A/N: Sorry for the delay; I was focusing on my other story for a few days. Thanks so much for all the reviews! I'm thrilled you all are relating and liking this. I hope I can continue to satisfy :).

Disclaimer: I do not own The Suite Life of Zack and Cody or J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

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The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. . . . Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.

Zack liked that. Liked it so much that he'd written it above the toilet in the middle stall. His black Sharpie led his fingers to that spot on the wall where, yesterday and the days before, he'd been continuing a conversation with Holden.

Holden, predictably, had written back.

The wall now read:

I, lone wolf, am no longer king.

Hello, long wolf. Are you not king?

Once I was king. Now I'm alone.

The first king is alone upon his throne.

This is my throne, now. Are you king?

Every man is a king, every voice is his throne.

He stopped to think for a moment, hand hovering inches above the wall in a silent pondering that would quake even the most docile of autumn's leaves from their quiet transgress within the fields of summer's wrath. Winter would come and winter would save them from a shattered resistance to change, eliminating any hope for going back and coming without any hope for spring.

Zack didn't much like summer. It was a confusing season; one where you were astonishingly content to just do nothing for the latter part of June, and oddly restless once July came around. School, classes, friends…They became distant memories in which the mind could not be bothered. Fruitless apples that hung from dying branches and baked endlessly in the midday's sun even as groping hands reached for their nonexistent seeds.

And then August rolled around and it reminded you too much of September. Too much of going back, so you tried to make the best of everything. Sleep in every morning, stay up late every night, drink every glass of lemonade with extra sugar, another lemon, a straw that bent just the way you liked it to bend.

Summer was a confused season.

Fall was dead-set on being the rebellious changer, Winter was good at enveloping everything in a freezing blanket of white and stilling the most dangerous of flames, Spring's only hope was to have hope-to smooth the time between two opposites and to give birth to new miracles.

Summer just…was.

Once upon a time Zack had been Fall. He'd been the rebel of his small family; the one who would change to better suit his selfish fancies as he moved through life at the speed of a bullet.

But Fall, as daring and challenging as it was, was stronger than the other seasons because to take what was warm and burning and slowly kill it so that it paved the way for winter's icy grasp was more of a talent, more of a hardship, than Spring's much anticipated performance.

Strong enough to resist temptation. He'd turned down the weed, walked away from the booze, and locked the door firmly behind him as the party raged out of control. And when one friend tried to follow him home in his big brother's Ford, body drenched in the water of alcohol, he was told the next morning that Drew had been killed. Gone. All because he'd chosen to drink. Because he'd chosen to follow Zack home to try and persuade him to just have fun, man.

Now, Zack was a summer.

Confused. Alone. Pressured to be this way, that way, not him, not that, not this. Summer hid away from the winds of change and huddled in fear as the gentle touch of blossoms graced its back.

Zack hated confusion.

Who was he? What was he? Where was he? Why was he? How was he? What was happening? What already had? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Holden wasn't confusion's biggest fan, either. He liked to know what was going on. But then again, who didn't? Humanity: Phony, pitying, alone, and confused.

He stole a glance towards where he was keeping his lunch money. He had a lot now. Enough to do, well, a lot of things.

But confusion stopped his mind from forming ideas, confusion stilled his hand as he leaned in to respond to Holden's last reply, confusion held him hostage in this bathroom. In this world of his own.

Running a hand over his face he took a deep breath and touched the black Sharpie to the wall, the letters forming words before his eyes.

Too many kings mean too many rules.

And as Zack settled back to read more of Holden's book his mind slowly unraveled itself and suddenly he was not so confused.

He hid in here a lot.

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To Be Continued

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