A.N. Thanks again to my long suffering Beta, Lisa, who poured buckets of red ink over this chapter and so is not responsible for the mistakes. Thanks also to her for allowing me to borrow Tim for my story. He's a nice kid – too bad Lisa hasn't posted her story with him yet.

A Bad Monday

8:00 am

There were two paths leading away from the platform on which Ryan stood: one led off to the right along the crest of the hill to the admin center, Sandy's destination; the other took a meandering route down to the central quadrangle. Ryan headed to the quad. Coming to school today had been a dumb idea. This realization struck him on the climb up from the parking lot. If Sandy had asked him one more time if he wanted to go home, he would have said yes.

Now Marissa, pride, and the gentle downhill slope of the path kept him moving forward. His prime motivation failed him when he found that Marissa wasn't on her usual bench waiting for him. He frowned as he saw that a kid from the Middle School had filled their bench with her book bag and assorted stuff. He vaguely recognized her. She was here on upper campus to take an AP class this semester. She looked up from her book and smiled when she realized someone had stopped in front of her, but her bright smile slipped to be replaced by a tentative, uncertain one as she caught sight of the expression on his battered face.

Ryan hadn't meant to scowl at the girl. He was concerned that Marissa wasn't where he expected her to be. Before he could say anything, the girl began hastily gathering up her belongings.

Where was Marissa? She was always on campus before he was on the rare days that he didn't ride with her. So, that left the question - why wasn't she here? He realized now that he hadn't heard from her at all on Sunday - not at home or at the hospital.

Claire, he remembered the girl's name, dropped one of her books as she tried to edge past him on the pathway. He had to go down onto one knee to retrieve it for her. He handed it to her absent-mindedly still kneeling like a Victorian suitor promising his heart. She scurried away with a timid thank you and without raising her eyes to meet his. It was only then that it struck him how oddly she'd acted and how abruptly she'd left.

"Oh great! I'm scaring kids now." He got back to his feet with a disgusted sigh.

With Marissa absent he might as well head to class. He considered going to his locker in the Science Building to dump his extra books, but knew he wasn't up to making two trips across campus . The climb up the hill to his first class would be enough for right now. He set off with a lopsided smile. God, he had bad ideas sometimes!

****

Anna had a major complaint to register with Ryan Atwood and she intended to confront him with it before class. Accident or not, she couldn't believe that he would call Summer about the accident on Friday and not call her until Sunday. From her spot on the steps of the Nichol Building, she spotted him coming up the hill from the quadrangle. Her angry scowl softened into a frown of concern as she watched his progress. Ryan was moving very slowly.

Anna walked down to meet him. As he reached the bottom of the staircase, he let the backpack on his shoulder slip to the ground and dropped onto, rather than sat on, the bench at its foot. Now she was worried.

"Well, you're a sight Ryan. Should you even be here today?" Anna hesitantly put out a hand to touch the large bruise discoloring the right side of his face.

"Hey, Anna." He flinched slightly as her fingers lightly brushed the skin. "This is nothing. I've looked worse before." He smiled for Anna's sake, a thin smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"So, what's the news about Seth?"

"He's doing pretty well. He'll be home from the hospital by the end of the week, and he'll have regular visiting hours starting today." At her relieved expression he hastened to add, "But I'd check with the hospital about that before you go up. Things are definitely looking up." The smile on Ryan's face was genuine and unstrained this time.

"You're a lucky man, Ryan Atwood. I had every intention of killing you this morning for calling Summer and forgetting to call me. I've had a change of heart, though." She gave him a wicked smile. "Killing you today would be too much like a mercy killing. Letting you live will be a much better punishment."

"You have no idea, Anna. Consider me punished." He gave her a quick look out of the corner of his eye and then leaned forward to pick up his backpack from where it had landed.

She beat him to it and, using both hands, hefted it onto her shoulder.

"Hey, give me that. I can do it." He got to his feet slowly and reached for his backpack.

