing cars and the soft squeak of a distant school bus.
Nate kept glancing sideways at them. Listening. Letting their voices wrap around him again.
Haley was telling a story about someone in her homeroom who claimed she was allergic to the smell of pencils. Jade countered with a sarcastic theory about students who faked entire conditions just to get out of writing.
"You're just jealous of her creative strategy," Haley said.
"I'm just jealous of her capacity for shamelessness."
"Same thing."
Nate laughed quietly.
Haley turned her head toward him. "You've been weird all morning. Like, more than usual."
"I'm just thinking."
"That's not allowed. Not until math class."
"What are you thinking about?" Jade asked, genuine curiosity flickering under her sarcasm.
He hesitated.
How do you tell someone, I think I died and came back in a world that used to be fiction and now you're real and we're friends and I might love you both but don't know how to say that yet because we're thirteen and the world doesn't make sense?
Instead, he said, "Just... appreciating stuff."
Haley snorted. "That's such a vague boy thing to say."
"I like vague," he replied.
"Careful," Jade muttered. "She'll demand a five-point essay next."
Haley elbowed her. "Don't act like you wouldn't read it and correct his grammar."
"Only if he paid me in gummy worms."
Nate just smiled.
They passed the corner lot where an old swing set stood in a yard gone wild with clover. A single red tricycle sat in the rain, abandoned.
For a moment, everything felt slow, suspended.
Like a scene he had watched once in a dream, and now had the chance to walk through frame by frame.
The school came into view.
Same cracked blacktop basketball court. Same faded hopscotch outlines on the cement. The gates were propped open with a milk crate full of wet copies of the student newspaper.
They walked through like they always had—shoulder to shoulder, unspoken center of gravity intact.
As they entered the building, Nate turned back once and looked out at the world behind them. Just rain and trees and a sky the color of steel wool.
But it felt different.
Because he had them.
And he wasn't going to waste it.
The halls of Franklin Middle School smelled like wet denim and floor wax.
Lockers slammed rhythmically, creating an accidental percussion line. Someone was already yelling about forgetting their gym shorts. A group of eighth-grade boys clustered near the vending machines, laughing too loudly, all of them trying to impress the same disinterested girl with a retainer and a binder full of frog stickers.
Nate stepped into the stream of noise and movement like someone stepping into cold water—hesitantly, body first, then head. But as the flood of sensory memory washed over him, it settled into familiarity.
This was his school. This had been his orbit.
The weird thing was, he remembered it all—and didn't.
The squeak of sneakers on the linoleum. The damp squeal of a locker door with a bent hinge. The way the third tile in front of the science lab was always loose, like it held a secret code. All of it was right.
But now it felt like reading your own journal in someone else's handwriting.
He spotted familiar faces: kids he remembered vaguely, their names hovering just out of reach like half-remembered dreams.
Benny with the backpack covered in duct tape. Kayla with her twin French braids and dragon earrings. Mr. Valencia, the guidance counselor who always wore mismatched socks and asked every student "What's your story?" like he was auditioning for a Disney musical.
Only now, Nate wasn't answering the question the same way he used to.
Second period was homeroom, which meant free reading or pretending to read until someone got sent to the principal's office.
Nate grabbed a book from the class shelf automatically, without thinking, and sat down at the desk closest to the window.
The book was titled The Crown of Pebbleborn.
He flipped through it idly—dense paragraphs, too many ellipses, characters named things like Sirnix and Bellantha and Krumbor. It read like someone had stolen Tolkien's groceries and tried to recreate Lord of the Rings from the labels on the cans.
He glanced at the shelves.
Dozens of books, all colorful, all vaguely familiar in structure. None of them familiar in essence.
No Percy Jackson.
No Hogwarts.
No Camp Half-Blood.
No Middle-earth—not really.
No Nemo, no Wall-E, no Elsa or Woody or Lightning McQueen.
Nothing.
He ran a hand through his hair slowly.
He was sitting in the middle of a timeline that never received the stories that raised him.
And suddenly, the ache in his chest wasn't fear or confusion.
It was grief.
Grief for stories that hadn't happened.
Yet.
At lunch, he sat at the usual table with Jade and Haley.
Jade was chewing on a pencil and drawing something half-formed in the margins of a worksheet. Haley was watching a group of older boys like she was auditioning for a role only she could see.
"Today's meat is not meat," Jade announced flatly. "It's regret shaped into a patty."
"Don't be dramatic," Haley said, poking her own tray. "It's not that bad."
"You're only saying that because you didn't eat it."
Haley grinned. "Correct."
Nate pushed his tray aside and leaned on his elbows.
"Question," he said.
"Uh-oh," Jade murmured.
"If you could make up a movie—any movie—what would it be about?"
Haley narrowed her eyes. "Are you trying to steal my ideas for your book thing?"
"Maybe."
She considered. "Okay. A girl who gets lost in a department store overnight. But the mannequins come to life. And there's a mystery. And maybe a romance. But mostly shoes."
Jade raised an eyebrow. "That's weirdly specific."
"I had a dream about it once."
"Yours?"
