A/N: Thank you all for your reviews; I'm sorry for the wait. Just so you know, I'm not going to be following any canon laid out in "Babble On" concerning JS's childhood. And as for canon-JS's PT…well, I'm taking some creative license and pretending that, because he's young, he was alright in that regard and doesn't have to worry about PT. Just cause I don't want to bother. Anyway: here's the long-awaited Chapter Two.

Chapter 2: The Aftermath

Soon, the still-astonished nurse had called Herb and Vera Smith, who arrived within minutes. Overjoyed that their son was awake and coherent, they insistently petitioned the hospital staff to let him come home.

Eventually, the doctors acknowledged with some resignation – and no end of amazement – that Johnny seemed perfectly healthy, and dismissed him from the hospital.

His parents happily updated him on some of what he'd missed throughout the car ride home. He tried to pay attention – much of it, admittedly, was interesting – but he couldn't help being distracted by the memory of what had happened earlier.

It still seemed so real. The flames danced before his mind's eye as he remembered what he had, somehow, seen, and a horrible thought occurred to him: had he caused it? He considered this terrifying idea for a minute, then discarded it. After all, what he had seen had not actually happened. But it could have. And the more he thought about it, the more he reached just one conclusion.

It had been the future – a future that he'd changed.

He let his mind process this information, and felt the weight of the responsibility settle heavily on his shoulders. There was so much he could do with this ability, but he was just a kid. Why did this have to happen to him? And how did it happen? He had so many questions, but he doubted that anyone would be able to give him the answers he sought; that this wasn't exactly a common occurrence was fairly obvious.

Going back over the incident for the thousandth time, he thought, though, that he might have at least figured out how it worked. He'd touched the nurse and seen her daughter – possibly, it had to do with his hands.

Reflectively, his thoughts on why, and how, and what he was going to do about it, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Maybe it was just a one-time thing, or maybe not – but he wasn't taking any chances.

Once they got home and he'd spent some time acclimating himself to the inevitable changes his home had undergone in the six years he'd been asleep, his father made a few phone calls and then told him, "I figure you might not be eager to really get back into the swing of things, but the school's gonna try and work out what to do with you. This kind of thing is, well, unprecedented, but they said to expect some kind of a test, probably some time next week, to decide what grade you'll be put in."

Johnny nodded, his mind immediately setting to work at an attempt to determine the odds he had of ending up the tallest kid in the entire middle school.

Despite his best efforts, Johnny had several more occurrences like the first throughout the next week. He still didn't like them much – it was always something of a shock when his present reality was pulled out from under him to be replaced with the future or, as he'd discovered was also possible, the past – but they were a little less frightening now.

He didn't have too much time to worry about the strange visions, regardless. He had a test to study for.

The next day marked the day of the test. Mumbling the Pythagorean Theorem under his breath, he climbed out of the car and entered the high school with his parents.

Vice-Principal Cunningham strode toward Johnny Smith with a smile, hand outstretched in greeting, and introduced himself.

"Johnny Smith," the boy replied, shaking the offered hand.

A careful observer would have noticed the faraway look in the teenager's eyes, but the vice principal wasn't paying attention.

Johnny, on the other hand, certainly was.

The exam was a true test of his memorization skills, but Johnny had been able to commit enough of what he'd seen to memory to answer a significant number of the questions, which he then used to solve several more. He thought that, with luck, he'd do fairly well.

Question sixty-four, though – was that A or C?

Shrugging, he halfheartedly ran a hand across the page. And winced at the red ink.

Well, it wasn't C.

Johnny marked A with a chuckle, and moved on to sixty-five.

He could get used to this.

A/N: I'm not terribly pleased with this chapter, but at least it's up, right? More importantly, I'm writing this as I go along, for the most part, so I have yet to give this story a satisfactory plot. Any suggestions for a possible plot that are reviewed/emailed to me will be considered and, if I incorporate one or more of them, credit will be given where it is due. So, if you've got ideas, share! That's all till next time. Thanks for reading!