Anna backed out of reach.

"Do you carry every book you own around all day?" She asked in disbelief as the weight of the bag caused the strap to cut into her shoulder. "Where'd this old thing come from? It smells like fish." She wrinkled her nose at the odor but only adjusted the pack on her shoulder to a more comfortable position. She made no effort to return it.

"I can't carry much in the new bag Kirsten bought so I use my old backpack on weekends. I had planned to do a lot of studying this weekend but…" He trailed off and then finished without thinking. "It was too far to walk to drop them off at my locker this morning so I just brought them all with me." Realizing his mistake, he snapped in irritation. "Just give it here, Anna."

She took another step back. "Never had a girl carry your books before, Chino? Guys are the same everywhere - all macho attitude and no common sense." This earned her a major frown. "Okay, I'll make a deal with you. I'm starting up the stairs with this bag of bricks now, and I'll give it back to you whenever you catch up to me." With this she turned and headed up the staircase.

Ryan followed after her scowling but, even relieved of the weight of his pack, he wasn't able to reclaim it until they were a few steps from the door of their classroom and less than a minute before the second bell.

****

Tim Lockhart looked up from the book he was reading and checked the clock above the door. It was 30 seconds before the second bell and he wasn't surprised that Ryan hadn't made it to school today. The pileup on the freeway that he and Seth had gotten caught in on Friday had been major news over the weekend.

He was surprised and, he realized, disappointed that Anna wasn't in class yet. Well, maybe she'd luck out and get here before Ms. Lovell. He wasn't sure that he had ever heard of their teacher being late before but it was looking increasingly likely today.

He went back to his book and, just as the bell began to ring, heard the door open and close. There would be no ten-minute rule today -- Ms. Lovell made it after all. Tim checked ahead in his book and decided he had time to finish the chapter before she got herself organized. He'd found his place in the story when the chatter that filled the class was bludgeoned into silence like a steer in a slaughterhouse by a loud male voice.

"Damn, I thought we got rid of the little fag and the car thief."

Tim's head snapped up and he saw Ryan and Anna in the aisle, halfway to the back row they shared with him. Ryan, in the lead, had stopped. His backpack, off his shoulder, was gripped in his left hand and he was swinging around, right fist clenched, with a grim expression made worse by his bruising.

Anna jabbed Ryan hard in the ribs, which produced a noticeable wince. She followed up with a shove and a sneering comment that was loud enough for the whole class to hear. "Forget it, Chino. He's not worth the trouble." She waited for him to move, then whispered, "Ryan, please! Just keep moving."

Ryan met Anna's eyes for a beat before looking away. He took a deep breath, and slowly unclenched his fist. Ryan stood for a moment studying the backs of his silent classmates. They were very obviously avoiding looking at Anna and him. Finally, with a shake of his head, he made his way to the back of the classroom and his seat. The scrape of Ryan's chair as he pulled it out signaled the start of a subdued buzz of conversation.

Ryan slumped in his chair, chin resting on his chest, legs stretched out in front of him, staring at his feet. His hands played absently with a pencil.

Tim couldn't think of anything to say to Ryan that didn't sound lame. Everyone at Harbor knew Ryan's history, but Tim had thought the animosity would fade as people got to know him in class and as one of the school's athletes. He'd more than held his own in his classes. No one accused Ryan of being at Harbor because of Mrs. Cohen's money any more.

Ryan's success on the Pirates soccer team should have won over the beer-and-sweat-sock crowd. He'd brought a solid, methodical, and selfless style to the striker position that melded smoothly with Luke's aggressive, high-risk, flashier style. With assists from Ryan, Luke led the conference in goals and was on his way to a league record for goals in a season.

Maybe it was that Ryan's contribution to the team was too subtle to appreciate, but anyone who understood the game knew what he'd added to the Pirates. They also knew why Ryan was the third leading scorer in the league.

