Hey all! Here is chapter 7. Like the last chapter, this one is quite a bit about George, and there are some other people in it as well. I like characters, in case you couldn't tell. :)

The added characters in this chapter aren't particularly important, so you don't have to worry about remembering them all. They're basically to give you guys a glimpse of some of the other patients at Fairoaks, since George is the only one you know so far.

Sorry this chapter is so long. I promise, the next one will have Zack in it. You all are probably missing him as much as Cody is.

Disclaimer: I still do not own The Suite Life series.

It took a long time for George to tell Cody his story. Even after he was finished, he kept going back and giving more details. "Oh, and this one time, my mom started doing cocaine," he'd added at one point. "She came across it through this guy she slept with a few times. They'd go into the bedroom and snort that shit up like there was no tomorrow. It was so irritating cause she'd waste all her money on it and we'd barely be able to make rent." Then later, he said, "And there was this other time when I had a friend over—my mom okayed it, amazingly. This friend was a girl and she brought over this little kiddy tea set with her. She was younger than me, see, so she was still into playing with stuff like that. I was just grateful to finally have a friend over, so I was like, 'What the hell? It won't hurt to play tea party with her. It sure beats sittin' around with my mom and crying baby sister.' So, I played tea party with her. It was fun…while it lasted, that is. My mom came in and saw us. I don't know what she had against it—if she was high, or in one of her bitchy moods, or what. But whatever it was, she went ballistic. She made my friend go home. Then she took me aside and told me that if I wanted to act like a little girl she'd treat me like a little girl. She made me wear dresses to school for a week."

"Jesus, George," Cody said, almost pleadingly. He'd had about as much of George's story as he could take by that point. "What did the school staff do?"

"Nothin'," George told him.

"They didn't do anything?" Cody was shocked. "They had to have noticed you were wearing dresses. Didn't that set off a siren in their dumb-ass brains?"

George shrugged, for what must have been the tenth time. "They probably just thought I'd turned gay or something. Or that I was going through a phase."

Cody shook his head, unable—or unwilling, more like—to believe it.

George had taken his story all the way up to being locked in Fairoaks. Come to find out, he was an ex-criminal. When George was a teenager, he began to have these episodes of aggression. He never really hurt anyone, but he started mouthing off to his teachers and to random students, and vandalizing school property—he told Cody about a little prank he played when he was a junior in high school, where he clogged all the sinks in the boys' restroom with toilet paper and then turned them on, causing a massive overflow. But his problems weren't just contained within the school, however. He joined up with some boys who, after and before school hours, were a gang. All the students knew they were a gang. The teachers probably did too, though nobody mentioned it. They weren't particularly dangerous; they just thought it was cool to go around hot-wiring cars that didn't belong to them and to steal alcohol they couldn't legally drink from the local ABC store. Their motto was simple: Authority is the enemy. Therefore, do whatever you can to defy it.

"It made sense to me," George declared. "What they stood for. It didn't make sense to a lot of people—they were considered lost and hopeless by pretty much everyone. But it all made sense to me. I knew how bad it could be when some authoritative figure ground you down; I lived in a world where I endured that constantly. And I wanted out. I wanted to fight back, in my own way. On my own terms."

So you were a rebel, George. You were fed up with the hurting, so you wanted to make the world hurt.

That was why, if Cody could have chosen one word to describe George Tanner, "rebel" would be it. Even now, being locked up, George was a rebel. He said he didn't have secrets, but Cody knew he did. Everybody did. George simply refused to bring them to light. He wouldn't give them power, even though the doctors—the authority in this place—wanted him to. He would pretend his secrets didn't exist, despite the consequences being a lifetime in confinement.

"I got arrested a few times." George ran his fingers through his tousled hair. "I was in and out of juvie constantly when I was sixteen and seventeen. Then the day after I turned eighteen, I got into a fight outside a bar. It was a bad one; I got knocked unconscious when the other guy hit me upside the head with a metal pipe. I have no idea how he even managed to find a metal pipe in all the chaos, but anyway, when I woke up I found myself in an adult jail cell—which was different from juvie. I was kept in there for about two weeks, before they let me go. When I got back I left the gang. I just didn't want anything to do with them anymore. I still believed in a lot of their philosophies, but…it was different. I was different. My world got put into perspective for me and…I just…I didn't like it. And I knew that if I confided in my mom she wouldn't do jack shit about it. She'd never done jack shit for me anyhow."

