Disclaimer: I certainly do not own Zero ((but he's sooo cute)) nor do I own many other things Louis Sachar and Walt Disney have made up. HOLES belongs to Mr. Sachar, THINGS-YOU-DO-NOT-RECOGNISE probably belong to me.

My Angel, My Only

Chapter Twenty ll Stanley Yelnats

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Zero sincerely wished he had been a bit more careful when he had gone to fill the water jars. He had known someone was watching him -- but he had been too ignorant to worry about it. Turns out Mr. Pendanski had seen him while he snuck into the kitchens.

Zero was sitting on his knees, holding onto the suitcase tightly, which was on his lap. Mr. Pendanski directed the flashlight to him, then back to Stanley, who was still in the position of climbing out of the hole.

They were caught.

Zero carefully shifted his head and saw Mr. Sir, wearing nothing but pyjama bottoms. He quickly shrank his head back down.

"You boys arrived just in the nick--" the Warden started to say. She stopped talking and stopped walking. Slowly, she began to back away.

Zero was wondering what was wrong with her when he noticed movements on the suitcase.

There was a yellow-spotted lizard.

He sucked in his breath and tried not to breathe.

A second lizard crawled up on the side of the suitcase and stopped just an inch from Zero's little finger.

Zero glanced up at Stanley, who looked terrified. He tried to tell him to climb out of the hole, before the lizards turned on him, but Stanley was as still as a statue.

"There's another one!" he heard Mr. Pendanksi gasp.

Zero inwardly sighed. Then his eyes darted to the second lizard, which was crawling up his arm.

He stiffened up.

Mr. Pendanski's torch light was illuminating the hole -- both Stanley and Zero dared to glance down and they froze. They were standing in the middle of a lizard nest.

Zero couldn't see anything, seeing as he was sitting down in the deep hole, but he heard another three counselors approach.

"What's going-- Oh my God."

"What do we do?" Mr. Pendanski's voice sounded above them. Despite everything that was happening, Zero still felt like striking the shovel against his stupid face again.

He gripped onto the suitcase tighter as a third lizard came running up his leg.

"We wait," said the Warden, "It won't be very long."

It? What's 'it'? Zero wondered, then, Ahh... our deaths.

"She's going to ask a lot of questions," Mr. Sir was saying, "And this time she'll have the A.G. with her."

"Let her ask her questions," the Warden said impatiently, "Just so long as I have the suitcase. I don't care what happens. Do you know how long..." her voice trailed off, then started up again. "When I was little I'd watch my parents dig holes, every weekend and holidays. When I got bigger, I had to dig too. Even on Christmas."

Zero felt like yawning, but he didn't dare to. What if a lizard crawled into his mouth mid-yawn?!

"It won't be long now," the Warden said again.

Zero could still feel and hear his heart beat. Each beat told him he was still alive, at least for one more second. Glancing over to Stanley, he was relieved to see him blink. Stanley gently eased himself back down into the hole, so that he was in a more comfortable position.

He didn't know how long it had been, but Zero felt like he had been sitting rigidly for at least five minutes. He wondered why the lizards hadn't bitten him yet. But all the same, he was thankful.

He shifted the suitcase slightly -- the lizards didn't seem to mind. As he did so, he noticed some words across the top of the suitcase. It was too dark to make them out clearly, but he thought the first word began with an 'S'.

Zero almost kicked the suitcase away in shock when he heard Mr. Pendanski scream, then a gunfire blast. He guessed one of the lizards had tried to bite him, and Mr. Sir had shot it.

But somehow, he remained calm, though his heart was certainly beating a lot faster. Stanley glanced at him, and Zero looked back. Somehow, they were still both alive.

"I thought you quit," Zero heard one of the counselors say. He craned his neck and made out the figure of Mr. Sir lighting a cigarette.

"Yeah, well, sometimes sunflower seeds just won't cut it," he said, "I'm going to have nightmares the rest of my life."

"Maybe we should just shoot them," came Mr. Pendanski's voice.

"Who? The lizards or the kids?"

Mr. Pendanski laughed. He actually laughed over the matter, "The kids are going to die anyway. At least we got plenty of graves to choose from."

Zero glanced back down at the suitcase. The first word began with an 'S' and a... 'T'.

"We've got time," the Warden was saying, "I've waited this long, I can wait another few..."

Her voice trailed off.

St...a?

"We're going to keep our story simple. That woman's going to ask a lot of questions. The A.G. will most likely initiate an investigation. So this is what happened: Stanley tried to run away in the night, fell in a hole, and the lizards got him. That's it. We're not even going to give them Zero's body. As far as anybody knows, Zero doesn't exist. Like Mum said, we got plenty of graves to choose from."

Zero had barely listened to her. He was concentrating on the words. It took his mind off matters.

"Why would he run away if he knew he was getting released today?" asked Mr. Pendanksi.

"Who knows? He's crazy. That was why we couldn't release him yesterday. He was delirious, and we had to keep watch over him so he wouldn't hurt himself or anybody else."

"She's not going to like it."

"She's not going to like anything we tell her," the Warden said.

Stan...

