Title: Another Brick in the Wall

Author: Lea of Mirkwood

Rating: R, just in case anyone is opposed to the general idea of high school. And so I don't get sued for poisoning the minds of innocent children because I misrated my story.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Faculty. I only own Kit.

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Senior Poll Category #2: Most likely to become president

Casey Conner: Delilah Profitt or Kit O'Connell (the second name added after Kit saw the paper and started laughing so hard she fell over.)

Stokely Mitchell: Stan Rosado

Delilah Profitt: Delilah Profitt

Stan Rosado: Delilah Profitt (and then we'll cease to be a world power.)

Gabe Santora: Gabe Santora

Katherine O'Connell: Zeke Tyler will become president of the Pornographic States of America

Zeke Tyler: Principal Drake

Friday, October 30, 1998, before First Period

Delilah hurried over to Stan. "Hi, sweetie! Could you help me with these flyers for the party?" Delilah handed the pile to her quarterback boyfriend. "It's that sort of post-game night, Halloween costume party that Gabe's been planning for ages."

Stan looked resignedly at the pile of flyers in his arms. "Sure, Del. Who do I give them to?"

Delilah smiled sweetly at Stan. "The senior class, of course. Don't worry, honey. I'll be here to show you the don'ts about who to invite."

Stan grimaced, thinking about Delilah's ideas about popularity, not based on personality but on clothes, money, attitude (but only an attitude conducive to Delilah's) and most importantly a letter jacket. Stan quickly changed his grimace into a smile. Delilah, interpreting this to mean he wouldn't invite anyone heinous, pecked him on the cheek.

"Thanks, sweetie."

Stan moved to his position by the door and started passing out (with Delilah's instructions called to him from across the hall) the flyers to the seniors, and few acceptable underclassmen. Stan glanced across the hall at Delilah and saw she was absorbed in talking to her friends from the cheerleading squad. Stan sighed and looked at the front walk. He glanced at the front steps and spotted two members of the senior class that he knew were *not* on the guest list. The new girl and that other kid...named...named....what was his name again? He grimaced again. The girl said something to the boy (were they dating? No, one of the guys on the team said the girl, Kit, had a boyfriend back on the ranch.) and he heard her say, "-no, Casey, I will not leave you alone and I will not stop making fun of Delilah."

Stan smiled at this and checked for Delilah. She was reapplying lipstick and listening to one of her friends talk. Stan looked at the two outcasts nearing and decided to invite them. For once, he decided to forget Delilah's list and be nice. He stepped over to the pair and handed them flyers. Casey kept his eyes fixed on the ground but Kit looked up at Stan. She took the flyers and smiled at him mischievously.

"You sure about this? I mean, inviting us two 'outcasts' to your big society party?" She leaned close to him and looked up at him, her eyebrow raised. "Better be careful. We might actually be..." she lowered her voice dramatically, "...fun." Stan laughed and Kit straightened up. "Well, I might be. I don't know, Casey would be if he talked more!" she said pointedly, shaking her companion's shoulder. Casey looked up for a second, then muttered a shy, "Thanks."

Stan shrugged and glanced back across the hall. Delilah was glaring at him and making a slashing motion across her throat. Stan shrugged and turned back to Kit and Casey.

"Well, you know, if you can come. It'd be...you know, fun."

Kit smiled and glanced at the flyer. She looked at Stan and said in a leveling voice, perfectly straightforward, "The party's at Gabe's. He doesn't know you're inviting me, does he?"

Stan shifted his weight. "Well, no, it was actually kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing."

Casey raised his head when he heard Kit say, "I don't think he'd like me there, after I insulted him."

Casey stared at Kit in amazement. Then, just when he thought she might be somewhere near empathetic, she spoke again.

"Of course I'm coming anyway."

Stan laughed a little, then felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around.

"Hi Del. I've just been giving two fellow seniors the flyer for the party Saturday. They said they'd love to come."

Delilah smiled in a strained way. "I'm sure they would. So, ah...by the way, no one's going to be wearing costumes. So you don't need to bother with that. It's just, you know, for the whole principle of the thing. So you don't need to bother with any gaudy or elaborate things. No costumes at all."

Stan looked at Delilah sharply, but she turned her gaze to Casey and beamed at him. Casey swallowed.