Tim looked to Anna for help. She was staring at Ryan intently with no pretense of casualness in her face. Tim caught her eye and spread his hands in a questioning gesture. If Anna had a suggestion to offer, it died along with the buzz of conversation in the class, cut off by the entry of a young man carrying a stack of files and books. Anna shrugged and with a final worried glance at Ryan directed her attention to the front of the classroom.

****

English Comp, Ryan's first period, was normally one of the good periods of the day. Ms Lovell, the teacher, was okay and Anna was in the class. This had formerly meant one friendly face with which to start the day.

Tim Lockhart, a teammate from soccer, was the only other person in the class who acknowledged his presence there. Some of the class ignored him - the rest made sure he knew how welcome he was at Harbor. He now had twelve toy models of the car that Trey stole in August, a T-shirt from Chino H.S., and a wanted poster with his picture on it.

Tim was okay, both in and out of the classroom. He'd always treated Ryan fairly and given him the benefit of the doubt. He'd never displayed the condescension, suspicion, or hostility that Ryan had run into with so many others around school.

When Ryan asked about Tim, Seth filled him in on campus gossip. Seth was adept at eavesdropping on other people's conversations. Appearances to the contrary, Seth could be quiet and listen when he chose because he was like old wallpaper, familiar and, therefore, invisible and unnoticed. By keeping a low profile Seth heard lots and knew far more about his fellow students at Harbor than any of them would have guessed.

Of course, some times the conversations he'd overheard concerned Seth Cohen and the things said had hurt - hurt as much as any of the humiliating pranks he'd endured over the years. Some of these he turned into jokes on himself and shared with Ryan. Ryan knew that there were other things that Seth might never confide to him.

Tim and Seth had been together at Harbor since grade school. He and Seth weren't friends; but Tim had never participated in any of the indignities visited upon Seth by his other classmates. Tim had grown quieter and more withdrawn since his older brother died in a car crash the previous summer. The talk around school at the time had been that Richie was bombed at the time of the accident. Tim stopped doing the party scene the same summer. Now, Tim no longer seemed to be a member of any of the campus cliques.

Seth declared that for a Harbor student, Tim was relatively normal - high praise from Cohen. He explained this by postulating that Tim was a human changeling taken by the pod people and raised as one of their own. Seth also claimed that further proof of this could be found in Tim's dad, Paul Lockhart. Seth had seen Mr. Lockhart occasionally at business parties Kirsten had hosted at home. He was a big man with dirty blond hair and a voice that boomed, but never seemed happy; nothing like his dark, lanky son, who excelled at distance races and whose passion was cross-country.

Ryan took all of this to be Seth's way of saying that Tim was one of the few classmates, male or female, that Seth would have liked to get to know. Had Seth ever developed the skill necessary to carry on a normal conversation, one that didn't consist of a string of one-liners and non sequiturs that left the party on the receiving end dazed and confused, that might have happened.

Ryan knew that Tim went his own way. It had been Tim, one of the soccer team's veterans, who had unexpectedly taken the lead in killing the plan cooked up to remove Luke as captain last fall. Tim wanted to be able to play and enjoy soccer without a tangle of meaningless distractions. He seemed to try to be fair to everyone. Ryan didn't know him well enough to call him a friend, but he thought he might be one day.

Somehow, at the beginning of the semester, the three of them found themselves occupying the last two tables in Ms. Lovell's English Comp class – Ryan and Tim on the right and Anna on the left. Ms. Lovell believed in allowing her students to find their own uniquely, right seat in her class. Being an old flower child at a button down prep school, it was one of her many small acts of rebellion against conformity.

****

The young man standing in front of Ryan seemed scarcely older than the students facing him. His name was Mr. Snyder and he'd be replacing Ms. Lovell for the next two months until she recovered from her surgery.

In Ryan's experience change, especially unexpected change, almost always resulted in something bad happening. You couldn't prepare yourself - harden yourself - for surprises. Outside the classroom, surprises had too often meant pain either physical or emotional for him. Ryan shook his head and noticed Anna smiling at him. He fought the urge to stick his tongue out at her.

