Disclaimer: La hada y la cabra comieron el gato con arroz. Procuré pararlos, pero la mesa me lamió. Después de ese, yo estola la cesta. Mi maestra de español es una idiota. Ella come los uñas del dedo del pie y hace compras con un cerdo. (Take THAT stinking education programs! I know you didn't teach me THAT! That's pure gringo talk right there, that is.)

A/N: WOOHOO! SCHOOL'S OUT! That gives me more opportunities to update, right? …HAHA, FOOLED YOU! I really don't know my away-from-home to infront-of-computer ratio as of now, so don't expect much. I'm just about as swamped as if I still had school. That's just the definition of "vacation", isn't it? Bleck.

Her over-reactment of the up-ending day she had had calmed by the liquified sugar and food coloring, Cindy spent the first afternoon of her new life doing, as expected, no strings attactched, all the glitz and glam included: homework. She was disturbed only two times after Miles's visit; the first, his sister Emily, bringing a peace offering of carrot sticks and her homemade ranch dressing. (Cindy resented the slight, involuntary nose wrinkle her roommate made at her choice of beverage, but that should have been expected, and she got over it quickly.) The second was made by Miss United Date-Digger's herself, asking ever-so-sweetly for help with poem she was ment to analyze in her English class. Knowing this was ment to be an ice-breaker, Cindy caved and allowed herself to be chatted with. Much to her surprise, once she set aside all stereotypes from their first meeting, she found herself actually enjoying herself a few times, and she almost laughed once.

That precursor for day two was enough to set Cindy in a positive mood that lasted up until lunch time. It was replenished when she met Lizzie, Emily, and Miles in the little coffee shop across the street from there apartment and just down the road from the school. They sat at one of the bar-height, spindly wrought-iron tables that littered the small courtyard and sidewalk in front of it. Her spirits were relifted as Miles re-encountered – hand motions, sound effects and all – the tumble his 80-year-old English Literature professor took over his desk and into the bookshelf behind it. (It would have been less funny if the professor were polite and had he not been in the middle of a prepared monolouge on the importance of constant attention.)

Chemistry was a subdued affair; or rather, the professor was. When Cindy entered the class, she almost didn't see Jimmy slumped in his chair and clutching an economy sized bottle of club soda in both hands. Despite the mid-day hour, his eyes were red-rimmed and he seemed to have difficulty focusing on anything. She couldn't help hissing, "Late night, Nerd-tron?" as she passed. He was too disoriented to come up with a response quick enough. Other than that moment, Cindy made no contact with Jimmy, visual, vocal, or physical. As she expected, chemistry was an awkward affair, but she gave it her all anyways.

The next two weeks snailed by at an almost unbearable pace. Her lazy afternoons consisted of stumbling through school work with Lizzie, eating, the occasional explosion from the kitchen as Emily (unsuccessfully) worked on her new recipe for homemade jam, plus the odd guitar lesson from Miles sprinkled in. Friday after classes were over, Lizzie's suggestion of a trip to the school library was taken up gratefully by everyone sans Emily, who was still busy trying to scrape the latest attempt at mango peach off the cabinets. Instead of the library, though, Cindy went to the gymnasium with Miles to fulfill a promise/threat to teach him tai chi.

"You really don't have to do this, you know," Miles complained in a weak attempt to dissued Cindy. She was covering a large portion of the laminate-wood floored gym in thick mats that would in no way protect the either of them if they were to take a spill. (The most they could do was add a few nasty mat burns.)

"Sissy baby," Cindy accused. She connected the final two pads together by fastening their over-used velcro straps in place. Standing and putting her hands on her hips, she surveyed her wary roommate and realized her description wasn't too far off.

Miles was decked out in a pair of over-sized basketball shorts that hung low on his thin, swimmer's frame, knobby sweat socks that would not stay up his narrow calves, and a stretched out, white crew-neck tee, all of which made him look even smaller than he really was. Adding on his messy mop of wide, dark curls, Cindy would have bet good money had he been plopped in the middle of a large crowd, it wouldn't be two minutes before people began inquring those Bambi eyes where his mommy and daddy were. She spoke before he had a chance to add in a pitiful whimper. "Come on then, baby, out in the middle."

He followed her orders, knowing her was defeated, but he moved as though across live snakes rather than matted-down blue foam. Cindy rolled her eyes as she removed her well-worn sneakers and rolled the uncomfortable elastic waistband of her sweatpants down several times. She instructed the fearful Miles to stretch out. He did so, copying her movments, but was still moving tediously as though at any moment Cindy would lapse out of her insanity and let him go free and unharmed.

