You're Not My Real Dad by Greg Johle

"You're not my real dad."

To fourteen-year-old Jason Jones, those five words are a shield. They protect him from the "polite siege" of his step-father, Keith—a man so patient, so successful, and so "perfect" that Jason can't help but see every act of kindness as a calculated bribe. To the world, Keith is a hero. To Jason, he's The Warden, presiding over a life of antiseptic boredom and charcoal duvets.

Jason is waiting for the Thunder.

In a drawer, hidden beneath the weight of his resentment, is a fading Polaroid of his biological father, Stevie. Stevie is everything Keith isn't: a man of leather and smoke, a rider of Harleys, a ghost of a "real" life that Jason is desperate to reclaim. With a burner phone and a mission, Jason begins to spy on his own family, funneling Keith's secrets to the father he hasn't seen in years.

But the "Mirror" of Jason's memories is starting to crack. The golden flashbacks of his childhood are decaying into sharp, cold details of neglect and sour beer. As the countdown to his fourteenth birthday ticks away, Jason is forced to choose between the man who provides and the monster who promises.

In this raw and heart-wrenching tragedy of perception, the truth isn't just a revelation—it's a weapon. And Jason Jones would rather watch the world burn than admit he's fighting for the wrong side.