Jade looked at Nate. "A toy that thinks he's more than a toy. And the kid who loves him doesn't know how to let go."
Haley blinked.
"Okay... dark."
"Not dark. Just... honest."
Nate stared at her.
She hadn't meant to echo Toy Story. She couldn't have. And yet—she had touched something in him. Something that felt like confirmation. Or fate. Or something quieter than both.
He smiled. "That's good."
Jade gave him a look. "You're being weird again."
"I'm thinking."
"Stop it."
After school, Nate ducked into the library before walking home.
It was quiet. A little dusty. It smelled like old carpet and printer ink.
He wandered the shelves for almost fifteen minutes.
Nothing.
Not a single title from his world.
Not one of the books that had raised him, saved him, made him believe that magic could hide in closets and toy boxes and subway tunnels.
He sat down at the back table and pulled out his notebook.
On the top page, he wrote:
"They don't have the stories."
And then underneath that:
"But maybe... I could give them back."
He got home just after four, shoes soaked through and hoodie clinging to the back of his neck. Elena wasn't back from her shift yet, but her patrol schedule had changed the week before. He remembered that now—odd, scattered memories dripping back in like thawed ice.
The living room was dim. The light outside had turned a colder gray. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked once, then went quiet.
He stood in the middle of the hallway and exhaled slowly.
Then climbed the stairs two at a time.
He didn't flick the light on in his room. He didn't need to.
The layout was etched into his memory like a song played too often to forget. Desk on the left. Bookcase to the right. CanvasLink charging on the windowsill. Two notebooks—one new, one worn—resting beside it like a pair of loyal animals.
He sat down.
Pulled the notebook closer.
Flipped past the list of missing stories. Past the story seeds. Past the line Jade had inspired—"A toy that thinks he's more than a toy"—until he hit a clean page.
He wrote a title in bold, messy print:
TOY STORY – DRAFT 1
Then a subtitle:
What if toys came alive when we left the room?
He paused.
Felt his heartbeat thrum in his ears.
Then he began.
The first line came easily. Not word for word, not stolen. Just right. A cowboy doll. A kid named Andy. A room full of imagination. Nate wrote in long, lean loops, a rhythm forming at his wrist as he leaned forward into the page.
He didn't write dialogue yet. Just the scene. Just the opening image. The emotional tone.
The boy loved the cowboy because the cowboy had always been there.
But the cowboy didn't love being left behind.
He stopped there.
The page felt heavier than it had a minute ago.
He flipped open his CanvasLink, heart ticking up.
CanvasStudio loaded fast. The interface was exactly as he remembered—white background, clean toolbar, the "Your Creations" tab glowing gently at the top of the screen.
He tapped New Project.
It asked him to select a title. A thumbnail. Tags.
He hesitated.
Then typed a different title:
THE COWBOY AND THE BEDROOM LIGHT
Under author, he typed:
NorthWinds
He didn't use his name. Not yet.
He didn't add a thumbnail. He didn't tag it as Pixar, or Fanfic, or Literary Reconstruction, or Multiverse Manifesto. He didn't even write a synopsis.
Just pasted the paragraph from his notebook.
It looked too small on the screen.
Too quiet.
Too vulnerable.
But he read it again.
And it felt like something.
Not flashy. Not trendy.
Just... true.
He hovered over the "Publish" button.
Then, cautiously, tapped the arrow and selected:
Private Listing – Invite Only (3 Random Users Max)
He clicked publish.
The page reloaded.
And there it was.
No fanfare.
No alert.
Just his words, sitting quietly on a digital page.
He closed the tab and slumped back in his chair.
The sun was already dipping below the rooftops, staining the sky with a murky orange bruise. Downstairs, the fridge hummed. Somewhere outside, a sprinkler sputtered to life despite the damp ground.
He didn't feel like a hero. Or a genius. Or a savior of lost worlds.
He just felt... calm.
A little scared.
But calm.
At dinner, his mom asked how school went.
"Quiet," he said. "Good."
She didn't press.
She never did when he said it like that.
Later, in bed, the CanvasLink buzzed once.
He rolled over and checked the screen.
New comment: sketchmutt13 — "This feels real. Like I know this cowboy."
Just one line.
But it hit him like a bell through fog.
He read it twice.
Then turned the screen off.
And let the dark return.
Saturday morning started with bacon, Phil Dunphy, and chaos.
Nate had barely finished brushing his teeth when the doorbell rang once, then again in rapid succession like someone was trying to send a Morse code distress signal.
He opened the door to find Haley standing there with a paper bag, one earbud dangling, and no preamble.
"Claire made too much breakfast again and I got bored," she said. "Let's go."
"Is that an invitation or a command?"
"Yes," she said, and turned around.
He grabbed his hoodie and followed.
The Dunphy household was loud in the way only large, over-caffeinated suburban homes could be.
Claire was reorganizing the pantry for the third time that week. "If I find one more open cereal box stuffed behind the quinoa," she muttered, "I swear someone's grounded and it might be me."
Phil, meanwhile, was trying to set up what he called a "personal temperature oasis" in the living room using a combination of fans, humidifiers, and something he claimed was a mood diffuser.