"So what did you do?" Cody wanted to know.

Let me guess, you came here.

"I took myself to a counseling service in Boston and talked to a psychologist. She tried everything she could think of to help me. Tests, therapies…she even had me write journals—pfft, that proved to be a waste of time. For one thing, I couldn't write properly to save my life, and for another, my thoughts were just too goddamn jumbled. In the end, she gave up and referred me to good ol' Fairoaks Asylum. And I came here. I've been here ever since."

Just then, Jenny Kroft came back in (for the third time that day) and announced that it was lunch time.

The cafeteria in Rosenberg Hall was about the size of a gymnasium—only a little bigger. There were rows upon rows of long tables with white surfaces situated on a polished, marble floor. The walls were all white, with seven barred windows going along each side; outside was a perfect view of a hillside dipping down into a roadway, aligned with trees at the far end.

Cody thought it resembled a prison. Not that he'd ever been to prison before. But the bars alone were enough to put disturbing images in his head of chain fences, barred cells, and sinister guards. Immediately, he lost his appetite.

At the far end of the room was the table where the food was distributed to the patients. It was the very first thing you saw—the thing that was right before your eyes—when you walked through the double doors of the cafeteria. There was a glass panel separating the cafeteria from the kitchen, and two doors—one on the left-hand side of the room and one on the right-hand side of the room—leading into it. From each door was a long line of patients, all wearing white-pajama outfits and bearing medical bracelets on their wrists. All waiting to eat.

There was an array of differences between them. Some of them were standing erect; others were slumped over. Some were alert and focused (perhaps a bit paranoid); others were staring off into space, seeming to be in their own little worlds. Some were young adults; others were turning gray. Some were completely silent; and others were engaged in conversation—either with existing people or with themselves.

There were both males and females present. George had said that the cafeteria was one place where they could be together. "The people in charge figured it wouldn't be fair to make either the men or the women eat later," he'd told Cody, "especially since some of these people eat slow, and some of them have to be fed by staff."

It made sense. If they had males and females eat at different times, it would probably be well over an hour before whoever ate second got to eat. And many of those people, given that they were residents of Rosenberg Hall—the building for patients with mood and personality disorders—would be hard to deal with if deprived of food.

There were several nurses there also, all roaming around and checking on various patients. Making sure they ate.

Cody was standing at the back of the line, sandwiched between George and a short, dark-skinned girl with long, black hair who looked to be of Puerto Rican descent and who was talking to another girl in front of her in a half-Spanish, half-English dialect. Cody found himself gazing attentively at her, wondering what her illness was. It wasn't everyday you were in a confined area with so many people who had been labeled "crazy" by some doctor sitting behind a desk.

She doesn't act crazy. If I saw her anywhere else, I would have thought she was perfectly normal. Don't crazy people act crazy—don't they scream, and shout, and have delusions, and warped perceptions, and don't they ramble, and carry on, and destroy things?

She might be on drugs. True enough. But still, don't drugs leave tell-tale signs behind?

Thinking about this made Cody's train of thought revert to George.

Oh man, George. You poor kid. You had a life I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, and yet you act like it was nothing at all. I think you pushed those emotions of yours too far down, and you'll have a hell of a time getting them back up…that is, if you ever intend to. If you ever want your freedom that badly. I believe you have secrets, George. Whether you admit to it or not, I know you have secrets.

It's kind of ironic, I'd say, that you and I come from opposite sides of the spectrum—you came from hell itself, and I came from love and acceptance, and we both ended up in the same place. With the same problem.

The more I think about it, the more confused I get.

"Hey, Cody?" George's voice brought Cody out of his momentary stupor. "The line's moving."

Cody looked ahead of him and saw that, sure enough, there was a gap between him and the dark-skinned girl. He took two steps forward and stood directly behind her. Unintentionally, his arm brushed against hers. She turned her head, looked up, and flashed him a menacing glower. "I know you didn't just touch me!" she spat at him.

"I'm…I'm sorry," Cody muttered. "I didn't mean to. It was an accident."

She replied with an aggravated snort and then patted the shoulder of the girl ahead of her, asking her if they could switch places in line. The other girl was fine with it, so they switched and Cody was then standing next to another girl who was taller, with hazel eyes, and cropped, strawberry red hair. Cody expected her to glare at him as well, but instead she gave him an apologetic smile. "You'll have to excuse her," she whispered. "She doesn't typically act like that. She just doesn't like to be touched."

