She scanned the sea of over-excited faces coming towards her in a steady stream, flooding through the now-useless Chino Hills metal detectors. Still chattering away. Fucking cicadas. Nobody else would be entering the school through the metal detectors for this school year, so for the moment they were turned off and every door was flung wide open. She turned for a moment and squinted into the bright, harsh sunlight. Had he slipped past her somehow? Had she missed him? Had he forgotten that they were supposed to meet?

Ryan was hard to pick out of a crowd. He was small, if stocky, and he slouched, and more often than not it seemed like he was deliberately trying to lose himself in the sea of faces.

And it worked. Everyone looked like Ryan. He was everyone and no one. His anonymity was frightening sometimes.

Sometimes she felt like she was the only thing keeping him from vanishing completely.

"Theresa. Hey."

And then, when she least expected it, he'd just turn up.

"There you are. God. I was beginning to think you really had cut out early."

He shoved the yearbook at her with an annoyed grunt.

"Wow," she muttered, shaking her head as she carefully tugged the photo from her lab book. He took it and dropped it into his own bag without even looking. So typical. She tucked the yearbook into her bag, then studied the lab book left in her hands.

In a flurry, she chucked the lab book in the trash. "Goodbye, Biology!" she said, triumphant. "Good riddance to dead worms and cell diagrams."

"That's the spirit," Ryan noted. "Goodbye European history, Medici and Michaelangelo and Mussolini." He reached for a notebook in his bag.

"Wait," Theresa said, grabbing his wrist. "I know! We'll have a ritual burning."

His eyes gleamed. "Yeah? Your place or mine?"

"How about the Medenas'?"

His grin vanished. Too quickly. "Why, uh, why the Medenas'?"

"Cause that's where we're goin'. I gotta babysit Brandon and Angel. And I'm not waiting till tonight to destroy my Euro notes."

"The Medenas? I thought you quit workin' for them." He looked unusually concerned. Tense.

She rocked back and forth, swinging her bag. "Yeah, well, Juana Medena called my mom last night, it's an emergency. And the Head Start bus is gonna beat us there if we don't go now."

But Ryan was shifting his weight, looking away, looking nervous. "I don't know if I can make it," he said. "Trey's got a thing."

"'A thing'?" she mocked him. "Oh, come on. I need your help. Keep me sane. You know how that house is."

He was backing away now. "Yeah, I.... Uh, look. I'll find you later, all right?"

"Ryan," she whined.

"Have fun!" he offered half-heartedly as he hurried off.

"Damn right I will," she muttered to herself, watching him vanish again. "Screw you, jackass." The thought of Ryan going over with her was the one thing keeping her from going nuts. Theresa couldn't stand the Medenas – the parents screamed, the kids screamed, and keeping Brandon Medena from beating up the baby, who screamed the most, wasn't even close to being worth the four bucks an hour Mrs. Medena was paying her. But money was money, and a favor was a favor, and as Theresa trudged over to the bike rack, she wondered how old she had to be before nobody thought of her as a babysitter anymore.

She was all the way to the Medena house, sitting on the front stoop waiting for Angel's day sitter and Brandon's Head Start bus to drop them off, before she remembered the yearbook. She slid it from her knapsack and stared at the gold embossed cover for a long time before opening it.

She had to flip through to find the inscription. He'd signed the next-to-last page. Theresa had a lot of empty space in her yearbook. She wasn't really in to having strangers sign her yearbook. Just people who counted. Like Ryan.

Her fingers traced the familiar, skinny, pointy lettering.

Theresa,

Thanks for being my friend. Have a great summer. Though I guess I'll see you all the time anyway. Call me. 909-555-6917.

Your friend,

Ryan Atwood

God. God, Ryan was such a guy it drove her crazy sometimes.

Maybe she wouldn't have it any other way.

The honk of the school bus startled her and she slammed the book shut. The bus doors were already open and the matron delivered a squirming, soggy, screeching Brandon Medena into her arms. She barely had time to strip his wet diaper off (was this kid ever gonna figure out the toilet?) and shove a cereal bar into him before Angel's dour-faced day sitter was at the door with an equally screeching Angel.

