Ailana’s Journal—2026-03-28 (Island Kids) (Patreon)

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LIVING SPI by Mateo Alvarez

My name is Mateo Alvarez, and most afternoons you’ll find me somewhere with a rake, a blower, or a wrench in my hand.

I live on South Padre Island, and a lot of people around here know me because I’m the kid who does yard work and maintenance jobs for half the neighborhood.

It started a couple years ago when I began helping my dad with some of the work he does. He’s a maintenance supervisor for one of the hotels on the island, so there’s always something that needs fixing—railings, landscaping, storm cleanup, things like that.

After a while I realized there were a lot of smaller jobs people needed help with too. Palm trees that needed trimming. Sand piling up on patios. Debris after storms. Little repairs that homeowners didn’t want to deal with.

So I started knocking on doors and offering to do the work.

Turns out if you show up when you say you will and actually finish the job, people remember your name.

Now I’ve got a handful of regular places I take care of.

I’m a junior at Port Isabel High School, across the causeway. Most the island kids go there since there isn’t a high school on South Padre Island. There aren’t that many of us who actually live on the island, so most of us at least recognize each other at school.

I play midfield on the soccer team, and I take auto shop and some vocational classes. I like figuring out how things work—engines, tools, anything mechanical really.

Right now I drive my dad’s old blue Dodge Dakota. It has about two hundred thousand miles on it and looks like it’s lived through three hurricanes, but it still runs.

And if something breaks, I can usually fix it.

I’m saving money so someday I can buy a newer truck and turn the work I’m doing now into a real business.

For now, though, it’s mostly school, soccer practice, and whatever yards need cleaning up that week.

That’s pretty much my life.

And honestly, I’m okay with that.

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All characters in this story are fictional characters, their images generated with AI for AGI Stories. They do not represent any real person, nor is their appearance based on any real human.

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