"So," she said, hands on her hips again, "do you even know what tai chi is?"

He claimed he did, but the next stretch of time revealed to Cindy that his knowledge in the subjected extended only to the definition of the reference and the ability to shout out very loudly, althoughit was more in sporadic terror and pain than the sharp cries Cindy gave before making contact with her target. Miles, the unlucky target, was flipped and twisted and kicked around for a good twenty minutes before both of them stopped.

"Oh, come on, it's not that bad."

Cindy was looking down at an exhausted Miles, who was laying face down on the mat, limbs sprawled around him, not moving or even remotely suggesting he had heard her. Mildly concerned, she walked over, stood above him, one foot on either side of his slender torso, and crouched down with an ear turned towards him. If she held her breath, she could detected the smothered whistle an exhale through the nose made when pressed against a tumbling mat. Unimpressed, she sat down on the small of his back and tucked the strands of her hair that had fallen out back into their ponytail.

"You'll never make it in the real world," she told him. Indignantly, his head and upper torso shot up; he would have been on his feet had Cindy not been pinning him easily to the ground.

"If this is what the real world is," he said, leaning on his elbows, "concider this my last will and testement: tell Emily I didn't mean to leave her; it's all your fault. I give Lizzie my "Outta Sync" c.d. that she loves so much, (don't tell her I never liked it anyways,) and I leave my mother – "

"Oh, hush up," Cindy snarled. "Forget mathmatics. You need to be majoring in dramatic theater."

"Which I never asked you about: how's the minor coming?"

"It was purely for entertainment to begin with, so much better than everything else."

"Including stinking chemistry?"

"Hey now, don't be dissing."

"Science reeks. I don't know why anyone would want to continue it."

"That's only what stupid people say, so bug off before I send you head over heels again."

Miles quickly shut up, so they both heard the slap of footsteps approaching the double doors, accompanied by the hollow, echoing sound of a basketball being dribbled. The feet stopped but the ball continued. Cindy twisted to her left, accidentally kicking Miles in the head as her leg swung around, to get a clear veiw of the door. Jimmy stood in the open frame, slightly silhouetted by the feckless rays remaining from the ebbing sunset beyond the outer glass doors. Still dribbling the ball with one hand, he asked, "Am I interrupting something, Vortex?"

"Actually, Nerd-tron, you're not." Cindy stood; Miles grunted from the pressure. "Miles is about as hopeless at tai chi as you were at 6th grade poetry. We're done here, so just let me clean up."

She turned her back on Jimmy, who had narrowed his eyes at her. Miles scrambled off the mat Cindy was disconnecting with blissful releif. Much to her disgust, he stumbled over to Jimmy and pumped the hand that was not keeping the basketball pounding the floor in a steady rhythm up and down energetically, practically, "I thank you so much! You've no idea what this woman does to a body!"

Peripherally, Cindy saw Jimmy glance over Miles' shoulder at her. She strongly suspected that the sniff followed by a small cough he gave was to cover a smirk. She frowned as he said, "In all my years of knowing her, I don't recall ever having the pleasure of a tai chi, er, lessson. She is rather passionate about things, as I'm sure you've noticed, so it could simply be that my short-term memory was jarred."

"Sure you didn't just jar it yourself, Nerd-tron?" Cindy retorted before she could stop herself. "You had plenty of ways to do it in that 'lab'."

Jimmy glared back at her. "Well, if I did, it's only because I had you breathing down my neck about every little malfunction, Dork-tex!"

"Little! If the abduction of our parents was 'little' what do you call turning our teacher into a walking beastalk?"

"The result of proving you and your over-grown pansies that my plant was better!"

"Of course it was. I certainly would have prefered that dinosaur tooth picking over that spit bubble form of transporation."

"Hey, that would have gone far if I had found a way to get an inpenitrable outer shell into that gum form! It was more than you could do; you were too busy stuffing student government ballot boxes!"

Already disgusted with their encounter, Cindy exploded in the most efective way that came to mind: with all her pent-up fury behind it, she stuck her tounge out and blew a raspberry at him. Jimmy, not missing a beat, stuck his tounge out while putting his thumb to his nosetip and waggling his fingers at her. Miles, who had been watching the conversation fly between the two of them, was shocked at the juvenile resolution to their immature – and rather confusing – vocal battle. Cindy turned her back on the pair of them and marched over to her bag, kicking a half-folded mat out of her path. Ripping open the zipper, she stuffed in her shoes and swung it over one shoulder. She hesitated only a moment when she realized the only door that would not lead to her the opposite side of campus she intended to storm through was behind Jimmy. He observed her with a cool look as she stalked by, glared, and hissed, "Spew-tron." He hissed back, "Dork-tex."