Zero tried to pronounce it in his mind, but it was hard, especially with the Warden blabbering on in the background. He tried to block out her voice, but it was difficult.

"Why aren't you dead yet?" the Warden asked him.

Zero said nothing. He was still working on the words. It was too dark to see the rest of the letters. Zero glanced around and saw the lizards, their milky white tongues flipping out. They seemed harmless. But he knew they were deadly.

Stanley seemed to be thinking about something. So deep in thought that he didn't even notice a lizard run down the side of his face.

Zero tried to get lost in his thoughts as well. If I'm about die, I don't want to see lizards and the Warden and Mr. Sir and Mr. Pendanski... I want to see... my mother.

He closed his eyes and her face faded in. Her beautiful, warm face with her cheerful smile.

"Happy birthday, my dear," she said, cuddling me close in her arms.

I smiled and hugged her tightly. I looked around and saw colourful balloons and a big birthday cake. It had four candles stuck in it.

She sang me the birthday song, then she sang me the beautiful lullaby. I blew out the candles and she clapped.

We ate many pieces of cake and played some games. Later, we had ice cream and lollies.

"Hey, Caveman, guess what?"

Mr. Sir's voice interrupted Zero's trip down memory lane. Immediately, his mother's face disappeared. His eyes opened, and he glared at Mr. Sir.

"You're innocent, after all. I thought you'd like to know that. Your lawyer came to get you yesterday. Too bad you weren't here."

Zero gently let some air out of his mouth, blowing his hair off his forehead. So, they had finally realised Stanley was innocent. Whoopdeedoo. Too bad there was a ninety-nine percent chance that he was about to die several seconds later.

Stanley hadn't seemed to have heard. He still looked to be deep in thought, in fact, dreamy.

---

"It's getting close to 4:30," Mr. Pendanski announced, "They'll be waking up."

Zero listened to them talk.

"Return to the tents. Tell the boys not to talk and give them breakfast. As long as they do as they're told, they don't have to dig anymore holes. If they talk, they'll be severely punished," the Warden ordered.

"How should we say they'll be punished?"

"Let them use their imaginations," the Warden replied simply.

4:30.

Zero wondered how long he and Stanley had been in the hole. The lizards still had not bitten them. They remained quite stationary, flipping their tongues in and out.

Zero felt like yawning again. He could feel a lizard on his shoulder.

He saw Stanley looking at him. He slowly formed his hand into a fist, and raised his thumb.

Stanley managed a small smile back. Zero watched as he slowly allowed himself to lean against the side of the hole. The lizards surrounding Stanley didn't seem to mind.

---

The sun was up, and Zero's heart was still beating.

It was a fair miracle.

Now that there was light, he could see the letters. There were two words on the suitcase. The first one had the letters:

S -- t -- a -- n -- l -- e -- y.

He wondered what that spelt.

He tried breaking the word into two.

S -- t - an.

"Satan," Zero said. In the distance, he could hear the campers getting their bowls of cereal in the Mess Hall.

"Why don't you go see if you can take the suitcase from Zero," the Warden suggested.

"Yeah, right," Mr. Sir scoffed. He and the Warden were the only ones left. Mr. Pendanksi and the other counselors had returned to give the boys breakfast.

"The lizards aren't obviously hungry."

"Then you go get the suitcase."

Zero was still concentrating on the words.

"Sa--tan lee," he said, sounding the word to himself.

Stanley was looking at him in an odd way.

Zero flashed a quick thumbs up and returned back to the word.

Sometime later, they saw a tarantula crawl across the dirt.

"Look, a tarantula," Mr. Sir said, sounding fascinated.

Zero looked up and stiffened at the hairy black body.

"I've never seen one, except in--" the Warden started.

Zero trembled as a lizard leapt off Stanley's neck and pounced on the tarantula. Next thing he knew, the tarantula was gone and there was one hairy leg sticking out of the lizard's mouth.

"Not hungry, huh?" Mr. Sir scoffed.

Zero, feeling utmost terrified, stared rigidly at the two words written across the top of the suitcase. There was a similarity between the two of them, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

S -- t -- a -- n -- l -- e -- y. Y -- e -- l -- n -- a -- t -- s.

Sa--tah--nlee--ya.

No, that's not right. When 'y's at the end of a word, it makes the 'ee' sound.

Stan-lee.

With a jolt of astonishment, he realised the first word spelt "Stanley". Zero, now feeling light-headed and confused, glanced over at the owner of the name, who seemed quite unfazed with the whole fiasco.

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---- A/N: Okay, so I was wrong. The NEXT chapter is the one that needs editing. So that may take me awhile to post. :( Anywho, I know this chapter was boring. And so is the next one. And the one after that. And the epilogue after that is pretty boring too. No... IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES! :) Okay, never mind. Hehe. I've been a bit busy, what with going out to the city and shopping at places far from home... And them yum cha-ing. :) Hehe. I was going to post tomorrow, as in a few minutes I'm supposed to leave to go shopping elsewhere. But I just remembered tomorrow I'm going with my friends to watch Wimbledon. Wow, I sound really pressed for time. LOL. Thanks for reviewing, dudes. Fools... hehehe. PEACE OUT! :) --MSQ.