"Chill, Chino. How bad can this puppy be? We'll paper train him. You'll see." She whispered to him from across the aisle. Ryan quickly found out what the sub had in mind – as the puppy continued.

"I didn't have time to review Ms. Lovell's lesson plan, however, I did review the syllabus for this class." This statement provoked some nervous mutters from the students. "Your final exam will be in two parts: the first day will cover the readings in your textbook and the second day will be an essay, with the topic to be assigned on the time of the exam."

The new guy had been here five minutes and nothing bad had happened so far, Ryan thought. He wasn't sure where this was going but he knew there was a shoe somewhere waiting to drop.

"So, today, to help me get to know all of you and to give you practice in writing an extemporaneous essay, I'd like you to each write a personal essay on the topic, How I Spent My Summer Vacation." The groans this statement elicited were punctuated by the crack of a pencil snapping in two.

Ryan stared down at the pieces of pencil in his hand. He didn't have to look up to know that people were sneaking glances his way. He could picture their amused smiles as they all wondered what the car thief from Chino would put in his essay. To avoid their smirks, he kept his head down as he pulled paper and a pen from his backpack under the table.

Ryan stared at the blank piece of paper. He hadn't even written his name on it yet when a female voice, he should've known but didn't recognize, spoke up.

"Oh, excuse me, Mr. Snyder." The voice came from his left.

"Yes . . . Miss Stern, do you have a question?" Mr. Snyder came around from behind the desk carrying Ms. Lovell's seating chart and leaned against the front edge of the desk.

Anna, who was wearing her usual short skirt, stood with a considerable display of leg and stepped into the aisle. "I was hoping you could give me a little more information about the essay you want us to write. What's going to happen after we turn it in?" Her voice was a breathy one Ryan had never heard her use in or out of class. Had he not known better, he would've thought she was flirting with the puppy.

"I'll grade it and return it to you." Mr. Snyder's expression was puzzled. "What did you think I'd do with them?"

Anna held a pen in her right hand that she slowly slid between the thumb and index finger of her left hand. "I just wanted to make sure that we weren't going to have to read our essays to the class or anything embarrassing like that. I want to be frank in my paper, but I sailed to Tahiti this summer with friends and there are some details that I just wouldn't want to share with the class. I'm sure I could trust your discretion. You're a teacher, after all."

Anna glanced over at the boy's table. Ryan and Tim were staring at her with expressions that she hoped indicated male, teenage disbelief. She couldn't believe that she was doing this either. As she watched she thought she saw a light go on in one of their faces. Interesting, cute and smart.

Tim thought the word simpering was only used to describe the speech of vaporous and vacuous heroines in bad 19th century novels. So, why was no-nonsense-tell-it-like-it-is Anna-Ms.-Steeltown-Stern simpering? Then he got it. She was trying to help Ryan. By humiliating herself this way, she deflected people's thoughts away from Ryan and his history but still got him the answers he needed. Any guy on campus could tell you she was pretty; and a few days in class with her was enough for the brains to show; but Anna was a good person who was showing her decency in front of the whole class and only two of them got it.

"No, Miss Stern. This essay is a classroom exercise. You'll be graded on it but you won't be sharing it with the class."

"Thank you so much for making that clear, Mr. Snyder. I'm sure we'll all enjoy having you as our substitute," Anna gushed as she settled herself into her chair.

The sub turned his attention away from Anna to another student's question with a visible effort. Ryan thought he saw color in the puppy's cheek. That was when he realized what Anna had done. She'd asked those questions for him because she knew he wouldn't ask them. He shot her a quick, grateful look. The paper, however, still lay before him as blank as when he pulled it out of his notebook. He saw his classmates working on their essays. Essays that he knew recounted European vacations with their parents, summers of sun and sand here in Newport, or summer jobs spent in one of daddy's companies.

