This was supposed to be up Friday, but please, blame the fact that I had to work ALL DAY Friday AND Saturday for a stupid class (yeah, and didn't get paid, either!).

My wonderful beautiful reviewers! I love thee!

Mucho mas---er, thanks to Mistress Flame, my first reviewer!

To Flipper: :blinks:um...wow. I've never met anyone so enthusiastic before!

Please know that this chapter is up earlier than it otherwise would have been due to your astonishing enthusiasm! And yes, Chelsea is one heck of a gal. :smiles fondly:

(Oh, and Chelsea says "..." which I took to mean "Thank you very much. Cash, not credit!")

Again, this would not be conceived, written, or good at all without Chelsea, my inspiration (insert appropriately mushy music).

I now treat you to yet another chapter written exclusively after midnight on a schoolnight. :shakes head: And my morning professors wonder why I sleep in class...well, they usually just think I'm hungover like the rest of the population. I don't feel the need to tell them I'm just drunk on fanfiction! Well, and reviews, of course!

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Chapter Two ("Free")

Brown University, Mark decided a year and a half later, was a lot better when you didn't care what your report card said. Ever since an ultimatum from his father a week earlier ("You're going to put that camera down and start a good sensible medical career, or you're going to figure out some way of paying your own tuition!"), he had been enjoying his college experience to its fullest extent.

Somewhere in the past year, he had lost what little patience he had left for following his parent's decrees. He supposed that had much to do with the fact that in college, no matter who's paying the bills, each individual decision is for you and you alone to make. Not everyone could handle it, either. Mark had seen four or five dorm-mates slowly drink themselves braindead, spending most nights with their heads in toilets. He'd seen a former roommate crack under the pressure of self-sufficiency, leaving Brown altogether after a nervous breakdown. Math majors, he thought to himself. Lunatics, all of them.

The completely novel sensation of being totally free, of living in a different town, different state, different life from his parents, was more intoxicating than the tequila the senior upstairs had smuggled to him as a birthday gift early his first year. He had begun simply not attending the classes he didn't like, sticking to the electives. When his first film was completed (a short mock-exposee of what truly went on in the cafeteria), he had sent his parents a copy.

When he had first heard his parents' reactions, he had been convinced he had made a mistake, and had wondered what had possessed him to do such an idiotic thing. His mother was worried about his declining grades, and his father had put a veto on any more filming until he was "back on track."

Now, however, he was positive that sending "She Wore a Hairnet" was a deliberate, intentional decision, and that he had known all along that this was what he had meant to do. Now that he'd had a taste of independence, there was no way he could go back. He couldn't give up film; he wouldn't get a job. Therefore, his days at Brown were at an end.

No longer worried about the next semester, he had immediately switched to the Visual Arts department, spending every waking moment either not attending Art History to work on his latest screenplay, or sneaking into the Performing Arts classes, experimenting with angles and zooms on more-than-willing fledgling actors. The professor had been adamantly against Mark's attendance at first, but he had somehow managed to win her over by promising her a part in his final for his digital imaging course. She didn't know that he would be long gone by final time, and he didn't feel the need to enlighten her.

For the first time he could remember since leaving New York City, he felt truly alive. Not just in bursts, like that day so long ago, but all the time. Life, he realized, was thrilling. Captivating. It had become harder and harder for him to fade into the background this past few weeks, he realized. There were days when, for all his passion for his work, he just wanted to put the camera down and join in the dance.

The last night of the semester, Mark couldn't sleep. He lay on his bed wide awake, reflecting. All his possessions were packed neatly into boxes with his parents' address printed on the sides, ready to be shipped in the morning. In a bag by the doorway sat a toothbrush, toothpaste, a few changes of clothes, his camera, a sheaf of screenplays, and his savings (which amounted to a grand total of three hundred dollars; it had been more like a thousand, but he had bought himself a brand-new camera as a dropping-out-of-college present).

"Where're you going next?" asked Mark's roommate Benny. It had been Musical Roommates for a while; after his first roommate had suffered his breakdown, Mark had been saddled with an anal retentive who couldn't stand the bits of paper, electronics, food, and dirty laundry that seemed to blanket Mark's side of the room, and had filed for a room transfer in two days. Benny was his fourth roommate, after the third guy had transferred to Cornell at semester.

