Diclaimer: I own nothing. NOTHING! Not even a box set of Will and Grace Season 2! Which is a real pity, actually...
Dedication: I SO dedicate this to the first person who gave me a review (and it was a good one too!). I don't know who you are, or where you live, but...wait. I got nothing else. And Jessie moved, kay? 0
The next day, Zack arrived at school early. Very early. Too early, one might say. Unless one considers sitting on the steps outside waiting for the doors to be unlocked an integral part of the school day. He hadn't slept that night, because he and Jessie had sat in shocked silence, until she stood up. "I think we're gonna need a lot of liquor to get past this." Possibly on of the greatest sentences he'd ever heard.
So, they'd drunk into the night and past it, slowly getting more and more derogatory of Slater, and then just widening the scope of hate to everyone in the world. Once they'd got past the initial uncomfort, mostly through the alcohol, Zack had got the whole story from Jessie.
Jessie and Slater had gone away to her father's cabin on the beach for the last month of summer vacation, to just relax, free of all cares and worries and able to spend the entire day doing whatever they wanted. Then for the final two weeks, the cabin next door had been taken by a lifeguard named David, who was also taking some time off from life. They'd quickly become friends, and the two would often go over to his for the evenings, to drink and to talk on the porch until the sun rose again.
At this point in the tale, Jessie was swigging from a bottle every time she started to get angry...which was pretty much permanently. Instead, Zack had to pay close attention to her mimes, and although he had no practice decoding a drunken Jessie, it was PRETTY clear what she thought had happened. Zack suspected she knew less than she thought she did, but one thing was clear. She had caught at least one of them with their trousers around their ankles and the other...well, it had something to do with SOME orifice. Who knew?
Of course, opening up this story had made Jessie a little 'unstable', and coupled with the drink, made her, to put it lightly, a psycho. Jessie was always a bit of a man-hater, but as she became more and more smashed, she'd made Zack wear a dress and makeup, so that she wouldn't "rip his genitals off with my bare hands and stuff them into a blender." At least, that was Zack's excuse.
As he sat on the cold stone outside, in a miniskirt and badly applied lipstick, his drunkenness slowly turning into a hangover, Zack considered. He'd never have got any sleep anyway, but when he'd said he was going home, at about 5am, he'd actually expected his feet to take him home, rather than walk him to school. Of course, they'd done it in a weaving way, but still...how could he have been weaving so much that he turned in totally the opposite direction and just not managed to rectify the situation?
He knew why he couldn't concentrate on anything. This revelation about Slater was a shock. A major one. Admittedly, there had been signs. His liking for close bodily contact with other men while dressed in Lycra should have been a big giveaway, but wrestling was always seen as such a manly sport. Wait...he'd showered with Slater after gym. Had the boy been looking? Had he been secretly wanting?
He shook his head. Slater was his friend. Just because of his liking for big men with moustaches, was he going to start getting all paranoid whenever Slater high-fived him? No, he was going to promise to treat Slater exactly the same as always.
The only problem was...
...he knew that was a lie.
Owwww...he cradled his head. The moment between drunk and hungover had passed. He wasn't clever any more. He hurt. And the likekile...lilekiho...likeliliho...chance of a long word being used in the next week or so was pretty much nothing. Rather than deal with the philozopho...philansapho...philisuphi...thing, Zack lay down, his head soothed by the cold. Dimly he realised he'd probably catch hypatomi...hyportu...that thing, but he didn't care. Sleep was coming.
What seemed to be only seconds later he was woken by someone shaking his head inside fire. "Grrrrrrrruuughwassa?"
Kelly looked down, her face contorted with worry. "Zack, are you okay? Oh my god, do you need medical attention? I have some bandages...and a kidney dialysis machine. Do you need that? Stomach pump? Operation? I could perform open heart surgery if you want...I got a gold award in it over the holidays..."
Zack pulled himself up using only his mind. Then, when he realised he was still lying down, he waved an arm. "Pull. Gently. No surgery."
Kelly got him up into a sitting position. While he waited for his brain to follow him in a couple of minutes, Zack looked at Kelly. "Oh, Kelly...I really love you. You knew I was here and you came to get me. I loooooove you sooooooo muuuuuch..."
Kelly glanced about. "Well, actually I'm just coming back from the orphanage. I help them cook the orphans meals. Did you know, that before I started working there..."
"Kelly, let me feel important. Just once." Zack said, fixing Kelly with a glare so feeble they both felt it slide off her cheek and die in the cold.
"Wow...so you and Jessie were drinking, huh? Does it have something to do with her and Slater?"
Zack sat bolt upright, before hunching into a foetal position as his brain cracked. "Owowowowow. I mean, what do you know about their arguement? Anything? Anything at all?"
"...that they had one?" Kelly said cheerily. "Why? Should I know more? Ooh! Can we play a guessing game? I wanna guess!"
