From that second, Todd was unable to feel anything content go on inside him. He felt as though all the optimism he thought he had was finally about to expire. And all because of some ghost that seemed to give Todd from his newly petrified state painful nostalgia.

All this made him run towards a corner of his room, trying to avoid the ghost.

"I thought I didn't have to think of you anymore! Why do you still exist?" Todd asked feverishly yet dejectedly at the same minute.

"Oh come on, "Todd", if that's what they seem to address you as nowadays. You know I never actually died; you just got rid of my exterior."

Todd was still scared, yet he could not help but interject.

"YOU'RE exterior?! I'm the one who decided to get rid of you FROM ME!!"

The least his tone managed to do was make the ghostly figure scowl in fault as it replied.

"You hold a legitimate point, but that's just what I was going to ask from you: Why did you get rid of me?"

Had Todd felt no nerve in replying would this have been easier for him? Todd was near to angry, but when he made eye contact with the ghost himself, he didn't want to feel surprised nor outraged any longer. As of now, Todd began to feel only what the ghost made him feel from the get go, pessimism.

"Why do you think I got rid of you? I don't even want to remember" Todd said, as he felt the bottom of his lip quiver.

"It's all coming back to me! Now I know why I didn't come to school today!" Todd thought to himself.

The ghost could have spoken, right until he saw Todd's face up close was it more clearly to him. The ghost lowered towards Todd's level, which was now crouching nearly in fetal position in that same corner.

"Calm down Todd. Just tell me what it is exactly that you hate about me. I'll understand."

This made Todd look at the ghost, yet it wasn't going to stop him from lamenting how his feelings almost took over him.

"I d-don't hate you" Todd nearly stuttered.

"It's j-just that every time I l-l-look at-t y-you, I remember about ever-rything…Oh gosh, former self? I should have known"

This might have been what Todd wanted to be enough of an explanation. Yet the ghost's expression told him he had done everything except make it apparent for him.

"What do you mean everything? You surely can't be talking about your childhood, right? I mean come on! No one can ever be able to-"

"YES, I AM!!" Todd interrupted, now scowling enough for his eyes to close.

"DON'T YOU GET IT?! EVER SINCE THAT DAMN TRAGEDY HAPPENED, I LOST EVERYTHING! MY HOME, MY FRIENDS, MY SANGUINITY…EVERYTHING! YOU THINK I WANTED IT TO BE THE SAME AGAIN!?"

The ghost was without a doubt surprised. And became even more once Todd began giving him more of an answer than he requested. Even though he really did want an explanation, the ghost didn't know if this was too much he was taking from Todd.

"Everyone I knew died in that mass anthrax epidemic. Two of those friends I knew ran away. I knew I didn't want to live any longer; all I wanted to do was to end my life and get rid of the pain. The painful reminiscences of the childhood that was taken away from me"

Todd sniffed as he wiped away moisture that seemed to be entering his eyes.

"But then a friend of mine told me, before he ran off, to move on without him, there wasn't anything desperate I could do"

For every minute Todd took to explain all this, the ghost became more and more surprised as he heard every detail. Enough to have him rise upwards again.

"Then I figured out something, something clever. What it was was I didn't have to get rid of living. All I had to do was take out everything that made me think of what I once was, and succeed in convincing my parents to eliminate my identity, eliminate my image, eliminate my character, and most of all, eliminate myself"

From there and on, the ghost seemed to understand everything with more precision than before. Enough to have him ask intrepidly something he knew was already clear yet could not bother than to be sure about.

"So…You got rid of me? You became someone else?"

"Exactly, from the day I moved here and on, I was Todd Williams, I was never going to be Eddward Marion Schrödinger, or -"

It was the last phrase that made the ghost feel just as surprised as Todd felt.

"-Double D"

From there one out, silence spread throughout the psychologically synthesized room. One second, the ghost looked down for a moment while his flabbergasted gaze remained in tact. Todd, who had been feeling more confident than ever now that he explained things more thoroughly, thought he was going to remain that way.

That was until the ghost that could now be presumed was called Double D reacted with a question.

"But you miss me, right?"

Just hearing those words made Todd want to reply by just saying that he didn't. He could have done that, until he stopped himself from uttering even a vowel.

That was when Todd actually thought about what he was asking: did he miss being his former self?

All this made Todd begin to feel emotionally weak once more as he began to browse through his memories. The memories that he had when he wasn't who he was right now, but when he was who he really was, Double D.

