Chapter Seven-Something's Missing
"Air is a precious commodity."
Jessakah "Jack" Gilligan

"Fourteen days till we go back to Hogwarts," Ron commented from the kitchen. Hermione stuck her head in. Her hair had been pulled into a messy bun with loose curls cascading down the back of her head and neck, a very pretty look for her, Ron thought privately.

"Pardon me?" she asked.

"Two weeks. Fourteen days."

"Three-hundred-thirty-six hours, twenty-thousand-one-hundred-sixty minutes," George input.

"One-million-two-hundred-nine-thou—"

"Shut up, Fred," Ron said, throwing an apple to his older brother, aiming for his chest.

George snatched it out of the air somewhere near the vicinity of his own head, eyebrows raised. "I see why you weren't recruited onto the quidditch team after all," he said impishly. Ron's face fell at the mention of his and the rest of the wizarding world's favorite sport. It caused him to remember that Harry wouldn't be there for the start of term…ever again….

Hermione took a deep breath and attempted to brush it aside. "Have you finished your summer homework yet?"

"Bugger!" Ron swore, and groaned loudly. "I can't believe I forgot!"

With a small smile, Hermione murmured, "I can." After grabbing an apple from the bowl sitting on the center of the very cluttered island, she sat down at the kitchen table and began to read The Advanced Book of Spells (Grade 7).

&

Jack watched with anticipation as Daniel flipped at the same time as the boy in the lane next to him. She prayed that the other guy sucked at turns. To her delight, Daniel came out in front, and sped down the lane to the end of the pool.

"Go!" she shrieked, her throat beginning to hurt from all the yelling she had done that day. He was nearly there. The boy in the next lane was catching up. The were going to tie!—

The scoreboard read Lane 3— 2:13.55, and a few seconds later Lane 4—2:14.03. He had done it! Daniel won!

Feeling relief flood through her body, Jack looked up and saw Zack being helped up by someone that she hadn't seen for a long time. Maybe I'll go chat later, Jack thought as she jogged to the blocks to give her boyfriend a hug.

&

"Chris, do you see Celeste anywhere?"

"Nope…hey, where'd Zack go?"

"I dunno…oh, look, there she is! Let's go talk to her."

"Okay. This time, I'm setting the pace; you walk too fast!"

"Is it my fault that you're on crutches? Wait…don't answer that…"

&

Zack gaped at the girl who stood in front of him, her arm outstretched, a friendly smile on her face. "I don't bite," she promised with a laugh. Zack continued to stare.

"Hey!" Jack's voice called out. Startled, Zack swiveled on the ground to see her running up from behind. "How are you doing?" she asked, confusing the poor amnesiac even more before he realized that she wasn't talking to him.

"Jack!" the girl said, hugging the orange and blue haired teen. "I'm sorry about your race, but—"

"What are you talking about?"

"Inad beat you. Didn't you know?"

"Inad's here?" Jack sounded surprised.

Uh oh, Zack thought suddenly, seeing Inad and Kirsten suddenly close by.

"Celeste!"

"Lia!" Lia swooped up on the girl from the black void of his dreams and hugged her fiercely. "How've you been? How's Chris?"

Zack was now very, very confused. Hadn't she been with Chris a few moments ago?

"He's sad that he can't see me as often any more, but he's good."

"Zack!" The amnesiac jumped as Lia addressed him suddenly. "What are you doing down there?"

"I ran into him," the girl said sheepishly.

Lia laughed. "This is Celeste," she said, introducing the girl. "Celeste, this is Zack."

Celeste—if that was really her name, as Zack felt that he knew from somewhere beyond the black void—grinned at him. "I'm sorry for knocking you over," she told him. "You know what? You look really familiar. Have we met before?"

"I-I don't know," Zack stammered. He paused for a moment before adding, "I don't remember anything before meeting Jack and Lia."

"Oh? Why is that?"

"Do you really need to ask?" Jack asked her, grinning evilly at Lia.

Lia opened her mouth to interrupt before Chris' hand swooped from behind and clamped over her mouth. "You know that her driving skills are worse than yours ever were! Anyways—"

A very muffled, "Hey!" came from Lia.

"That's not very nice," Celeste scolded him, "considering you don't even have—"

"What is it with you people and picking on me!" Chris cried.

