By the time the kid with the worn-out sneakers reached for the Lamborghini, the California sun had already turned the hood into a mirror.

His reflection—twenty-one now, hoodie over a designer T-shirt, chain barely visible—hovered over the razor-sharp lines of the car. The Lambo sat in front of the Beverly Hills dealership like a shark in a glass tank, glowing under that perfect Los Angeles sky. Phones were out. Salesmen were watching. Somewhere behind him, a customer’s kid had both hands pressed to the door with the reverence of a museum exhibit.

“Hey!” a sharp voice snapped. “Get your hands off the car. You can’t touch that. Were you raised in a barn or something?”

The boy flinched like he’d been slapped.

He had that look Garrett knew too well: too-thin T-shirt, off-brand shorts, shoes whose soles had seen more miles than they deserved. The same look he used to see whenever he glanced down at his own feet in high school.

“Mom, look,” the kid whispered. “It’s green. Like in that racing game.”

His mother looked exhausted, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, eyes shadowed, but she still managed a soft smile. “I see it, baby. Just don’t lean too hard, okay?”

The salesman in the navy suit—name tag: LOUIS—rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. “I said off,” he repeated, stepping closer. “This is a business, not a playground.”

The kid’s shoulders hunched. His hands curled into tight little fists by his thighs. His eyes darted from the car to the salesman to his mom, panic rising like a wave.

“Hey,” Garrett said. His voice came out steadier than he felt. “Take it easy. He’s just excited.”

Louis turned, irritation ready. The moment he saw Garrett’s face, it changed to something else: calculation. Recognition.

“Oh,” Louis said. “Mr. Fton. My apologies, of course. Didn’t see you there.”

That was the thing about America, Garrett thought. In the right zip code, in the right shoes, people apologized to you for rude behavior instead of the other way around.

A few years ago, before the channel, before the subscribers and brand deals and this ridiculous car, nobody would’ve noticed him at all.

Back then, they mostly noticed his shoes.

The first time someone shamed him for them, they were standing in the dust behind a Texas middle school.

“Watch this,” Landon said, already grinning as his friend pulled out his phone. The field stretched beyond them in scrubby, uneven green, the metal bleachers glowing dull silver under the Houston sun.

Garrett had just picked up the football when the shove came between his shoulder blades. Not hard, but enough to knock him off balance.

He stumbled forward, his toe catching on a divot in the dirt. His shoes—faded, generic sneakers with the canvas peeling away from the sole and a dark crescent-shaped hole near the right big toe—folded under him. The ball popped out of his hands.

“Yo!” Landon cackled. “Did you see that?”

His friend’s phone was already up, recording.

Garrett pushed himself up on his palms, cheeks burning. Dirt clung to his skin. He lunged for the ball.

A white and red cleat slammed down on it first.

“Dude, look at his shoes,” someone said. “There’s actual daylight through those things.”

Landon bent, pinching the frayed hole in Garrett’s right sneaker between thumb and forefinger. He tugged it up and down like a puppet mouth.

“Hello,” he chirped in a high-pitched voice. “I’m Broke-boy Shoe. I like trash cans and sadness.”

Laughter exploded around them.

Garrett yanked his foot back. “Cut it out,” he snapped, reaching for the football again. He knew it was stupid to keep playing with these guys, knew they were only nice when they wanted an extra target, but football was the only thing that made Texas afternoons feel less heavy.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he demanded.

Landon held the ball just out of reach. “You want this back?” he said. “Go fetch.”

He hurled it across the field. It soared, gleaming in the sun.

“Landon James is in the pocket!” he shouted, already jogging after it. “He’s at the thirty, he’s at the twenty, he’s at the ten—and touchdown, baby!”

He caught his own throw, spiked it, then tugged his jersey like he was on ESPN.

The phone caught every second.