"I call it: Climate Phil," he said proudly, adjusting a miniature weather vane taped to a table lamp.
Nate blinked. "That's... not the worst thing you've made."
Phil beamed. "See, this kid gets it."
Jade was already sprawled on the living room floor, sketchbook open, headphones in. She didn't look up when Nate dropped beside her on the carpet. Just offered him a half-empty bag of cheese crackers.
"You smell like Phil's invention," she said without emotion.
"I feel like I've inhaled citrus and bad decisions."
Haley flopped onto the couch dramatically. "We're watching whatever today. No voting. I'm the benevolent dictator of Movie Morning."
"What genre?" Jade asked.
"Hopeful dysfunction," Haley replied.
"...You mean family?"
"Exactly."
They ended up watching some mid-90s comedy about divorced parents pretending to be a happy couple for the sake of their daughter's school project.
Nate didn't watch much of it.
He watched them.
Jade curled up with her sketchbook and stopped drawing halfway through to rest her head on Nate's knee. Haley slipped off her shoes and half-sat, half-lay across both of them like a cat claiming furniture.
Alex passed through once, glanced at them, then said dryly, "You three are like a triangle of barely restrained chaos."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," Nate muttered.
Later, they migrated to the backyard.
The grass was a little wet from last night's rain, but Haley insisted it was "spongy, not soggy," and Jade didn't argue, which meant it was a victory.
Phil appeared briefly to offer them lemonade, half of which was already absorbed by his novelty mustache mug.
"Remember, hydrate your minds and your bodies, kids," he said, winking like he thought that was both wise and edgy.
"Phil, no," Jade said without lifting her head from the picnic blanket.
They lay in the grass in a triangle formation, sun pressing warm into their sleeves.
Jade flipped pages in her sketchbook.
Haley tapped at her CanvasLink, scrolling, occasionally laughing.
Nate closed his eyes and listened to the soft wind moving through the trees. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked once and was answered by another. A car passed. A wind chime clinked.
He opened his notebook and began scribbling words. Not story. Not plot. Just tone.
A toy that doesn't want to be forgotten.
A fish who loses something too precious to name.
A house lifted by balloons, because it can't survive staying grounded.
A snowman who dreams of summer, even if it means melting.
A girl who runs from her magic until it becomes her prison.
He paused.
Then wrote:
"Maybe it doesn't matter if the stories were mine before. Maybe it only matters that they exist again."
Evening came slowly.
The sun folded itself into the rooftops, the sky shifting from soft blue to orange to a kind of deep charcoal wash that made every window glow just a little brighter. The scent of grilled something drifted down the block. Somewhere a neighbor was testing out their stereo speakers again—classical music this time, which Nate found oddly comforting.
He sat on the porch steps in his hoodie, sketchbook balanced on his knees, letting the soft hum of the neighborhood soak into his chest like music.
His CanvasLink sat beside him, dark screen blinking faintly.
He hadn't replied to the comment yet.
He didn't know how.
"This feels real. Like I know this cowboy."
– sketchmutt13
He'd read it at least a dozen times.
Not because it was groundbreaking. But because it was true. Someone out there—not a friend, not Jade or Haley—had read his words and felt something.
Even if just for a second.
And that meant the story mattered.
That meant he could keep going.
He heard the cruiser before he saw it.
The familiar low growl of the engine. The faint chirp of the brakes. The metallic creak as the door opened.
Elena stepped out of the car, one hand rubbing the back of her neck, her badge clipped at her waist and her hair fraying slightly at the edges. She looked tired, but steady. Grounded.
She paused when she saw him on the steps.
Then smiled.
"Didn't expect to find you outside. You're usually allergic to fresh air after five."
"Change of pace."
"Big day?"
He nodded. "Sort of."
She climbed the steps and sat beside him, groaning a little as she lowered herself down.
They didn't speak for a while.
The night settled in around them. Porch light buzzing. A cricket starting somewhere near the bushes.
"You've always been quiet," she said at last. "Even when you were little. Like your head was its own city."
He smiled. "Still is."
"You writing something?"
He hesitated.
Then nodded. "Yeah. Something small. I posted the start of it today."
"That's new."
"Not really," he said softly. "More like... old. Remembered."
She turned to look at him. "That's the good kind."
Nate didn't answer.
But the silence between them said enough.
That night, he sat at his desk again. His lamp cast a gentle golden circle on the wood. The rest of the room was in shadow, quiet and waiting.
He didn't open the Toy Story draft.
Instead, he flipped to a new page in his notebook.
And wrote one word at the top:
Frozen
Then below that:
A girl afraid of herself.
A sister who won't let her disappear.
A storm made of memory.
He stared at the words for a long time.
Then added:
"Some stories are born again, not because the world asks for them—
but because someone still needs them."
He climbed into bed, the window cracked open just enough to let the chill in.
Rain tapped faintly against the glass.
The Dunphys' lights flickered out across the street, one room at a time.
Nate pulled the blanket over his chest.
Closed his eyes.
And whispered into the quiet:
"Let's begin again."