A/N: Hey! Back from Yellowstone, had a great time. I know I said I would update on the 17th and BELIEVE ME I tried. The site wouldn't upload the document for whatever reason. So sorry it's late, but please don't blame me. I hope it was worth the extra wait…Some of the science may be made up, just go with it, please. Thanks to Tahra, xXbittersweettearsXx and Proops for reviewing and an extra thanks to bittersweettears for mentioning the sequel. It's good to know you're interested and I think I'll put it up after this one is finished; we're getting there! If there is any more support for the sequel, LET ME KNOW! Thanks and on with the chapter.
Last time on Strange Days at Blake Holsey High: Corrine took a deep breath, turned to Josie and said slowly. "Josie, he's not breathing."
"What?" Three voices asked simultaneously. Marshall and Lucas had walked in the door just in time to hear Corrine's statement.
Corrine turned slightly to include the two. "Z isn't breathing, and I bet Vaughn isn't either."
Marshall and Lucas turned to Vaughn, then back to Corrine. "What happened?" Lucas asked incredulously.
Josie replied shortly, "Vaughn came into the office, Z told him that we went to the movies together, Vaughn started to leave, slipped and Z froze him, we came in, Z sat down and…froze himself or something."
Corrine started to correct a couple things, "It wasn't exactly like that…" She trailed off after receiving a glare from Josie.
"Okay, what do we do about the people who aren't breathing" Marshall asked.
Everyone turned to Corrine.
"Ummm… Check vitals, yeah, vitals." Corrine said quickly and carefully grabbed Z's wrist and pressed a thumb to the front of it. She waited a moment then said, "His pulse is fine, maybe a little slow, but it's even." She looked to Josie who'd been feeling her anger ebb away. It was hard to be mad at someone who wasn't breathing.
Josie's gaze switched form Corrine to Vaughn and she walked over to his frozen form. After a pause, Josie told the rest of the group, "She's right, he's not breathing either but his pulse is okay too."
"What do we do now?" Lucas asked and they turned to Corrine again.
"Does anyone know CPR?" She asked helplessly.
"Don't you?" Josie asked in disbelief. Corrine knew everything!
"My mom's a shrink and my dads a brain surgeon. I guess I missed the cardio pulmonary area!" Corrine burst out defensively. Then tried to calm down. After a moment she said, "All right, we need to get help."
"From who Corrine? Any one who comes in here is going to want to know what's going on! We have two… frozen people in an ice covered office with a wormhole in it!" Josie said, her arms punctuating her sentence.
"Maybe not." Lucas said from the other side of the room where'd he'd been looking at Vaughn.
Everyone turned to him confused.
"I mean you're right about the office and the wormhole, but I don't think they're exactly frozen." The other science club members gazed blankly back at him.
Lucas looked to the ceiling, then back to the group. "On Quest for Neptune they used cryonics to get to Neptune," he pause thinking, "Of course, they were all killed by aliens when they got there…Anyway, the crew set the ship on autopilot and went into cryonic pods. When they were in them, their body temperatures lowered and they survived the trip of, like, eighty years in a frozen state. It was a good movie really."
"Lucas! This isn't science fiction!" Josie said loudly, trying to get him to talk sense.
"Close enough." Marshall mumbled.
"I know! But cryonics isn't science fiction either, at least not completely. When some people die, they state in their wills that they want to be put in cryonic pods and they're frozen. The idea is that in the future, medicine will have progressed enough to revive the person in the pod. It's not possible yet, but it might be someday. If you look at Vaughn and Professor Z, they're not frozen like everything else; they're not covered in ice. I think something happened to lower Z's temperature to a cryonic state." He pointed to Vaughn as he walked over to the group. "I bet that's what happened to Vaughn too when Professor Z touched him."
"Lucas, that's brilliant!" Corrine said. A lot better then the alternative anyway. "So what do we do to bring them out of it?"
Lucas shrugged, "In the movie, the pod just warmed them up, but I don't think that will work here."
Josie had been listening to Lucas and thinking, "Z was hiding something from us. I think he was feeling bad about it too; maybe that's what started to lower his temperature in the first place."
"Right!" Marshall agreed getting into the conversation, "I bet there's something here that will tell us about what's got Z so down."
"Sounds good to me." Josie said and walked over to the counter and began looking around.
The group split up and looked in various places around the office.
Lucas was the first to wander over to Z's desk and start going through drawers. In less then a minute the rest of the science club heard him say, "Ah ha!" and they walked quickly over to him.
"Look at this!" He said triumphantly and held up the note from Z's mother. He began to read, a slight grin on his face. "'My Dearest Noel,
I miss you terribly. I'm sorry to say it, but I don't have much hope that this will work out. Please don't come, I couldn't bear for you to see me this way, and I know you're needed at that school. Remember, I love you and I always will.'" Lucas laughed and declared, "Z's broken up over a girl!"
Marshall looked over his shoulder to look at the note. "It looks like she broke up with him," he started, the frowned, "but then it looks like she feels bad and still likes him. Why would she break up with him in the first place then?"
"Maybe it's a long distance relationship, or maybe their parents don't approve or something." Lucas supplied.
"It's not even signed," Corrine noticed, "I wonder why?"
"I know who sent it," Josie said suddenly, looking at Z's form with a new sadness in her eyes.
Josie raised her eyes to their questioning gazes. "It was his mom."
"What?" Marshall and Lucas asked in confusion.
They looked to Corrine whose face showed shock. She'd realized more quickly then the boys that something was wrong.
Josie reached over, grabbed the note, looked at it a moment, then put a finger over a part of it and handed it back.
Lucas and Marshall looked where she'd had her finger, there; a slight wet splotch where the ice had melted into the paper was the blurred word 'Mom'.
Then Josie held up the doctor's letter and began reading aloud what she'd read silently a moment before.
"'Dear Prof. Zachary, I regretfully inform you that, during her last checkup, your mother, Miss Katharine Zachary, was found to have a malignant tumor near the occipital lobe of her brain. Surgery is to be as soon as possible but there is only a forty-five percent chance of successfully removing the cancer without it spreading. We will telephone you with the results as soon as we are able.' And it goes on…" Josie said heavily. She gestured to the note, "Read it again."
The boys looked down and read it to themselves. This time, however, there was no laughing or grinning. Their faces showed shocked sadness as they realized the magnitude to the note they were reading.
"Wow." Lucas managed to say when they finished.
"Yeah," Marshall agreed softly, "we sure had that one figured wrong."
"You think?" Josie asked rhetorically.
There was a pause while the science club stared at indiscriminate points and reflected with their own thoughts.
"Wow, Z, why didn't you tell us?" Lucas finally asked of no one in particular.
"I couldn't." A voice said from the desk.
The students turned to find Professor Z staring at them with watering eyes. He didn't give them a chance to speak before going on. "I'm a teacher and you're students, I can't let my personal problems affect you."
Josie looked around the office again, pausing slightly on Vaughn, before looking back to Z with a raised eyebrow, "You don't think this affected us?"
Z ran a hand distractedly through his hair. "I know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought you into this."
"Professor Z, You didn't bring us into it!" Corrine stated, "We came in here because we were worried about you!"
Zachary paused, just realizing now that it was true. "Why were you worried about me?" He asked, confused.
"Because we all missed the meeting and then you didn't show up to teach classes." Marshall answered.
"But I'm just your teacher." Z said wonderingly.
"Z, you are our science teacher, but you're our friend. You can be both you know." Josie said softly.
Professor Z was silent for a moment…and in that moment, the phone on the counter began to ring.
A/N That's all for now, review for more!