Later that night, Garrett would lie on the sagging living room couch in their tiny apartment just north of I-10, watching that clip loop on a cracked iPhone screen. The caption would say something like “When the tackling dummy thinks he’s a wide receiver.” The comment section would have more laughing emojis than words.

If you turned the volume down, you could almost pretend Landon was laughing with him, not at him.

Almost.

His dad told him the truth three weeks after that video went up.

“Garrett,” he said, hands braced on his knees, eyes not quite meeting his son’s. “Your mom and I… we’re splitting up.”

They were in the kitchen of their starter home in Spring, Texas. The cabinet door under the sink didn’t close right anymore. The fridge hummed like it was angry.

“What does that mean for us?” Garrett asked.

What it meant, in practice, was this: boxes. So many cardboard boxes he saw them in his sleep. Moving trucks. New schools every year. Apartments that always seemed to be “temp” and then lasted just long enough for friendships to almost stick.

“Hey, are you kids ready?” his mom would call from the car, ponytail hanging limp from another double shift.

“Do we have to move?” his little brother, Case, would ask, clutching a stuffed bear that had only ever known the inside of rentals.

“Yeah, buddy,” Garrett would answer, resting a hand on his shoulder. “But I’ll be there. Okay? Wherever we go.”

Mostly, he was telling himself.

They traded their creaky starter home for smaller and smaller places as gas prices went up and hours got cut. Houston suburbs blurred into each other—Pasadena, Katy, Richmond—until even Garrett’s teachers stopped trying to remember which school he’d transferred from.

It wasn’t all bad.

They had video games. Friday nights meant frozen pizza, YouTube videos playing on the hand-me-down TV, laughter drowning out the sound of their mom’s weary footsteps.

“Okay, guys,” Case said once, half his face lit by the blue glow of the screen. “How many likes do you think this video’s gonna get?”

Garrett, who had just uploaded a shaky clip of them doing a Roblox death run with zero editing and way too many “um”s, shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe seven billion.”

“That’s good enough,” Case replied solemnly.

They howled.

On nights when the air conditioning sputtered and died, they lay on the living room floor with wet washcloths on their foreheads, watching other YouTubers living lives that seemed like different universes.

“Dude,” Garrett said once, nudging Case. A white Lamborghini slid through a Hollywood street on screen, engine purring. “Imagine driving that in real life.”

“Maybe one day,” Case answered.

“Hey, Titi,” their oldest brother, Nathan, called from the kitchen, using the nickname he’d given Garrett when he couldn’t say “Garry” as a toddler. “You think life’s always gonna be like this?”

“Nah,” Garrett said, rolling onto his back, staring at the water stain on the ceiling. “We’re gonna have a big house. Our own rooms. Mom’s gonna have a new car. You’ll see.”

He wasn’t sure he believed it. But saying it out loud made it feel a tiny bit less impossible.

By freshman year of high school, Houston had morphed into a small college town in North Dakota. His mom had followed a job, packing everything into a rusting sedan with a taped-on bumper and a prayer.

The town looked like it had been built around the football stadium. The bleachers rose over the flat land like silver teeth. Friday nights, the whole place shut down except for the field and the Dairy Queen.

“Every year I just move,” Garrett muttered his first day at Northfield High, backpack slung over one shoulder. “I’m like a glitching NPC.”

“Hey, I saved you a seat,” a kid named Nico called in the cafeteria, gesturing to a spot at the end of a long table. It felt weird, having someone call him over. It felt… good.

It lasted three weeks before Nico moved schools.

“Where you going?” Garrett asked, tray in hand.

“Dad got a new job on base,” Nico said. “We’re moving. Again.”

Garrett laughed. “Wild,” he said. “People actually stay at the same school all four years?”

Nico grinned. “Guess you’ll find out without me.”

So it went with friends. He’d start to connect and then either he or they would disappear. The only constants were Case—skinny, loud, always encouraging—and Nathan’s voice on the phone from whatever military base he’d been assigned to.

“Work hard,” Nathan would tell him. “Don’t let anyone think you’re small, G.”

