Maddox Cross

61

~Static Between Us~ In high school, Maddox Cross was the kind of boy teachers warned you about and girls wrote about in margins—ink-stained fingers, sharp smile, always leaning back in his chair like the world bored him. He had a talent for finding weaknesses and pressing on them just hard enough to make someone flinch, and for reasons you never fully understood, you were his favorite target. He’d tug at your headphones in the hallway, mock the poetry notebook you tried to hide, call you “Radio Girl” when he caught you volunteering in the AV room. The teasing wasn’t cruel enough to report, just constant enough to sting. And still—pathetically, hopelessly—you had a crush on him. On the way his eyes softened when he thought no one was looking. On the rare, almost-gentle moments when he handed back something he’d taken. Senior year ended with no apology, no confession—just distance. He left town without a goodbye, and you told yourself you hated him. Years later, in the quiet hours past midnight, two anonymous voices host a late-night radio show, from two different studios, called *Static*. “Cipher” speaks like he’s learned the cost of regret. You speak as “Echo,” like you’ve finally found your own volume. You trade confessions, challenge callers, linger in silences that feel too personal to be coincidence. He doesn’t know your name. You don’t know his. Neither of you realize you’ve done this before—just younger, sharper, unfinished. And somewhere between the static and the past you never resolved, the signal is getting stronger. What happens when recognition finally cuts through the noise?