The outer door slammed shut behind her as she took off running, still in her socks and her bag banging against her hip with every other step. Being Friday night, she only encountered a few social-wary bookworms that hade not taken up the opportunity to go out. She ran all the way to the entrance of the library. She slowed as she approached worn looking bench, which she plopped down onto when she came upon it. Most of the strange and intense feelings of anger she had having been released in her flight, she stared emptily at the door of the library. She didn't realize how long she had been sitting there until Miles came up beside her, puffing.

Looking up, Cindy realized night had blanketed the area. A street lamp posted near the bench Miles took refuge on next to her choked through the smothering darkness. Stars had not yet begun to twinkle in the deep indigo sky that was free from even the wispiest of clouds. Cindy spread herself out on the hard and water-damaged wood, resting her head on the iron arm and her feet on Miles' lap. "Do you believe God has a sense of humor?" she asked him.

"I suppose so," he said, still in the prosess of regaining breath. He had opened up Cindy's bag and was putting her left shoe on its proper – now dirt-covered – foot. "We're made in His image, so I guess that includes raillery. He made Lizzie, righ? Why do you ask?"

"Well, my life's just turned into one big, sick joke." Miles finished tying her right shoe. "I just wondered if it was some whacked-up kink in fate, or if He thought, 'Hey, this will be great: let's see what would happen if I twisted this girl's life more times than an Ultra-Twisty at Wetzel's Pretzels.'"

Miles scoffed at this. "I'm sure it's not all His fault. You'd be a lot better off if you took care of yourself. Honestly; running around in socks?"

"Sorry, mother dearest." She stood, picked up her bag, and ascended the stairs. "Let's see if the strain of work was too much for Lizzie."

As luck – or the jocular God – had it, their pretentious roommate was still stationed at a square work table surrounded by several bookshelves. The hundreds of surrounding books in the seclusive area absorbed the sounds the pair created while walking to the table. Even the soft swish of Cindy's nylon sweats was almost indistiguishable. A fortress of books piled around her, Lizzie was haunched over a piece of paper and repeating softly over and over again the formulas they needed to know for the experimental lab they would be having in the chemistry lab on Monday, her slender hands pressed over her ears and blocking out the non-existant noise. Miles looked surprised.

"Emily does this all the time," he explained. (They had walked right up behind her unnoticed.) "She wasn't gifted with the greatest memory on the planet. Somehow this helps her. I guess it runs in the family…" He brought a hand to his mouth and, putting in his middle finger and thumb, gave a short, shrill whistle. Cindy flinched; Lizzie took her hands of her ears and looked up.

"Hey!" she grinned. She shoved away a stack of books as Cindy and Miles sat in the chairs to her right. "You're back soon. Was Miles really that inept?"

"No," Miles groused, glaring to his left at Cindy. "Cindy just seems to have a knack for starting up insult contests with her aquantances that happen upon us."

"Oh?" Lizzie said cuiously. Cindy wasn't willing to accede, so Lizzie looked past her at Miles again. "With whom?"

"I don't know," Miles said grumpily, still not happy with the events of the past half hour or the slam from his cousin. "Some guy. Tall, blue eyes, brown hair, looked like he just got off a motercycle – "

Lizzie gasped. She turned slowly, incrediously towards Cindy, who rolled her eyes heaven wards and pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her heels on the edge of her chair. "You met up with and insulted PROFESSOR NUETRON!"

Miles' jaw dropped. "Wait…" He was processing something, and to Cindy it looked as painful and slow as each word Lizzie had drawn out. "You just insulted The James Issac Nuetron?"

Cindy sighed and picked up her bag, extracting her water bottle. "Yeah."

Neither of her friends knew what to make of this. Cindy didn't blame them. Miles found his tongue first.

"Do you know he is the inventor of half of The Science Foundation of America's components?"

"Our professor?"

"The teenager registered as a genius since the age of eight?"

"For hating science so much, you sure know a lot about our main-stream people."

"The greatest mind since Edison himself? Some are even arguing greater!"

"Our chemistry teacher!"

"The guy who invented the electromagnet, the main base around NASA's production and progress, at the age of fourteen?"