Which was ironic, considering “Small” was literally his nickname now.

“What’s up, Four-for-Four?” one of the junior linebackers asked the first day of football practice sophomore year, eyeing Garrett’s small frame as he tugged on a helmet that felt two sizes too big.

“Four-for-Four?” Garrett echoed.

“That’s your height, right?” Landon—yes, that Landon, somehow also in North Dakota now—called from across the locker room. “Four-foot-four?”

The guys burst into laughter.

“Shut up,” Garrett said, but he tried to smile. If you laughed with them, half the hurt dissolved. Or so he told himself.

He stepped out onto the field, the North Dakota sky a pale endless blue. The helmets gleamed. The padding creaked. The grass smelled damp and sweet.

A whistle blew. “Bring it in!” Coach Boeger barked. He was all belly and bluster, a whistle hanging around his neck like a medal. Behind him stood his assistant: Landon’s father, sunglasses perched on his head, clipboard tucked under one arm.

“Hold up,” Coach said when he saw Garrett. “Let me make sure I heard you right. You want to start at wide receiver?”

“Yes, sir,” Garrett said. The helmet made his voice sound muffled. “I just want to know what I have to do.”

“Coach Boeger,” Assistant Coach James chimed in, smirking. “Kid’s a shrimp. Can’t even take one hit. But, hey, my boy’s never had a better tackling dummy.”

The team broke into chuckles.

“Look,” Coach said, patting Garrett’s helmet like he was a well-meaning puppy. “I appreciate the enthusiasm. But enthusiasm doesn’t win games. Size does. Speed does. Bloodlines do.” He clapped his own son on the back. “I’m grateful you’re on our team, kid. Our QB needs someone to fall on when he’s practicing his footwork.”

Landon swaggered up, already in full gear. “Oh, there’s the other half of our dynamic duo,” he said. “Skin and Bones and Short Stack. You find the nurse’s office yet?”

“What?”

“It’s down the hall, left then right,” Landon said. “So when you get flattened, you know where to crawl.”

Case watched from the fence, fingers curled in the chain links. “Ignore him,” he called. “He just thinks he’s better because his dad’s the assistant coach.”

Which, annoyingly, was true.

That night, Garrett dropped his pads in the hallway and collapsed onto the peeling couch. His mom looked up from her second-hand laptop.

“How was practice?” she asked.

He stared at the muted game on the tiny TV—an NFL wide receiver half his height catching a ridiculous sideline pass.

“I’m thinking of throwing in the towel,” he said.

His mom turned fully toward him. “Is that so?”

“Coach says I’m too small, that this is the end of the road. That I should be grateful to be the tackling dummy.”

She got quiet for a second. The only sound was the hum of the old fridge and the distant rush of traffic from the highway.

“I don’t care what Coach says,” she said finally. “What do you want?”

He swallowed hard.

“I want to go pro,” he said. “Like Steve Smith. Undersized, but quick. Smart.”

“Then work at it,” she said simply. “Don’t let anybody make you feel small. One day, you can make it big.”

Something in him clicked.

He made everything in his life revolve around football.

Alarm at five. Run until the sky shifted from black to gray. School, then practice, then solo drills when everyone else went home. Ladder work in the hallway. Push-ups during commercial breaks. Sleep. Repeat.

“Come on!” he yelled to himself in the empty yard behind their apartment building, sprinting between cones made out of empty milk jugs. “Try harder. Hit the line. Again.”

“Looking good, kid,” the janitor said once, pausing with a bag of trash in his hands.

“Trying to be ready,” Garrett panted.

Game nights came and went. Mostly, he saw them from the bench, helmet on, heart pounding. Landon ran crisp routes, dropped just enough balls to keep things interesting, milked every touchdown for all it was worth.

Everything changed one chilly October evening.

Northfield was tied with their cross-town rival. Fourth quarter. Four seconds left. The scoreboard glowed against the darkening sky like something out of a Texas stadium, only smaller, colder.