"New York," Mark answered confidently. It had been all he could think about since he had made the decision to leave. He remembered how inspired he had felt, laying eyes on the skyline for the first time. He remembered the lights hundreds of stories in the air, remembered the way life seemed to speed up, remembered the feeling of the wind rushing by between alleyways, as if it too were in a hurry to get someplace. Most of all, he remembered the look on his mother's face when he told her his plans; shock, horror, and a desperate attempt to look like she was happy for him. Priceless.

Benny looked over at him skeptically. "You're going to starve. You know that, right? I mean, how did you even afford to pay for that camera? You never work."

Mark chuckled bitterly. "My dad. It's the only thing he ever gave me. I remember..." his eyes unfocused as he stared at the ceiling, "every year on my birthday, he would come home from work, my mom would go over to him, and whisper something in his ear. He would shrug, then he'd come over to me, take out his wallet, hand me a fifty, say 'Happy Birthday,' grab a beer, and head upstairs."

"Man, that's cold."

Mark shrugged. "Could be worse. He never hit me, or anything. Never called me names. He just...wasn't there." Now, Cindy, his father had known what to do with her. He'd just kiss her on the head, and give her something pink. She'd pretend to like it, because she knew he'd tried, and he thought she was easy to please, and he'd feel like a good father. It was just enough for him to be able to forget that he had another child, a child who wasn't quite as easy to understand. A son, but a son who was afraid of the ball. A son who was smart, but didn't like to read. A son who he was sure dreamed of something, but who ever heard of making a living from a camera? Eventually, their relationship dwindled down to the last sentence of his father's letter: "Call when you do something right."

"You know where you're going to stay?"

Mark laughed. "Not a clue. That's the point! It's all about going out there, and just...living, you know? That's what I need to do."

Benny looked as if he were about to ask something, but stopped himself. "Yeah, well, okay. Call me when you get a place...maybe I'll be tired of this place by then. You're gonna need a roommate, or else who's gonna pay your rent?"

Less than twenty-four hours later, Mark was on a train to NYC, feeling more complete than he could ever remember feeling in his life. He had his camera, he had a little money, he had his dream, and he was going to New York City. Life was good. Best of all, his parents were history. They didn't know where he was staying, because he didn't know where he was staying. They couldn't call, because he didn't have a phone. They couldn't put down what he was doing, because they didn't know what he was doing. He would miss Cindy a little, but he'd gotten used to it in college. They'd always gotten along pretty well; when he broke an expensive vase, she'd covered for him, and when she stayed out late with a boy, Mark covered for her. Four years was enough an age difference so they weren't constantly competing, and even though Mark had always felt that she was favored a bit, he didn't mind. It allowed him to shrink into the background, to disappear. He'd always been the observer...no more, he vowed silently. From now on, I live. I'm going to live, and love, and starve, and get burned. He pressed his nose against the window, struggling to catch a glimpse of the far-off skyline. It's life on my terms.

He turned his camera on the second he stepped off the train and began narrating to himself. "December seventeenth, five pm. Eastern Standard Time. Mark's first day in the Big Apple."

For hours he wandered the city streets, not going anywhere specific. He filmed anything and everything, getting really excited when he found something he could incorporate into one of his scripts. He soaked in the city, tried to capture on film everything he'd seen that first day so long ago. He panned up the fire escapes, tried to film the homeless without being obtrusive, swept across barren urban parks. He at little; a pretzel from a street vendor, a soda from a vending machine outside a supermarket. He ignored as best as he could everything tourist-y; he skirted Times Square, declined to have his name on a grain of rice, didn't film the Statue of Liberty. He filmed plenty of people shamelessly indulging in these pleasures, however. He walked until his feet were sore and his battery was dying, then decided to find a hotel room.

There were varying stages of feeling adult, he realized. There was puberty, trying to acknowledge that your body was no longer that of a child. There was the feeling you get from moving away from home the first time with instructions to call that night. There was the absolute freedom of having no one in the world to answer to. But there was also, he thought as he payed for his room, the feeling of competency. He pulled a fifty out of his pocket, but couldn't shake the feeling that that was something his father would do.

All his fears and reservations about being alone in the city (for some reason his mother's voice constantly echoed in his head) melted away as soon as his head hit the pillow. The only thoughts in his head as he drifted off to sleep were that he was nineteen, he was in New York City, and he was free.

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And the next chapter will likely be up later today!