"Saturday! In the park! I think it was the Fourth of Jullllyyyy!" Hester Waldorf sang gaily at the top of his lungs as he got out of the town car.

"Brother, dear. It is neither Saturday nor July. It's a Tuesday in September," his much more rational twin, Corbin, stepped out after him.

Hester simply grinned and wrapped an arm around his brother's slim shoulders.

"You are far too literal," he said, the cultured Upper East Side nuances in his voice contrasting with the ridiculous backwards baseball cap he wore. His wavy blonde hair stuck out from there rather comically.

"You know…" Corbin looked at the school before them. "Patrick said that they used to call this place Homo High back when he went here."

"You said that last year on the first day of school. We get it. The super gayness of the school has been replaced by the shit at every other school!"

Corbin gave him a reprimanding look. "Language!"

He waved him off. "Come on, let's go visit Patrick before first bell rings. You know he'll be happy to see us."

Hester all but skipped up the staircase. As the more insane twin passed the faded graffiti on the third step, Corbin squinted at it like he did every day last year, trying to figure out what it said. So far, all he could come up with was 'Cowbwow' that simply made no sense.

He started to head up after him but the sight of two people stopped him. Well, the sight of two, the appearance of one. A random, composite jock behind him noticed the other one.

"Look, it's the flower fag!" He exclaimed, actually pointing and laughing.

Corbin tried to muster up an angry look but the jock was far bigger and—most likely—far stronger than he was. As the second set of twins neared, the jock trotted off to his Neanderthal friends. Corbin frowned. Maybe it wasn't fair to call all of the jocks Neanderthals seeing as one of his best friends was a football player but it seemed ridiculously illogical to compare Star to them. Instead he paid attention to the two coming up to him.

"Hey, Windy." His voice caught in his throat, which closed up like it always did whenever she was around.

"Wart!" she squealed excitedly and tackled him in a hug. "I haven't seen you all summer! How were the Hamptons? Did you meet anyone? Are you ditching us for a ritzy, private school?"

His skin singed from her touch but he tried to remain as nonchalant as possible.

"Fine, no and no," he said with a small smile. "How was your guys' summer?"

Windy let go of him and rolled her eyes. "Boring. We went to an art camp that smelled like cat pee and made charcoal drawings of John Lennon all summer."

Her brother nodded and handed him something flat and wrapped in recycled paper.

"Here," he said. "Expect one of these for every holiday until the end of the year. I have about twenty that I drew."

"Thanks, Pickle." He took the package and tucked it under one arm.

Pickle shrugged.

"Where's Jester?"

"Saying hi to Patrick."

Windy's gray eyes lit up. "Ooh! I want to too!"

And she was off like a shot. Wart watched her go. He turned around to see Pickle glaring at him. Pickle rarely glared. He was too centered and peaceful for that. Always smiling or singing and his strange, yellow-green eyes were always alight. So it was strange to see him glaring at him like he wanted to throw his vegetarianism out the window and bite Wart's head off. Although, for Wart, it wasn't entirely strange.

"Don't," he said in his deep rumble of a voice.

Wart gave a worried smile. "Um…wanna go say hi to Patrick with me?"

Immediately, Pickle brightened.

"Oh, sure."

Still, as they headed up the steps, Wart watched the modern day hippie out of the corner of his eye.

--

Patrick Conlon sat at his desk, sipping coffee and reading the school paper. He didn't usually read it, it was almost always poorly edited and the students on the newspaper staff did it on purpose because they hated their academic advisor. Patrick was only reading it because he was in it. Or, rather, his graduating class was. The ten year reunion of his class was to take place next week. Why it did so then rather than at the end of the year was just another puzzling predicament about Joseph Pulitzer High School that he didn't quite get after five years teaching in addition to the four years he spent actually in the school.

Part of him wanted to attend but a much larger part didn't. He hadn't kept in touch with anyone after high school. Race had all but disappeared after graduation and Jack was still traipsing about in Europe. He could go to see his temporary friend in senior year, Specs, but what if he didn't even show? Plus, who knew how the student volunteers would react to that many gay men in one room?

"Patrick! Patrick! PAAAATRICK!" The door to his classroom flew open and Hester Waldorf came bounding in, a huge grin on his face.

"Down, Cujo." Although he had allowed Corbin to be relieved of his nickname from when Patrick used to baby-sit them, Hester hadn't been so lucky. He was still ridiculously immature.

Hester quieted down but kept the grin on his face. "Guess who has you first period."

"This may be a stretch but…you?"

He nodded and settled into a desk. "Although chemistry is totally lame to learn in the morning. Star's in this class too."

"Fantastic."

He dropped his backpack into a chair and got back up.

"Hey, Patrick…you're going to your reunion, right?" he brazenly picked up the newspaper and began to read it. "Ten years, big one."

He snatched it back. "In school, it's Mr. Conlon. And I don't care."

"Well, I'll be there," he said, taking a sip from Patrick's coffee cup.

He snatched that as well. "Hester, you're fifteen. You should know to ask before you take things." He considered what he just said. "And what do you mean that you'll be there?"

Hester plopped into an empty chair by Patrick's desk and widened his chipped tooth grin.

"I mean that we're the volunteers. Even Heck's gonna do it and you know how much he hates to stand behind tables. They make him look short."

"…He's five three. Everything makes him look short," Patrick replied but he was largely relieved that students he knew were going to be the volunteers and not possible homophobes.

Before Hester could say anything more, a squeal cut through the air.

"Patrick!" Shannon came pelting in the door and threw herself over the desk to get a hug from him.

"Shannon, out. Go to your first period," he commanded. "And get off me."

She relented but stood bouncingly by. Patrick's early morning tranquility was even more shattered when the door opened again.