"Going to have those pictures ready for the next issue, Casey?"

Casey nodded and smiled quickly. "Sure."

--- --- ---

Saturday, October 31, 1998, 7:30 p.m.

Kit stood in the lobby of the airport attracting stares. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss her father on the cheek.

"You sure you're alright with this, Kit?" asked Ben O'Connell to his only daughter. "We'll be only gone for a week. It's only to check up on the ranch. You sure you want to stay behind? This party is that important to you?"

"Daddy, I'll be fine. Mom, tell Dad I won't let any axe murderers in the house."

"Ben, she's not going to let anyone in the house. Stop worrying. You'll make us miss our flight."

Kit nodded. "Yeah Dad. Don't miss your flight."

--- --- ---

Kit O'Connell

It's not like I want to go to this stupid party. I don't even like Gabe. I think he's a conceited jerk who can't tell a good deed from his own…no, I'm trying not to swear. But Delilah was invited. Which means Casey is going. He must like her, I mean if he didn't he wouldn't keep defending her whenever I start ragging on her. And I really think that if Casey's there alone with the football team and there's not even school administrators there to referee it. I mean, they're at school every day and look what happens anyway! So I have a feeling that if there isn't at least one person there on his side, something awful might happen to poor Casey…

--- --- ---

Casey Conner

You know, I really hate high school. I thought that when I got to be a senior everybody would stop picking on me like they have for the last five years of my life. But no, apparently I'm just going to be the pathetic little outcast for the rest of my life. Maybe if I go to college in Canada nobody will realize I was the school dork for all of high school. But at least now I'm invited to a really good party. All since sophomore year I've heard how great Gabe's parties always are, how there's always music, and dancing and beer. I've heard stories about the people too drunk to get home and the people who throw up on the neighbor's lawn gnomes. I don't know, maybe I'll get in a few drinks and prove I'm not such a little pure and perfect geek. It's great that there won't be costumes. I can't stand not knowing who I'm talking to. But with all the hypocrisy in school, that's pretty much every day. I mean, I don't really know Stokely. She seems really nice (if anti-social and reclusive), but she could be just like Allison in the Breakfast Club and steal stuff all the time. And who is Kit, really? Sometimes I think that everything she does is all a façade. She's way too weird to be real. I bet if anyone got in real trouble, she'd be gone in a flash. But I'm off subject. Can't wait for the party!

--- --- ---

Casey got out of the car and started up the walk quickly. His father leaned out the passenger side of the car and yelled out, "Be careful!"

Casey winced and hurried up. Even he knew how pathetic that sounded. As the car pulled away, Casey could already hear the jeers from the house. He hurried up the steps and reached for the front doorbell.

"Casey!"

The voice stopped his hand halfway to the button. He turned and saw a girl getting up from her seat on the porch swing. She walked quickly over to him. He looked closely at her face. It was Kit, but a Kit that looked very different from the Kit he knew. The Kit he knew wore jeans and a T-shirt, or baggy pants and a fitted blouse. The Kit he knew had thick dark hair that refused to look normal and was usually in a ponytail. Kit usually wore glasses. The girl in front of him had dark sleek hair reaching to her shoulders. Her green eyes were lined in dark kohl and her lips were painted gold. Casey looked at Kit up and down, trying to make sure it was actually her. Kit was wearing a very revealing net top that looked like it was just two dense mesh strips running from the back of her neck down her front covering her breasts. She was wearing gold lame slacks. Casey looked at Kit's face, his face feeling hot. Kit tugged on her hair.

"It's just a wig," she said carelessly.

Casey opened and closed his mouth a few times and finally blurted out, pointing at her top, "Isn't that underwear?"

Kit laughed out loud. She then looked at Casey with an amused smile and said with a grin, "Marry me."

She chuckled again and then rang the doorbell for him. Delilah opened the door and looked out.

"Casey! Hello!" she said in a friendly tone. Casey looked at her with a kind of worship.

"Hello Delilah."

"And this is…"

"Kit."

"Oh! Oh, Kit! That's right. You look…different."

Delilah was in costume, she was dressed as a peacock in shimmering blues, greens and purples. Kit decided not to mention that the colorful peacocks were male.

"What are you dressed as, Kit?" asked Casey, seeing the antagonistic light in her eyes.

