The Boy Who Finally Smiled

Beck is the most miserable man on the internet. For three years he has marketed his own gloom while the public calls him a fraud and his agent Gideon begs him to smile. Only Beck knows the truth: his dying grandfather's prophecy of eighteen deadly trials before adulthood. Seventeen are behind him, and the eighteenth looms a week before his eighteenth birthday.

Now his agency has signed him up for a wilderness survival reality show in a tropical rainforest. When Gideon demands Beck hand his personal survival pack to Cyrus Novak, the network's golden boy, Beck refuses. Cyrus plays the forgiving martyr for the cameras, and the livestream turns on Beck as a selfish monster.

As the helicopter carries them toward the canopy, Cyrus silently mouths a threat. Beck's hand finds the micro-tracker hidden in his sleeve. Seventeen trials taught him one truth: when someone shows you who they are, you don't argue.