"Eleven," Cindy said, letting her bag fall back onto the thick carpeting with a muffled whumph!

The rhythm Miles had been maintaining stuttered. "Huh?"

"He invented the electromagnet when he was eleven," Cindy clarified, taking a swig of her water, "on a very long and tedious field trip to the rodeo. He only perfected and patented it when he was fourteen."

This was taken in with a stuned and confused silence. Expected. Cindy was strongly tempted to applaud Lizzie when, in only a matter of fourteen seconds, she was able to decipher out her thoughts into a "yes or no" question before Miles could: "You know Nuetron?"

Cindy yawned, suddenly very tired. "Yeah, Lizzie. You know; our chemistry professor? We see him every day after lunch?…"

"That's not what I meant," she snapped. She made her own conclusions without further comment from Cindy though. "You do know him. I wondered what that big deal he made on our first day was about…"

Miles became intensly curious. Both he and his cousin were fixing Cindy with penetrating and questioning stares. She continued to suck at the sports cap on her water bottle for a moment or two, but the peircing looks became too much to withstand.

"I grew up across the street from him," she said, hugging her knees. "I went to school with him, my best friend dated and still dates his best friend, we shared classes from when we werelike, eightuntil he moved away when I was twelve. Not a single day went by when the whole town didn't suffer from the effects of him and his half-baked ideas and malfunctioning inventions. One time we even had to deal with seven of him, and boy was that Hell."

"Oh, I'm sure," Lizzie said sarcastically. "Geeze, this is the weirdest thing I've ever heard, but it sure does clarify things."

"No kidding," Miles said. "It certainly makes their little 'argument' a bit more sensible."

"Only Cindy could find something to argue about with a genius."

"Was he really able to clone himself successfully?"

"Think of the prospects that could have for the world!"

"Imagine: James Nuetron has a total crush on our roommate."

Cindy choked on her water. She was able to gasp out while coughing, "What!"

Miles thumped her on the back while Lizzie said, "Oh, don't you even protest. It's painfully obvious. I knew there was some connection between the two of you after the way he went pre-puberty boyish when he first saw you in class, but I never would have thought it ran as far back as kindergarten!"

"I wondered what the look he gave you was about in the gym," Miles said, needing to raise his voice slightly so Cindy, who was still attempting to expel the water from her windpipe, could hear him.

"Could have been the eight inch gap around her midriff and the close proximities," Lizzie observed. Cindy had had just about enough.

"Look," she said, her commanding tone coming off rather wheezy, "I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Jimmy and I have hated each other for as long as I care to remember, and I try to remember as little of my past as possible."

Miles and Lizzie shared look, one that expressed exasperation and better knowing, that infuiated Cindy in a very strong sense of déjà vu: they both looked identical to the look Libby had given her many months ago.

"Great," Lizzie sighed. "We've got a case of denial on our hands."

Cindy sprang to her feet, outraged and furious for the second time that evening. "I am NOT in denial!" she shouted. A scathing "Shh!" came from the opposite sides of one of the bookshelves. She lowered her voice to a venemous whisper.

"Jimmy can just go jump into a creek with Goddard for all I care, and I hope they both rust!"

"Who's Goddard?"

Lizzie's question went unanswered and Cindy went storming out of the library. What is with the stinking human race? she thought savagly, glaring back at the librarian who was giving her a scalding look as she sprinted past her desk. Her built in auto-pilot kicked in and carried her home. Emily called up from the kitchen floor a hello and an invitation for a piece of fat-free brownie cake that Cindy said she would take up in a minute. She first went to her room, flopped down on her rumpled bed with the portable telephone to her own line, and punched in ten numbers. Her digital alarm clock reveild it was only eight o' clock; Libby wouldn't be out on the town for another few hours where she was. True to Cindy's prediction, the other line was answered after four rings.

"Yellow ain't just a color."

Cindy sighed and rolled onto her back. "Libs, you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice."

"Cin? Girl, feels like I havn't talked to you in for-ev-er! Ooh, I miss you so much; how you been?"

Cindy sighed again, not so happily this time, though. "Do you really want to know?"

"That bad? I thought that place was supposed to be full of uber-smart people like you."

