"It was huge!" Charles catered the group of high schoolers surrounding his table at lunch the next day. "It was so fucking huge, like…it was just crazy! And the military was chasing us, and shit was blasting all over the place. I had to stay behind to help Martin, so I didn't actually get to go into the cave, but I did see the monster, and holy hell was that thing…" Cary rolled his eyes as he walked past his friend. Charles hadn't been down there. Sure, he had been dealing with some of the same shit, but unlike anyone else in the group, he was capitalizing off of his new found popularity, and Cary just wished that he would stop. He told it like it was some made up story, but it was very, very real.

"What did it say to Joey?" A blonde girl asked.

"I'm not totally sure, I mean it was a psychic conversation and Joey didn't give me all of the details, but something about how it just wanted to go home!"

"Wow…" the girl looked blown away. "That must have been so scary."

"It was scary." Charles nodded. "For all of us, I mean…just knowing that my friends were down there with that…that thing, I didn't know if I would ever see them again, and there was nothing I could do because I had to help Martin, you know?"

"You were so brave." The blonde edged closer to Charles, and Cary wondered how long it would be until Charles stopped using this damn story to get girls.

"I know, but so was everyone else, right? Hey, Cary!" Charles waved at him. "Come over here! They wanna hear about your adventure."

"I'm good." Cary gulped. He hadn't wanted Charles to spot him, he had wanted to be left alone, but now that he had caught his friend's attention, that seemed highly unlikely, and he was right. It wasn't long before some of the crowd from Charles' table moved over to his.

"Tell us what it was like!" A sophomore boy asked, his eyes wide as he sat across the table from Cary. "Was it like…like Godzilla?"

"No," Cary shook his head. "Look, can I just eat my lunch please?"

"Come on…" the same cheerleader that had asked for his autograph the day before sat down next to him, practically pressing her body up against his. "You were so brave to go down there, I just can't imagine doing something like that." She shuddered, and Cary could feel her body move against his.

"Yeah, it was brave, it was scary, big monster – look, you guys know the story, okay?" He sighed. "I'm just trying to eat my lunch." He didn't want to be rude, at least not at first, but he was really starting to get annoyed with everyone asking him to recount the details. It wasn't as though he was going to give them any new information, they already knew what had gone down that night.

"Alright, alright." The wide eyed boy across from him nodded. "Let's let him eat, guys, he's probably really hungry."

"Okay." The crowd stayed at Cary's table, though they cut the chatter. He wolfed his lunch down and headed for the library, waiting for the bell to ring, signaling class. He had never really liked class before, but compared to the stress of lunch time, he couldn't wait for Algebra to start.

Throughout the day, Cary caught people looking at him, and he didn't really know what to think. He knew that people thought he was some sort of hero, but the fact that he wouldn't delight them with stories of his experience made him feel as though it wasn't going to be long before he was back to being labeled a freak and an outcast. He didn't want to be any of these things, of course, but it was better to be left alone and called a weirdo than it was to tell the story that haunted him again and again.

"Hey." Charles caught up with Cary after school ended. "Lucy wanted me to give you this."

"Who's Lucy?" Cary asked, looking skeptically at the folded piece of paper Charles handed him.

"That cheerleader who was sitting next to you at lunch!" Charles spoke as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and Cary just nodded. "That's her number. She was too shy to give it to you herself, but she wants you to call her."

"Oh." Cary tucked the paper in the pocket of his jeans, making a mental note to throw it away when he got home.

"Oh?" Charles asked. "That's all you have to say? She's like, the most popular girl in the sophomore class!"

"Cool." Cary shrugged. "But…when did you start caring about popularity?"

"Since I had the chance to actually BE cool. Don't you get it? With this kind of publicity, if we make another movie, it'll be big! People will want to come see it, we'll have fans"!

"Oh."

"You say that a lot." Charles frowned. "Look, we have a story to tell, that's something no one else in this boring as hell town has. Why not give the people what they want? Call her, Cary. Take her to dinner."

"I don't like her," Cary argued.

"You don't know her," Charles pointed out. "How do you know that you don't like her? Maybe she's your soul mate, and you don't know it yet because you haven't had any time to talk to her one on one?"

"I don't think she's my soul mate, Charles." Cary rolled his eyes. One of Charles' problems was he was overdramatic. It worked when they made movies, but it got old fast in the real world.

"If I call her will you leave me alone about it?" Cary asked.

"Of course!" Charles grinned. "But take her out – her friend Bethany seemed into me at lunch. If you and Lucy hit it off, we could double! Wouldn't that be great?" Charles grinned and ran down the hallway to catch up with Joey and Alice.

Yeah. Cary thought to himself. Real fucking great. He wasn't sure how much he wanted to be at a table with two girls who just wanted to get close to him so they could get insider details on what he had been through, maybe ride the coattails of his adventure, but if calling Lucy would get Charles off his back, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to take her to the movies just once.