"Kit? Kit? Who is this Kit? I am Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile."

Casey privately thought that the top made her look more like Queen of the Night, but decided not to say so.

He turned to Delilah and stared. Suddenly a hand waved in front of his eyes.

"Hello? Are we going in, or are we going to just stare at Delilah?" asked Kit.

Casey jumped and looked at Kit and then back at Delilah. "You…you….look….umm….pretty."

Kit rolled her eyes and left the room. Casey smiled at Delilah shyly and hurried off into at her for a minute the living room.

12:00 a.m.

"Hey, Casey!" yelled an inebriated Gabe, lifting his mouth from the spigot of the beer keg. Gabe was too inebriated to realize that the school geek was at his party. Gabe pushed aside his pirate eye patch and laughed.

"Can't see a thing with this damn thing on!"

Casey leaned back away from Gabe's disgusting beer breath.

"Yeah, I imagine not."

Gabe reached back his hand to slap Casey's back in a companionable manner, but he missed Casey completely.

"Come on, join in the fun, eh? Have a drink!"

Casey shook his head, but the room seemed to spin and sway around. The punch must be spiked, he registered dimly. Somehow, however, he found himself nodding and bending over in front of the spigot.

A few rooms away, Kit was sitting on a couch reading a copy of People Magazine. She idly flipped the page and checked her watch again. She reached over and grabbed her untouched cup of punch and brought it to her lips. She took a sip and immediately spat it back out, spraying Gabe's collection of Sports Illustrated with spiked punch. Kit made a face.

"Cheap vodka, too," Kit shrugged and heard a roar of laughter from the other room. She narrowed her eyes and held the cup over above the teak table. She slowly upturned the cup and poured the cheap punch all over the Sports Illustrated back issues. She shook the last few remaining drops out of the cup and threw it across the room.

"God. This would be so much easier if Nell were here. No, screw that. This would be so much easier if I just didn't come tonight."

1:00 a.m.

"Come on, Casey, just one more drink, man!"

Casey laughed. He wasn't sure what was really so funny, except that he just wanted to laugh. He nodded and laughed again. Jason, the linebacker, clapped Casey on the back. God, this is great, thought Casey. I'm finally one of them. I feel like I fit in. For the first time in my life, these guys aren't trying to make my life miserable. They're like my friends. He leaned over and closed his mouth over the spigot on the keg and turned the knob. These guys are great. He felt blissful oblivion washing over him. Happiness swelled inside his mind, suffusing his senses and making all his thoughts melt away.

1:15 a.m.

Kit extended her leg, catching her toes on the bottom edge of the punch stained coffee table. She pushed and sent the table upturning, spilling wet magazines all over the rug. She dug the points of her stiletto heels into the rug. Suddenly she heard a yell from the other room.

"He's about out, man!"

Kit stood up and stretched her arms over her head. Her arm scraped against the coarse hair of the Cleopatra wig and she pulled the thing off and threw it in the corner of the room. Her hair was tightly pinned up on her head. She started yanking the pins out of her hair and sticking them in her pocket. When she finally removed all of the pins, her hair fell down around her shoulders in a thick mass of bobby-pin induced curls. She walked out into the living room and looked over at the card tables holding the kegs. Casey was laying on his back on the couch, giggling. Kit saw immediately that he was completely wasted. A couple of the guys from the football team were looking at him in a more sober manner. Oh, Casey, you idiot, she thought mournfully. You little naive idiot, you're supposed to put your tongue on the spigot so you don't swallow enough to get yourself completely, stupidly, moronically intoxicatingly drunk. The linebacker walked over to Casey and pulled him halfway off the couch.

"Hey," laughed Casey in confusion, "What's going on, guys? What...what are you doing?"

Kit's eyes clouded with pain for a moment and she hurried over.

"What are you doing? What the hell do you think you are doing?" yelled Kit. The linebacker let Casey slide back down onto the sofa.

"What the hell do you think? We're just having a bit of fun, ya know? You wanna join?" said one of the others.

Kit let out a little unamused laugh. "I think your brand of fun would only make me nauseous and homicidal. Leave him alone." Kit paused, seeing complete and utter unconcern in their eyes. "Fine. You wanna play? Let's play. Drinking contest. I win, you leave Casey alone. You win, I shut up about it."

