📖 Chapter One: The Rooftop Pact
When Skylar moved to Halebrook High, her only goal was to blend in and avoid drama. New town. New school. Clean slate. Easy.
But that plan shattered exactly five minutes into her first day, when she collided—literally—with a boy carrying a telescope and a sketchbook.
“Whoa!” he gasped, trying to catch his balance as they both toppled over. Papers flew like leaves in the wind.
Skylar scrambled up, brushing her knees. “Sorry! Are you—”
The boy just smiled, flipping his notebook shut. “You’re not from here. I would’ve remembered.”
She blinked. “You sound so sure.”
“I remember people,” he said with a shrug. “I’m River.”
He held out a hand.
“Skylar.”
And just like that, her first friend found her instead.
That night, she found a note in her locker:
> “Rooftop. After dark. If you like stars and breaking small rules. R”
She shouldn’t have gone. But curiosity is louder than caution.
When she reached the rooftop, River was already there,telescope aimed, thermos of hot chocolate in hand, and that same knowing smile.
“What if I was someone else?” she asked.
“I knew it would be you,” he said. “You looked up at the sky in the hallway.”
She laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”
He poured her a cup. “Nope. That’s fate.”
And that was the start of everything. Of the late-night rooftop pacts. Of the stargazing. Of the secrets. Of the journal they’d pass between them, writing dreams, dares, and doodles in the margins.
And of the rule:
> “If one of us falls… we have to tell the other.”
Skylar didn’t think she’d ever fall.
But some things,like starschange position when you're not watching.
