Rose Petals

Some friendships change your life. Some teach you how to survive it.

South Georgia, 2001.

Ryan Blake Brooks is trying to understand himself in a world that already seems determined to tell him who he should be. Then he meets Anderson "Andy" Garrison.

What begins as an unexpected friendship slowly becomes something neither boy quite knows how to name. Through school hallways, handwritten pages, family expectations, first discoveries, and the complicated tenderness of growing up, Ryan begins to understand that becoming yourself sometimes means risking the version of you everyone else expects.

Told through a blend of traditional narrative and Ryan's personal journal entries, Rose Petals is a tender coming-of-age story about friendship, identity, vulnerability, and the quiet moments that shape us long before we understand what they mean.

Set against the changing world of 2001-2002, Rose Petals captures that fragile space between childhood and adolescence-when friendship can feel like everything, feelings don't always have names, and even the smallest moments can leave something behind.

For anyone who remembers what it felt like to be young, uncertain, and searching for a place to belong.