Landon went for a slant and took a hit that jolted the ball loose. The crowd groaned as he scrambled to recover, clutching his shoulder.

“Timeout!” Coach Boeger yelled, yanking his headset off. He scanned the bench, eyes wild.

They landed on Garrett.

“Fine,” he muttered, like the word hurt. “Fton! Get in there.”

Garrett’s legs shook as he jogged onto the field. His breath puffed white in the air. The defender across from him looked like he spent his off days lifting tractors.

The ball snapped.

For one second, everything went quiet.

Then his body moved the way it had in empty fields and silent parking lots for years. He burst off the line, cut sharp, left the defender stumbling. The QB saw him, eyes widening.

The throw was high.

Greasy-paper-thin diner fries. Manners. All the things he’d sacrificed to finish one more drill flashed through his mind in a single heartbeat.

He jumped.

The ball smacked into his hands. He tucked it in, legs pumping.

Thirty. Twenty. Ten.

The roar of the crowd turned into a roar in his own ears.

End zone.

Touchdown.

He slammed the ball down and ripped off his helmet, chest heaving. For a second, he didn’t hear anything. Then the sound hit him like a wave—cheers, shouts, his name.

Case barreled down from the bleachers and tackled him in a hug. “You did it!” he yelled. “You actually did it!”

Coach clapped him so hard between the shoulders he almost went face-first into the turf. “You saved us, kid,” he shouted. “That was—uh—that was something.”

In the locker room, Landon sulked in the corner with an ice pack on his shoulder.

Outside, as the team hoisted the trophy, Landon sauntered up, forcing a grin.

“Nice catch,” he said. “Enjoy your five seconds of fame. No college program is gonna want you as a wide receiver. Maybe they’ll let you hold the Gatorade.”

He jerked his chin toward the cracked sedan where Garrett’s mom waited, engine sputtering.

“Y’all heading back to the motel?” he added. “Still living behind a dumpster?”

Garrett felt the old heat rise in his chest. “At least I’m not almost losing us the game,” he shot back. “Coach had to put me in to fix your mess.”

Landon’s smile slipped. “We’ll see who’s laughing when I’m at Florida State,” he said. “Enjoy North Dakota State. Or whatever tiny school you end up at. That’s as far as you’re going.”

He was half right.

Garrett did end up at North Dakota State.

He played a little. Caught a few passes. Sat a lot. The coaches liked his work ethic, his attitude, his willingness to get hammered over the middle without complaining. But when it came time to talk about the future, they all had polite versions of the same line:

“This is probably the end of the road, son.”

His last real conversation with his college coach happened in an empty field house that still smelled like disinfectant and rubber turf.

“I was hoping to get some more tape for a highlight reel,” Garrett said, twisting his hands together. “Maybe I could transfer. D1. If I could just get some snaps—”

“Your highlight reel,” Coach repeated, leaning back. “Kid, if you wanted the NFL, you should’ve started at a big school. You’re scrappy. You got heart. But this is probably it.”

He said it kindly, like he was ripping off a Band-Aid.

Garrett went back to his dorm, stared at the four walls, and tried to imagine his life without football.

Two weeks later, the world shut down.

“Man,” Case groaned, flopping onto the couch, quarantine hair sticking up in seven directions. They were back in Texas now, their mom having returned to Houston to be closer to family just in time to be stuck inside with the rest of America. “It stinks being locked in with you two.”

“Love you too,” Garrett muttered.

“How am I supposed to make it to the NFL if I can’t even get on a field?” he asked, mostly to himself.

“You could do something else,” Case said. “In the meantime.”

“Like what? Knit? Start a sourdough?”

“I don’t know.” Case shrugged. “Give YouTube a real shot. We’ve got nothing better to do.”

