AN: Thank you all again for reviewing, I really appreciate it! My parts are getting longer as all the stories gain momentum. So I hope you all enjoy this. As of now, Spinner is the funest to write. He can be so goofy but cool, I think he is an interesting character. And Craig is the hardest to write. But meh, oh and the "Kingdom under some guy named Pyhlum" and the grandma's soup comments by Spinner refer to the little ditty to help people remember the animal class sysetm. It is something like King Philip Came Over For Grandma's Soup = Kingdom Phylum Class (can't remember the O) Family Genus and Species...now that I've bored you...
Disclaimers: I don't own Degrassi: TNG, Hoobastank, or the Lion King.
Part 3: Lonely
What happened to us?
We used to be so perfect, now we're lost and lonely,
What happened to us?
And deep inside I wonder, did I lose my only?
- "What happened to us?"
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"You bitch."Emma Nelson spun around as soon as she heard the hateful hiss. Standing there, in an ensemble of
too tight and brightly garish fabrics, was Manny Santos. Underneath the "playa" hat and hoop
earrings, she wore a look of narrowed eyebrows and blazing eyes.
"Excuse me?" was all Emma could manage, the statement flung at her as she had been heading to
her locker during the lunch period had thrown her for a loop.
"Your report. You deliberately tried to humiliate me!" Manny planted her hands on her hips and
glared. "Y'know, I'm really tired of your 'holier than thou' attitude."
Emma briefly remembered the time when Alex had said the same thing about her as well, that was
shortly before she had kicked the crap out of her. "I didn't do it as an attack on you."
Manny let out a derisive laugh. "Oh sure. You just can't handle the fact that my actions went
against your moral fiber. You just love looking down on me, don't you?"
"You need to stop being so self-absorbed. Why must you think everything I do is an attempt to
degrade and hurt you?" Emma turned away from her former friend in hopes of a quick get away.
"Me? Self-absorbed?" Manny laughed again, pulling Emma's attention back to her. "Look at
yourself, princess, you think the world revolves around you. But you're really just a scared little
girl, aren't you Em'?"
Emma took a deep breath to try and contain herself. "Manny, I don't want to get into this right
now. Just walk away."
"Walk away? After you just slandered me in Kwan's class?"
Emma's resolve snapped. "'Slandered'? Oh look Manny is using big words now in a lame attempt
to showing she has brains along with those boobs."
"At least I have them."
"You're comebacks are shrinking with your IQ."
"I don't understand how I wasted so many years of my life being stuck as your little sidekick."
Manny crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "Being friends with you had to be my biggest
mistake."
Emma froze as those words came out. Manny regretted, not having unprotected sex, not gaining
an infamous reputation, or destroying relationships, but their years of friendship? It felt like a
physical blow to her stomach.
Manny looked smug at her silence.
But all Emma could do was eye her sadly and leave her standing there in the middle of the hallway
wondering what had happened to their friendship.
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Spinner Mason wanted to bang his head against the lunch table as the bell rang, signifying the end
to the lunch period. It was time for class, and not just any class, but science. The very same class
that there was going to be a giant, huge, mammoth test in.
He suddenly wished Sheila's food really was as poisonous as it looked so he could die right then
and be spared the agony that was awaiting him under the guise of a really hot teacher.
With sudden decisiveness, Spinner turned to his slightly geeky-at-times friend, Marco del Rossi.
"Quick! Tell me everything we've ever learned in Ms. H's class, in small words, in under 5
minutes! Go...now!" he awaited all the answers with a wide, expectant face.
Marco just raised one dark eyebrow at him and proceeded to stare blankly.
Spinner groaned. "Talk to me man! I am not ready for this!"
Across the table, Spinner's other friend, Jimmy Brooks groaned in agreement. "I don't blame you!
Comprehensive tests are the worse kind of wrong."
Paige Michalchuk, Spinner's girlfriend, however, looked unimpressed. "Come now, honey-bee,
we've studied constantly together. You should know this by now."
In Spinner's mind, the only thing he could seem to remember were the jumbled thoughts of: Bees
= bugs. Something about bees being similar to monkeys and cause death. Marco afraid of monkey
death. (wait something about that didn't seem right) Animals all live in some kingdom under some
Phylum guy. And something about soup and grandma's....don't forget Paige and her kisses and
studying on her couch...which would lead to kissing...
Oh man, he was going to fail.
"I really should just give up hope now. There is no way I am going to pass this exam." Spinner
gave into temptation and banged his forehead against the table. "I barely remember any animal
stuff, much less any thing that involves DNA."
Marco suddenly interrupted his stream of dread with a huge yawn.
