AN: Wow, other than issues with its length, I'm actually somewhat satisfied with this chapter…it must be the lack of sleep. Not too much to tell oy with the cursing though, damn kids and their foul language.

Rockerchik777: I'm glad you liked the chapter, Spinal Tap is such an awesome movie! I haven't seen it in a long time.

Dozengirl: I'm glad you enjoyed it!

United Nude Postmasters IDH: Thank-you for the compliment, Dewey is a fantastic character and I hope I adequately captured all of his robust enthusiasm and essential…Dewey-ness. He's kind of like Zack's musical mentor, but he ends up coming off as a paternal figure more often than not.

V

The Distance

"Like a winter storm,

fear's gonna pierce your bones oh yes you will find out.

You can't hold out, you can't hold out

Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere"

The Rolling Stones "I am Waiting"

Horace Green High School, the most picturesque of prisons sat at the end of the long green field like a Norman Rockwell painting, among gleaming juniper trees, mating Cardinals and the foamy warmth of fountain's spray.

It made Mooneyham want to vomit.

In true eighties teen movie fashion five members of the Varsity lacrosse team were waiting for him as he trudged across the sunlit crest of the hill. Standing in a violent looking formation, like vengeful geese, sticks in their hands laughing and talking to each other like the contestants of The Price Is Right on pot.

It hadn't gone well. ("Gentleman." "You ready to die mother fucker!" "I wasn't ready to die two days ago what makes you think I've changed my mind?" "Why don't you suck it queer!" "I'd rather go to a White Stripe's concert.") And now he stood in the white hall flooded with maroon blazers and striped ties, dirt on his black converses, mud in his hair limping slightly. The faint imprint of the sharp end of a lacrosse stick lay on his pale forehead.

The hall buzzed under the hot lights, trophies glittered abrasively from their glass cases and the bored ghosts marched in formation in front of him. Hunched maroon shoulders identical moving in a slow assembly line pushing together like restless atoms. We Don't Need No Education

He felt the fever rising like deep maroon in his throat, hot in his brain as he staggered down the hallway like Dante down the steps of Hell, face streaked with dirt. So many atoms pressing against his small shoulders, Mick Jagger yelling at him to get a life from the broken headphones lying round his ears, everything smelled like teen spirit.

Truly, it was as if he were the first person to walk down a goddamned hallway.

All the eyes were like the harsh glow of reckless fire. Gazes, some quick, others lingering, shy and daring and cautious all plied into the side of his head like tiny drills carving their initials on the narrow shadow of his cheek. Eyes all the same, the spiky haired, lacrosse playing fucktard still a little hungover from that midnight beach party over the weekend, leaning up against the lockers easy grin sliding across his face as he took in the raven hair and small waist and delicate fingers.

Shy soft haired freshman, budding desert roses with creamy skin and flushed cheeks fumbling with their locker combinations as they flicked short telling glances in his direction. Hungry looking seniors, panting and insubordinate smelling of Marlboro's and the Clash gazing with a terrible rapturous hunger that gnawed at their stained eyes.

He was painfully aware of the fact that he was thin and pale and the stark hair that pitched forward against his sunken skin cast a shadow over his dark brown eyes framed in black eyeliner. And yeah, one glance in the harsh stainless glass of the trophy cases confirmed it: he looked like Billy Joe Armstrong with anorexia One hand gliding across the cool lockers, the other clutching his black messenger bag as if it were his mother's milk in a solid form.

He hadn't really expected the morning to begin any differently, by arriving early he'd left a giant window open ripe with ass-kicking possibility. By wearing his Creed Sucks button, he had both failed to prevent the ass kicking and invited it with open arms like a distant relative.

The champagne colored walls were moving, winking at him drowsily as the fever rose screaming in his brain. He tripped and fumbled over his feet pangs in his chest long black lashes twitching. Zack lay his head against the cool door of his locker, feeling his brain boiling, feeling a form in the ashes of some noxious gas that filled his head and helped the nervous nausea pass away.

A Wall.

Perspiration gripping his fingers in a thin, glossy webbing skin raw and red and checkered with invisible bruises from the long train of visual molestation. When he opened his eyes again there grazed two worried pairs of worried orbs that glittered like dull stars. Marco and Gordon were standing a few feet away, paused in front of their open lockers looking at him as if he were the Messiah in their ham and tuna fish sandwich.