"Oh, I don't know," Lia said sarcastically, removing his hand from covering her mouth, "maybe it has to do with the fact that you always let everyone push your buttons!"

"I do not!"

"Too."

"Not!"

"Too."

"Not!"

"You wanna keep this up?" Zack watched with amusement as Lia attempted to pull her arm from his grasp and couldn't. "I can keep this up for longer than you can! I have two brothers that are fifteen, you know!"

"And I am how old?"

"Two, dummy, two!" Lia exclaimed, holding up her left arm with her index and middle fingers sticking up in the air.

"Inad," Jack said in greeting. Zack turned away from Lia and Chris' fight to watch Jack's reaction.

"Hello, Jack. Great race!"

"Maybe for you," Jack growled.

Inad smiled at her, her blue eyes sparkling innocently. "Whatever do you mean by that, Jessakah?"

Jack sighed, and Zack nearly laughed out loud. Maybe the remainder of the meet wouldn't be so bad after all if there were any more races the two girls were in together.

&

Jack sighed and continued to gaze into Daniel's deep blue eyes. The candlelight was flickering in a majestic dance, but neither teen seemed to notice.

A giggle broke the reverie as Lia watched Chris and Pyro doing something funny. Jack ignored them and continued to look at her boyfriend.

"Oh, look!" an unfamiliar voice said. "How sweet…remember when we used to be like that, Sam?"

"Yes, dear; young, silly, and very in love." Jack felt her cheeks warming, but ignored the older couple as effectively as she was ignoring the others.

Daniel finally broke contact to take another bite of his spaghetti. "Did you get any PRs today?"

"Yup." Jack took a sip of her Sprite and played with a few of the loose strands of her hair, which had been piled on top of her head. The chicken strips on her plate were half eaten, but she felt like she was done eating—for the meantime. She reached across the table and grabbed his now idle hand in her own and began to stroke the top of it with her thumb, an action that she knew drove him insane. The familiar look filled his eyes and he got up suddenly, throwing his napkin down.

The waitress came by with the check, and he paid for it out of his own wallet, something Jack didn't let him do very often; normally they split the charge.

Leaving the restaurant without notice from Lia, Pyro, and Chris was simple, but Jack knew Zack was slightly more observant. Winking to him as they left through the door, she knew that he wouldn't tell the others that they had left by way of the small smile that filled his face. It was good to know that she could trust him.

They kissed just outside the doors, and again in the entrance to the parking lot, and again against the car. The wind swirled Jack's red dress around her thighs, goosebumps rising all over her body at the exhilaration of kissing Daniel. She breathed him into her, tightening her hold around his waist.

"What have we told you two about taking detours?"

The teens sprang apart like startled rabbits, Jack going red and Daniel coughing nervously. Lia stood in front of Pyro, Chris, and Zack, her hands planted on her hips, her feet set at shoulder width. She was trying her best to look stern, but the laugh that was escaping her lips betrayed her true feelings.

"Lia!" Jack said, annoyed, but embarrassed. The four of them burst out laughing. Pyro and Chris were using each other to stay standing, Lia was leaning over, her hands propped on her thighs, and Zack was using a parked car as a support. Daniel and Jack glanced at each other.

"All in favor of mutilating those four?"

"Aye!"

&

Chris couldn't sleep. He supposed that he had eaten too much cherry pie that night at dinner.

Or maybe it was Jack and Daniel running after us after we split them up, he thought with a slight grin. The couple had slipped out of their respective tents ages ago, so he was forced to sit there and battle with his aching leg while Zack slept quietly. In any case, he was too hyped up to do anything but lay there in the dark, watching light flickering from the neighboring tent and listening to hushed whispers coming from it. He guessed that Pyro and Lia were awake still as well. When a two stifled laughs came from that direction as well, he guessed that either Pyro was reading out loud, or that they were up talking about the contents of what had been in the note that they were passing back and forth in the car a few days ago.

Do they know how annoying that actually is? he wondered, shifting his leg in hopes that it would feel better. It didn't work.

A sudden bright light erupted in the tent, causing Chris to jump and leaving him blinded for a few moments. His leg suddenly felt as though it was full of splinters, and he gasped with pain.

Daniel flashed the light over him again. "Sorry," he whispered. Chris noted dimly that there was what looked like lip-gloss on his lips and up the left side of his face. "Did I wake you up?"

"Nah," he rasped, resisting the urge to grab his leg and bang it against the ground. It was really hurting him now! "I was already awake. My leg's buggin' me."

"Pyro probably has pain killers. You know how her mother is, being a nurse and all. I'll go grab some."

Chris could see him grinning in the dark. "You're just doing that because it gives you another excuse to see Jack," he accused.

Daniel shrugged. "So what if I might get to see her not wearing anything but her p-jams?"

Chris sighed sadly and shook his head, nearly shaking with suppressed laughter.

&

VWW: As I'm having a blast letting other people write parts of MY story, I thought that I might as well give other people a chance. The real Kirsten wrote this part.

Kirsten slammed the door of her red Mustang convertible. She grabbed the blue bag with all her Kung Fu gear in it and walked into Moye's Kung Fu and Tai-Chi Academy. It was rare for her to go to Kung Fu on Monday night, but the anger that flared in Kirsten caused her to want to beat someone. She made the proper salute as she walked in to the school and slipped off her pink flip-flops.

"Hey, Kirsten," Thomas, a short boy of fourteen said as she headed to the back to put her shoes on the shoe rack.

Kirsten nodded hello, not in the mood to chat with Thomas. In fact, she wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone at that moment. The angry teen rummaged through her bag and found her green-brown belt. She'd be going for her brown belt in November of that year. She'd been working hard for almost three years to earn her brown belt and within the next year she hoped to have her black belt.

After the first hour of class was over, Kirsten put on all her Kung Fu gear and was ready to spar. Her anger had begun to boil, and Kirsten knew that the sparring would help to diminish her anger somewhat. She ignored Thomas and tried not to glare at Vicki, her nemesis, during class. To the blond's dismay, Vicki was her first partner for sparring that night.

Kirsten aimed a punch at Vicki and hit her nose with full force. Immediately, red blood began to run from the offended appendage. Vicki threw off her gloves and put her hands over her nose, groaning. Kirsten stepped back and stared; she had never lost control like that before.

"Kirsten, may I speak with you?" Sifu, the teacher, asked. Nodding miserably, Kirsten followed him to a part of the room where they could speak in private. "You've never lost control like that before," he pointed out. "Heavy sparring is for the advanced class only, Kirsten. You know that. Now you need to slow down and concentrate. I don't want to have to make you sit out of sparring. You need to keep control of yourself and whatever problems you have with Vicki are to be forgotten while you're in class."

Kirsten nodded again, feeling her face redden with shame.

"Now, go help Vicki clean up the mess, and next time don't lose control."

"Yes, Sifu," Kirsten replied, and headed to the bathroom to get the disinfectant so she could help Vicki clean the blood off the mat.

Kirsten remained angry for the rest of class, but with no one more than Vicki. She tossed her gear into her bag, trying unsuccessfully to rid herself of more anger.

Stop yelling! You're giving me a headache! a voice suddenly scolded in her head. Kirsten sighed.

Sorry, Inad. I didn't realize I was yelling at you.

What are you so angry about?

Oh, nothing. I'm just pissed at Vicki again.

What'd she do this time?

Kirsten grabbed her flip-flops so forcefully from the shoe rack that she nearly broke the cubby boards. She stole Jake!

Kirsten, he broke up with you in April.

Silence echoed almost painfully in her mind as Kirsten refused to speak. The last time that someone had mentioned the breakup between Kirsten and Jake, Lia nearly got punched in the face. Everyone knew from that moment on that Kirsten was still obsessed with her ex, but she refused to admit it. So no one mentioned his name around her.

How do you know she's going out with him?

Kirsten explained seeing him and the little Bitca when she was at Fred Meyer's, shopping for monkey socks with Baskin ("I only have thirty pairs! That's nowhere near enough!")

I'm sorry, Kirsten.

All guys are scum, Kirsten thought back bitterly.

No they aren't. Zack doesn't seem that bad.

Kirsten sighed. She gained a few strange looks from the people around her in the changing area, but, as usual, she ignored them. Instead, she pulled off the top to her Kung Fu outfit. I guess you're right.

