Static & Signals

In 1994, Connor Kelly is the most famous sixteen-year-old in America.

Everybody knows CK. The teen singer who came out of nowhere and is suddenly everywhere. The first album flying off the shelves, the voice on every radio in the country, the cute-boy smile MTV runs between videos so his fans can see who the real CK is.

Nobody knows Connor.

Samuel Fisher is fifteen, from small-town Indiana, and has spent his whole life trying to disappear. From a family barely there, and barely noticing him. From an uncertain life and a more uncertain future. So he hides. In oversized clothes, in oversized silence, in the background where it's safe.

His only step into the spotlight is to remind you it's Samuel. Not Sam.

Which is why a concert in Indianapolis on an October night is the last place he'd ever be, except that a youth group leader who sees something in him won't take no for an answer, and drags him along with the rest of the kids.

A CK concert.

And somewhere in the middle of it, Connor looks out and finds the one person in eighteen thousand who isn't watching CK perform.

Samuel is watching Connor. As he actually is.

Out of thousands of screaming fans, the most famous boy in America has stumbled into the life of a boy who has spent fifteen years trying not to be found. And he wants to go with him.

Connor is terrified of forgetting he was ever Connor. Samuel would give anything to forget he was ever Samuel.

But nothing in Connor Kelly's world stays private, and sooner or later the whole country is going to find out exactly who both of them really are.

It was never complicated. They were just in love.