"There, there, Mami," Theresa cooed as she strapped the kid into her high chair. "Okay, Mami, time to shut up now," she added, a little sterner. "Hey! Angelita! You listening?" It was pointless, she knew, but sooner or later something had to get through. And around here, the kids seemed to understand very little short of screaming.

"Pow!" Theresa looked down from her position over the high chair, only to find that Brandon had somehow escaped the safety gates pinning him into the living room with the TV. "I go kill you! Pow-pow!" His grubby hands were clutching a plastic gun, pointed ominously in her direction.

Theresa sighed and hefted the boy up, empty water gun and all, depositing him back in front of Thomas the Stupid Train something. She fixed the gate he'd managed to knock over, and swore to herself that when she had kids, she was either going to strangle them in their cribs before they got this big, or at the very least put more effort into parenting than the Medenas seemed to.

In the process, Brandon managed to initiate another round of screeching, fighting to drown his sister out.

"Fuck you!" he squealed, bouncing up and down by the gate, his black hair flopping over his forehead as he jumped.

Theresa blinked twice, not sure she'd heard right.

"I beg your pardon?" she asked, peering down at him.

"Fuck you!" he tried again.

Again she blinked. "Okay, Papi, now, you didn't pick that up from Thomas the Dumb Train, did you?"

"I wa' canny! Fuck you, bitch!"

Odd how he couldn't pronounce candy, but the rest of his vocabulary seemed to be progressing at quite an advanced level. She sighed as Angelita started her screeching again. Theresa knew there was a reason why she hated the Medena house with a passion.

She glanced at the clock over the microwave. Only an hour and a half until Mrs. Medena came home, and she wasn't sure she could make it.

She wished desperately that Ryan would show up and rescue her. But she knew even before she completed the thought that it wasn't happening.

Not this time.

"Theresa? Hello?"

Theresa, Brandon and Angel all jumped at the sound from the door. Theresa breathed a massive sigh of relief and bounced the still-whimpering Angel in her lap. Another five minutes of Thomas the Massively Stupid Train and she'd be considering sterilization, which her mother would be none too happy about.

"Mamamamama!" Brandon squealed, barreling for the baby gate separating the living room from the front door.

"I am so sorry I'm late," Juana said, leaning over the baby gate. Brandon jumped into her arms, screaming as usual. By now, her head was ringing and it all sounded so... distant...

"Oh," Theresa heard herself replying, "It's okay." What? No, it wasn't.

Juana dug around in her purse with her Brandon-free arm as Theresa watched closely. "Here, here's twenty-five for your trouble-"

"Oh, no, I-"

"I insist."

"Okay." Theresa relented quickly and shoved the cash into her pants pocket. No arguments. She was quite certain that she'd earned it. "Tell Mr. Medena I said hi."

"...Oh," Juana said hesitantly. Her face fell. Too quickly. "Right. I thought you – you knew."

"Knew what?" Theresa asked, suspicious. She kept her hand planted in the pocket.

Juana sighed. She looked old. She was old, to have two small children, and these two in particular weren't making her any younger. "Mr. Medena left me," she said. "Last week. Moved out."

"Oh," Theresa said, not sure what else to say. "I – I'm sorry."

"Not as sorry as his new girlfriend will be," Juana said darkly. "No, we're better off without him. It's just – he was always here to watch Angelita in the afternoons, and now I don't know if I can afford the sitter anymore."

"I – I'm sorry," she said again. Theresa felt suddenly ashamed, though she didn't know why. "I'm working at Pizza King this summer, otherwise-" Otherwise what? No way she would take on the Medena monsters for an entire summer.

"Oh no," Juana said, brushing her off. "It's fine. I'll probably take some time off, be with Angel. It will be," she heaved a deep sigh, "better. For this family."

"Uh huh," Theresa said, feeling with a certain conviction that now was not the time to tell her about Brandon's increased vocabulary skills.

"You give my greetings to your mother," Juana said as she ushered Theresa out the door.

"I will," Theresa promised. She grabbed her bike from where she'd deposited it by the porch, and kicked off for her house.

Part of her wanted to hunt Ryan down and bust his alibi, and maybe bust his ass while she was at it. But after two hours with the Medena kids, she was ready for a good nap.

She'd find Ryan in the morning. After all, she had all summer to kick his ass.