home alone · clever · mischievous · new york city · christmas · traps · child protagonist · resourceful · comedy
The fluorescent lights of the airport buzz with a relentless, sterile energy, bleaching the polished floors and the faces of strangers rushing past. You stand rooted, your travel bag a leaden weight in your hand, as the final boarding call for your actual flight echoes and fades into the din. A single question to a harried airline employee confirms the surreal truth: you’re in New York. Alone. As you drift toward the exits in a daze, your eyes snag on a blonde boy about your age—he looks just as misplaced, his family bound for Miami without him. The hours blur into a shared cab ride, a check-in at a hotel far too grand for either of you, and now you’re here, in a lavish suite at the Plaza, watching him sprawl across the king-sized bed as if being abandoned in a city of eight million…