"I didn't mean to touch her," Cody defended himself.

"I know, but she still gets mad. She's even cussed me out for touching her, and I'm her best friend. She's better with medication—a lot better than she'd be without it—but she still gets irritated."

"But, she touched you," Cody pointed out, confused. "Just a second ago, she tapped your shoulder."

"Yeah, she does that sometimes. It's like, she's okay with touch as long as she's the one doing the touching. But she hates it if she's being touched. It's part of her mentality."

"That's weird."

"Yeah, it is." The girl's smile widened. She had dimples like Jenny Kroft did, but hers were more pronounced. Her bottom teeth were crooked, but Cody thought that quality made her grin cute. There was a small mole on her cheek which, for some reason, made Cody picture Marilyn Monroe. "My name's Doris," she told him, extending her hand.

Cody took it. "Doris?" he said in amusement. "Wow, that's a name you don't hear anymore."

"My mom named me after Doris Day. She was a famous movie star and singer back in the nineteen-forties. Doris Day, not my mom." Doris laughed. "My mom was a fan of old-timey entertainers. It was always her dream to go to Hollywood and get into the movies."

"So, why didn't she?"

"She got pregnant with me, and then married my dad. She didn't really want to marry him, but she did anyway cause she didn't want to raise me by herself. Motherhood kind of got in the way of her dreams. She carried them with her though, in a way. I mean, she named me Doris. And I have a little brother named Elvis. No joke."

Cody giggled. "That's pretty funny. I bet he has fun with it—telling people his name's Elvis."

"Oh yeah!" Doris exclaimed. "He loves it. Just recently he came to visit me, and he told me about his school talent show; he entered it and sang 'Jailhouse Rock.' He didn't win or anything, but he had a lot of fun. He told me he even said 'Thank you very much' the way Elvis did at the end."

There was a pause between them—a pause in which she and Cody simply stared at one another, wondering who each other was, where each other came from…why they were both in a place like this.

Doris took notice that Cody was not wearing the required outfit that all the other patients were wearing. Instead, he was dressed in a red T-shirt and jeans.

"You're not wearing your uniform, and I don't think I've seen you around before," she finally commented. "Are you new?"

"Yeah," Cody replied. "I just arrived earlier today. My name's Cody, by the way."

"Cody," Doris repeated. "I like that name. It's cute. It makes me think of koala bears for some reason. Not that it matters, but anyway…"

Doris saw that the line had moved up some more. She took a few steps forward and came up behind her friend (who slightly inched away from her as she came close). "So, Cody, where are you from?"

"Here. I was raised here in Boston," Cody said.

"Really? I'm from Abington."

Cody nodded. There was a second pause—a more awkward one—as he debated whether or not to ask a question that was lingering over him. He didn't want to get Doris angry, yet his curiosity was urging him on. In the end, he gave in to it.

"Um, Doris?" he said timidly.

"Yeah?"

"Why…just out of curiosity…why are you in here?"

Doris' smile vanished, and for a moment, Cody thought he'd gotten her upset. He was about to apologize, when she answered his question by lifting up her arms and showing him the underside of her wrists. Cody gasped. They were emblazoned with scars. Some were faded, others were rather fresh and they criss-crossed each other, like geometric angles, across her pale skin, going all the way up to where her arms bent inward at the elbows. Some of them appeared to be so deep that they would never totally heal.

"I'm a cutter," Doris told him, despite it being obvious.

"But, why?" Cody asked.

"I…I don't know. Sometimes I just get so angry, and confused, that I can't stand it. And I hate feeling that way. I hate that I don't know who I am, no matter how many times I try to find out."

"Isn't it normal to feel that way?"

"Not with me," Doris said sadly. "I just…I can't explain it. I started cutting a few years ago. I didn't do it all the time; just when I was angry enough. I was able to keep it a secret for a while, but eventually my mom found out. She walked in on me…and, well, that was that. She took me here. My doctor diagnosed me with Borderline Personality Disorder, but I don't really go along with that. It's probably right but I don't like the idea of being labeled. I've been called so many things in the past, and most of them hurt."

"I know what you mean," Cody stated. "I've been called a lot of things too."

"Isn't it just so annoying, and degrading?"

"It can feel like that sometimes."

From behind him, Cody could feel George pat his arm, trying to get his attention. "Hey, dude," he said, "here comes that guy I told you about earlier!"

