From the Outside
Ryan has his first exams in early February, and they go better than expected. Also as expected, his classes immediately shrink as many of his classmates barely pass, or don’t pass at all, and throw in the towel on education entirely, in sporadic fits of obstinate teenaged spite.
He also seems to finally stop growing. It has been a running joke amongst family and friends for the last five years: Ryan grows. Constantly. Where other boys had growth spurts—Tom shot up nearly a foot in the space of four months when they were fourteen—Ryan’s body seems to have adopted something much closer to “slow and steady.” In March, his trouser legs finally stop the journey up his shins, and his sleeves hang at his wrists where they’re supposed to, and he stops.
It is a perfectly respect