Marco's flaming red hair stood frozen like a wave of fire magnetized like the villain of a Kung-fu movie on Gordon's round spectacles. They stood with their shoulders together peering at him cautiously as if he had the bubonic plague and was intent on sharing it with them.

Zack grinned widely. They were like fucking Lavern and Shirley.

"You okay Zack?"

"Yeah, you look sick."

The boy put his hands together and bowed at them ceremoniously almost toppling over. He paused for a moment, startled then pushed off the wall like an inebriated figure skater and practically floated through the swelling sea of blazers and ties eventually coming to the other side of the hall, where his comrades watched him enter what he would soon find out was the wrong classroom.

Gordon turned to the red haired boy trying to get pieces of lint off of his blazer, and straightened his glasses.

"I think he's on dope."

The day swam before his eyes like a dream. Flashes of sound and color deaf and dumb staggering through the misty lines.
A sugary drowsy garden of happy neon fatigue bloomed at the sharp corners of his spirit when he barreled into Intro to Musical Theory. All the light and the spinning and the sugar oozing in his blood made him feel as if he were on the inside of a piñata some little kid with epilepsy was beating the crap out of with a sawed off shotgun.

Pre Calculus was hard. Solid like granite and truth, something he could feel under his fingernails, firm dough kneaded with theory and fact. Equations and formulas spread themselves in messy hieroglyphics made of red dust in his brain. Civics was worse than being trapped on the teacup ride in the Euro Disney in hell. Law and rhetoric and the women in Jersey who drowned her four kids in their own bath water because they wouldn't stop crying when she was trying to watch "Wheel of Fortunel".

He tipped his chair back in Lit class, listening to the cheery beep of Tetris on Leonard's Gameboy and all the dead talk round him that loaded in his ears like bullets. The Game against Jefferson dude it was this goddamned close, Did you see how plastered Mary Ann got at her mom's wedding? She was totally hitting on her stepdad, Oh my god Chelsea, how totally fucking hardcore was that Maroon Five concert last night? And (his personal favorite) What the hell is up with Mooneyham's face? Eyes couldn't stop pawing, mouths couldn't stop working, no one could keep quiet about it cause damn scars were cool. They either meant you spent all your time rescuing girls from trouble like a young Brando, or you went to the hood on the weekends and stole cars.

And there was nothing cooler than a heroic gangster who disguised himself as a delicate looking, moody queer.

Chem was a different beast all together. Hot stuffy air, warm pressure nuzzling into his neck and pressing into his shoulders, mind and breath swelling with the strawberry colored heat that was stabbed by dapples of hot yellow light. Black tables and pink walls, hanging plants and hot glass beakers invisible clouds of heat and knowledge exploding in the narrow curve of his face.

Girls blowing bubbles and mouthing pieces of John Mayer songs to each other. Maroon blazers thrown loosely around small shoulders, black curls and light brown tresses that fell against unbuttoned collars like vines Creamy skin peeking shyly from behind the soft white material, bright eyes framed in lush blue and dangerous brown, Cheshire smiles and laughter and sweet whispers. He couldn't concentrate.

The fever rose higher and higher, there were clouds and whispers and neurons bouncing round in his brain another brick in the Wall. A golden haired girl with a narrow pout and limestone eyes that sat across from him in all the glittering fog kept grinning at him and closing her eyes. When he leaned over to retrieve his pencil, black hair falling over his forehead, it was discovered that she had written his name on her eyelids in black sharpie

Back into the hall. Sweltering jungle perspiration mingled with mild mania an endless drum beat in his head. Pushing his way through the maroon waves, dizzy pounding drowning upstream. Shoved against the wall by sharp shoulders, drowning in hot air, he felt like Alice down the rabbit hole, and that house with the pink shutters was too goddamned small.

Mother could I run for president.

By the time European History rolled around he was fucking high as a fucking kite. Head on the desk drooling like an unconscious cat in the back of the room, smiling widely at all the happy color pictures floating across his eyes the class factotum's voice a warm winter song in his ears.