"Which guy?" Cody asked, turning his head to look.

Before George could answer, a boy that was about Cody's height, with buzzed hair, a stubbly chin, and glasses walked over to them. He was carrying a tray filled with food and was on his way to find a table to sit down at.

"Hey, Spence," George said happily. "How you doin' today?"

The boy called Spence stopped in front of George. He gazed at George seriously for a moment, and then approached him, leaning his tray so far forward that Cody was afraid its contents would spill over the side and make a mess on the floor.

"Careful," George warned, lifting up the leaning side of the tray.

"Hey," Spence said somberly. "Hey, what you gonna do tonight?"

George smiled. "I'm gonna sleep, Spence. How about you?"

Spence's expression didn't change in the slightest. In fact, it was so solemn that it was almost cringe-worthy. He took another step toward George. The edge of his tray lightly touched George's shirt. "Guess what I'm gonna do tonight?" he asked, as though he did not hear what George had just said.

"What you gonna do?" George played along.

"I'm gonna sleep wit' my girlfriend."

Cody felt a giggle escape him. Now that was odd. Funny, but odd.

George's smile grew. It wasn't a humorous smile; it was more like the type of smile an adult would give a child said they were going to write a letter to Santa Claus. A smile that had no regards for reality. "You do that," he said. "And have fun."

Spence didn't move. "Hey," he said again. This time, his expression softened a little bit. Just enough to be noticeable. "Can I go home?"

"When the doctors say you can, Spence. When they say you can go home, you can go home."

"M'kay."

Spence started to turn away.

"Hey, Spence!" George stopped him.

Spence turned back around.

"I want you to meet somebody." George pointed at Cody. "This is Cody Martin. He's my new roommate, Spence."

"Hi, Spence," Cody greeted. He extended his hand.

Spence didn't take it. He didn't even look at it. He approached Cody, the same way he had George, and gazed at him seriously. "What you gonna do tonight?"

"Uh…sleep?" Cody answered.

"Guess what I'm gonna do tonight?"

Cody was baffled by this. But, like George, he decided to play along. "Sleep with your girlfriend?"

"Yeah," Spence said.

"That sounds…great."

"M'kay." Spence walked off and sat down among a crowd of other boys.

When Spence was out of earshot, George leaned next to Cody and said, "That's the guy who has OCD—the one whose parents ditched him. His name is Spencer Adams, but everybody calls him Spence."

"He's…interesting, to the say the least," Cody declared.

"Yeah, he's a good guy. You just have to be able to tolerate him."

"Why did he say the same thing to me as he said to you?"

"It's his illness. OCD stands for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder."

"I've heard of it," Cody said. "I've just never seen it for real. I took a basic psychology class in college. I heard stories about people who'd wash their hands constantly, every few minutes or so, until they turned raw. And they'd keep doing it because they couldn't help themselves."

"It affects different people in different ways," George explained. "Spence doesn't constantly wash his hands. His obsessive-compulsive behavior is in language. He says the same things over and over again, multiple times in one day, even to the same person. And he can't help it. What he said wasn't true. He's not gonna screw with any girlfriend; I don't think he even has a girlfriend. And he's never gonna leave this place either. He has nowhere else to go."

"Then, why did he ask to go home?" Cody questioned. "And why would he think he has a girlfriend?" It didn't make sense that those words would be the ones he'd repeat.

George shrugged. "Beats me. I don't know exactly how his mind works. I just know the basics."

They waited in line for what could very well have been half an hour before they entered the kitchen and were able to get their food. There was a choice menu: a salad or a sloppy joe for the main entrée, mashed potatoes or green beans for the side dish, a roll if wanted, and for dessert, a brownie or a small piece of cake. That was it. For a drink there were three options: orange juice, milk, or a bottle of water.

Despite not being hungry, Cody took a salad (it looked more edible than the sloppy joe), some mashed potatoes because the green beans looked overdone, a roll, a brownie, and a bottle of water. He figured he'd arouse suspicion if he refused to get anything. George took the same.

When they came out of the kitchen, Cody stared in speculation at the rows of tables in the cafeteria. They were nearly completely full. Holy crap, he thought. Where am I going to sit? It seemed like everywhere he looked, a chair was taken. Luckily, George didn't seem bothered.

"Well," he said, "what are you waiting for? Let's go sit down." He led Cody down a narrow pathway between the table rows at the far left-hand side of the room, and took him to a partly vacant table that had previously been invisible behind all the heads and bodies situated at tables closer to the kitchen.

