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As the last period ended and the bell rang through tiled hallways, a colorful flood of high schoolers came pouring out of classrooms in every direction. Excited chatter welled up with the student monsoon until Edd could barely hear himself think.

The sixteen year-old hung back in the doorway of Ms. Egbert's biology classroom waiting for the flood to abate a little bit. Though he had gained a respectable bit of height since the start of high school, Edd still had a very slim frame and experience had proved time and again that stepping into the Friday afternoon flood tended to leave him dazed, bruised, and washed up somewhere he never intended to be. Ms. Egbert sat at her desk smiling in quiet amusement at the teenager's plight.

Like most of his teachers at Peach Creek High, Linda Egbert was very fond of Eddward Vincent. He was soft-spoken, but very clear in all his class contributions, respectful to both his teachers and peers and – although Linda would never admit it – possessed of all the sweet charm of a prim baby rabbit.

Edd had very soft, approachable features. His eyes were rather large and an unusually clear shade of light aqua. His shaggy black hair hung in bangs across his forehead in spite of that floppy beanie he was always shoving his errant locks into. His nose was a cute little upturned button that almost begged to be poked above a small mouth that was usually quirked into the barest suggestion of a smile.

He bounced on the balls of his feet, anxiously watching for an ebb in the rush of students flooding past the biology door, a stack of textbooks clutched tight to his chest. He jerked back from the doorway and raised his books to cover his face like a shield as another teenager suddenly breached the mass of bodies in the hallway, leaping like a salmon to land in the classroom.

Miss Egbert pinched the bridge of her nose and stifled a groan. The fish metaphor was all too appropriate for this particular junior as he lay on his belly on the tiled floor, flopping and gasping for breath. Edd's blue eyes appeared over the edge of his academic shield.

"Oh hello, Ed," he said, sounding suspiciously relieved, Ms. Egbert thought.

"No time, Double-D!" the flopping boy wailed.

Before either Ms. Egbert or Edd could ask what he meant, Ed bounded to his feet in one smooth, athletic movement that many professional ballet dancers would envy. Edd was tall enough – about average for his age anyway – but Ed towered at just a few inches under 7 feet tall; Ms. Egbert's favorite student didn't even come up to his friend's shoulder.

His formidable height was compounded with a broad frame well-muscled by three years of all-season athletic activities. Half of the trophies in the display case outside the auditorium had Ed's name on them. If it not for his friendly, somewhat goofy demeanor, Ed

"Ed, what in heaven's name are you –?" Edd started to ask.

"KANKERS, DOUBLE-D!"

Edd yelped and frantically clutched his books even closer as his mountain of a best friend suddenly grabbed him around the waist, hoisted him like a battering ram above his head, and charged out into the hallway. Ms. Egbert's jaw dropped nearly to her chest. She scurried to the open door and scanned the crowded hallway, but there was no trace of either of them. She stared down the hallway for a moment, shrugged, and then closed the door.

Alarming as his affection was, at the very least all the staff agreed that the football player was legitimately best friends with the soft-spoken boy. No harm would come to her favorite while they were together, Ms. Egbert thought as she packed up her papers for the day. If she had any inkling of how wrong she was, she might have run after them.

"Ed, will you please calm yourself!" Edd yelled at his friend. He ducked and squealed as his friend suddenly turned left and bolted through another doorway. The door jamb missed taking Edd's head off by bare millimeters.

Edd gave up trying to calm Ed down. When he got like this it was like trying to stop a raging bull with a wet paper plate; it wasn't going to happen. He tucked his knees to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut. All he could do was ride it out, so to speak, and hope that his cranium was still firmly attached to his spine whenever Ed stopped.

They whizzed past the cafeteria in a blur. Ed rounded another corner, smoke practically belching from his heels. Edd dared to peek through slitted lids. Up ahead of them was a twin set of bright red doors. Edd's heart leaped into his throat.

"Edward Hill, absolutely not!" Edd squawked, turning stiff with indignation. "That's a fire door, Ed! The alarm will sound! Students are expressly forbidden from using that door –"

An ear-piercing wail rang down the hall as the two boys exploded through the emergency door. Bystanders could never be sure later if the siren came from the door's alarm system or from the cringing teenage boy held aloft by the star quarterback. The bright afternoon sunlight nearly blinded both of them for a moment, which had little effect on Ed's momentum.