Spinner looked at him, slightly affronted. "Excuse me, am I boring you, Del Rossi?"
"Huh?" Marco rubbed at his eyes. "Oh sorry, I'm just kinda tired."
"Yeah? You and Paige both." Spinner rolled his eyes as the group finally stood and shouldered
their bags. "Why must school start so early? By the time the tough classes' tests come around
we're too busy being exhausted to answer anything coherently!"
Paige looped her arm through the crook of Spinner's and laid her head on his shoulder, "I
understand you, Honey-bee, but I think school is finally getting to your head."
"What do you mean?"
"You used the word 'coherently' in a sentence; correctly I might add."
Jimmy laughed from behind them as they all walked to their science class. "Yeah, man, and that is
like a Grade 8? Vocab word? That's pretty advance for Spin."
"Hah, hah, you can just shove it." Spinner glared over the top of Paige's blond hair, at Jimmy,
who just gave him an innocent grin.
"Spin, the test isn't gonna be that hard." Marco quietly spoke up. "We're not going over the
DNA information during this test. This one is just dealing with the animal kingdom."
"Yeah? And all I can seem to remember about the animal kingdom is that damn Lion King song
that goes something like 'the ciiiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiiiiiife!" to everyone's alarm, Spinner broke out in
song.
"Spin!" Marco looked shocked at the horrible off key performance, but he burst out in laughter.
Spinner joined in, glad to be enjoying some moments of humor before the inevitable failure of the
test. Laughing, he caught the expression on his girlfriend's face.
Paige was staring at Marco, who was still laughing at Spinner's attempt to sing, and her
expression looked troubled.
Spinner's 'spidey-senses' were tingling again.
----------------------------------------
She was waiting for him as soon as he left the class.
Ashley Kerwin seemed like she had been laying in wait for Craig Manning, and took the
opportunity to pounce as he left science and he had been vulnerable from the vicious test.
"Craig, I need to talk to you." was the first thing out of her mouth.
He hadn't been prepared for this confrontation; he'd like several days advanced notice for one of
their infamous Ash-Craig-(and inevitably about Manny) war of words. So like the great, inspired
lyricist that he was, he responded with the articulate: "Huh?"
Ashley rolled her eyes and pulled him away from the classroom door where he was causing a
bottleneck to occur. "About the history project." her voice carried the undercurrent of duh, you
moron, why else would I lower myself to speaking the Scum-off-of-my-Shoe?
"Oh yeah, that Vietnam thing." he was too busy focusing on the contact that was made between
her hand and his arm; she had yet to let go.
"Yeah, that 'Vietnam thing'." there was the roll of the eyes again. "We don't have much time to
do this project and I for one, do not want to screw this up and destroy my grade. So we need to
get together and do this."
"As in today?" Craig couldn't help but wonder where the confident Craig had gone and when had
he been replaced by this stumbling dork?
"Today would be good. When?" Ash was getting right down to business.
"We're suppose to have band practice today. Working on a single for that recording deal." he
added as an afterthought. "So how about tonight? You can come over and have some dinner with
Joey and Angie. Then we can figure out the reason behind Vietnam."
There was a flicker of emotion is Ashley's eyes as the reminder of his apology in the form of a
song was brought up.
"That sounds good."
"Then if we finish and have some time, we can figure out the meaning of life. We can have that all
down by tomorrow morning history." he couldn't believe it, but had made Ashley smile for the first
time since their break-up.
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Ellie Nash violently threw her science notebook into her locker, relishing the resounding crash asit impacted the metal back. She was tired of these tests, she was tired of worrying about her
grades, she was tired of the stress that was heaping on her shoulders.
"Didn't do as well as you had hoped?" a voice asked from behind her.
Spinning around, she met the slightly worried gaze of her friend Marco del Rossi. He was holding
his own batch of science notes in his hand. "I blanked. I couldn't remember a damned thing." she
answered. "You?"
Marco slouched against the bank of lockers and shrugged. "I'll do okay." was all the response she
got.
Ellie peered at him as she made a pretense to be looking for something in her locker. "Is this the
same Marco that freaked out about a B on your math test?"
He shrugged again. "Some things are more important than just one test."
Ellie had to drop her act of searching to stare at him. "Marco del Rossi? Sis you just say that there
are more important things than tests?"
Marco shrugged his discontented shrug that has become his trademark of late, "El', c'mon, you
have to admit my annoying habit of obsessing over silly tests was getting old."
"Marco, are you okay? You are acting really strangely." Ellie shut her locker and focused a
penetrating look at her friend.
He shoved his hands into his jeans and rocked back on to his heels. "Why are you looking at me
like that El'? I've just decided to change some of my outlook." Marco paused and realized that he
had dropped his notes onto the hallway floor; he bent down and retrieved them as Ellie continued
to give him the look.