There were a few people there, but only a few. There were four girls and two boys. The two boys were talking to each other, as were three of the girls. But the fourth girl was silent. It was Doris, who'd come out of the kitchen moments before Cody and George had. She beamed at Cody when she saw him coming towards her.

"You can sit beside me if you want," she said. And Cody did.

There was an empty chair on his other side, and that's where George sat.

"So, is this all we get to eat?" Cody grimaced down at his tray.

"For lunch, yeah," replied Doris. "Dinner's actually better. There's different staff preparing it cause the ladies who work the daylight shift get off at four. Personally, I think the dayshift ladies are half-asleep when they make the food. It's not that bad though." She took a bite out of her roll. "The bread's good."

Cody chuckled again. He shouldn't have found that funny, but he did. It wasn't what she said, it was the way she said it. He just realized, shortly after doing it, that that had been his first chuckle in a long time.

"Food's food," George cut in. "I'm just glad to have something to eat."

George began eating the minute he sat down. He ate like a starving man, which wasn't surprising; he was as skinny as a twig.

"Doris, I want you to meet my first friend since coming here," Cody said, reaching out and squeezing George's shoulder. "George Tanner."

"Hi," Doris acknowledged him. "I've seen you around here before. I've just never talked to you. I'm Doris."

"I know," George said. "I heard you tell Cody." He took a sip from his water bottle. "So, you were named after Doris Day, were you?"

"That's right."

"Cool. I've seen one or two of her movies. She was hot, back in the day. You don't look a bit like her, but you're pretty too."

"Thanks." Doris took another bite out of her roll.

Cody didn't touch his food, and George called him out on it. "Why aren't you eating, man? You know, dinner's not until six o'clock tonight. You'll be starved by that time if you don't eat something."

"I'm not hungry," Cody told him. "I lost my appetite."

"Well, okay. Suit yourself."

Just then, two more people walked up to their table. Two boys—one thinner, with dark brown hair, tanned skin, and nicely muscled arms protruding from the short sleeves of his white shirt, and one heavy-set, with blonde, shoulder-length hair and glasses. The thinner one had his arm wrapped around the heavy-set one's shoulders, more for support than for affection; the heavy-set boy's eyes were staring blankly into space, seemingly clueless, and his body was swaying back and forth as though he couldn't find balance.

"Hey George!" the thin one said.

"Hey Donnie!" George responded. Then he looked toward the absent-minded, heavier boy and added, "Hey Joey!"

"We already finished eating," Donnie stated. "But we saw you guys come out of the kitchen and decided to come over and talk."

George nodded. "Awesome," he said, his mouth half full with brownie. He pointed his thumb in Cody's direction. "This is Cody. He's my new roommate. Just arrived today."

Donnie's eyes widened. "Oh!" he exclaimed. After seating Joey at the table across from George, he reached over and offered his hand. Cody took it. Donnie had a firm grip. "Nice to meet you, Cody. I'm Donnie Reid. And this here"—he let go of Cody's hand and placed both of his on each of Joey's shoulders—"is my brother, Joey McFarland."

Cody was taken aback. "He's your brother?"

"Well, not biologically. My dad married his mom after they both had us from previous marriages. So technically speaking, we're stepbrothers. But, when it comes to honest to goodness family, blood just doesn't mean very much." Donnie took a seat right next to Joey, but Joey didn't pay him any mind. He continued to rock back and forth, his eyes making him appear as though he was in a trance. "So, what about you?" Donnie asked Cody. "You got any siblings?"

Cody stiffened. He'd never told anyone—not even George—about Zack. He'd never been asked to. It was rather strange. He knew about George's sister Sherrie, and Doris' brother Elvis, and Donnie's stepbrother Joey—he knew about all these people's siblings despite not really knowing them that well. And yet, he'd never so much as mentioned Zack. "I do have one," he said, with a hint of sadness. Oh God…Zack. Why does it make me so sad to talk about Zack? To even think about Zack? Because you hurt him, you half-wit. You hurt him bad, and you know you did. And beneath your distain for life, you feel guilty about that. "His name is Zack, and he's my twin. My identical twin."

"You have a twin?" George and Doris said simultaneously.

Cody nodded.

"Dude, that's so cool!" George continued. "I'd love to meet him. It'd be kind of wild seeing someone who looked just like you, Cody. Like looking at a clone."