He made three dozen paper cranes by the end of the morning lecture sitting with his chin resting in the valley of his joined fingers behind his golden fleet. Upon the conclusion of the test over the Inquisition he'd begun to belt out "You Need Somebody to Love" in a voice that sounded like Grace Slick being clubbed with a tire iron. Professor Klausan had begun to yell and someone hurled a hardback copy of the World Atlas dangerously close to his paper fleet which like any good owner of inanimate pets, he scrambled forward to save, blocking the evil Atlas with his thin hands.

There was pain but not much of it, not enough to warrant crying anyway. The professor was to show a movie about eighteenth Century England, beheadings, Kings, prostitutes you know, the good stuff, only the projector broke. Zack volunteered to help with reconstruction of the defunct instrument but the graceful hand of the factotum went up first and his desire was wiped clean. Sucking on his sore fingers in the dark he watched light flicker and play against the strands of dark hair in the shadow of the broken projector.

Mother should I trust the Government.

And finally…lunch.

He stood in the dark grass on the thick green lacrosse field with his brain burning, looking up at the mass of fog overhead wishing that he could simply become vapor. Revert back until he was just a bunch of molecules then float up to live in the stomach of the clouds.

The wind blew his irresponsible black hair out of his face as he felt himself slip away slowly, along the lower lining of his dreams, palms adorned with orange Flinestone's Band-Aids. He stood there with his arms outstretched slightly feeling as if he could just disappear into the atmosphere, until a short fiery voice bitch slapped him in the ears.

"What the hell are you doing?" Lawrence's voice came out in short bursts like cannon fire.

He was standing a few yards away, on the hill next to the crazy cannon used in the pomp and ceremony of Horace Green lacrosse matches. Nodding his head to the ipod in the pocket of his blazer dark eyebrows all frowned together like the Andes Mountains; Zack didn't even have to hear it to know he was rocking out to Devo.

"Shh! I'm trying to figure out how to get all the members of ABBA in one room so as to better assassinate them."

"I think two of them are already dead." He shouted

"Then my job is half done."

"Good luck trying to organize a reunion. Lawrence called; short voice battered by the wind that caressed Zack's warm face. You want some wheatgerm?"

Mooneyham reluctantly shuffled over-paper cranes spilling out of his bag and making a yellow trail behind him as he climbed the hill-and stood next to the taller boy fog creating swirling shapes between them. The mist fought for dominance over the shocks of black hair that stood up like electrocuted woodland animals as the symmetrical face bobbed up and down, chin working furiously on a bit of wheatgerm.

"It's supposed to sharpen your mind." He nodded as Zack took a pinch from his palm.

"God. Zack grimaced. It tastes like moldy corpse."

Lawrence shrugged not even wanting to know how Mooneyham could make such a comparison. "Better than my mother's cooking."

He found himself in the clear glass resting on the bridge of Lawrence's nose as the large brown eyes stared at him probingly.

"What happened to your head?"

"Tripped on the steps." His cool hand swept across his forehead uneasily.

"You look like you caught a hand grenade in the face." The boy cocked his head to get a better look but couldn't see for the forest of dark hair.

"You didn't hear? It's the least expensive natural selection procedure they could think off, the kids who can run the fastest get to keep their limps."

Lawrence blinked. "You're a smartass."

"Really?"

Bobbing his head like a happy Hare Krishna the boy just grinned widely at him. "Come on, we're over here."

Zack felt the wind in his hair watched it sift through the other boy's so that his hair resembled a messy black kite against the sky. Sighing and clutching a yellow paper crane he hesitantly followed Lawrence, back through a labyrinth of vines and plants in the deep shadow of the school, to the front garden with swelling azaleas and blistering red roses, mazes of thick vines and giant plants

He could feel the Wall heavy in his head, glimmering yellow brick. It trembled against the sounds that traveled through the thick flowers on the black path to his ears. The excited beeping of Tetris, laughter and low chatter and Eleni's incredulous voice:

"You're insane Marco the Hives are awesome!"

" Yeah if by awesome you mean they suck ass. Marco grunted. You just likes Dutch guys."

"They're from Sweden!"