Hey, maybe you should ask him to homecoming in October! He probably won't have a date, because he's too shy and you're too mad at every guy to have a date anyways. It'll be perfect!

Why do you always have to point out my faults?

It's my job as your best friend. Come on; let's go to Burgerville. A milkshake will make you feel better.

Okay. See you in ten minutes?

Deal. Kirsten finished changing into her pink tank top that matched her flip-flops and pulled on a pair of khaki shorts.

After waving goodbye to Thomas, earning a smile from her short friend, she saluted and headed out to her car. In Kirsten's opinion, it was the best car in the world. She had worked for two summers to earn enough money to buy it and her parents agreed to pay for gas and insurance if she bought it.

A few minutes later, Kirsten pulled into the parking lot of Burgerville. Inad was just stepping out of her truck. Kirsten waved at her friend. Inad ran up to her and they walked into the fast food restaurant together. They found Lia and Zack standing at the counter, ordering some food.

"Hey Lia! Zack!" Inad hollered. "Why aren't Chris or Jack with you? Or Pyro?"

"He was complaining about his leg, so Jack and Pyro took him home. I volunteered to bring Zack here. Can you believe he's never had a milkshake before!"

"Lia, he can't even remember his real name. How would he remember if he's had a milkshake before?" Kirsten pointed out.

"Ahh…that's a good point…Zack, since you've already ordered, why don't you go find us a table to sit at."

The Brit agreed and walked away to find someplace where the four of them could sit.

"Umm…I think I should get an extra large strawberry milkshake with extra whipped cream," Kirsten said, looking at the menu.

"Oh, dear. What happened?" Lia asked Inad, knowing Kirsten's habit of drinking strawberry milkshakes whenever she got depressed, or she saw Vicki practically dangling off of Jake.

She saw Vicki with Jake, Inad confirmed, mouthing the words over Kirsten's shoulder. Lia grimaced and nodded.

Once the three girls had finished ordering and had paid for the food and milkshakes, they headed back to the booth where Zack was sitting. Lia distributed the various items and they began to eat. Zack's face lit up as he bit into his bacon Tillamook cheeseburger, and Kirsten's mood improved drastically with each sip of her milkshake.

"So Lia, you gonna ask Chris to homecoming again?" Kirsten asked, taking another gulp of her milkshake.

Lia's ears and cheeks began to turn red. "Um…I dunno. School hasn't even started yet!"

"Well, anyways, all guys are jerks, so I don't see why you would even bother," Kirsten added quickly, waving a hand and digging into her milkshake once more.

&

Zack watched the three friends talk. He just couldn't understand the Americans; they were all so sarcastic! It seemed that they were either fighting or joking, but the Brit could never tell.

Perhaps he would never understand the teens.

&

Lia glanced warily around the waiting room of the hospital. She had never been here before—had hoped and prayed that she would never have to—and it was strange to her, almost alien in its perfectly clean state. St. Christopher's hadn't even been this clean.

To her surprise, she spotted Chris, Zack, and Matt on the other side of the waiting room, so she got up and walked over to them. "Hey!" she greeted them, grinning. Chris looked up from his swimming magazine and gave her a smile that nearly made her melt on the spot.

"Hi! What are you doing here?"

Lia held up her bandaged arm. "My doctor told me that I should go to the hospital to get my stitches removed, unless she wanted either her to do it without pain killing stuff or me to do it on my own. I told her she could make me scream in pain on some other day."

Chris and Zack laughed. Matt gave her his normally stony glare, which Lia stuck her tongue out to.

"They're taking a look at my leg," Chris told her. "It's been feeling really weird for the past few days. Monday it felt as though someone had taken the bone and broken it into little splinters and then jabbed them into interesting places in my muscles. Yesterday it abruptly stopped hurting…it was really weird."

"I think that all that chlorine's gone to your head," Matt told him.

"Why are you still here?" Lia shot at him, giving him a strange look. "I thought that you moved out."

"He did," Zack and Chris said in unison. "He came back."

"His girlfriend kicked him out," Chris added with an evil grin.

Matt glared at him.

Chris gave him a smile, which earned him a slap on the head.

Zack squinted as he watched it all.

"Have you ever considered that you might need glasses?" Lia asked him.