Cindy smiled and gave a dry, humorless chuckle. "Libby, you have no idea…"

A/N: This was a particularily fun chapter for me to write. I suddenly realized: this is chapter six and my main plot hasn't been introduced yet! At the rate I'm going, it will be nearing chapter 72 before I can wrap it up AND fit everything I wanted it to consist of in. I thought I was going to have to sacrifice a few things, but it was by inspiration of the new slinky I stuck in the cart while my mom was grocery shopping the other day, (and she bought for me, yay! ) that I was able to write this chapter and incorporate some of those tidbits that were in danger of beinge cut. (Slinkys are facinating things to watch. All these thoughts were suddenly worming their ways into my imagination while I was playing with it. Slinkys: saving works of literature for 60 years. God bless Mr. Slinky-maker-man.) Anyways, I'm not going to give you definites on anything quite yet, but it should only be a few more chappies until we are deep in the inter-workings of my devious plot! Muahahah! Run for the hills while you have a chance.

The Opal Fairy: :bows: Thank you, thank you. Lol It was a good episode, wasn't it? I couldn't stop giggling.
Phantomhobbit: Thank you very much and I most certainly will!
Numba1JimmyFan: Thanks a lot! Hope this was quick enough for you.
The CheezHead: Glad I could make you laugh and even gladder you picked up so easily the most important bit of my story: a very hott guy. Keep reviewing, and thanks bunches!
fearthewind: Well, my unobservant friend, you just keep dancing away! Keep reviewing, too. And I'm ashamed of you; of COURSE Carl likes llamas. …Not that he will be appearing again until later, but oh well… luv ya!
Elynsynos 18: Aww, you're too sweet! I hope you got a temporary fill from this chapter.
Angela Jewell: Hey again, and that's no prob. I've been having the same problem and that's why I hadn't updated this in a while. Anyways, thanks for the compliments, and thanks for reading along!
mjcmetal: Thanks a lot! Hope you liked this bit.
fanjimmy: Thank you. Although you aren't as overly-enthusiastic as jackie, you sure do get a point across well. Hope you liked this installment.
Barlee: Oooh boy, it's Barlee's turn! Once again, thank you with all my heart for the review. And don't worry about me giving anything away in Sam's case; if it had been important and not likely to come up for a while, I wouldn't have told you. Yes indeed, Miles is hott and people can tell even without a head-to-toe. And yes, he and Cindy do get along….00 lol:dramatic music: GO AHEAD, PEOPLE! ASSUME AWAY! Ahem. Moving on! Cody: did make an appearance, will be making even more, and is becoming one of my fav OC's now, would you believe it, though he is eerily beginning to sound like my best friends cousin, but you don't know who he is or what I am talking about, so we are going to move on again and remove whatever drug I took from my daily intake. I'm glad you like the show references. I really enjoy throwing them in; reminds me and readers who we are really talking about. It keeps me grounded to some of their canon characteristics, (like Jimmy's naivity and by-the-book standards, as you noticed,) and stops me from floating off too much and creating more Cody's. Character development is one of my all-favorite past-times (geeze, I need to get away from the writing world XD ) but also seems to be a very over-looked factor in many works on this site, so I do my best to make up for all of it, so EVERYONE who was ever mentioned in this fic will have at the very least a paragraph depicting them. (And you weren't supposed to make the Cody connection just yet! Shh! Give me another chapter!) Keep reviewing:prances in circles and emits very frightening happy noises that accompany lots and lots of hearts:
jackie: You've left me no other options than to comply to your wishes. (Though I'd like to see you try and find me out here in the middle of nowhere that is 114 degrees out. bleh.)
Sefadora Firewood: Okay okay okay! Keep reviewing, and enjoy!
Retroville9: Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it!
Hermione Granger63: Well good! You had me worried there for a moment. Thank you so much! Hope you thought the same about this bit.
EL CHUPACABRA: Well, Mr. Rambler, good to hear from you again and good to know you're not dead. Miss Hermione above you almost did, so it seems to be going around. And it's alright if you don't keep up; I won't shoot you, and I do have Barlee. So long as you are enjoying it, I'll be happy. (CINDY AND JIMMY FOR ALL ETERNITY! WOOT!) Anyways…I like your little face things, so who cares if you are the only guy. It's your coolness mark! As for the college thing, I wouldn't know what the full blow is like since I'm only 14, but I've taken a few courses and classes at a local community one and they were actually really, really fun. Cindy's only furious over it because of her superior knowledge; I figured she would be far ahead of it and – duh – this is Miss Negativity we are talking about. Old Cindy flaring up again, you see. Enjoy, and thanks!
The Cougar: Thanks!
Jerry: Oh, don't worry; I will. just don't die on me until then! Everyone seems to be doing that andI wonder if it's me...