That night, Garrett dug his old laptop out from under a pile of notebooks. The “N” key was missing, but it still booted. They rearranged the living room so the least-peeling part of the wall was behind him. He balanced his phone on a stack of books and hit “Go Live” for the first time.

“What’s up, chat?” he said to exactly zero people. “It’s your boy, Garrett… but you can call me Foltyn.”

The name had started as a joke—someone had mispronounced his last name as “Fton” during roll call and it stuck. He figured if he was going to reinvent himself, he might as well lean into it.

He played Roblox. He died in Roblox. A lot. He cracked jokes. He cringed at his own jokes. He ended stream and immediately rewatched the whole thing, making mental notes:

Talk less.
Laugh more.
Turn on an actual lamp.

Wake up. Edit. Eat. Stream. Sleep. Repeat.

“Dude, you’ve been up since five,” Case said one morning, squinting at the ring light.

“I have to get the timing right,” Garrett said. “Different time zones.”

“Of what, Mars?”

Six weeks in, a video titled “POOR NOOB TO PRO IN ROBLOX” hit fifty thousand views.

“Kase,” Garrett hissed, shaking his brother awake. “Wake up. Look. Look.”

Case shoved his hair out of his eyes. “What? Did your fake Lambo show up?”

“Fifty thousand,” Garrett said, shoving the phone in his face. “Views.”

Case blinked. Then he grinned. “Good job, dude,” he said. “Keep going.”

So he did.

Months blurred. His subscriber count crept up, then leaped. Fifty thousand. One hundred thousand. Three hundred. One million. Four.

Brands emailed. Viewers donated. His mother cried when he paid her rent himself for the first time.

“I told you,” she whispered, hugging him. “One day, you’d make it big.”

The first big purchase on his bucket list wasn’t for him. It was for her: a sensible, shiny SUV from a big dealership in Los Angeles, where Garrett had moved to be closer to the creator studios and other YouTubers.

“You sure?” she asked, running her hand over the leather.

“It’s already paid for,” he said. “You deserve a car that doesn’t need prayer to start.”

He could have stopped there. That would have been the smart, mature thing to do.

He also bought himself a Lamborghini.

“Chat made me do it,” he joked on stream, panning his camera across the glossy dashboard. “Texas kid to L.A. Lambo. Who would’ve thought?”

The comments flew by: FIRE EMOJI FIRE EMOJI W W W W W.

Still, when he walked into the Beverly Hills dealership to pick it up, his sneakers squeaked on the marble floor. The old reflex made him glance down.

No holes this time. Just perfectly intact soles.

Didn’t matter. Somewhere inside him, Four-for-Four still flinched.

Which was why, when the salesman snapped at the kid outside, Garrett straightened.

“Sir,” he said, the word unfamiliar in his mouth. “He wasn’t hurting anything. It’s just a car.”

Louis plastered on a tight smile. “I’m sure it’s just ‘a car’ to a wildly successful content creator,” he said. “But we have to keep the experience premium for all our clients.”

His eyes flicked to the mother, then to the scuffed sneakers again.

“Which means making sure certain… distractions… don’t linger.”

The kid rocked on his heels, hands flapping slightly at his sides. His breath came quick and shallow.

“Hey, buddy,” Garrett said, crouching down to his level. “You like puzzles?”

The boy’s eyes moved to him, then to the small metal brain teaser Garrett pulled from his pocket—a gift from a fan that he’d been fiddling with all morning to keep his nerves down.

“Think you could figure this out for me?” Garrett asked, placing it gently in his hands.

The boy’s fingers moved immediately, twisting, testing, the tension in his shoulders easing as he focused.

“Thank you,” the mother said quietly. “Most people… don’t know how to handle it when he gets overwhelmed.”

“I’ve got some experience,” Garrett said. “My little brother’s autistic too. Different triggers, same storms.”

Louis made a scoffing sound. “Oh, please,” he said. “That’s just an excuse people use so they don’t have to teach their kids manners.”

The air tightened.

“Excuse me?” the mother said. “You don’t even know us.”

