A/N: There are a few pieces of historical information that you should know if this chapter is going to make any sense to you. First, the Beats didn't indulge in hard liquor or harder drugs, but stuck mainly to tea, coffee, and marijuana. They also liked to roll their own tobacco cigarettes, as you will see in this chapter. A lot of people smoked during this time because it was a lot more glamorous and socially acceptable, and fewer people were aware of the health issues surrounding smoking.

A "flat top" is sort of like a military-style buzz cut. It was a popular style for boys during the late 50's/early 60's.

Also, it's important to know about the differences between schools of the 80's and schools of the 60's. For one, schools of the 60's were more formal. Students were always referred to as "Miss" or "Mr.", not to mock the student (like Vernon), but as a matter of respect. Also, students dressed more formally. Girls NEVER wore pants to school. EVER. Pants or capris (which were becoming popular during this time) were worn during only the most casual of activities, like around the house or whatever. Most girls wore skirts or dresses, without fail, even if they were just going to the movies or something. In this story, Jean is wearing capris. The only reason she's getting away with it is because it's detention and because the principal is not concerned with getting his students in more trouble than they already are.

This chapter is solely from Jack's POV, but the other chapters will be from other POV's.


Chapter Two: Rolling Cigarettes


"So, it looks like everyone is here." Principal Reed glanced down at his clipboard again, then tucked it under his arm. "Thank you for being on time."

"No problem whatsoever, Mr. Reed," Jack replied from the back of the room.

Principal Reed smiled indulgently. "I appreciate you enthusiasm, Mr. Reynolds."

Jack bobbed his head in response and leaned forward so that his elbows were resting on the table.

Mr. Reed checked his watch. "Alright, it's 8:08." He put his hand down and looked back out over the rows of tables. "Normally, I would stay here with you for the duration of your stay, but unfortunately the district superintendent, Dr. Fields, has come down with the flu. Dr. Fields was supposed to run our teacher orientation seminar in the library today, but because he won't be there, I will be running it in his absence." He paused. "That means that I am counting on you to discipline yourselves and to conduct yourselves in the manner that you feel is most appropriate to your given situation. Yes, Mr. Reynolds?"

Jack lowered his hand. "So, you're leaving us…alone?"

Mr. Reed smiled. "It would appear so."

Jack nodded thoughtfully. "…for seven hours?"

Mr. Reed nodded. "I will be checking in on you occasionally, and I'll probably be sending in one of the teachers from the orientation to make sure that everything is alright. But for the most part, yes, you will be alone." When Jack didn't say anything else, Mr. Reed lifted an eyebrow. "I trust that you don't have any problems with that?"

"No, sir."

Mr. Reed nodded. "I'm glad to hear that. I'll be counting on you to keep everyone in line, Mr. Reynolds."

Jack lifted his hand in salute.

"Does anyone else have any questions?"

The girl in the light blue cardigan raised her hand.

Mr. Reed nodded in her direction. "Yes, Miss Clark?"

"What are we supposed to do for seven hours?" she asked hesitantly.

Mr. Reed frowned thoughtfully. "Well, there is no talking. No moving around the room unless you feel that it's absolutely necessary or unless you have to use the restroom. You may work on homework or read, if you brought your books. Otherwise, I'm afraid you're out of luck." He paused. "Unless you would like to make a trip down to the library right now. The orientation doesn't begin for another twenty minutes, and I would be glad to escort you if you wanted to pick something out."

The girl sank down a little lower in her chair and shook her head.

"Anyone else?" asked Mr. Reed.

No one said anything.

"Alright. If there is an emergency, you can find me in the library, though I do ask that you reserve these visits for emergencies only. If you need to use the restroom, then you may use the facilities located at the end of the hall outside of these doors. Please do not travel outside of this hall." He glanced down at his watch one last time, then looked up and smiled. "I'll see everyone in a little while." With that, he nodded politely and swept out the door.

As soon as the principal was gone, Jack started rummaging around in his pocket. After a few seconds, he pulled out a small bag of dried, brown herbs. Tucked inside the bag was a separate bag of rolling papers. Jack opened both bags and started spreading his supplies out on the table.