"Hey, Patrick," Peter said sunnily. "How was your summer?"

"Fine. Now can all of you who don't have this class kindly leave?"

Corbin left immediately with a scared expression on his face but Peter had to drag Shannon from the room by one arm as she waved exuberantly.

"We'll come back after school!" Shannon squeaked before the door closed behind her.

Patrick glared at Hester who took his seat, the soles of his Kangaroos rested on the chair behind him. He was playing with his baseball cap, which looked worn and old but Patrick knew to cost eighty dollars. And the "rough"-looking denim jacket he wore easily went for three hundred. He knew this because Hester's mother had gotten him a very similar one last Christmas. He hadn't been able to bring himself to wear something so expensive yet.

"Isn't it great that we're helping with your reunion?" he asked brightly.

"No."

--

"God, Robert, you are the last bastion of hormonal retardation!"

"And you're a frigid bitch!"

Claudia Samms glared up at her adversary and crossed her arms across her chest.

"I'm a frigid bitch? Is that footballer for 'lesbian'?" She asked venomously.

Robbie Starkey jut out his lower lip and crossed his own arms across his chest.

"School hasn't even started yet and you're already calling me a chauvinist!"

"Because you are! And you're probably a closet homophobe too!"

Robbie tossed back his head in laughter and walked past her into the school. How little she knew. He passed a couple of his teammates who gave him fist bumps and other male handshakes that put them back to the stone age as he headed to his first period.

"Yo, Star!" they called after him.

His teammates believed him to be called 'Star' because of his skills on the football field. The truth was that his actual friends had given him the nickname because of his lifelong obsession with The Beatles and, most importantly, Ringo Starr. Along the line, the other 'r' fell off and he simply became 'Star.' The rest of the team simply referred to him as 'that tanned, redhead kid' because they couldn't remember either of his names.

Star wasn't big with the football players off of the field since they were too different. He rarely went to their parties and preferred spending time with his real friends. He remembered seeing stories on cartoons he used to watch where one kid became cool and popular and ditched his friends only to come back, having learned a valuable lesson. He never saw that happening with him since he would never ditch his friends. It wasn't like popular girls hounded after him either with his curly red hair and nearly flat features.

Star glanced back at Claudia to see if she was still glaring at him. She probably was. For some reason, she really didn't like him at all. Fine by him, he wasn't fond of her either. Whistling slightly, he walked into the chemistry classroom.

"Heya, Patrick," he said with a grin.

"Mr. Conlon," Jester corrected with a snicker. "He's our teacher now."

Patrick gave Jester a dirty look. "Shut up, Cujo."

Star crossed his eyes. "Otay, Mr. Conlon."

"Sit down, Ringo, and shut up too."

Star sat next to Jester and the two boys cackled in delight. Patrick looked a bit pissed but he was sure it was just a show. He totally actually cared about them.

"So, what'd you do this summer?" Jester asked.

"Oh, the usual."

"Hobnobbing with the rich and famous in L.A. with Lion?"

"Of course. Nah, we just surfed in Zuma. Then I came back here and hung around Central Park with Izzy and Anastasia."

"Sounds more fun than helping my dad build boats in the Hamptons."

Star smirked. "It probably was. So how's your crush coming?"

"I don't have a crush on him," Jester snapped, mirth momentarily gone from his eyes. "I just can't breathe when he comes into the room."

"Right. You're in love with a midget."

At that comment, Jester jumped up and thumped him in the arm.

"He is not a midget!"

Patrick glared up at them. "Cujo, Ringo. Shut up."

"Yes, Mr. Conlon," they said together in exaggerated obedience.

They sat back down and grinned, fight over. The bell rang, signaling the beginning of first period and their sophomore year.

--

At lunch time, Patrick sat alone in his room. He had no papers to grade and was deliberately eating a chicken sandwich from the school's cafeteria in small bites. There was something almost refreshing about being back. Shannon's energetic hugs and Robbie and Hester's bickering earlier that morning. It was a sense of normalcy that had been gone from his life all summer. He actually missed those kids. It made sense seeing that he had known them for ten years now.

He took another bite of the sandwich and reached for his bottle of juice. He felt almost like a kid again, eating lunch provided by the school. But the paper next to him deemed that he wasn't. He was coming on thirty in another couple of years. It was a scary thought. Maybe he would go to his reunion. Just to see everyone. He was a teacher here so he'd probably have to.

The door to his classroom opened and Corbin tentatively stuck his head in.

"Mr. Conlon?" he queried.

"What?"

"Heck and I have a petition for the 'Change the Mascot' thing happening. Wanna sign it?"

He rolled his eyes. "Sure."

He knew what they meant from the paper. It had outlined a run for a new mascot. Apparently, a profile image of Pulitzer's head wasn't school spirit-y enough. Putting him in the school colors of yellow and green didn't seem to help at all.

Corbin came in, accompanied by Daniel. The taller boy held the clipboard while the short Brit held a stuffed skunk for some reason.

"You're changing the school to the skunks?" Patrick queried.

"Of course," Daniel said proudly. "Jester wanted the octopi but Star kept singing so we decided on skunk instead."

"Scintillating." Patrick signed the clipboard and the two boys scampered off.

He grabbed his sandwich and started to eat it when the door opened again. With a groan, he set it down. He saw a jean jacket out of the corner of his eye and groaned again. Cujo, of course.

"For the love of God, leave me alone for one minute," he snapped.

The shape didn't leave or speak until he bent down in front of Patrick's desk. He was glad he had set down his sandwich because he had a feeling he would have started choking.

"Aw, Spot. Is that anyway to greet an old friend?" Jack asked with a smirk on his face.

--

A/N: I couldn't leave DAMY done for long without this. This is my current pet and I love it so. Also, anyone who gets Star's last name gets a cookie.