“I don’t have to,” Louis said, smooth as an expensive suit. “I’ve seen enough to know when someone’s not a fit for this showroom. Now, as the acting manager today, I’m going to have to ask you both to leave.”

“Acting manager?” Garrett repeated.

“Our actual general manager, Mr. Wilson, had a dental emergency this morning,” Louis said, already weary of explaining. “He put me in charge, and I’m not about to risk a major sale because someone can’t keep their child under control.”

“Louis,” a younger woman said from behind the reception desk. Her name tag read NATALIE. “She has an appointment with Mr. Wilson. We have it on the books.”

“He had,” Louis corrected. “And I’m canceling it. She can come back another time. Without the disruptions.”

The mother’s face went pale. “I can’t come back,” she said. “I need to finalize this today. People are depending on me.”

Louis crossed his arms. “Not my problem,” he said. “You can’t afford anything here anyway. This is Beverly Hills, not a used lot off the freeway.”

Garrett heard the words like echoes of every “You can’t” anyone had thrown at him since middle school.

You can’t start at wide receiver.
You can’t move beyond community college.
You can’t make a living playing games.
You can’t.

“Actually,” Natalie said, voice trembling but steady, “our motto is ‘Luxury with heart.’ Maybe we should try living it.”

Louis rounded on her. “Do you like your job?” he asked. “Because you’re about one more comment away from not having one. I am your supervisor. You don’t tell me how to run this showroom.”

Garrett stood up.

“Call Mr. Wilson,” he said.

“I’m not bothering him at the dentist because some stranger doesn’t understand boundaries,” Louis replied. “Now, Ms.—”

“Mims,” the mother said. “Dana Mims.”

“Ms. Mims and… your son,” Louis continued, “are going to leave. Right now. Before I call security.”

“Or,” Garrett said, “we could solve this another way.”

Louis laughed. “And what way is that? You going to post a mean review? Yell at me on TikTok?”

Garrett pulled his phone out and scrolled through his contacts. “No,” he said. “I’m going to call Wilson at home like I’ve done every time I’ve bought a car from him.”

He hit dial. The line rang once.

“Garrett,” a warm voice answered. “You here? Louis said he had everything handled until I get back.”

“Yeah,” Garrett said, eyes on the salesman. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk about.”

He stepped away to explain.

Louis’s complexion shifted from confident flush to worried pale in the space of thirty seconds.

When Garrett came back, Mr. Wilson was right behind him—literally, having arrived from the back office he’d ducked into after his dental appointment, no longer at the dentist at all.

“Ms. Mims,” Wilson said, walking straight to Dana. “I am so sorry for the confusion. I stepped away for an hour and apparently all customer service training went out the window.”

Dana blinked. “It’s okay,” she said automatically. “I just… really needed to finalize a few purchases.”

“Louis,” Wilson said, turning. “My office. Now.”

“But sir, I—”

“My office,” Wilson repeated.

Louis went, shoulders stiff.

In the end, the meeting didn’t happen in an office at all. It happened right there on the showroom floor, where everyone could see.

“Dana tells me she runs a charity,” Wilson said later, clapping his hands once at the sales staff. “One that provides support—and transportation—for families raising autistic kids. She wants to donate cars at her first fundraiser. Four of them.”

Natalie’s eyes went wide. “That’s… amazing,” she said.

Garrett glanced at Dana. “That’s why you needed it done today,” he said.

She nodded. “I promised four families they’d drive home from our event in something safe, reliable, and dignified,” she said. “I couldn’t let them down.”

“You won’t,” Wilson said. “Natalie, you’re going to write up the paperwork. Full commission.”

Louis sputtered. “What? That’s my deal,” he said. “I greeted them.”

“You insulted them,” Wilson corrected. “You tried to throw them out. You misrepresented our values. And you embarrassed this dealership in front of one of our best customers.”