"-except in cases of emergency." Edd finished.

"But Double-D, this IS an emergency!" Ed cried as he cut across the deserted back field of the school campus and curved his aim towards the woods bordering the property. "Kankers are coming!"

"I fail to see-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Edd's voice rose into a shriek as he happened to catch movement just to the left in his peripheral vision. "Faster, Ed! RUN!"

The back field was not nearly as empty as Edd had initially supposed. Two cackling girls were charging at them from the side, running nearly as fast as Ed himself. The smaller of the two had long blonde hair that streamed behind her as she ran – were she herself not so terrifying, the sight would have been quite pretty. She tailed closely behind her older sister, whose curly red hair obscured so much of her vision it was a mystery how she could even see where she was going at all.

Edd tried to shrink into a smaller ball. The Kanker sisters were bar-none the biggest tormenters he and his two best friends had ever had to deal with. They had pursued the boys ruthlessly all the way through middle school. High school was supposed to be a fresh start for all of them; that had lasted until the second Friday of freshman year when the girls had all of a sudden pounced on the boys as the last bell rang.

Ed let out a bone-chilling screech that made Edd release his precious books and clap his hands over his ears. Birds flying overhead checked themselves, and even the two girls behind them slowed down their approach for a moment. Ed put on an extra burst of speed, the trees drawing so close he could practically taste them.

He had been working on his Super Ultra Death Screech of Monster Killing for several weeks now in preparation of just such an emergency. His parents had hired contractors to soundproof his basement bedroom after the third day. They had had to double-layer it after the sixth day. With one last push, he leaped forward and breached the tree line.

Edd's eyes widened in fear. "Ed! Watch out for that – OOOOF!"

Too late to move out of the way or warn his friend, Edd caught a thick tree branch to the gut. Instinctively, he latched on to it as the force ripped him out of his friend's hands. Ed disappeared into the woods, speed unchecked, his hands still held high above his head. Seconds later, the Kanker sisters flew by in a mass of hair beneath the cringing boy in the tree.

Edd was not particularly religious, but he offered a small prayer of gratitude as they sped on after his friend without even glancing up at him. Quiet settled back in to the outer scrim of woods as the three teenagers delved deeper into the forest. Unfortunately, this left the slim boy in the tree in a rough predicament; he was quite afraid of heights and he was at least eight or nine feet up in the air.

He glanced at the ground and immediately wished he hadn't. Waves of dizziness washed over him and he clamped onto the branch like an opossum on steroids. He squeezed his eyes shut and mentally recited the elements on the periodic table until his heartbeat slowed to a rate that was almost reasonable.

"Calm down, Eddward," he said out loud. "Calm. Right then," he quickly calculated his own height against the height of the branch he was considering spending the rest of his life sitting on. He was a decent five and a half feet tall, so if the branch was indeed eight or nine feet, then…he gulped and slowly lowered his body down until his feet were dangling above the ground. Best case scenario, he would only fall two and a half feet, worst case scenario: three and a half.

Both completely harmless heights so long as he softened his knees. He willed himself to let go of the branch. His grip tightened instead. This was completely irrational, he argued with himself. This was hardly as scary as dealing with Kankers or poking bears or dirt. Yet he could not convince himself to let go.

There was an affectionate scoff from somewhere behind him, but Edd dared not open his eyes nor twist around to look.

"Hang on, kid, I got you."

To Edd's mortification, for the second time that day, someone put their hands around his waist. His mysterious benefactor actually lifted him up a few inches to illustrate their strength. "See? I got you. Let go of the damn branch already."

With a little whimper, Edd complied. He felt himself being lowered down as gently as a ball of cotton on the wind. When he had composed himself enough to actually talk, he turned around to thank his helper.

His words died in his throat. One amused eye glinted at him. The other was hidden behind a swoop of sapphire hair. Edd was alone in the woods with Marie Kanker and she still had her hands around his waist.