A/N: Hey, everyone! I'm back from band camp! It was great. It really was. Here's the next chapter! Hope you like it. The names really could be better, I know. Review, please, and share your thoughts!

~Bananna


The good inventions of his dream: plastic, the shower, ice cream, the baseball cap.

Neutral: The slight change in language, frozen vegetables, sun screen.

Bad inventions: THE BUS. And school rules, which apparently didn't allow baseball caps.

The vehicle was a lot more primitive than the car or the airplane. The whole ride from Jake's street corner to the school was bumpy. There were two many children crammed into a small space. The seats needed to be enlarged, also. Benvolio and Jake could barely share one, and they were not the largest kids on the bus. The other children were quiet, sullen, and generally not very awake. Jake pulled out his schedule from his backpack on the way there, showing everything to him.

"Pre-calc first," he mused. "Math in the morning. Icky. American History… computer applications…Lunch. It's my favorite already. French 4…oh, no. I forgot about that. Ben, did you take French back at your old school?

Benvolio bit his lip, trying to think about what he did know. "No…Latin."

"Latin! They offer Latin here. We'll have to ask about that. Study hall, English Literature, Chemistry. That sound good?"

"Do I have a choice?" Ben raised his eyebrows at the seemingly harmless piece of paper.

Jake laughed as the bus pulled into the parking lot of a large building. The school, Benvolio decided, especially when the bus stopped and all of the other students started getting off. He followed Jake, amazed as he saw some of the other youths of this town. Some wore nothing but black. Others had silver dots on their faces! He didn't say any of his thoughts aloud, although he wondered how his dream would react if he did.

The two wandered into the school, made of mostly gray stone, and through another door labeled GUIDANCE OFFICE. Jake opened his mouth to talk to a woman typing away at a screen behind the desk, but someone else tapped his shoulder first. Benvolio squinted at all the words, all around him! The desk was labeled Mrs. Mosh, Secretary. That must be the person sitting there. The lady who had stopped Jake was wearing a pin that read Ms. Page, Guidance Counselor.

"Jake!" she exclaimed. "Did you have a good summer?" He nodded, and she switched her gaze to Benvolio, hovering behind them. "And this must be the foreign exchange student! Ben Mantahue, was it? Welcome to Washington High School."

"Thank you," he said. "I look forward to studying here." He decided not to ask whether he should have a label too.

"We came for his locker number and schedule," Jake explained, pulling out his own with his left hand. "He's taking the same stuff as me, except with Latin instead of French."

Ms. Page took the schedule out of his hand and glanced at it. "That sounds alright, boys. What level of Latin, Ben?"

Level? He thought, bewildered, rapidly deciding on a response. "Ah…advanced."

Jake covered for him, much to Benvolio's gratitude. "He went to a private school out in the country, Ms. Page. They ran things a little different there."

Ms. Page nodded. "Understandable. How many years have you been studying Latin, Ben?"

He thought back. "About five or so, I think."

Her eyebrows rose, impressed. "Latin 4 is the highest class we offer. Why don't you talk to the teacher if you have questions?" She handed Benvolio a white piece of paper, smaller. "I was actually going to deliver this to Jake's first period teacher if you two didn't come talk to me first. This is your locker, Ben. Why don't you go to it now, before your first class?"

"That's a great idea, Ms. Page," cut in Jake. "We'll go find ours now. See you later," he trailed off as he tapped Benvolio's shoulder and steered him back into the hallway.

"I really don't want to be late to class the first day-" he started, but was cut off again, this time by someone who launched himself in between them, and then started walking backwards so he could face them and move at the same time, oblivious to the stares he was receiving.

"Here comes the rebel and the new kid! Too-cool-for-school and the oddity!" Matt crowed. "How does it feel to be-"

"I feel extremely bothered by some annoying kid who won't go away."

"Missed you too, bro." Matt said, running his fingers through his short blond hair. "Ben, what's up?"

"Locker 517," he mused out loud.

"Oh, cool!" Matt's face broke out in a grin. "Mine's 510."

"459," Jake muttered. "A bit down the hall, I guess. Ben, why don't you drop off everything you don't need in your lockers, and I'll meet you at class."

"Sure," Benvolio agreed. Locker…a numbered thing that locks…probably the green boxes lining the hall. Kids were getting into them, by spinning a small dial about the height of his hips. He wandered closer to the wall to get a look at the numbers.

"Hey, Ben!" Matt called. "Our's are down this way." He jerked his head to the left, finding his place next to Ben and walking next to him, slightly guiding him away. Benvolio was slightly surprised. He hadn't really spent any time with Matt when Jake was not there. It didn't seem to matter. Matt seemed completely at ease, rattling off whatever came to his head rapidly, not minding that Benvolio wasn't really holding up his side of the conversation.

"Hey, Ben. Fancy seeing you here, right? I wish. School, school, school…as if we haven't been learning for long enough. So, you like it here? It's better than some. Well, I don't really know. This is the only high school I've ever been to. Hey, I wanted to talk to you about Jake. Is it just me, or has the whole going back to school thing made him a bit more down than it should be?"

"He was very tense this morning," Benvolio started. He might have added more any other time, but now he didn't need to.

"Yeah, that's exactly it! Tense! He's been so uptight, even though the Cats had all summer to cool off."

"What?" Benvolio shot off. An explanation. This was what he'd been waiting for.

Matt gave him a look out of the corner of his eye. "These lockers. What was yours again? Oh, you got it. Never mind. So I guess Jake didn't let you in. He probably hoped it'd just go away."

"What would go away?" Benvolio asked impatiently. Matt went to his own locker, quite near his own, and was spinning the dial, stopping at certain numbers. Oh, that must be what the "combo" was.

Matt sighed. "Look, I think you have to know, just for your own good. So, way back in 3rd grade, these two 9th graders got in a huge fight. They actually blew up a lab room, and set half the baseball field on fire. They got expelled, big time. Everyone in the town knew about it, even us little kids."

"What was their dispute?" Benvolio asked, mystified. The locker door still wasn't opening. He set in the numbers again.

"Nobody knows!" Matt shouted, causing several other kids to look over. He continued anyways. "They refused to tell us little kids! Well, I think that the whole thing was hushed up from everyone, period. Privacy laws and all that. I don't think that's fair. If it was a big enough argument to affect town property, then the town should know what's going on."

"True," muttered Benvolio, yanking on the locker door one last time. It still didn't work.

"But the thing was, there was a huge fight in the entire school system on whose fault it was. One guy's name was Katt and the other was Miento, and somebody was one of them's neighbor…I don't know. It didn't really matter. Soon everybody was fighting."

Benvolio kicked the locker door roughly, causing a large echo. "Whoa," said Matt. "Need some help there?" he came over, looked at the locker combination paper in Ben's hand, and started twirling the dial himself. Benvolio paid special attention this time.

"So then, one day at the playground, one of the kids who like Katt-"

DIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG.

"Darn it, the bell," said Mike, finally opening the locker door. It was an empty space, with some hooks and a shelf. "You know, you don't have anything to carry. Just grab a pencil, stuff the backpack in there, and go to class."

Benvolio did so, and after that they set off through the hall. Matt was walking so quickly, he almost had to trot to keep up.

"Just know the Katts are bad news," Matt said over his shoulder. "There's your class. Good luck." He was swept away by the crowd.

Benvolio didn't say anything, just walked into the room with his mouth set in a straight line. He took the strange-chair-with-a-small-table-attached-to-it next to Jake, who smiled at him but didn't get a chance to talk because of the second bell.

DIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGG.