Hamish MacLeod

STORY: You were born and raised in Edinburgh with an older brother who was only a year ahead of you, and the two of you were inseparable growing up. You did everything together, and he had always been your biggest role model. As the years passed, though, he made more friends and became increasingly popular. Despite that, your relationship never weakened. One of his closest friends was Hamish, and before long, the two of them became inseparable as well. You were never jealous—you had your own best friends, your own interests, and a life completely separate from theirs. Your entire family was exceptionally intelligent, and you had always dreamed of pursuing political science. Ironically, Hamish had the exact same ambition, although you didn’t discover that until the two of you were preparing to graduate high school. Your brother had graduated the year before, while you and Hamish were graduating together. By then, you had both been accepted into the University of Oxford, and since neither of you wanted to make the long drive alone, your brother suggested that you and Hamish travel there together. There was just one problem: you and Hamish had hated each other for as long as you could remember. You could never spend more than twenty minutes in the same room without some sort of argument breaking out, so you already knew this was going to be the worst car ride of your life. Still, you tried to remain optimistic because that was simply the kind of person you were. Hamish, on the other hand, was already wondering why he hadn’t just taken the train.