And there they were sitting at a long table on the veranda under a big white umbrella, talking and laughing and throwing things at each other. Leonard in the middle of one of the benches emersed in his Gameboy, Marco and Gordon on the other side trading lunches, Billy flipping through the August issue of Vogue Alicia leaning over the table arguing with Tomika who was captivated by the picture of Howling Pelle Alquvimest on the cover of the battered Rollingstone Michelle and Eleni were pouring over, strands of blonde hair touching in the flashes of stolen sunlight between the trees.

Frankie large and granite faced shoveled down his food next to Alicia on the other side of Gordon whose profile all but obscured the light fuzzy edges of Marta's pigtails. The sun was breaking through the trees on their heads, the portable radio in Marco's lap was blasting Pinball Wizard and Katie sat at the end of the farthest bench, playing with the shutter speed on her camera, short dark hair shading her face like a curtain.

It was the perfect picture. The Breakfast Club on crack cocaine. And Zack stood in the shadow of the yew bushes feeling as if he'd never seen them before, as if the portrait were etched in some thick perfection he couldn't fathom blemished by his awkward black presence.

Feeling old and fuzzy, like a television set that had suddenly become obsolete, he turned round ready to ask Lawrence if he wanted to eat on the field to find his comrade had already plopped down, still nodding his head and was in the midst of a lunch trade with Gordon. So he clutched the straps of his bag feeling like a nervous third grader with a bladder problem and approached the table purposefully, feeling the Wall glitter and glow.

Mother should I trust the government.

They greeted him in the usual way; a cheery echo of "Zack Attack!" like he'd just graduated from the AA program. He sat down next to Lawrence slowly and was overcome with the familiarity of it Gordon patting him on the back the line of excited eyes and flushed faces in the sunlight, Marta's shy smile. Moments he'd lived a thousand times before.

"Did anybody take the Inquisition test in EHAP yet?"

Sunlight flitted on the top of the table, between juice boxes and Ziploc bags and a worn red Fraggles lunchbox.

"I hoped you studied it was hella hard."

Frankie was trying to see how many Batman fruit snacks he could fit in his mouth, Leonard's Game Boy beeped excitedly and Zack looked across the table.

"What the hell is it?"

The branches shifted and the sun poured into his eyes. Across the table the light caught itself on Marta's glossy blue eyes, she held his gaze for a moment and gave him a tiny grin.

"The lunch lady said it was water…and a little bit of rum to kill the bacteria."

"Sick."

"Sick like your face."

"So Zack Attack, Larry told us your parents are out of town,"

"For two whole weeks man, you know what that means-.'

"Party at Mooneyham's!"

"You units won't mind if we party at your house will they?"

"Naw it's cool." Zack tugged at his black Maggot Death wrist cuff, vampire Ned grinning up at him savagely. All the talk made a pleasant hum in his ears.

" Sweet, I'll bring the tunes Ace of Base anyone?"

It was one of those transparent pictures, if you shifted your wrist a little the back round turned blood red and Ned grew fangs. He could close his eyes and know which one was speaking; it was a game he played sometimes when he was feeling lost, disconnected. Like the old Zack.

"If you ever say something like that again I'm gonna fucking kill you."

"Calm down Alicia I was kidding…would you prefer some Vinilla Ice?"

"If you want me to go ice, ice baby all over your punk ass then bring it on."

Glimmers of the old Zack always fighting to get through. He could never rest. His blurry, tired eyes riddled with heat and fever turned themselves on to the flashes of the glowing field through the yews and junipers. Long and flat and green littered with copper leaves floating from nowhere set fire by the sun hiding in the topmost branches like a shy star. Blinding light playing on the bruise red leaves shaking and spitting, forming images in its center that shone like crystal, rubbing against his bruised forehead like a mother's warm hand traveling down his closed eyes and through his hair and shooting everywhere in great beams like kinetic energy.

"Where's Summer?"

Zack's head jerked up so fast it sent a sharp pain down his spine.

"In the library, where else?" Michelle rolled her eyes.

"She is still thinking about running for class president?"

"Oh Sum's definitely running." Michelle lifted her chin haughtily.

"Hardcore." Eleni nodded vigorously, ponytail swinging, the Death Cab for Cutie pin on her blazer shining in the sun.

"She was giving out tarts this morning! Gordon's eyes lit up. They tasted like little squares of heaven!"

"Who's she running against anyway?"

