His arms were warm and inviting as they wrapped around her, pulling her closer into his chest. She silently took in his scent, his touch. It was unlike anything she had ever felt, or that she would ever feel again.

"Goodnight, Specs," he left a sweet, tender kiss on her forehead.

She listened to his heartbeat, her eyes closed. It was soothing, like a lullaby, and she soon found herself nodding off to sleep.

"Mmm…" Specs sighed contently, as her History teacher rattled on and on before the class. Usually, she was very good at paying attention. But today she was too preoccupied to even bother.

That vision was so real to her that she couldn't tell whether it was a memory or merely a wonderful dream. She vaguely recalled Krayonder climbing in her bed after that party, but when she'd woken up in the morning, he was gone. She had been so disappointed when he wasn't beside her that she actually started crying. Waking up in his arms had been a fantasy of hers for a long time now, as pathetic as that sounded.

Perhaps that had all been a dream, and he hadn't slept with her at all. She supposed that would have been for the best anyways.

At the desk in front of her he sat doodling in his notebook, not paying any more attention to the lesson than her. From this view behind him, she could admire his shoulders and arms perfectly. He truly was a handsome man. Far too handsome for his own good.

"-And I want this essay on my desk by Tuesday afternoon," the teacher said, but the last of her words were drowned out by the bell ringing. "Class dismissed."

"Man, I am so glad that's over!" Krayonder laughed as he caught up to Specs in the hall. "I swear, if I have to listen to one more word in her monotone voice…"

She almost laughed at how clueless he was. It was so surreal to be completely coming loose at the hinges, not being able to tell the difference between dreams and memories, and here he was, just freaking fine. It was so damn hilarious that she thought she just might bang her head against the wall fifteen million times.

They walked into Mr. Holmes' classroom and took their seats. He wasn't there himself, and he didn't arrive until a good couple of minutes later.

"Alright," he said as he stumbled in, his hair all mussed up. "I'll ignore that some of you are late, if you ignore that I'm the latest. Now, what scene are we on?"

"We finished the play yesterday," someone called out.

"Oh… Okay, then, I know exactly what we're gonna do…" he shuffled around his desk and grabbed a large stack of papers.

"The thing that makes Shakespeare so timeless, is that almost everything is left to interpretation. If you flip to any page in the book, you can see that there is very minimal stage direction written in. 'Enter.' 'Exit'. 'Fight'. 'kiss'. Everything else is left to the imagination. So, to see how each of you interpreted Much Ado About Nothing, I've put together a little project for you guys," he held up the stack of papers.

"You will be working in groups-"

There was a ripple of "Yes!" throughout the room.

"-That I will choose."

The entire class sighed disappointedly. Krayonder turned to Specs and shrugged. She knew that he wanted to work with her badly, because he didn't think anyone else had the patience to help him stumble through Shakespeare.

"Each group will be given a small section to perform, to show how you interpreted the play." He began listing off scenes and groups, as Specs silently prayed that she would get with somebody who at least slightly cared about getting a good grade. So many of the illiterate gorillas, a.k.a, her classmates, didn't even try to respect the work of one of the most amazing writers ever to exist; many of them had random doodles in their books. Who the hell did that? In Specs' time, books were considered a rare artifact.

"Ms. Willowson and Mr. Moses, you two will be playing the roles of Beatrice and Benedick in act three, scene one. You'll only be doing the end part when it's just your two characters."

Krayonder grinned excitedly, winking at her as Mr. Holmes handed them the scripts. She glanced at the first line.

"Benedick: Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?"

She knew what part of the play this was instantly; it was when Beatrice and Benedick confessed their love for each other. It was actually one of her favorite scenes. Actually, she loved every single scene with Beatrice and Benedick in it; the two characters had amazing chemistry together. That was probably why Holmes chose them to do it; they would be able to perform well because they were such good friends.

Specs wondered for a moment if she had made it so obvious that she was in love with Krayonder that Holmes had seen it; he was definitely the type of teacher who would play matchmaker with his students.

"Krayonder?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you stop kicking my chair?"

"Oh, sorry, man," he apologized, and proceeded to tap his pencil on the table.

He and Specs had gone to Donna's after school, and they now sat with their scripts in front of them. She had insisted that he write down the subtext (the lines, but in his own words), telling him that it would help him understand the scene better. He had to know the subtext to write it down though, which was the hard part.

"Do you think we could do this later, Specs? My brain hurts."

She rolled her eyes. "We took a break five minutes ago-"

"Please? Pretty please with a milkshake and fries on top?"

"No."

He pouted, sipping his cherry coke. He hated how she could just glance at the words and know exactly what them meant. Reading normal English was hard enough for him, but Elizabethan was ten trillion times harder. The words swam about on the page like fish.

"Come on, man!" he begged. "I'm not smart like you, I can't do this!"

She set down her pencil and looked him in the eye. "You're too hard on yourself. If you really put your mind to it-"

"Put my mind to it? Put my mind to it, of course, I had no damn idea that I should do that! If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to "put my mind to it," I would be the richest man in the whole 'effin world! Contrary to popular belief, I actually try to do well in school. But I just can't, I can't make my brain work right. So don't tell me I'm not trying, man! I'm trying harder than you could even imagine. So don't even say a damn thing!"

Specs stared at him, cheeks red. Mumbling under her breath, she gathered all her stuff. "I-I.. I'm just going to walk home. Bye."

She walked out the door, leaving Krayonder alone at the table. He sighed and put his head in his hands.

"Just a tip," Mr. Hummel-Anderson said from where he stood behind the counter. "Girls don't like it when you yell at them."

He glared at the old man. "No, really?"

"I know, shocking, right?"

He didn't have time to deal with a sarcastic old man; he felt really bad about yelling at Specs, and he need to do something to make it up to her. He picked up his stuff and started to walk out the door when her suddenly bumped into something so heavily perfumed that he started to choke.

"Hi, Kray!"

"Oh… hello, Sarah."

She stood way too close to him, batting her eyelashes as if something was stuck on them. "Hey, I forgot to tell you at school, but I'm having a party this weekend… You wanna come?"

A party… Krayonder suddenly put two and two together; a party would be at her house. A house where her dad's nuclear weapon plans would be. It was all coming together; him and Specs could sneak around the house, find the plans, and then they could make out or something… And even better, if he told her this, she wouldn't be mad at him anymore!

"Awesome! I'll tell Specs, and we'll be there!"

Her smile fell. "Oh… You're going to invite her?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I?"

"Well, I saw her storming out like you guys had a fight or something…"

" We did, but it's going to be ok. I mean, we get into fights all the time, but we always work it out."

"Oh… great." Her expression, however, said otherwise. "I'll see you there then…" He ran out the door and hopped into the rental car that Robert rented for them. Hurrying as fast as he could, he pulled out of the parking lot and dashed down the street. About halfway home, he saw her walking.

"Specs! Specs! I gotta tell you something, man!"