Author's Note: While life is still really, really busy, I have managed to work in a little bit of free time for myself every now and again to write something. I'm trying to post at least once weekly now, so here's your weekly installment involving Alex and Christine of Harrison High. I'm hoping to also post my next drabble in the Evaluation of Erik series, so check back for that in the next hour or so as well.

Erik was working, the book said. Erik was working on his opera. Well, maybe it was an opera. I don't know. He was working on some masterpiece musical thing. He lived in an opera, so I'm going with it was an opera. Andrew Lloyd Webber said it was an opera, anyway. Don Juan Triumphant. Of course, Webber said a lot of things that turned out not to be in the book. Whatever. Erik left Christine alone for two weeks because he was working on something.

Alex, on the other hand, was suspended.

At first I figured Alex was just leaving me alone for two weeks because Erik left book-Christine alone for two weeks. It occurred to me that Alex would find something to do for two weeks that he figured was roughly equivalent to what Erik was doing for those two weeks, so maybe he was writing poetry or trying to compose songs or something. Then I remembered that Alex said he'd done something different. He said that every time he noticed something the same, he did something different. Was it true? I thought about it. He talked to me the first time in class, face to face. That was different. Erik did that creepy hiding and talking through walls thing.

I reviewed our early conversations. That's my favorite book, he'd said. That was a pretty normal thing to say, I guess, if it had been anyone other than him saying it, or maybe had he been saying it to anyone other than me. Why didn't he say it to someone other than me, though? He picked the blonde haired blue eyed girl named Christine? And there were four Christines, now, not all of them blond. Webber's Christine has brown hair anyway, so I was going to have to wear a wig. If he'd really wanted to be different, he'd have talked to one of the other girls playing Christine. Better still, he might have talked to someone who wasn't even in the stupid musical. No, he hadn't done something different every time. After all, he'd asked me to the Mardi Gras dance, which he kept referring to as the masked ball. He obviously thought the dance counted as the modern reenactment.

Okay, so he didn't keep me prisoner someplace. I didn't have to go throwing a letter out the window of Alex's beat up old car in the hopes that Ryan would find it. I laughed at that thought, actually. Alex was way less creepier than Erik. I mean, he lived in a regular house with regular parents, I guess.

I stopped to wonder about Alex's parents. I'd never seen them. I think he said his dad wasn't around. He'd never even mentioned his mother that I could remember. I wondered if he lived with other family or something. He couldn't live on his own at our age, could he? The government wouldn't allow that, would they? Could he be in foster care?

,I'd have driven myself completely batty trying to figure out whether Alex was deliberately doing things differently or deliberately doing things the same, but then Alex turned up, temporarily, anyway. He'd been away a couple of days, maybe. Nothing unusual considering the chronic skipping problem most of the junior and senior classes have at our school.

Then there was that day in the social studies wing of the upstairs hallway.

I heard this sound. Something like you'd hear in a movie. A wild yell like no one ever makes in real life. A blur of green and yellow sailed across the hall and hit the wall with another sound, an umph, like all the air coming out of a body. Something huge and white hurled itself across the hall in the same direction. Suddenly everyone was there and all the sounds were drowned out with yelling and cheering. Fight registered in my mind. It happens from time to time. The adults would have you believe it's the freaks against the jocks, but usually it's not. Usually it's jocks against jocks or freaks against freaks. Usually, it's two people I don't know. Usually, it's goofy underclassmen who haven't figured out yet that Harrison is strict as hell and you'll be suspended forever or even expelled.

I'll admit, I stopped to watch. I'm not alone in that. Everyone in the hallway stopped to watch. I'll also admit that I didn't see anything. I flinch a lot when there's a chance of something hitting me in the face. It's why I've never played on the volley ball team.

What I did manage to discern was that the white blur I saw second was Mr. Mason—this huge teacher who teaches ninth grade geography. When the slow motion effect of my brain turned off, I heard Mr. Mason yelling, "That's enough, that's enough, knock it off!" He reached in and wrapped his arms around something and hauled it back across the hall yelling, "It's over! It's over!"

I let my eyes drift across the hall. A vaguely familiar guy in what was left of a letterman jacket was leaning against the wall and everyone was gathering around him. "Are you okay?" and "Oh my god, you're bleeding," and all that. He was bleeding, too, I think from his lip. A high-pitched shriek behind me turned out to be his girlfriend. She shoved me out of the way as she bounded towards him. I stepped on something green and slippery on the floor. "Oh, baby, look at your face," the girlfriend crooned. And then without even taking a breath she turned and yelled, "You fucking freak!" at the top of her lungs. She turned back to her man. I didn't. I followed where her gaze had been. Mr. Mason still struggled with some writhing, moaning beast, but he was making progress towards the other end of the hall. Mr. Smith was coming towards him at a run.

The bell rang.

Some of the crowd dissipated.

"That's enough!" Mr. Mason was still yelling at the kid in his arms, still thrashing to get free. "Stop, Alex!" he tried again as Mr. Smith reached him.

Mr. Smith reached around Alex's bulk as Mr. Mason let go and stepped to the side to face him. "It's over," Mr. Mason said. The kid raised his head enough for me to confirm that it was Alex, though I wouldn't necessarily have even recognized him if I hadn't heard his name. His hair was a wild mess about his head and shoulders. His teeth were bared like an animal's. His eyes were wide and strange. I've heard the term vacant used to describe eyes, but this was the first time I understood how it was possible. "It's over!" Mr. Mason said again. It seemed to register this time. Alex went mostly limp in Mr. Smith's grasp, but Mr. Smith did not let go. With Mr. Mason at his side with his hand on his shoulder, the two escorted him down the hallway.

I think I stood there with my mouth open a few seconds before I turned away. I stepped on something green and slippery. It was Alex's windbreaker. I rolled it into a tight ball and stuffed it into my backpack. I'd find a way to return it to him later.

Please, please, please leave a review. It means the world to me. Also, I'm doing better to update about once a week, and I have the next portion almost ready already, so if a lot of people are all excited, I'll be more likely to post faster. Thanks in advance!