Zack gave her a strange look. "Perhaps once or twice," he admitted. "But it's not like I can't see without them. I don't want to be a burden to the Grahams."

"They'll probably check you and give you a free pair if you tell them that you don't have your memory and that you're staying with friends," Lia told him. "If not, we'll get Cait—that's Pyro's mom—to pull some strings."

"Why would she be able to do what the doctors couldn't?" Zack asked, confused.

"It's not that they wouldn't be able to," Lia said slowly, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, "rather than not wanting to. Cait is an OR nurse here; she might be able to talk them into giving you a pair."

"OR?"

"Operating Room," Chris stuck in.

"Right."

"Graham, Florence," a voice called over the PA.

Lia grinned. "Looks like we're up," she stated, and walked up to the front desk to check in. A friendly looking nurse took her by the elbow and chatted her ear off as she escorted Lia to a small room to be examined. Chris was escorted right across the hall.

"Well, Ms. Florence," the doctor said, coming in and checking the folder that the nurse had left in a box in front of the door. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Oh, no problem," Lia told her, and pointed to her arm. "I just need the stitches removed—painlessly, please. I'm a bit of a wuss, sadly enough."

The doctor laughed.

"Well, we'll need to take x-rays again," Lia heard from across the hall as her doctor unwrapped the bandage from her arm. She averted her gaze as she saw gauze begin to appear and instead watched the scene in the next room. Chris sat on the examining table, his leg propped up on a chair. Matt was standing out of sight, but Zack was sitting in a chair near the door with his back to her.

He needs a haircut, she noted, seeing that the bottom of his messy hair just brushed his shirt collar. We should buy him one before school starts.

Chris sighed loudly. "Okay."

Lia grinned, and swore when the doctor pulled at one of the ties on her arm. She resisted looking, though, and was slightly startled when Zack turned around, and Chris looked over at her. She grinned sheepishly, but held still.

"This hasn't healed completely," her doctor said, bringing her back to the room. Lia looked up at her, trying to ignore her repulsion at the paleness of her arm already, and the disgusting looking wound. It wasn't that it was infected or anything, but the sight of the stitches just grossed her out. "It's well on its way, though. You say it doesn't hurt anymore when people poke it or you get jostled?"

Lia agreed with her.

The doctor thought for a moment. "I guess I could remove them. You'd have to be extremely careful not to re-open the wound, though. It's already going to be a nasty scar, and you may never have full use of your arm again."

&

Chris froze as he heard the uttered words from the doctor across the hall, and stopped listening to what his brother was telling his doctor at the look on Lia's face.

"What do you mean?"

The doctor crossed the room and closed the door just as Lia yelped, "What the hell do you mean!"

"Oh, no," he groaned, burying his face in his hand. He knew that he would have full control of his leg again, as it was only the bone that broke, but not knowing for weeks, perhaps even months whether her arm would be useful again…?

Chris noticed that Zack was being more quiet than usual.

"I can't help but feel bad for her," he muttered.

"I know," Chris agreed.

"Okay, Christopher," his doctor said, snapping shut a notebook and putting it on the counter. "X-rays."

"Could you do me a favor?" Chris asked her irritably.

"Sure."

"Don't call me Christopher."

&

"I can't believe you!" the blond screamed.

"Whaaaaat?" Her boyfriend threw up his arms in exasperation. "It's not like you didn't do anything wrong, either!"

"I hate this movie," Daniel said thoughtfully into Jack's ear. Jack rolled her eyes and threw a piece of popcorn at him.

"I know, they obviously don't," she said, gesturing to the screen.

A toe-tapping song suddenly filled the area, Jack's ringtone, accompanied by dirty looks.

"I really wish your mother wouldn't call you when she knows we're at the theater," Daniel told Jack as the teen tore through her purse, looking for her phone. She finally found it, and without looking at the screen to see who it was, answered it.

"Mom, don't call me when you know I'm at the movies!" she hissed angrily.

"Oh, so now I'm your mother?" Chris' voice said.

"Oops…heh…hi, Chris. Chris, don't call me when you know I'm at the movies!"

"She called you Mom!" Lia's voice said in the background, filled with humor.

Great. Juuuuuuuust great…

"Yeah," Chris answered her with a laugh.

"What's going on?" Daniel asked, trying to grab the phone from Jack. She evaded his reach by grabbing his wrist and leaning away.