The flat top on the front row was the first to notice what Jack was up to. "Hey!"

Jack looked up and pointed to himself. "I'm sorry, are speaking to me?"

The guy stood up and walked closer to Jack's table. "Yeah, I'm talking to you. What do you think you're doing?"

Jack looked down at the rolling paper in his right hand. "Well, I think I'm rolling cigarettes, but it's entirely possible that all of us are trapped in some kind of alternate reality where nothing is as it appears."

The other guy ignored the comment. "Put that stuff away! Mr. Reed's gonna come back and see you, and then we're all going to get in trouble!"

Jack waved him off. "Mr. Reed is a smoker, too. I'm sure he understands that a guy can't go seven hours without a cigarette."

The larger boy leaned back, watching Jack closely. "You're that guy!"

Jack ignored him and started sprinkling the herbs onto the cigarette paper.

"You're that guy!" he said again, shaking his head. "The guy that I nearly ran over this morning."

"It's alright," said Jack. "We all make mistakes."

The other guy scoffed. "You stepped out in front of my car!"

Jack shrugged and used his fingers to spread the dried leaves evenly across the paper.

"You need to watch where you're going," the other boy warned, pointing a thick finger in Jack's direction.

"And you need to get your registration sticker replaced," Jack said evenly. "It expired last month."

The taller boy apparently didn't know what to say to this. His nostrils flared and his hands clenched into fists at his side. Jack waited to be dragged out of his seat and thrown against the wall, but nothing happened. After a moment, the boy walked away from Jack's table and went back to his seat.

A few seconds passed by as Jack finished rolling his cigarette. When he'd finished, he lifted the stick to his lips, licked the adhesive edge, and pressed the paper together.

He looked up to see that everyone in the room was watching him. Well, everyone except for the meathead, who was staring at the front wall, clenching and unclenching his fists, pretending that he wasn't paying attention to what was going on behind him.

"Is that…marijuana?" The blonde whispered the last word as if just by mentioning the drug's name, she was committing some kind of crime.

Jack lifted his eyebrow. "Why, you interested?"

The blonde pursed her lips together. "No."

"You sure?"

"Yes!"

Jack nodded. "Well, this is just tobacco, but if you change your mind about the--" He glanced around and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "--marijuana, then I know of a couple of people that you can talk to."

The girl's jaw clenched in anger. "I don't do drugs."

"Why not?"

The girl hesitated. "It isn't right," she said finally.

Jack frowned thoughtfully. "How so?"

The girl shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "It's against the law."

"The government doesn't always know what's right for the people," Jack pointed out. "Maybe they're wrong about this, too."

"The government isn't wrong," she said. "And neither is the Bible."

"The Bible?" Jack asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep from smiling. "And what does the Bible say about drugs?"

"That you shouldn't do them," she responded firmly. "It's a sin."

Jack offered a sly grin. "Well, it's a sin to look as good as you do, but that didn't stop you from putting on that skirt this morning, did it?"

The girl's mouth dropped open in shock, but any response she might have had was preempted by the curly-haired girl sitting directly in front of Jack. She scoffed loudly and rolled her eyes.

Jack held out his cigarette. "I'm sorry, did you want one?"

The girl just stared back at him blandly, suggesting that she found his question ridiculous. Jack shrugged and started rummaging around in his jacket pocket for a lighter.

"You're not going to smoke that?" the blonde exclaimed when he brought out the lighter and started fiddling with the clasp.

Jack glanced up. "That's generally how this works," he said patiently.

"That is--" the blonde sputtered. "--that is the rudest thing I have ever heard of!"

Jack looked doubtful. "You can't be serious."

The blonde scoffed. "I certainly am!"

Jack lifted his eyebrows and looked back down at the lighter in his hand. He put the cigarette to his lips and lit the other end. Then he stuck the lighter back into his jacket pocket and took a drag from the cigarette.

The blonde watched him smoke, her eyes clouded over with disapproval. "I could tell Mr. Reed about this," she threatened.

"But you won't," Jack said casually.