Eleni shrugged. "President of the Calligraphy club, the foreign exchange student from Pakistan-."

"And some chick named Mavis who just moved here from Ohio. Michelle said disdainfully. She's totally got it in the bag."

"Hey where'd Freddy go?" Lawrence looked around. "He was right behind me in line."

"He ran off. Michelle's harsh beautiful mouth spread into a wicked grin that cut Zack's eyes. "Said something about needing to study."

The catch in her voice made Zack's breath die in his throat. Unsteady blood in his ears, burning with fever, crooked vision looked down at the song lyrics sprawled on his shoes in black sharpie, the silence echoing in a deafening roar.

Lawrence nodded, one earphone hanging from its cord nearly touching his mashed potatoes, then turned to Zack.

"You want something to eat?"

Zack shook his head keeping his eyes down so as not to get caught in the glare of Michelle's gaze.

"Damn, Alicia swiveled her neck like an ostrich. Dewey should have called you bulimia boy."

"I don't think that works out too well as a stage name."

"It was a joke Marco, kind of like your taste in music."

"Bam!"

"Oh Marco got served!"

Then it was a rush of noise, wind through the trees, sunlit laughter and Pete Townsed shredding guitar like nobody's business. It hammered against the soft spot in his head where he sat with his eyes screwed shut trying to bury his black converses in the deep brown dirt. Focused all of his energy on pawing and kicking at the dirt until he'd made rusty patterns in the dust, kicking until his toes curled from the blunt force of the ground.

And he could feel himself drifting, he'd been leaning for a long time now, on a dark dock lying tied to a fading tether, bobbing helplessly half drowning half struggling against the surf and in that moment he felt himself slipping away from them. Being pushed down the current before he was caught on the large yellow Wall. Down the beach where they all sat eating and singing and arguing and he was bobbing farther and farther out to sea and soon the roar of the surf was so loud he couldn't hear the laughter.

When he opened his eyes he was sitting in the harsh bubble of the white Spanish classroom. Wide sombreros across the plain walls, the professor lecturing in long slabs of blaring static, verbs and conjugations and mucho lingual tortura y humallacion. It wasn't so bad because he had Marta. Sitting at her desk across the room, swinging her legs making faces at him and mimicking Mrs. Keach's actions. She crossed her bright eyes and wiggled her nose and pulled at her pigtails like Pipi Longstocking on laughing gas.

He wanted to press her lips together with his fingers to keep her from making those horrible faces but he grinned at them anyway. Making long dark lines with his pencil on the margins of his notebook, MAGGOT DEATH in crazy big letters, clean shaven monsters with spotted ties and glasses and long teeth roaming the lined pages with clubs and copies of The New York Times in their claws. Led Zeppelin and Cream in swirling cursive dancing round tiny sketches of his guitar with a red and purple heart under the strings, Celine Dion with her hair on fire, the grim reaper wearing a Harvard sweat shirt, Hendrix's afro taking on a life of it's own and terrorizing pregnant librarians.

"Am I boring you Mr. Mooneyham?"

"No ma'am, I'm ready, alert and filled to the brim with a yearn to learn."

A glare that flew off him like vapor Marta laughter that didn't pause until they were in the corridor, shoulder to shoulder, marching two by two, down to the ground to get out of the rain Off to the fresh hell of a school wide assembly, moving in a slow assembly line, pushing together like restless atoms. Until it stopped. Until he stopped.

Turned sideways and disappeared when he felt the eyes on him. Pressed against the door of the A.V room, watching the lines pass. Shock of blonde hair like a smothered crown on his head, eyes the color of dark sea foam Thor with a hangover bashing his hammer against an angry beach. Just staring.

"Can I help you?"

"Your shirt's inside out."

"Thanks mom."

The boy smirked and Zack's fever broke, erupted and foamed all over his brain in hellish rivers of burning lava.

"You look happy, your Avril Leveign box set finally come in the mail?"

"Nah man, just heard you got your ass kicked last Friday. Freddy grinned. You've gotta learn some karate dude."

Zack could feel the ghostly rhythm of his heart in his ears. "Yeah…I'm gonna pass on that, see I'm really not good with hand to hand combat, kind of like when you try to remember how to spell your name and you almost give yourself an aneurysm."