Love for science, the unnecessary obligation of scams, having a crush on Nazz and being crushed by Sarah and the Kanker sisters. Thinking it through, Todd found out he really WAS someone special through those years. Those years that because of an envelope anthrax murder spree done on everyone except him and two of his other friends which he no longer remembered were stolen from him. Now they were nothing but the person he was looking at, an eclipse of the past.

"Why wouldn't I?" Todd said, as of now, being unable to avoid from crying due to his emotions finally giving him more than he wanted.

"Y...y...you're only someone (sniff) that (sniff) I w…wo...would have k…k…ept (sniff) being m…me if I hadn't (sniff) b…become s…s…someone else (sniff)" Todd faltered, obviously overpowered by all the snuffling his sobbing was giving him.

Double D came down once more to look at Todd much more easily as if to help him cope with the idea he was struggling to let go of.

"Look, Todd, it's not as bad as you want it to be, okay? Just calm down and simply explain to me what was it that made you decide to forget about me until now"

After Todd heard Double D's question, he thought it would be better if he just put himself together and wiped off the tears from his face as he tried hard to remember. It took him a while to come through with it, but after a while, he came up with some things that he now knew happened on Monday through Thursday.

"I guess I felt surprised when Myron, one of my simple minded friends, asked me if I owned a bug collection, which immediately reminded me about you. Then, my brainiac friend, Dana asked me if I considered her to be a "dork", which was something that although I could tolerate, drove me a bit nuts."

Todd was about to go on, when he chose to unfasten his eyes much wider before getting to the last part.

"But the two things that really gave me head sickness was when I saw Mauricia's new hairdo made her look exactly like Marie Kanker. And if knowing her name ties with the other one quite coincidentally wasn't enough, I didn't know how, but then I stumbled upon an old friend before dozing off"

Double D cringed in wonder before he asked.

"Did that friend happen to be me?"

"No" Todd said, before finally giving Double D the answer that would jumble more questions on him than he could count.

"It was Plank"

Now nothing more could be said. Double D knew quite well it would have had to have been someone like Plank to have been able to awaken Todd's awareness. What Double D didn't understand was how Plank could have possibly arrived at the scene.

For someone like Double D, it would be crazy to assume Plank would have moved there himself (unless it was for the fun of it). Until he realized he was no longer a part of his own physical personality. Perhaps there were many things Double D had underestimated throughout the time he began to remember quite clearly.

Especially, now that he figured it out, with his own existence.

"You know, I think I remember being almost similar to this before, and when you appeared" Todd said, which by that moment, got rid of the silence.

Plus, I made Double D forget about what he was initially speculating of.

"It was when I became crazy about becoming filthier the less soon I took a shower that I saw you"

Double D didn't know why, but he felt something strange after Todd said all that. Something he hadn't known until Todd finished off what he was trying to say.

"You seemed to be trying to tell me to become YOU when I had gone crazy. Of course, you disappeared so easily when my strange desire for filth defeated you. I knew you were going to become the way I once was after I saw you disappear" Todd continued.

It was as though he had finally become aware of how separate he and Todd actually were. Which Double D didn't know whether to find it a good thing or a bad thing.

"Now I know, all this time, you were someone I still wanted to be but never had the guts to admit to. All because I was running away. I'm sorry"

Double D didn't know what to think as of that moment. He was at first happy, yet depressed too from seeing Todd was now someone different from who he thought was merely a phase his body was going through.

Perhaps he didn't have to live in person to understand his own existence was viable.

"Don't worry Todd, I'm sorry too for assuming that you weren't anything real, but if you insist, apology accepted"

"Ha! Same here I guess" Todd replied, no longer sounding as cynical as he started out.

"So, does this mean we're friends now?"

Double D scratched his chin as a way to help him think about it more thoroughly. He couldn't say they weren't, but since he existed in him, he almost had the feeling he didn't have much of a choice.

"Well, it depends on how you want me to see you from now on, but don't you already have people that you can call friends of your own?"

"Yeah, but you can never have too many friends! If you want I can introduce… Oh that's right, how am I going to introduce you to them if-" Said Todd, before he came up with something clever.

"Hey, how'd you like to be me for a day?"

Double D´s eyes flew open after hearing such. There wasn't anything he couldn't say that that it was impossible, yet he still had a weird feeling of such. Still, if he never tried it, he would never know.

"I guess we can go there, but what about Plank?"

Now it was Todd's turn to become widely aware of the pros and cons of what they were trying to do. All those meetings may have been uncanny accidents, but Plank was the real deal. He could doubt that he was going to see him again, but there was still the idea of why he came there in the first place.

That's why Todd decided to remain positive yet serious as he answered Double D's question

"It's like I said, if we DO see him again, you can never have too many friends"