"Maybe I will."

Jack shook his head and blew a puff of cigarette smoke to his left, away from where the others were sitting. "He said we were only allowed to bother him if we have an emergency. I doubt that he would consider this an emergency."

The blonde girl huffed and turned back around in her seat. Just in front of her, the meathead with the flat top turned to give Jack a menacing look. Jack shot him a friendly smile, and the guy sneered and turned back around.

Jack glanced to his right, where the girl with the light red hair was sitting, watching him smoke. When she realized that she'd been caught, her face flushed deeply, and she glanced down at the notebook in her lap.

"You want one?" Jack asked.

The girl looked up again. She glanced nervously at the cigarette he was offering her, then shook her head silently.

"You sure?" he prodded.

She nodded, then pushed up her glasses and went back to her notebook. He could see her scribbling something with a ballpoint pin, but she was too far away for him to get a good look. Curious, he let his eyes linger on her hunched figure for a moment before he looked away.

He smoked the rest of his cigarette in relative peace and quiet. When he was finished, he pinched the lit end of the cigarette with his fingertips so that it stopped burning. Then he peeled the paper away from the stub of the cigarette that remained and emptied the extra tobacco into his sack. He stuffed the burned paper into the pocket of his blue jeans and pulled out his fresh papers to roll another one.

"You're not going to smoke another one, are you?"

Jack looked up to see the blonde girl watching him again, just as horrified as before. "All of this cigarette smoke is going to clog my sinuses," she informed him, brushing her fingertips against the edge of her nose for emphasis.

"I'm just getting them ready for later," he explained.

"Later?" she asked indignantly. "You mean, you're going to do this all day?"

"You're not a smoker, are you?" he asked patiently.

The girl wrinkled her nose, as though the very thought disgusted her. "No, I'm not," she said haughtily.

"Well, if you were, you'd know how difficult it can be to go for long periods of time without a cigarette."

"That sounds like you can't stop if you wanted to," she said smugly.

Jack frowned, confused. "Why would I want to?"

The girl didn't have an answer to that. She watched him roll cigarettes for a moment before he looked up at her again.

"You know, I could teach you to smoke these," he offered.

The girl glared at him. "I don't want to learn."

Jack pretended as though he hadn't heard her. "We could go out under the bleachers during lunch sometime. It's a great place to--"

"I would never go out to the bleachers with you," she spat out angrily. "Ever."

"I could teach you some other things while we're there, as well," said Jack, lifting his eyebrows suggestively.

The girl's eyes widened dramatically. "Take that back!" she demanded.

"Hey, no need to be embarrassed," Jack assured her. "We have to walk before we can crawl. No shame in that."

The girl's face flushed a deep, rosy pink, and she shook her head, her blonde curls swishing. "That is…disgusting," she finished unevenly.

"Hey."

Jack glanced over at the girl in front of him, the one wearing the men's work shirt. She had her eyes narrowed in the blonde's direction, and her head was cocked thoughtfully. "I've seen you before," she said finally.

The blonde opened her mouth to respond, but then Jack saw her face crumple slightly, the anger in her eyes fading into something like fear. She closed her mouth and turned away from them both, rummaging through her purse to distract herself.

Jack glanced back at the girl with short hair, who was still watching the blonde closely. When she noticed him watching her, she turned to face him, arching her eyebrow defiantly. "What?" she demanded.

Jack held his hands up defensively. "Nothing. Sorry."

The girl rolled her eyes and turned around in her seat.

Jack grinned and went back to rolling his cigarettes. If the day progressed in the manner in which it started, he knew he was going to need more where they came from.


A/N: For this story, I tried to create new stereotypes based on the time period rather than keeping the same five groups we saw from the movie. So, it isn't like one person is "Bender" and another is "Claire", etc. There may be similarities between Claire and Maggie, for instance, but their situations and their personalities are not the same, as you'll see later. Also, there will be a few parallels and references to the film, as you saw in this chapter, but not everything will be the same. I wanted to keep some of the spirit of the original, but also tailor the original story to fit the time period and my own themes.

Please review! Thanks.