"Marco." Ellie repeated.
Marco finally met her gaze and was hit with the full force that the look carried. Unfortunately for
Ellie, he countered it with a never before seen dead look. He didn't even flinch under her stare.
"Ellie."
"You're not going to tell me what's wrong with you, are you?"
There was the shrug again, it was really becoming annoying, and the equally disaffected response,
"There is nothing to tell, El'." He looked over her shoulder, "Listen, there's Dylan. I'm getting a
ride home with him. I'll see you tomorrow." with that he left her before she could rib him with
any teasing remarks; leaving her without his customarily 'ciao'.
She watched him meet up with the elder Michalchuk, silently vowing to figure out what was
wrong with him.
Ellie waited until he had disappeared out of the glass doors before finally getting ready to leave.
Sean had decided to meet up with Jay and his friends after school to work on Jay's car or
something like that. Cars weren't her specialty but she knew that boys needed their cars to be
happy, so she just declined their invitation and decided to venture home and gage her mom's
reaction to her dad's early morning call.
When she had unlocked the front door, she knew that something was wrong. First was the stench
of vodka, which wasn't entirely unusual, but it was so strong that it made her stomach roll in
disgust; second was the beeping of the phone left off of the hook, and third was the sound of her
mom sobbing.
Dropping her bag, she rushed into the living room where her mom tended to take up residence on
the couch. There, surrounded by blankets, empty vodka bottles, and the phone strewn half on the
couch and half on the floor (and it confirmed that it was indeed off the hook) was her mom. She
didn't look hurt, but tears were streaming down her face as she rocked back and forth on the
soiled couch.
This was completely opposite of any scenario that she had envisioned.
"Mom? What's wrong?" she swooped down around her sobbing mother and pulled her into her
arms. She couldn't help but wrinkle her nose at the smell that emanated from her mom from the
alcohol but she pulled her close anyway.
"There was a call..." more crying, "from the army..." her mom trailed off into a particularly loud
wail.
"Dad? Did he call again?" worry crept into her voice.
"No, it was some officer...he...oh God...he said that your dad was hurt..." her mom dissolved into
tears again.
Ellie felt her body freeze. Her dad had gotten hurt? Did he call from Kuwait just this morning?
Wasn't that a safe outpost? "Mom," she started slowly. "Calm down and tell me exactly what they
said." She couldn't help but feel as the adult in the house, with the way her mother was acting.
"...said that he was sent on a supply mission in south Iraq." Ellie waited for the freash wave of
tears to stop. "...the convoy was attack and he was hurt."
"Hurt, not killed, right?"
"Oh God, Eleanor, he lost his leg! He might as well be!" she shouted and pushed her daughter
away and reached for a vodka bottle on the coffee table.
Reeling, Ellie stood and stumbled into her room. She felt numb as she tried to process the
information that her mom had shakily relayed to her.
Her dad went out on another mission into the Iraq war-zone.
That mission was attacked.
His convoy was hit.
He lost one of his legs and was hurt.
She knew that he must have made it to a hospital safely for the Canadian armed forces to contact
her mom, but everything seemed to be happening so quickly. She wished she had been the one to
answer the phone.
Thinking of the phone, she returned quickly to the living room and while her mom was
swallowing a shot of vodka, she hung the phone back up and grabbed the cordless to retreat back
into her room.
She had to talk to someone.
Ellie dialed the first numbers that came to her head; Sean. The phone rang and rang, no one, not
even Tracker answered the phone. In the back of her mind, she remembered that Sean was with
Jay.
Pushing back the disappointment, she dialed another set of numbers, her best friend, Marco.
Answering the phone was the thick and familiar accent of Marco's dad, Mr. Del Rossi.
"Hello, Del Rossi residence?"
"Mr. Del Rossi, this is Ellie, may I please speak with Marco?" she was amazed at how calm and
polite she managed to keep her voice.
"There is no one here by that name!" was the bark that filled her ear.
She stared at the receiver in shock. "Marco, your son." she tried again, wondering what was
going on.
"I have no son." There was a click and the dial tone resounded.
Quietly, she turned off the phone and stared blankly around her room. She now knew why Marco
was acting strangely. He had been disowned, she wasn't stupid, she knew how his family was like;
probably because he came out to them. But as of right now he was alone, like her and that was all
she could think of.
She had no one to talk too. Unwittingly she felt her eyes be drawn to her math case that contained
her compass, the compass that put scars on her arms.
Well that's not quite true, now is that?
She put the scars on her arms. Maybe she wasn't as alone as she thought she was.