He nodded toward Garrett. “Your services are no longer required. Security will see you out. You can collect your things in the morning.”

“You can’t fire me over a misunderstanding,” Louis protested.

“I could fire you just for calling a child a problem,” Dana said softly. “But I’m too tired to argue. I’d rather spend my energy helping families who actually need it.”

The kid, still fiddling with the puzzle, finally solved it. The metal pieces fell apart in his hands. His face lit up.

“Look, Mom,” he whispered. “I did it.”

She smiled, eyes bright. “You did,” she said. “You really did.”

“Thank you,” Dana said to Garrett a half hour later, as Natalie printed out the last of the contracts. “For stepping in. For understanding.”

“Of course,” he said. “Doing the right thing is always worth it. Even when the cost is high.”

He thought of those mornings in North Dakota, running drills in the cold while other kids slept in. He thought of the nights his videos got ten views and two were from his mom. He thought of that first check he’d handed her, the way her hands had shaken.

He thought of the kid’s fingers moving over the puzzle with fierce concentration and how familiar the expression of delayed triumph was.

“You know,” Dana said, smiling thoughtfully, “you’re pretty popular with some of our families. A lot of these kids watch your videos. They feel like they know you.”

Garrett laughed, embarrassed. “I’m just some guy who screams at Roblox,” he said.

“You’re more than that,” she countered. “You’re proof that you don’t have to fit someone else’s mold to build a life that fits you.”

Garrett looked through the glass wall of the dealership at his Lambo parked at the curb, at the dusty sneakers of the kid pressed to the window, at his own reflection between them.

A few years ago, he’d been that kid.

A few years from now, maybe the kid would be the one signing papers, buying his mom a car she didn’t have to pray over.

A few hours from now, Garrett would drive to his mom’s house in the suburbs north of Los Angeles—the one with the tiny patch of yard that reminded him of Texas—and hand her the keys to her new SUV.

“Someday I’m going to buy you a brand-new car,” he’d told her once, after the old one refused to start in a North Dakota blizzard.

She’d laughed. “Yeah, yeah,” she’d said. “Right after you actually get some time on the field.”

He’d gotten almost none.

He’d gotten something else instead.

That night, as the sun sank low over the palm trees, he sat at his streaming setup with the camera on and the chat scrolling so fast it was a blur.

“What’s up, chat,” he said, grinning. “It’s your boy Foltyn. Before we jump into the game, I gotta tell you something. When I was your age, kids roasted me over my shoes. I got benched more than I played. A coach told me my dreams were over. Today, I bought my mom a car that starts every time. I bought myself a stupidly fast car I don’t really need. And I watched a kid who reminds me of me figure out a puzzle everyone thought he couldn’t.”

He leaned closer.

“Listen,” he said. “Don’t let anybody else tell you how big you’re allowed to dream. Don’t let their limits become yours. You’re more than your shoes, more than your size, more than whatever they decide to label you as in the hallway or on some dumb clip online.”

He thought of that first video of Landon stepping on his worn sneakers, of the way it had felt to be the punchline.

“I started as the kid people laughed at,” he said. “I’m still short. I’m still from nowhere. But look at us now. We’re nowhere near done.”

He clicked over to the game. His avatar spawned into the blocky world, surrounded by a dozen other characters spamming jump.

In some tiny living room in North Dakota, maybe a kid in worn-out shoes was watching. Maybe his mom was falling asleep to the sound of Garrett’s voice. Maybe his brother was practicing routes in the frozen yard.

In a country where people could be written off based on sneakers, or height, or a meltdown in a showroom, just existing and succeeding could feel like a quiet revolution.

“All right,” Garrett said, fingers flying over the keyboard as the first obstacle appeared. “Let’s do what we always do—wake up, play hard, fail, try again. You already know the drill.”

The chat exploded with W’s and hearts.

On another screen, a notification popped up: “New Subscriber: DanaMimsCharity.”

Garrett smiled.

“Let’s get it,” he said.