They put Zig into the Remedial Rubber Room for Deliquents, Misfits, and Assorted Assholes in Black the second week of the school year.

A janitor had found him in an empty chemistry lab when he should have been in French. Zig shoved the rubber tubes into his backpack and tried to play dumb, but it was pointless: Simpson dumped that bag out on his desk and asked him if he had anything to say for himself, anyway.

"We could call the police for this, Zig. Do you get that? You could be arrested."

"You wouldn't," Zig challenged him, evenly. "Another notch in Degrassi's belt? It'd just make you look bad."

Simpson narrowed his eyes. Sighed. "I'm worried about what happened to you over the summer, Mr. Novak."

Zig flinched at this, slightly, but recovered quickly. Gasped, a little, for effect.

"What? Does the haircut not bring out my eyes?"

Detention wasn't enough, Simpson told him. Detention wouldn't do any good for the boy who'd left grade nine with bangs in his eyes and a steady B-average, only to roll into grade ten with a leather jacket and matching attitude problem. Zig needed time, Simpson said, to rediscover who he was.

"You're lost. That's not okay."

That's what Simpson didn't get: when the darkness and the anger had finally spilled out, stained everything, it was a relief. When people looked at Zig, they finally saw the truth.

Zig wasn't lost. He was finally fucking free.

The last time he saw Tori was in The Dot, and it wasn't on purpose.

He wanted to surprise his mom with one of their overpriced, fancy lattes. She'd never waste that kind of money on herself, and would scoff when he handed it to her over the counter, but he hadn't seen her smile in months. He was getting a little desperate.

Tori was at a table by the window, alone, journal open, pink pen falling out of her hand, big eyes gazing out at the street. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to approach, but he did anyway.

"Tori…. Hey." He startled her out of something, the pen hit the floor with a clatter. She hurried to pick it up, probably grateful for the excuse not to look him in the eye. He blazed past it, forced a smile. "How are finals going?"

"Oh, um, fine! Good. I'm done, basically."

"Oh, lucky." A long pause, as he slowly realized that if this conversation was going to continue, he'd have to force it. "So are you here to just, like, watch everyone else study and rub it in their faces?"

She laughed, a little. Thank God. "Not really. I'm just…" She trailed off, looked back to the window. Dramatically, because that's how Tori did everything.

"What?"

"Saying my, um. Goodbyes. Sort of."

"Goodbye to…. The Dot? It's not going anywhere." Suddenly, fearfully, he felt very stupid. "Is it?"

"No, but. Um. I am."

"You're going to Paris, too?" he asked, barely able to mask the jealousy in his voice. That trip cost more than his family paid in rent in a year.

"No, no… I'm moving. My family, that is." Able to sense his shock, she hurriedly covered, "I should have told you, it's just that my dad just got this random promotion and it all kind of came out of nowhere..."

He didn't really know what to say, so he just went with the obvious: "Where?"

"Ottawa."

He'd never been there. He'd never left Toronto. "Oh, cool?"

"Yeah. It'll be- nice. To have a fresh start. Not that I won't miss, you know, everyone-"

"Yeah…" Zig coughed, looked to his feet. "It's been a weird semester."

"You could say that," she said, weakly.

There wasn't anything left, really. Zig nodded. Cleared this throat.

"I hope you, um, have a nice time-" he offered.

"Yeah, you too-"

"-and, uh, I guess-"

"-keep in touch?" They said, in unison, stilted and nervous. Both fully aware that it was probably a lie. But they had to say it, anyway.

It was Zig's fault, that everything was so off between them. He'd hurled a grenade into directly into the heart of whatever he and Tori had shared, he knew this. He didn't regret it, necessarily; he loved Maya. Or liked her? Or whatever. But, then, in the Dot, beads of condensation dripping down his mom's rapidly melting frappacino, looking down at Tori and her sparkly journal filled with pink cursive: he wished he had more to say. He wished it didn't have to end like this.

But: she deserved more. She deserved more than him.

Tori stood up, arms open. They hugged. It was super weird. But he appreciated that she bothered at all.

"I hope-" Tori trailed off, biting her lip. "I hope you and Maya are really happy together, okay? I really do. I mean it."

"Listen, we're not-" He paused. He certainly fucking hoped they were. "Thanks."

When Zig got back to the store, the OPEN sign in the front had been flipped to CLOSED- at 4 o'clock on a perfectly normal June afternoon. Zig was only sort of breathing as he hurled open the door and scanned the aisles for any signs of life: nothing.

Once, in the fall, one of the first times Zig had been deemed old enough to be left in charge, he'd gotten restless. Sitting at the counter for hours on end, swiping bar codes on beef jerky, fishing pennies out of the cash register. It was mindless, and it was stupid, so the answer was obvious: he flipped the sign to CLOSED, locked the doors, and retreated to the half-dead patch of grass out back with a blow-up beach ball he'd found in the toy aisle.

His parents found him there maybe an hour later- Zig had never seen them so angry, before or since. "We could fire you for this," his father spat out, "If you weren't our son, we would."

He'd stormed inside, leaving Zig and his mother and her sad, tired eyes.

"You're not like your friends, Zig," she told him, quietly. "You can't- you can't make mistakes, be selfish. There's no room."

So: a casual midday CLOSED sign was not normal, and not okay. Zig checked behind the store, the bathroom, panic rising. His mom wouldn't just leave, unless something was seriously messed up. He struggled with the complicated freezer door for a few long, terrible moments, throwing his whole weight into heaving it open.

His mom was there, thank God. But the relief lasted only a second- she was squatted in a corner by tomorrow's milk, shoulders shaking, head in her hands.

Struck dumb by the sound of his mother's sobs, Zig gaped at her, frozen. When she finally looked up and saw him, her face crumpled all over again: horror and tears and shame and snot. An absolute mess. Not for his eyes, but: it was too late.

"Um, Mom, is everything-?"

"Oh, honey, oh, Zig, I thought you wouldn't be home until later…"

"What's going on?"

"It's just- your father isn't back from Uncle Anto's house, yet, and he was supposed to get back to Toronto before lunch. It's- I'm sure it's nothing, it's such a long drive, he could have gotten a late start- Honestly. I'm just- you know me," She forced a half-hearted chuckle. "The sun goes behind a cloud, and I worry it'll never come back."

Zig crouched next to her, nodding, awkward hand on her back. "Of course. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure everything's fine. He can't call you when he's, like, driving, so…"

She nodded, wiped away her tears, slowly becoming his mother again.

"Exactly," she said. Smiled. "You're a good man, Zigmund. I don't know what I'd do without you."

It stung, the magnitude of how wrong she was, but: it would take days, weeks for Zig to explain to his mother all the ways in which he was a terrible person. She was the only one left who believed otherwise, anyway; he needed that. So he helped her up, led her back to the counter, breathing sort of back to normal, but unable to shake the feeling that whatever was broken couldn't be fixed. Not this easily.

The drink from The Dot - frappucino, whatever - sat on a shelf by the door, entirely liquid, completely forgotten. It was one of the last times that summer, probably, that Zig would even bother to try and put some good into the world.