I met Scott in the most painfully cliché way possible. It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon, and I was stuck in a coffee shop where the Wi-Fi hated me. My deadline was closing in fast, and I was losing my mind. I sat hunched over my laptop, frustration bubbling inside me, when suddenly, a voice spoke beside me. “Need a hotspot? Mine’s pretty good,” said a man with kind eyes and a sarcastic smile that made me laugh harder than I had in months. That was Scott. We started talking

I Fought My Noisy Neighbor With Fire—And Won When my peaceful neighborhood was shaken by the loud roar of a new neighbor’s car, I knew something was about to change—and not for the better. What began as a simple fight over noise turned into a silent war filled with smoke and clever payback that no one saw coming. Just last spring, everything in our neighborhood shifted. And sadly, I was one of the people caught in the middle of it. See, I had lived next to Mrs. Bennett for fifteen

Most people didn’t even know Derek Ryder had a mom. When his classmates talked about their parents, Derek would just go silent. He never brought anyone over to his house—not for movies, not for video games, not even for birthdays. From the first day of primary school to his last day in high school, not a single person had ever stepped inside Derek’s home. When he started dating girls, he made up excuses. “Look, babe,” he’d say, “my mom’s super strict and really religious. She doesn’t let me date.”But it