One more step and yeah, there went his personal space. Plains of flawless skin lead by a short nose and those dark eyes, angry seafoam that pummeled his into submission and Zack didn't look away. Twin pairs of converse, black and blue toe to toe. Clenched fists and tight jaws like those fucking animals in Fight Club. It never got old.

And he could feel it, the final yellow brick being squeezed into the Wall. It moved forward in his head, great and glimmering like the looming bow of a ship coming through the mist, blue waves crashing against it. He looked right into the stormy irises the curling cruel sea rolling against tiny grains of sand and lightening flashing against the pupil and knew it was about to get ugly, ugly like an emaciated, one-legged Vietnamese hooker.

But he didn't get hit. Nothing. Freddy didn't go postal at all, Zack wished he would have.

The blond boy just looked contented like when you're playing Battleship and you have the exact coordinates to sink the other asshole only he doesn't know it. A dangerous confidence painted in yellow streaks across his face like war paint.

"I gotta go. Freddy said roughly, voice drawing out like the notes of some savage operetta, Hathaway's probably looking for me."

The grin was slow to spread across his face nice and steady, like a satiated fox. Zack imagined it was in response to the expression on his face which he couldn't see but yeah he could imagine it. Short stab wounds to the chest made by an invisible pin, his breath got so shallow so fast god if there was a medal for how fast your breath could get shallow without you having first ran a mile while carrying a pack mule he'd-

His brain collapsed. Under the ghost of the fever and the lava and the dull sour ache rising in his throat like vomit. Freddy was grinning, inches away but his eyes were still storms, heat and congestion that looked as if they were ready to explode. And Zack leaning against the Wall breathing shallowly and holding his stomach in pieces against the sharp waves could feel his hands becoming fists, could feel the ache tearing against the walls of his reason.

Mother should I trust the government. Pale hands rising embroidered in slow motion stony faces silent in the storm that rained down on them, raging thunder and lightening a monsoon of anger and expectance and regret until a hard hand came down on Zack's shoulder.

The Dean's face was like smog, being torn up by all the light in the corridor. Large, meaty palms leaving a heavy sweat stain on Zack's blazer, fingers that had ingested far too much cheese dip at lunch licking at his collar as the elder gentleman passed them.

"Take it out on the Taliban boys." He said in that deep grizzly voice like Father Christmas on crack.

He sat in the cool dark auditorium staring at the ceiling entertaining thoughts of forming a mutiny. Color all over his face, still breathing hoarsely white knuckles gripping the armrests.

"I'm gonna shoot somebody if this doesn't end soon." Lawrence's glasses glimmered in the dark.

"I'm gonna shoot myself." Zack closed his eyes.

On stage Tucker McPherson a plump boy from his Civics class was serenading the entire student body to a screechy, ungodly rendition of "Rock the Casbah" on his Autoharp. Audience participation had died within minuets of the number, and was now being replaced with boredom that manifested itself into paper airplanes, minor fists fights and catapulting things at Tucker's head. Tucker, unusually dedicated to his skill, never wavered for a moment; he had his eyes closed and was swaying with each movement of his harp.

"They wouldn't let us play at the school fair but they let this idiot have his own concert?"

"He got attacked by a rabid Doberman, they thought he was never gonna walk again."

"So? Lawrence hissed. I sprained my ankle on Eleni's trampoline did I ask for my own recital?"

"You made me and Gordon carry you up the stairs."

"That's because it stung like a mofo!"

Abrupt shushing erupted from the row of dark heads in front of them.

"What was the Dean talking to you about?" Lawrence whispered.

Even in the dark he could see Zack's face twitching like a fish having a stroke. The other boy cleared his throat noisily.

" Nothing." He shook his head.

His four-eyed comrade snorted

"There ah…building a private wing for the gifted on the football field."

"They want you to work sanitation?"

"Actually we were trying to decide upon how best to reject your application."

Lawrence grinned. "I hope you were nice about it."

Zack nodded slowly then cast his eyes round in the dark; feeling his brain cool and the adrenaline rush from his battered system like a tired flood. The entire marble hall was filled with the skeletal, hair-raising screech of fat fingers strumming thin harp strings.