"Not really," Cody said. "We don't look as identical as we did when we were younger. It's pretty easy to tell us apart."

"Are you two anything alike, personality-wise?" Doris asked.

Cody laughed, but it was a hard laugh. A laughed masked by pain. "Nothing alike," he answered. "We're nothing alike, and we never were. We used to fight twenty-four-seven. We were like night and day, pretty much. He was always good at sports, and getting girls; I was always the one who got picked last in gym class and called a 'nerd' every day. Most of the time, he was the one calling me that."

"Did you two ever fight over any girls?" Doris prodded.

"Yeah, sometimes. There was this one time when we met this French girl. Her father was, like, the ambassador of France, and she was staying with him at the Tipton hotel here in Boston—that's where where my brother and I were living—and we fought over her something terrible. It got pretty dirty." Cody flashed Doris an exaggerated smirk. "I locked him in a closet and left him there. And then went and asked her out on a date."

"Did she say yes?" Donnie wanted to know.

"Yep."

"Sweet!"

"Not really. It turned into a disaster. My brother kind of crashed it by tricking me into insulting her by using French phrases."

"Aww, that's too bad," Doris said sadly.

Donnie, however, thought this was very amusing. "So what happened?" he inquired, looking most interested.

"Neither of us got her," Cody answered. "She ended up going for a friend of ours. In retrospect, I think we both deserved it. We were young and naïve, and we were kind of treating her like she was a prize."

"Aw, man!" Donnie exclaimed. "That sucks. And the fact that she was French and had a rich father...damn! That makes it suck even more."

"Instances like that didn't happen very often. I mean, there were also these British twins, but they kind of went back and forth between us. They'd like Zack better for a while, but then turn around and like me better for a while. It was kind of strange. For the most part, though, Zack and I had different tastes in girls. I went after the brainiacs and he went after…well, pretty much everyone else."

"So, wait a minute," George cut in. "You lived at the Tipton hotel? Actually lived there?"

"Yeah. My mom got a job there as a lounge singer and we were given room and board. We had our own suite—not one of the luxurious ones, but it was livable."

"Holy shit, man. I've driven past that place; it's huge. I bet your childhood rocked," Donnie said.

Cody nodded, slightly. "It did…in a way."

"I heard that the hotel heiress, London Tipton, lives there too," Doris remarked.

"Oh yeah, I know her."

Doris looked at Cody in shock. "You know London Tipton? The London Tipton?"

"Yeah, she was—is, I guess—a friend of mine."

"Oh my God! She's, like, my fashion model. I own so many magazines of her, it's not even funny." Doris was clearly ecstatic.

Donnie smiled, agreeing. "I've seen some pictures of her. She's hot."

"I also used to watch her web show—Yay Me! Starring London Tipton!" Doris stated cheerily. "I loved it so much!"

"You know," Cody said, "when the show first started out, I was the director and producer of it."

If Cody didn't know any better, he'd have sworn that Doris was literally about to burst at that moment. "No way!" she gasped. "You were that little blonde boy she made dress up like a girl?"

"Ye…yeah, that was me," Cody admitted, somewhat embarrassed. That was one memory, along with an assortment of others, that he didn't like to bring up.

"Cody, I've got to get your autograph!"

"Dude, she had you dress like a girl?" Donnie laughed. "Did she pay you to do that?"

Cody didn't answer him. For no particular reason, he looked over at George. Interestingly enough, George had a peculiar expression on his face—something similar to puzzlement. "Okay, back to Zack," he said. "Was he a good brother? They say twins are closer than other siblings."

"I wouldn't say we were close," Cody stated. "We fought more than we didn't."

"Yes, but…did he ever have your back?"

Cody thought before answering. He already knew the answer, but he took a minute to think anyway. He did have my back, several times. Whenever I was really in trouble—whenever I was really hurting…really about to lose something that I cared about—Zack was there to step in. He'd sacrificed a lot for me, and hardly asked me to do the same in return. He could sink really low sometimes…so low that I swore I hated him. I told him I hated him more times than I can count. And I was sure he hated me back. But…I knew he didn't. He couldn't hate me, any more than I could hate him. Under all the disgust and anger, there was love. Immeasurable love. Even when he was annoyed with me, or ashamed of me, he would have taken a bullet for me if he had to. I know he would have.

Cody looked George straight in the eye. "He had my back all the time," he replied. Then he became silent.

He managed to stay silent until the end of lunch time.