"Grrrrrrrrrugggggh..." Zack slowly keeled back to the floor, as Kelly started ticking guesses off on her fingers.
"Was he cheating on her? No, too likely. Was SHE cheating on HIM? No, she's the angry one. Maybe he was an asshole all vacation? Yeah, but that hadn't stopped them going out before, had it...maybe he forgot their anniversary...?
Leaning against the locker, Zack yawned enormously. He'd given up on trying to look good today. In fact, from the looks he was getting from passing students, he suspected he was still wearing lipstick. At least Kelly had found something else for him to wear other than the miniskirt. He glanced down. Oh, wait. No. She hadn't. His mistake.
"BEETLES!" Screechs head appeared upside down in front of his face. Zack yelled, and crashed backwards into the lockers, breaking his fragile pain barrier. Trying to sandwhich the two halves of his splitting skull together, he glared at Screech.
"What. The hell. Are you doing. On top of the lockers. You bastard." Screech backflipped off of them, landing on his feet and bowing.
"And the judges are giving that display from Screech Powers, Olympic Champion for the USA ten, ten aaaand..."
"Detention, Mr Powers. I think that cancels out your world bid?" Mr Belding walked up, dropping a slip into Screechs outstreched hand, who shrugged and cartwheeled. The principal stood over Zack with a look of confusion.
"Mr Morris, is it now 'cool', or 'rad', to be seen lying on corridor floors? And why are you wearing a dress?"
Zack smiled up at him sleepily. "Sir, no one uses the word 'rad' any more. It's not cool."
Belding looked worried for a second. "But I'm still cool, right? Wait. Quiet Mr Morris. Why ARE you lying on the floor...if you're hungover in my school, then there is going to be hell to pay..."
Suddenly Lisa skidded around the corner. "Zack! Mr Belding! Zack! Screech! Zack! Mr Belding! Scree-"
Belding held up a hand. "Thank you Lisa, I had just forgotten what name to write when I expel this boy and if you don't stop doing acrobatics Mr Powers YOU WILL BE JOINING HIM!"
Lisa smiled. Or maybe it was just the makeup. "No, sir, I apologise for Zack. He was up all night finishing a sociology project...on transvestites. I have it here." She waved a sheaf of paper above her head, before passing it to Mr Belding. "And he wasn't feeling well in the first place. We just need to get some caffiene down him and he'll be right as rain, Mr Belding sir."
Mr Belding glared at the paper, then at Lisa. "Transvestites?" he barked at Lisa, who gulped and nodded.
The principal looked down at Zack, and sighed. "Well saved, Lisa. But don't let me see you like this again, Zack. Get out of here. BY WALKING, MR POWERS!" he yelled after Screech, who was just preparing to go into a backroll.
Lisa stuck an arm around Zack's waist. "I was wondering when my shopping bag muscles would come in handy. Come on, boy."
Lisa took him around the corner, where the rest of the gang were waiting. Jessie was there too, also looking decidedly worse for wear. Slater was there too, and despite the glances he kept giving Jessie, she seemed too hungover to really notice, or care.
Kelly lifted a cup to his lips, and Zack drank. Sweet coffee. Up waking. Remembering stuff...
"I'm wearing. A dress. I'm still wearing a dress."
The others looked around. "At least he's forming complete sentences, right?" Kelly said, smiling like a Barbie doll.
Screech leant close to Zack's ear, and before anyone could stop him, yelled "HOW'RE YOU FEELING, ZACK?"
As Zack keeled away from him sobbing in pain, Slater clipped Screech around the head. "Idiot."
Zack pressed the two halves of his head together. "No, don't worry about it. I'll be fine. Just lets avoid loud noises, yes Screech?" He stood up, looking about. "How did you know to do this?"
"Kelly told us about finding you this morning. She texted us all, and so we knew where to go and what to do." Slater gestured to himself, then Lisa. "I dealt with coffee, and she got your 'project'. To be more precise, a list of everything Lisa has bought over the last two months."
Zack furrowed his brow. "But there musta been about fifty pages in there."
"Fifty-seven. Your point being?"
"Whatever. Look, I have to go. Got class." Zack said, carefully lifting himself up without rattling his head.
Slater grinned. "Doubt it, preppy. We got you and Jessie a pass from the nurse. No class for you."
"But won't we miss some stuff? It's the second day. We should really be in class...wait. I'm Zack. Where the hell did that come from? Let's go!" Zack bounced down the corridor, before suddenly coming to an abrupt halt.
"Oooooh, I shouldn'ta bounced. I think I'm going to die."
The others ran up after him, laughing, and pulled him along the corridor to the exit.
P.S. Sorry about the false alarm, if anyone put it on the alert thing. I put this up, then read it, then changed it a little (made it longer), then put it up again. Hope you don't mind!