Marta sat on the other side of him playing with the hem of her gray skirt and blowing breath out of her cheeks like a bored second grader. He could see Katie's long yawn and Tomika's round shoulder's bowing as she cringed in pain, Eleni covering her ears, Billy filing his nails vigorously, Leonard curled in a fetal position and Gordon a few seats away pointing at Tucker's down turned head and laughing at something Marco was saying.

Frankie sat on the other side of Lawrence pretending to hang himself with his tie.

"This is hell. Lawrence whispered desperately. I can actually feel my brain cells committing suicide!"

Someone in their row was blowing bubbles. They floated in front of him like a ghostly parade, clear and bright in the dark

"Then walk out man, no one'll see you."

They traveled up the folds of the arch blackness and punctured themselves on the wide plane of space above his head. Dancing a suicide jig on the cool air that glowed like glass.

"I can't! The sound is so bad it's messed with my temporal lobe!" And before Zack could look at him Lawrence had stood up and cupped his hands round his mouth.

"Music butcher!"

More shushing, prim and insistent. Someone in the back burst into applause.

Lawrence sat back down regally and snatched his ipod from the pocket of his blazer. "I wish the dog had eaten him" he mouthed at Zack before his ears were devoured by the deafening sounds of Devo. He began to bob his head and his comrade closed his eyes and smashed his hands against his ears trying to keep the toxic musical filth from raping his hearing.

He was shot out of his sunlit dream a few moments later, by the smashing sound of roaring applause and abrasive cheering. Fearing for a wild moment that he had somehow been magically transported to an N'SNYC concert he looked round madly. Everyone around him was on there feet clapping and yelling and cheering.

What the hell? But he couldn't even hear himself think it because the noise was so loud. Rubbing his eyes like an inebriated banshee, he sat up slowly and stared at Lawrence, whose spectacles were bouncing on his nose violently because he was jumping up and down and shouting like a deranged cheerleader. He turned around and Marta was grinning and clapping, Leonard was howling with joy and Eleni-seemingly possessed with the spirit of Fred Astaire-was ballroom dancing with Michelle in the aisle.

He was staring at the unabashed euphoria dancing across Lawrence's face feeling as if the Dean had sprinkled the mash potatoes with ground up Ritalin, when he got it.

They were clapping because it was finally over.

Zack looked to the stage where the oblivious Tucker was waving his hat in the air and taking bow after bow. Lawrence grinned at him triumphantly. Exhausted, eyes lined with mascara and lost sleep he leaned back in his chair resting his worn Converses on the back of the seat in front of him.

"Thank you god."

He lay his head among the forests of maroon blazers and blinked drowsily at the high marble ceiling with the school crest emblazoned on it. Bubbles flew round his head; cries littered the air and the source of the impatient shushing noises turned around primly to ask the stupid tool behind her to please get his filthy shoes away from her head.

Zack's shoes hit the floor with a loud thump no one heard.

The Scientist blinked on like a light in his head as big brown eyes framed with long dark hair touched his own, softly as if the gaze was made of glass. Melting glaciers and broken windows in his head swallowed by hot lava and pieces of fever bubbles and dove feathers and the cool darkness that made her pupils swell. The inside of his mouth tasted salty like the ocean as his eyes vaulted into hers with reckless abandon, pink little mouth parted slightly, breath thin and hollow as her soft flushed face glittered in the dark like the opening of Monarch's wings.

Her smile was like the opening lines of an earthquake he didn't have time to take cover from, the sheer force of its radiance broke the Wall in his head and flooded the curves of his hot mind with blinding light and arctic ocean water.

Summer.

AN: Thought it would never end didn't you? I think this chapter was longer than "Revenge of the Sith" Sorry about the length (admitting I occasionally go overboard is kind of like saying Kurt Cobain was feeling a little under the weather when he shot himself) I just really wanted to root out Zack's school experience.

Sorry about the nameless dialogue in the lunch scene, when Zack doesn't pay attention the voices don't have names or faces. Sophomore year I actually had a gym teacher who would end lectures on behavioral conduct with the Dean's only line. Oh man I love the Clash… and Coldplay as well, but that's neither here nor there.

I hope the reason for the animosity between Freddy and Zack is clear.

Oh…EHAP is honors European History…the most vapid class on the face of the earth.