disclaimer: they don't belong to me.

Ham and his dad walked back to supper together. "..and how did English class go?" Steven asked toward the end of an itemized check on Hamilton's day.

"OK I guess."

His dad's face twitched. Mom and dad had made jokes for years about lumpen inarticulate teenagers, and now, any time he took refuge in monosyllables, he could see Dad hating it. "I sat in on some of Mr Finn's classes during his probationary period" the Dean recalled. "He gave a series of lectures on the Romantic poets that was very.." Steven paused, looking for the right word.

"Intense?" Ham offered.

"Intense. Yes, that is a good word."

A good word. Ham glowed. Finn told him once that he was more his father's son than his mother's. After a lot of thought Hamilton took that to mean that Finn was concerned about being seen to suck up to the Dean's son.

Clearly, his dad was still brooding about Hamilton's English. "Mr Finn is key" Ham heard him mutter.

Huh. Like Hamilton couldn't string a sentence together.

"What novels are you studying?"

Didn't Dad know? It must be on the paperwork someplace. Ham shrugged. English results for the school were good, and the Dean didn't bother Finn much. He hassled heads of lower performing departments. Mom was the one who related to the staff as an equal. The Dean's position made it seem unethical for him to press Hamilton's teachers. He had said lately he thought his hands-off policy had been over compensating.

"Great Expectations."

"Ah. The burdens one generation places on its successor. Pip and Estella can try to make a new future but all their aspirations and skills were given them by Miss Havisham and the convict - the very people they are trying to move beyond. The past moulds and shapes the future." Steven cleared his throat, embarrassed. "I'm sorry. That was dogmatic. There are other readings of the text."

Hamilton looked at him doubtfully. Will had made a big speech saying the book was all about class and money. Finn had endorsed Will. "I hate Dickens."

Steven sighed. By this, he was definitely thinking the hands-off policy had been, yeah, over compensating. "Why?"

"Finn keeps saying His Characters Are Wonderful." Hamilton looked questioningly at his father, who nodded. "They're not. They're two dimensional. He gives, like, great visuals, but the walk ons are too clockwork. He gives the minor players some tick; a stutter, or ugly, or obsessive hating men-"

"Miss Havisham" Steven chipped in, pleased he saw where that one came from.

Jake had talked about Miss Havisham and Estella in class. "Yeah. And then he repeats the tick. It's all externals. That's not character."

"He differentiates his characters purely by tics or mannerisms, you're saying" the Dean translated.

"You see them from the outside all the way."

"But in real life, all you will ever see is the outsides of people" Steven pointed out reasonably. "There is no way on earth you can tell what others are thinking or feeling."

Hamilton scowled. "You should ask them."

"It's entirely possible they'll lie to you, for any number of reasons." He added in a fairminded tone "Some of them altruistic reasons."

Hamilton was scowling at the thought of his last few days. He had been trying to scam his way through this term without making waves. He had been reading peoples' external signals. He should ask the things he needed to know. Even liars would have to tell him something. What he needed were the right questions.

"You think Dickens characters are too consistent when they repeat the same behavior without modification."

"Real people change" Hamilton said confidently.

"Adolescents change. With adults, what you see is very much what you get."

Now that they were talking to each other more, Ham sometimes felt sorry for his Dad, although nothing he could see in his life warranted this gloom.

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Moonlight, from the open, uncurtained window, dimly lit Hamilton's room. He stared at the ceiling. He'd just woken from a dream..

Hamilton looked the motel room over while Jake locked the door behind them. "Well this is nice" he said sarcastically, flopping on the bed.

"We need to keep a low profile." Jake measured the room too. "Look, a radio."

The radio needed to be fed coins to work. How crap was this place? Jake dug some loose change out of his jeans. Abba began to play. Dream-Hamilton thought - That's a good sign.

A wicked glint in his eye, Jake pulled Hamilton up and made him dance. "Running away together, hiding from every stranger-" he sang along.

Ham couldn't stop laughing.

..Awake, Ham lay frozen. Had that happened? Or did he want it to happen? (He couldn't work out which would be worse.) There was a lot of ceiling staring material here. He ran through the dream images, over and over, frantically. Memory or dream, it looked the same inside his head. This was horrible.

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He ran into Will early in the morning. It figured that Will would be a heavy user of the library stacks next to the common room.

"Hey" said Will.

Ham nodded and dropped his arm to carry his bundle of books loosely at his side, not clutched in front of him. Too late.

Will wasn't likely to ignore books. "What are those?"

"Jungian dream analysis."

Will looked interested. "You're dreaming."

Backing away, Ham shrugged. He didn't want to get into it.

Will fell into step beside him. "Maybe they're memories."

"And maybe not." Ham had found some good news, browsing in the stacks. "Dream imagery isn't straightforward. Things mean the opposite-" He didn't want to give Will the specifics. "It's symbolism, okay?"

"Depends how linear it was. If its Scout getting his tongue pierced and forming a Marilyn Manson tribute band, uh.. how surreal was this dream?"

Ham thought about the motel room. "Very surreal."

Will looked at him curiously, but didn't ask.

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