"What are you two doing? I thought that Lia was going to get her stitches removed and that you were going to get your leg checked on."

"Funny, that," Zack's voice said. He must have taken the cell from Chris.

"Gimme!" Jack heard Lia say in the background. "That's not fair—I'm still in a bandage! Ow!"

"He's running off," Zack told Jack, laughing.

"Running? He can barely walk right!"

"The doctor took his cast off."

"What!"

"Shh!" Everyone in the audience was now turned around glaring at her. Jack sighed in remorse; it appeared that they weren't going to get to see the end of the movie after all.

Grabbing Daniel by the collar of his shirt and heading for the stairs, she continued to hiss into the phone, "How is that possible? Last I heard, he was supposed to be in a cast for the next six months!"

"Huh?" Daniel asked, confused. Jack ignored him.

"Er…I have no idea what's going on. What I do know—"

Jack heard the sound of the cell dropping, and the line went dead.

Once outside, she relayed to Daniel what information she knew.

"Well, what are we going to do?" he asked her, taking a sip of his drink. He had somehow managed to bring it with him during their wild escape from the theater.

"Wait until they call back."

"How are they going to do that on a dead phone?"

"Knowing them, it was Lia's cell that they were using, and you know how flimsy the back is on that stupid thing. The battery probably just fell out."

Sure enough, the familiar song of her cell went off and, checking it, it had Lia's number on it.

"Lia?"

"Wrong again!" Chris' voice said cheerfully.

"Whoever, care to fill me in on what happened?"

"Zack ran into a row of seats and dropped the phone. They're checking his eyesight right now."

"And?"

"The doctor keeps muttering under his breath and writing stuff down on his notepad. Hey, how come St. Chris' had such evil nurses and SWW has all the nice people?"

"That's just the way things worked out, I guess. Hey, you know what, not only are you God, you're a saint as well!"

"What?"

"St. Christopher!"

"Ha. Ha. Ha. So funny."

"Yeeess, I know. Oh, back to the whole you're walking without a cast, etc. thing."

"They x-rayed me—"

"I don't think that's a word," Lia's voice said in the background.

"Well, it is now," Chris told her. "Anyways—ouch! Lia, don't hit me so hard!—the reason my leg has been feeling so weird is because it's completely healed. No scars, no damage to the bone, no nothing. It's as if it never happened."

Jack gaped. "That's impossible."

"That's what the doctors are saying. Lia screamed at them for ten minutes before they let me out finally."

"But…it's impossible!"

"What's impossible?" Daniel asked.

"Jack," Chris said warningly.

She sighed and gave the phone over to Daniel, and watched his expression go from confused to flabbergasted.

"That's impossible!…No, Chris, it's still not possible!…"

Jack held out her hand in request for her cell back. Daniel turned around so that he was no longer looking at her. "Chris—I don't care!"

Jack sighed in frustration and jumped on Daniel's back to try and retrieve her phone. Daniel yelled and leaned forward in an attempt to keep his balance, while Jack grabbed her cell from his grasp.

"We'll meet up with you and carry this 'it's just not possible!' later. It's costing me minutes."

"Whatever," Lia's voice said. "I'm going to go home and pout about the fact that he gets to go swimming tomorrow and I don't."

Jack rolled her eyes. "I'll see ya then."

"Yeah. Buh-bye."

&

Zack felt strangely small as he entered into the school. The ceiling stretched up…and up…and up…until it met in a glass panneled roof that let the midmorning sun pour into the area. Students were milling around everywhere, running from the right side, past a sunken area in the floor where someone had placed sad excuses for couches, to the left, disappearing past what looked like the end of a very long line.

"Not bad," Chris commented, staring at the line with a look of slight fear. "I really hope that Pyro or someone saved us a spot."

Zack pushed his new glasses up his nose. It was a nice change to be able to see things clearly rather than just be able to make out shapes.

"You'll get to meet the rest of the gang, too."

"What?" Zack said, startled. "There's more of you guys!"

Chris laughed and began forward. "It's not like there are that many of us. You've met the bulk of us already, I think. Oh, look, there's Lia."

Zack glanced up and down the line, but he didn't see the trademark curls of the teen. "Where?"

