The door rocked in its frames as a forceful knock awoke the man sleeping in the dimly lit room.

"Ben! Wake up honey!" Lisa Braeden yelled from behind Ben's bedroom door.

"Ten more ten minutes, mom!" He grunted sleepily and rolled to the other side.

"No, not in ten minutes! Now!!"

"How about in five minutes?" He knew the battle was lost before he even heard his mother's answer.

Her face peeked into his room wrinkled in a frown. "No!! Not 'how about in five minutes', how about right now?" She picked up a more or less clean shirt from the floor and flung it at her dormant son.

"Fine....alright....jus' please go way." Ben grumbled while trying to succeed the task of getting up. Unfortunately, he succeeded. It took him about fifteen minutes to get ready and wolf down his breakfast. He made it out the door ten minutes before school started. The school bus stopped two houses down from his, like it always did. And his mind wandered to that gorgeous '63 Mustang he saw in the paper, like it always did when he thought of taking public transport. Please don't let my day suck! He thought to himself as he kicked a rock onto the road.

At school his best friend ran up to him with a big smile on his face, but Ben barely noticed. "Ben!"

Ben kept his eyes glued to the ground as he walked.

"Ben! Dude!" His head shot up as Keola slapped him lightly on the shoulder.

"What! What?" Ben said with a look of annoyance. God not now, Keola...

"Dude! Do I have news for you! Did you hear that the Janitor died last night?" His face was set in a disbelieving grin.

"Jonesy? Really…? How...?" Ben felt his heart drop a little. He barely knew the man, but he saw something in him that no one else could. The guy was weird, but he was a good man.

"No one knows. The football coach jus went out there and found him dead on the field.....!"

"What do you mean 'no one knows'? Someone has to know?"

"No! I heard someone say that Tracy Bingham saw him when they pulled the guy into the emergency van, and she heard that the paramedics had never seen anything like it. I mean, even the cops seemed freaked out."

"Maybe he had a heart attack...?" Ben pondered more to himself than as an answer.

"They said that there was noooo heart problems so how could he of had a heart attack?" Keola seemed almost giddy about the whole thing.

"Why are you so riled up about this? A guy died, Keo."

He deflated a little and looked down in embarrassment. "I-I know, but… ya know… I never really knew the guy…"

Ben nodded and shrugged to avoid the uncomfortable moment. "Never mind." But the damage had already been done and Keola wouldn't let the moment drop as easy as that.

"Naw, naw I shouldn't have said anything. I knew you liked the guy."

"Said it's fine, dude. Jus' forget it." They walked to class in silence. Ben was still too consumed by his own mind to notice that the lesson had

begun. "Maybe it was a ghost...." Ben said in a quite voice in the middle of class. He never noticed the look Keola gave him and didn't learn a whole lot from that particular class.

The lesson ended and the day passed as if he was in a haze. School didn't normally take too much concentration, but this day it seemed even more tedious than others.

The second last class came and went and Ben found himself in font of the lockers. He sighed and opened the lock to his crappy locker. The thought of the dead janitor dying mysteriously suddenly invaded his mind. Maybe it was a ghost. He hoped not.

Since the changelings he, Keola, and Kate have begun to notice more of the supernatural world. And he did not like it. Everything seemed darker and scarier and a part of him was almost scared. Whenever he thought about those things he always thought about the two heroes who had rescued them. About the men who had been there when all others had failed. When he was younger he would spend hours talking about them until his mother had asked him to change the subject. But as many times as he tried to change the subject he could never forget them.

x8x8x8x8x8x8x

"Hey Dean? Why are you taking the wrong way back to Bobby's?" Dean glanced over at his brother, but didn't answer. "Why don't we take the same way we took from Bobby's to get back to Bobby's?" Sam was persistent.

"I'm not."

"This isn't the way we came before... so yeah you are. Why?" Sam demanded.

"Cuz I wanna!"

Sam's face tensed and changed to a slightly constipated look of annoyance. "My god Dean. You make everything difficult......you know that? And you......" He huffed. "Impossible!"

"I try to be, Sammy." Dean said mockingly with a smug look on his face.

"Whatever Dean. Just shut up and get us there."

"No why should I?"

"What?" Sam darted disbelieving eyes to his brother.

"We've been cooped up in that smelly guest bedroom of his for weeks now an' I'm in no hurry to get back." Dean tried to hide the smile desperately seeking escape. God he is easy to bait sometimes....

"Well I promised Bobby we would hurry back to help with the case he's on."

"He can handle himself." Dean turned the music up a notch and started singing along to Nirvana as they blasted from the local radio station.

"Could you knock it off?"

"Why?"

"Because it's annoying.....you...you....jerk...!"

Dean frowned and turned the radio of. "Whatever......you...dumb bitch..." Sam huffed and looked pointedly out the window at the world rolling by.