Gabe shrugged and one corner of his mouth tilted up in what he thought was a cocky, attractive smile.

"Fine. You against me."

Kit nodded, and smirked at the thought of the loophole she had made for herself. See, knocking out the football team and taking Casey away by force did not fall under the taboo category of talking, as long as she didn't say anything while she kicked their collective asses. A few minutes later Kit surveyed the twelve shot glasses of vodka in front of her. Six each. Her concentration was less than helped by Casey laying on the opposite end of the couch laughing. Unfortunately, Kit knew that the only reason he wasn't vomiting all over Gabe's carpet was because he was nice and stationarily laying down on the couch. The second he moved, however, he was going to regret every single molecule of alcohol that ever passed his lips. She turned her attention back to the matter at hand: six shots of vodka. She cocked her head at Gabe and smiled.

"Bottoms up!"

They both grabbed the shots at the same time and started furiously downing them. Kit reached for the last one. Gabe's hand shot out for his sixth and knocked it to the side accidentally. It swept off the table and shattered on the parquet flooring. Kit threw back her head and laughed loudly.

"You are such an idiot!"

Gabe sat and stared at her empty shot glasses with gold lipstick marks on the white porcelain. She stood up, her heels crunching on broken glass, and moved to Casey's end of the couch. She shook his shoulder.

"C'mon Case. Time to go home."

She pulled on his shoulder and helped him to a sitting position. He looked up at her foggily.

"Kit? Wha…wha's going on?"

Kit smiled at his drunkeness. "Casey, it's time for you to go."

--- --- ---

Kit opened the passenger door to her convertible and half pushed Casey into the seat, half picked him up and put him there. She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a few Burger King napkins. Casey's head lolled back against the backrest. Kit wiped off Casey's forehead. Suddenly his eyes focused and went wide. Kit recognized the look and quickly stepped to the side. Casey leaned over the side and threw up all over the sidewalk. Kit sighed and walked over to the storm drain and knelt in front of the opening. She stuck her finger in her throat and threw up all the alcohol she had just imbibed. She sat motionless for a minute, jittery from the revulsion. She hated to throw up. Hated it. After a minute she got in the car and started the engine. She leaned over and pulled Casey to the center of the front bench seat. He tried to concentrate on the road but soon felt his head slipping down to rest on Kit's shoulder. Kit turned into a driveway and stopped the car.

Casey looked up and didn't recognize the house he was at. Kit had stopped the car. She opened the drivers door and he felt himself be dragged across the seat and out of the car. Kit had put the top back and locked the door. He was slipping, and even though he was trying to walk straight, he was just so tired, and the ground kept moving around. Suddenly he felt a familiar sensation, that of bitter bile in his throat.

"Feel sicky," he managed to mumble before he fell down. As he was rid of more beer and what he was sure had to be his stomach lining, he felt a hand on his jaw holding his head straight so he wouldn't get any on him and an arm around his shoulders steadying him. He wiped his mouth off with the back of his arm and tried to prop himself back up with that arm but he felt it give way. His vision faded to gray and he dimly realized he was passing out drunk.

Kit groaned as she realized Casey had completely passed out. She managed to drag him through the front door and got him to the spiral staircase that led to her garage studio apartment. Somehow she managed to carry the unconscious Casey up the stairs and across her room. She dropped him onto her bed on top of the sheets. She unlaced his sneakers and took off his socks and set them neatly beside the bed. She lifted him up a little to pull the sheets out from under him and then covered him up. Kit gently placed his head in the center of the pillow and used the corner of the sheet to wipe off his forehead. She walked over to the other side of her room and turned on a nightlight and then walked back over to Casey. She sat down on the edge of the bed next to him and looked at his face, and the tear stains on his cheeks. Even as she watched him a tear ran down from the corner of his eye across his temple and into his hair from his closed eyes. She sighed.

"Poor Casey," she said softly, brushing the back of her hand across his forehead. "Poor little Casey."

--- --- ---

Kit O'Connell

1:36 a.m.

Well, Casey (whom I will now refer to as Grantaire) has gone to sleep. And I'm stuck sleeping in an inflatable chair. I am so hungry now. I think I'll listen to Elvis for a while before I go to sleep. In an inflatable chair.

Delilah Profitt

1:37 a.m.

Glad I left that party at midnight.