"She straightened her hair. You'll see her in a minute."

They walked over to her and Zack saw that Chris was right; she was still the same loud, rowdy girl as before, only with straight hair and really nice clothes on. Her shirt was deep red and ruffled in the very front, and she wore platform black shoes that put her at seven inches or so above his five feet.

"Hey, guys," she said, slightly grumpy. Perhaps it was the fact that Chris was now crutch-less. Perhaps it was the fact that it was still early—9:00 in the morning, in fact. Or perhaps it was the fact that she was wearing a skirt.

"Who got you into that?" Chris asked, bewildered.

"The same person who did my hair."

"And that would be…?"

Lia crossed her arms—or attempted to, at least, as she still wore her ace bandage—and jerked her head in the direction of a girl who looked to be Chris' age chatting loudly with Jack and Pyro.

"Kels went to your house?"

"Jack drove her. I think she's trying to prove a point, but I don't know what it is."

"Jack's always trying to prove a point."

"I heard that," Jack's voice said. The three teens turned and looked at her, and Jack laughed. "It was quite funny, actually. That's the skirt that she bought for Tolo last year and only wore once."

"Tolo?" Zack asked.

"It's one of the dances that we have here," Lia explained, glaring at her friend and going slightly pink. "Tolo is the opposite of every other dance, though; it's not formal, the girl asks the guy, and the girl pays. Somebody, though, doesn't seem to catch that last concept."

"Which reminds me," Chris said, suddenly digging into his back pocket. He pulled out his wallet and forked out two bills. "Here you go."

"Nope. Not taking it."

"Take it!"

"Nope. I already told you, I paid, end of story! I owed you for the movie, remember?"

"Take it!"

Poor Zack was really confused now. Jack pulled him aside and whispered, "Lia asked him to Tolo last year and insisted on paying for the whole thing. It drove all of us nuts, actually, since they battled it to the ground about who was going to pay, and since she already did, he's been trying to pay her back for the past six months."

This triggered a memory. "Was that what you were all talking about when we were still at the hospital? What had happened last year?"

Jack frowned. "Maybe…wait, did Lia get really embarrassed about it?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Jack laughed. "No, that was about Homecoming. We teased her really badly about that for a while, and when she showed us that she was quite serious, we laid back a bit. Anyways, she asked him to Tolo, we all went in a group, and had a great time."

"Right." Zack ran one of his hands through his hair.

"I still think we should have gotten you a haircut before we had pictures taken."

Zack frowned. "We're getting pictures taken? I thought that we were just coming here for schedule pick-ups."

"Nope! Why do you think that all the girls are in nice clothes, have gone to the effort of doing their hair, and are wearing make-up, and half of them are wearing perfume?"

Zack realized how foolish his thinking had been. Then, "Why are they wearing perfume if you can't smell it after the picture's been taken?"

Jack laughed again. "You and Lia are on the same page, I guess. She always bitches about that."

"Hmm." Zack turned back to look at Lia, and saw that the normally curly-haired girl was tugging impatiently on a strand of hair and twisting it around one finger, as though she still had her curls.

"Lia, stop it!" the girl Chris had called Kels told her. "You'll curl it up again."

"Will not."

"Yeah, it will!"

"Kels, I think I know my hair well enough to know that it won't curl when I twist my finger around it. See?" She released the strand and pointed to it. It curled up slightly at the end. Lia grabbed the offending strand and stared at it, cross-eyed and annoyed, while everyone else laughed.

"I told you," Kels told her pointedly. "Do we need to go fix it?"

"No!" Lia shouted, backing hurriedly away from her friend and bumping into Zack, sending them both flying.

"Ouch!"

"Jeez!" Lia commented, wind milling her arms wildly and finally falling onto her butt. She quickly leaned forward and planted her hands on her skirt, most likely to prevent any of the perverted new freshman, the new sophomores, et cetera, from having a look. Her face was also a brilliant pink. "I seem to be doing this a lot this year," she murmured so softly that Zack barely caught the comment.

"Are you okay?" Zack asked.

"Yeah," Lia said in a slightly sad tone of voice, and got to her feet once more. "My arm's hurting again, though…"

"Maybe that means it's going to rain," Chris said.

"That's with joints and bones, silly, not muscles and skin," Lia corrected him. "And this is Washington—it always rains."

