It started with two...

As with all good friend groups, it started when Hanlan befriended Peter back in 6th grade.

Hanlan was originally from some small town in southern Illinois, and was raised with what the Saito family cherished as "traditional American values". He was soft spoken, which only made his early growth spurt worse for him. Though he was never particularly popular, Hanlan developed a skill for baseball way before the other kids in his class, something Peter always had admired. To this day, Hanlan swears that Peter was the only kid he ever met who always knew exactly how to make him laugh. He couldn't begin to understand what that meant to Peter.

Though he eventually outgrew his awkward phase, Hanlan is still the tallest guy in their grade. With brown eyes and sandy blond hair, he carries himself as a charming, polite midwestern guy, and it has made him particularly loveable to school staff and parents alike. He was like a Christian girls wet dream-big puppy dog eyes, broad shoulders, says things like "yes, ma'am" and "howdy". It was sweet enough to make you sick.

The group chat buzzed again.

Brody: my place after right?

Connor: yeah ive got dads grand cherokee this week so i can drive

Brody and Connor came onto the scene in 7th grade, permanently altering the trajectory of their collective status at school. The one most responsible for that would be Connor.

The son of a well-known, though controversial Chicago judge, Connor learned quickly how to walk through life with a sense of authority and pride. He'd learned it from the best after all. The guy knew how to get what he wanted out of people, and Peter pitied those who chose to not give him what he wanted. But while most knew him as the the buff football captain with blue eyes and a bad attitude, Peter and their group knew him as the kid born into an unbearable amount of expectation who channeled his anxiety into anger. And they were all grateful to be a part of the one group that usually avoided Connor's wrath.

To this day, there is only one guaranteed cure for Connor's rage, and that is his best friend Brody. While Connor was the kid who was given everything, Brody was the scholarship kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and Connor loved that his parents hated how much him and Brody got along. Brody lived out in Portage Park with his dad, a washed up single father who was nice enough but never actually learned how to be a father. It was hard enough for Brody being one of the few kids there on scholarship, but he couldn't complain with a defender like Connor.

These days, Brody has some of the biggest muscles in school. His devil-may-care attitude was enough to drive girls looking for a bad boy crazy, but when he came out flexing his hair covered chest and arms in that wrestling singlet, he might as well have been a Greek god. They were a perfect pair - Connor the strawberry blond jock who ran the school, and Brody the brown-haired poor kid who kept the school wrestling team on the map. The two were kings.