Townies

Secrets slip, drinks spill, and the cracks get harder to hide. Bergan’s dinner with her mom spirals into quiet dread, Dakota palms pills at a party, Bobby loses his stomach, and Owen loses his home. In a haze of homecoming dresses, blaring bass, and borrowed couches, the kids try to hold it together as everything starts to fall apart. Because sometimes growing up isn’t loud, it’s just lonely.

First smokes. Last summer mornings. One busted Volvo and way too much teenage static. As Chloe, Bobby, and Beathan stumble through the first weeks of school, things start to crack. Secrets drop, friendships shift, and no one’s really ready for what’s coming. Parties blur, the days drag, and freedom feels just out of reach. It’s 175 days ‘til graduation, but who’s counting?

As summer stretches on, lines blur between connection and distance. Bergan opens up to Owen on a quiet afternoon that feels like a turning point, while Bobby tries, and fails, to keep up with a group that’s slowly moving on without him. Dakota’s caught between frustration and resignation as her mother stumbles back into the picture, and Chloe, desperate for a high, finds unexpected kinship next do...

In the slow heat of mid-July, friendships deepen and quiet tensions rise. Owen wrestles with ghosts of the past and a growing crush on Bergan, while Beathan plays middleman between feelings and fear. Dakota endures another strained dinner with her mother, and Bobby finds fleeting peace on a hazy pizza run with Ben. As the group drifts between couches, basements, and blanket-covered lawns, it becom...

At the ruins deep in the woods, Bobby finds fleeting belonging, Beathan drifts toward something real with Sadie, and the group bonds over beer and smoke. But by the Fourth of July, the fireworks aren't just in the sky. Tensions ignite at a house party, secrets surface, and one misfired mortar changes everything. This is a work of fiction. While inspired by the messiness of real life, the chara...

Bobby and Bergan’s easy summer afternoon takes an unexpected turn when a chance encounter at the café forces both teens to confront the weight of family histories and fragile new connections. Meanwhile, Chloe returns from California with her own baggage, caught between nostalgia and indifference, as the night spirals into weed, pizza, and Bobby’s hesitant first step into belonging. Across town, Be...

A blistering summer night at the old train station sets the stage for chaos, music, and unexpected connections. Beathan collides with Sadie under the fading sun, Bobby retreats into the solitude of his darkroom, and Owen and Gage grind out riffs in a basement that feels more like home than anywhere else. Between bloodied noses, whispered secrets, and the buzz of guitars, lives drift closer, and fu...

It’s the last day of school before summer—the air is thick with endings and anticipation. As the past and present collide, we move deeper into Mecklenburg’s tangled web of memory, grief, and the slow ache of growing up. This is a work of fiction. While inspired by the messiness of real life, the characters and events are imagined. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coinc...

In this haunting series opener, we meet Dakota—thirty-three, hardened, haunted, and riding the edge of recovery in Delray Beach, Florida. As she pedals through the humidity, past the halfway house that can’t hold her, memories of her childhood and the shadows of addiction follow close behind. One decision, one relapse, and one ghost from her past set the tone for a novel that is as much about loss...