He watched as the second hand of the clock over the door swept around the face unable to decide how to start his own essay. He had to turn in something, anything. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw Tim's arm slowly rise.

"Mr. Snyder, one more question." In Ryan's experience, Tim talked even less than he did.

"How many points is the essay worth toward our final grade? Will it be substituted for one of the other essay assignments on the syllabus or are we doing it for extra points? It wouldn't be fair for it to be anything but bonus points."

Ryan glanced at him in surprise. Why would Tim care? Ryan had never seen any of his papers come back with anything lower than a B+.

"You're correct . . .." Mr. Snyder consulted the seating chart. "Mr. Lockhart. This essay can only boost your grade; it won't have a negative effect on anyone's grade. Class, I would suggest you get started, if you haven't already. You have fifty minutes left." The substitute walked around the desk and settled into the swivel chair behind it.

Tim, who'd appeared to give the sub his complete attention during his answer, turned back to the paper on his desk and resumed writing. After a couple of seconds, he lifted his head and met Ryan's curious stare with a wink and, seeming to catch sight of something beyond Ryan, a shy smile before turning back to his paper.

Ryan looked to his left and saw Anna, head down, writing furiously, with a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

"So, I guess I have two friends in this class." Ryan thought. Focusing on the paper on his desk, he picked up his pen and wrote:

My New Life

By Ryan Atwood

August 7th, 2003, was the day I got arrested

Going along with my brother, Trey, that night was the dumbest thing I ever did. Going along with my brother that night was the best thing that ever happened to me. August 7th, 2003, was the first day of my new life….

He wrote quickly, mentally sorting the details of his summer in Newport into categories: necessary to tell, okay to tell, probably shouldn't tell, can't tell, and too painful or embarrassing to tell. Once he'd gotten started, he found it easy to write about the summer of 2003 and his new life – there was a lot to tell.

****

Tim had finished and gone on to his next class by the time Ryan finished his essay and turned it in. He found Anna waiting for him at the entrance to the building.

"Thanks for that."

"What did I do, Ryan?" Anna imitated one of his trademark head-down-glance-out-of-the- eye glances.

Ryan chuckled. "You know what you guys did. You and Tim helped me keep it together in there. I owe you both big, but I'll have to thank Tim in PE this afternoon. Why are you still hanging around? You'll be late for your next class."

"I'm waiting to carry your books." She smiled prettily, but Ryan could hear determination in her voice.

"Allow a guy some dignity, Anna." Her smile didn't change but her eyes narrowed. "What about your reputation – first Seth and now me?"

"Reputation? I just channeled Summer Roberts and flirted with a geek in tweed in front of a class of morons. I'll be lucky if there's not a big red A painted on my locker by morning. I'm from Pittsburgh. I wasn't registered at Harbor while still in the womb. I was Seth Cohen's girl friend for three weeks, for pity's sake" She laughed. "I have no hope of getting in with the crowd that cares about that kind of thing."

"So, Chino, you're saying you can manage all on your own? Don't need any help from anyone?" She put her hands on her hips and gave him a thorough once over. "So, I'm supposed to ignore the "Night of the Living Dead" look and let you do your thing?" She cocked her head. "What would you do if you were in my position and Seth needed help?"

Ryan stared down at his feet. "I'd tell him to give me his damn books and get over it. He'd probably say everyone called him a fag anyway so he might as well let me carry his books and confirm their suspicions. His rep couldn't get any worse, so what the hell."

"And, what about your rep, Chino?" She asked sweetly, turning the knife ever so gently.

Ryan sighed and handed over the backpack. "You can have them as far as the Science Building. But only because that's where my locker is and because we both have classes there."

He looked down at his watch and groaned. "Classes which start in fifteen minutes. You lead the way. I'll follow."

As Anna started down the stairs, she heard Ryan mutter under his breath. "Maybe people won't think we're together."