[Slow Updates] Best friends November Adams and Jessie Reynolds-Somber have always been there for each other. November's supported Jessie throughout her childhood leukaemia, and Jessie's...done the equivalent in return. When November's seventeenth birthday doesn't go as planned, she takes a bus ride in the hopes that anywhere would be better than her family's stuffy apartment. Unfortunately, it only gets worse when she gets off at the local hospital and sees Jessie's mom in the emergency room. And worse, her family's avoiding November's questions. An unsent email may have the answer. On it is a bucket list: eight items, a letter, and a promise, from Jessie, that she'll explain everything when the list is complete. But the further through the list November gets, the more she learns what's going on, and the less she wants to know the whole truth. [FORMERLY AN ENTRY FOR THE 2024 ONC]

When Darlene Hathaway is discharged from the hospital, the first thing she does is go to her dance studio. Sure, she might not be taking ballet classes anymore, but it's better than being alone. The first person she meets there is Hope McKaye, an up-and-coming comic book illustrator, the only student at her high school to graduate at sixteen...and Darlene's childhood best friend, whom she drifted away from in ninth grade. Hope's happy to see her again, and she's even willing to let her stay at her apartment for as long as she needs, despite Darlene's hesitance about letting her back into her life. But her entire life can't be made up of late night walks on the cold beach and following Hope around her various jobs. Darlene has to come to terms with why she's here--why she's freeloading off of someone who used to be so close to her instead of forging her own way in life---in order to move forward.

If you got anyone to describe Jessie Reynolds-Somber in one word, it would be 'lucky.' She survived childhood leukemia (twice), has the best friend-slash-roommate in the world, and she's studying something she loves at the university she's forever adored. But not even November can describe why she feels so incomplete, as though she's forgotten to do something she'll never get a chance to do. Why she feels like she's failed---no, worse, like she's a failure. [FORMERLY AN ENTRY FOR THE 2026 ONC]

Tris McCoy is having an uneventful summer. It's the summer before eleventh grade, and it's the last summer she has before she has to start worrying about driving, and college, and a career. With her mom being in the hospital and her dad enjoying the title of father out in Australia, she's left to spend the next six weeks alone. Until she (literally) stumbles across a stack of old letters from her pen pal, July Souders. July lives in British Columbia---four provinces away---but Tris knows of a camp she used to attend. Unwilling to spend the summer alone and desperate for any change, no matter the size, Tris sets off for summer camp. [FORMERLY AN ENTRY FOR THE 2024 ONC]