"Why is it the joints?"

"Do you want the smart scientific version or the I'm-stupid-and-not-in-SMT version?"

Chris glared sarcastically at her.

"Actually," Jack said, "It's easy—it's air pressure."

"Okay," Chris said, drawing out the word.

Lia sighed exasperatedly. "Never mind…"

The silence between the teens was broken by the other conversations around them, which gave Zack another chance to look around the school.

The cafeteria was huge, with a balcony overlooking it from the upper floor. An absurd amount of tables were lining the space between a small stage and the wall to a store. Although Zack squinted, he couldn't make out the name of it.

"The four-hundred wing is over there," Chris told him quietly. Then he pointed towards the middle of the cafeteria. "That's the six-hundred wing—the SMTers dominated it years ago, and they get really mad when general classes invade. It's kind of funny, actually, when other classes need to use it…we normally get kicked out, because we're 'disturbing the quiet of the wing'."

"Well," Lia butted in, "you do, the majority of the time. And they break our computers!"

"Remind me who got kicked out of that wing almost every day last year after school for the sole reason that they were being too loud."

Lia glared.

Zack was confused. "What, she stayed after and was made to leave?"

Chris laughed. "She and her boyfriend and Celeste and her boyfriend would stay after almost every day. She ended up getting kicked out within half-an-hour to forty minutes of being in there."

"It wasn't just us," Lia said in a hurt tone of voice. "Sometimes some of the juniors would be in there, too!"

The line moved forward drastically, and they passed out of sight of the cafeteria.

"How old is your school?" Zack asked, curiously. Even though he had nothing to compare it to (at least, nothing he could remember), he wanted to know about the school.

Lia did some quick calculating on her fingers, to which Chris laughed. "Umm…I think this is the eighth year they've been open. The first year—it's known as Bloodbath, or something like that—Skyview was home to all the freshmen in the district." She grinned evilly. "As you can tell from some of the more damaged wings, those who weren't going to Skyview regularly didn't take to it too well. It's like trying to put Hitler and his Nazis in a room full of Jews: some people just won't make it out 'alive.'"

They all laughed, and Lia had to turn around to claim her schedule. She swore lightly under her breath as she read it. "Dammit, they just won't let me leave, will they? Oh, well…half a semester of stupid Research…damn, damn, damn…." She continued her cussing rampage in the direction of the vending machines as she walked towards two sets of open doors, through which Zack could see wooden floors.

"The gym," Chris told him, snatching his own schedule from the pile, glancing at it, and shoving it into his pocket. Then, leaving Zack to his own devices, he walked through the doors after Lia, Pyro, and Jack, pulling a check from one of his other pockets.

"Last name, dear?" Zack jumped and turned to look at the lady behind the table, who was giving him a strange look.

"Er…Zack," he told her.

"L through Z is over there," she said in an annoyed voice.

"No, my name is just Zack."

"L through—"

"Ma'am, he doesn't remember his name at all. He's going by Zack for the meantime," Daniel's voice said from behind him. Zack turned around and saw that the tall blond boy was walking over, his keys twirling on the finger of one hand in idle boredom.

"What?"

Zack sighed and buried his face in his hands. He had the feeling that the next few weeks were going to be very interesting.

Yay! Done! Okay, in chapter 8, school starts, Hogwarts gets a very interesting program installed (so to say), and a strange and perhaps deadly occurrence…well, occurs…
I've had a few people question this in confusion already. If you still don't understand what is meant by "the black void of his dreams", please refer to chapters 2 and 5.
SWW is the main hospital here in Vancouver. Its full name is Southwest Washington Medical Center, for those who are curious.
SMT stands for Science, Math, Technology. It's a magnet program at Skyview, in which students focus on the aspects of SMT and learn how to apply them more so than the "general" classes. The classes are slightly more advanced; for example, I took Physics and Chemistry my freshman year. Physics sucked…chem. was fun!
Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I'm too lazy to do replies this time….

12/05/05: For those who have read this story before and are confused as to why things seem to be missing from this chapter, I'm tying up loose plot lines to try to have some semblance to a story. This is why certain things are missing (the intergetions from the beta and other people, for example). If you wish to see the story in its entirety, feel free to e-mail me at