Really, It Gets Better

After their family is violently torn apart, Apollo Galczynski is dropped on the front doorstep of his estranged, older brother, Jace Galczynski, and forced to start his life over an entire coast away from home.

Further complicating things is Apollo having since transitioned into a man, which requires Jace to reacquaint himself with a stranger. However, where Jace lacks understanding, Apollo makes up for it in scorn. Five years later, Apollo still resents Jace for forcing him to live with each miserable half of their family when he moved out the second he turned eighteen. Mostly because Jace promised Apollo that would come back for him, and now, their murdered mother and incarcerated father are tangible proof that he never did.

Apollo’s flight lands in New Hampshire on Christmas Day, and he and Jace immediately get into an argument. Apollo storms out of the house where, by a sheer stroke of luck, he meets a girl named Thea Simmons, who is everything Apollo is not: kind, sincere, and most strange of all, popular. After Apollo comes to Thea’s recuse in her botched attempt to buy a vape, the two strike up a friendship that eventually develops into something much more intimate when the pair usher in the the new year with a kiss.

When their allotted winter break ends, Apollo is now thrust onto the highest echelons of Crowfoot High School’s social hierarchy as Thea’s boyfriend. Now forced to navigate a world that was once entirely unknown to him, Apollo must now adjust from living a life solely to survive to living simply for the sake of living itself. 

But when Thea’s ex-boyfriend and the captain of the football team, Arthur Lang, threatens to out Apollo’s past to the entire school, Apollo must choose between staying within the comfort of his guilt, insecurity, and shame, or stepping into the promise of the future by finally forgiving himself in spite of it.

Trigger Warnings

• Past Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Abuse
• Death of Mother (Murder and Domestic Violence)
• Descriptions and Discussions of Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness
• Depression, Suicide, and Self-Harm