Sorry about the shortness of the last chapter. It's all I could come up with. However, I do hope to make up for that in this chapter and the next. More so in the next chapter.

I'm making references to another cartoon in this chapter. I'm sure you all will see it very quickly.

Read On!


"I think that….Poe meant for the house to be connected to both the mental and physical state of Roderick Usher, maybe his sister too. The house couldn't have always been in as bad as it is in the story, and it collapses once Roderick dies after his sister. Even he thinks the house is alive. It says the windows are like eyes and at the end, it's like the house screams out in pain before it collapses. But…he could not be sick at all. Sometimes it's like since he expects to be sick, he acts sick, and I'm not sure if his sister is dead when Roderick puts her in the tomb. She has rosy cheeks….I don't think dead people have rosy cheeks, but I'm sure that when the house fell it killed her, if she wasn't already dead. But that's just my opinion. I didn't particularly like that story by Poe. Only read it once. It was kind of repetitive compared to his other works."

With three of his friends having TJ in one of their classes (so far) Mikey thought the idea of him popping up in one of his classes was becoming more and more likely. As the day passed and he moved from one class to the next, he looked into the classroom, eye darting through the room for any sign of him. Until fourth period English. He didn't see him in the classroom. Rather, right as he arrived at the door, TJ did too.

Somehow, everyone else being afraid of him, Mikey didn't feel as afraid as they were. He was concerned with what TJ was capable of, yes. That goes without saying. But he wasn't afraid of his presence. His presence alone wasn't something worth causing a fuss over. Mikey thought everyone was blowing that part of him being here out of proportion.

Or that could be the part of him that was always willing to forgive and forget. He couldn't make out which.

"Nice observation, Detweiler," Their English teacher, Ms. Pataki said. "Most students don't make that connection." As she went back to teaching the class, Mikey couldn't help but over at him. He was fortunate enough to not have to sit next to him; he was two seats over to the left. He didn't expect TJ to be one for reading much of anything (besides the Barnaby Boy's books, or something similar). Then again, he spent some time behind bars, and people behind bars need some form of entertainment besides staring at the walls.

Along with possibly being the least afraid of him, Mikey was the most interested in what kind of person he was now. Everything he knew about juvenile detention came from the media, but the media was not always right, so he expected to be mostly wrong.

What he was sure of was TJ spending the bulk of his time locked away in his head. Juvie was a miniature jail, and jail was strict, so it would make sense for him to spend an enormous time thinking, possibly philosophizing. It would fit him, or how he used to be before he went crazy and lashed out on everyone he could reach.

~*~Mikey's POV~*~

Why did he start doing that anyways? There are a bunch of other questions that need to be answered, but everyone wants to know the answer to that. He used to use his talents in causing mayhem for good, then all of a sudden, it changed. First he aimed at those who didn't deserve it, then it was us, his best friends. Why would he do that? It didn't come on gradually, it literally happened overnight. Did he hit his head? Something must've happened to make him like this.

Hmm….I personally think I'm a good judge of character, and from what I see, he looks harmless. Intimidating, but harmless as a whole. I don't think he's as big as a threat as we're making him out to be, and I don't think he's going to try to hurt us. Just think about it. Why would he now? He used to, but he just got out of juvie. If we were him, we wouldn't do anything that would get us in trouble and send us back there, and I imagine he wouldn't either. But we don't want to trigger him.

I need to cut back on the CSI. It's starting to affect me.

It doesn't look like I'm going to rehearsal after school. Or the rest of the week. I'll wait until class is over to tell the others. Nothing gets past Ms. Pataki and I don't want my phone taken away.

I'm lying, sort of. He does scare me a little bit. You would be scared to if one of your friends, one of the nicest kids on the playground, turn into a monster. That's the only word we had to describe him back then. An uncontrollable monster.

Are we scared of him as a person, or just what he can do? I'm not sure. I can see how we would be afraid of him in both ways. The part of him we used to know went away a long time ago and turned into this. And this person is smart enough to get inside our heads, know what we're afraid of, and use it against us to humor himself.

Okay, he sounds like a psychopath.

Let's see….what can I tell from him right now? He likes to read. He said he read more than one story by Edgar Allen Poe. That's something. Poe's works are disturbing to say the least. What does that say about him? He has a dark set of mind, maybe? It's not out of the question.

I wonder if we all can be friends again. I miss those days where this situation was completely out of the question. It'll take some work, but I hope it can happen one day. They all say that I forgive too easily. I say it takes too much effort to not forgive someone and stay angry at them.

So yeah, I forgive him for everything he did, as terrible as it was. You can't stay mad at a person forever. It's exhausting. It try to explain it to the others, but they didn't understand it.

I hope he spent the last few years in his mind philosophizing. He was already sort of a mini-philosopher in elementary school. People who've been in any form of prison spend way too much time alone with their thoughts to NOT have their own philosophies about their life. I would rather than be the case than him plotting revenge against us all. If he's been philosophizing, then we're all safe.

If not, we're all going to see hell.

So far, I don't know what to think about him. We haven't talked to him yet, so we know nothing about him right now. If we all have the same lunch with him, then I think we should go over and talk to him. The worst he could do is ignore us. We're not going to find anything out by not doing anything.

Everyone's going to look at me like I'm crazy when I say that.

I don't blame them.

But we won't know that until later.


I don't like how short this chapter is, but it's all I have. I'll make up for it, promise.