Thanks for the review, Dizuz. Both your questions should be partially answered in this chapter. I don't want to give the answers outright, so I'll leave them both up for some level of assumption.

Just so you guys know, posts will come much more frequently on the weekends than during the week. I may only have one or two chapters throughout the week, but on weekends, I may have one a day. This does not apply to every week, however. Some weeks, I may not be able to post anything at all due to various reasons such as being away from home or being without access to a computer.

I'm hoping this chapter will be more exciting than the previous ones. I'm finally bringing in crazy, fun, flaky Phoenix, as I promised earlier.

Soon after the opening of presents, everybody had seemed to be getting tired and even a little bored of the party—Chandie included. Monty didn't mind, however. The party had lasted for a decent amount of time, and all fun affairs had to come to an end at some point.

Monty decided to begin the cleaning process. This was the fun part, though only he understood why. He loved transforming a mess of a room into a spotless one. It was almost like his superpower, to be able to make any mess disappear. He was something close to a superhero, some proud part of his mind told him. It was lame and dorky, he knew. Yet, at the same time, he really didn't care.

He decided to start with the kitchen, as it had been the main eating room during the party, thus making it the messiest. Just as he was slipping on his yellow, rubber, cleaning gloves, Chandie walked in on his moment.

She gave him an odd look. "Whatcha doin'? You have cleaning supplies out and a giddy smile on your face. I do not comprehend," she mused. "How can these two things ever possibly go together?"

"Just shut up and leave me to my moment," Monty said, unable to contain his smile. Nobody understood why cleaning gave him such a pleasure, and nobody ever would. He had accepted that fact a long time ago, though it still bothered him that people he had known for years like Chandie still insisted on questioning his strange fetish. "I thought you were heading home."

"I was still saying goodbye to Zoey and Richie. I think Phoenix already left as well, though I didn't actually see him leave." Monty noticed a sudden odd change in his friend's demeanor when she mentioned Phoenix's name. "You want some help?" she offered.

"No. You wouldn't know what you're doing, and you'd just mess it all up," Monty said with actual fear showing through in his voice.

"You okay there? I mean, I know you have your system and whatnot, but you . . . Well, you're shaking."

"I'm fine," Monty said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "And to prove it to you, I'll let you collect cups and throw them away."

"Oh, goody!" Chandie said sarcastically. "Lucky me. Thanks for letting me do this."

"You're welcome," Monty said with a smirk. "Unless, of course, you don't want to. You can just go home if you really want. I'm not going to force you to do all this cleaning on your birthday."

"I'm not falling for that," Chandie said, pointing an accusing finger at her friend.

"Falling for what?"

"Reverse psychology," Chandie said slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable.

"You're insane, Chan," Monty remarked. "Either help me clean or not, I really don't care. With the prior, I get to talk to my friend, which is nice. With the latter, however, I get to clean on my own, which is nice, too." He smiled. "Your choice."

"Fine. I'll clean with you," she muttered, still making it sound like she was being forced to make the decision. "I would feel bad abandoning you with my own mess, anyway. You've done so much for this party already."

"Thanks." Monty's smile grew broader. "Though, it really wasn't that much work. I kind of enjoyed it."

"Kind of? Don't think I don't know you, Monty," Chandie said with a smirk. "I know your enjoyment level was more than a 'kind of'."

"I know some things about you, too, Chan," Monty countered. "Like the fact that you haven't picked up a single cup yet. Either get on with it or get out."

At that statement, Chandie immediately grabbed hold of the nearest red, plastic, party cup and lifted it off the counter. "There. Happy?"

"Very much so, yes," Monty said. "Now for the next step. I'll explain it slowly because it's a bit more complicated than the last." She slowed down her speech to such a degree that it took several seconds to get the four words out. "Throw. The cup. Away."

Chandie tossed the cup easily into the trashcan from across the room. "What's next?"

"Lather, rinse, repeat," Monty said simply.

"Okay. But what brand of shampoo do you have? I'm very picky," Chandie mused.

Monty finally allowed himself to laugh. He had been trying so hard to keep their goofy conversation sounding serious, but the more laughter he held in, the harder it became to keep holding it all in.

"When we're together," Chandie began, "we can be very . . . interesting, to say the least."

"Yeah," Monty agreed in a quiet voice, and as he was saying that one simple word, something was happening. His eyes met hers. Blue gazed into blue. It was the first time it had registered to Monty that he and Chandie had the same color eyes. Something suddenly changed between them. They were no longer joking around and teasing each other. Now, they were each just standing there, staring deeply at the other's face. It was a quiet moment, a peaceful one. There was something so positively lovely about just standing there and staring.

The quiet, peaceful moment was soon interrupted by a voice. Monty couldn't place it at first. It seemed so out of place, something was just not right about it.

"Hello, my friends." Phoenix. It was Phoenix's voice. But there was something . . . different about it. He sounded happy. No, not happy. That was an understatement. His voice showed over-joyousness. He almost sounded high.

Monty and Chandie whipped their heads in unison toward the voice. Monty was taken severely aback by the mere appearance of his friend. Upon Phoenix's head lay one of Zoey's birthday cone hats. On it, written in thick black marker, were three lovely words:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BITCHES!

That was about the sanest part of Phoenix's getup. He wore a jacket which was clearly put on backwards. It was bright pink, a color that was completely out of character to Phoenix. His pants were neon green, and his hair was atrocious. For a boy, he had fairly long hair, which allowed him to do whatever he had done to it that made it stick up the way it did now. The mess of blond hair stuck out in all directions, like stiff spikes threatening to jab anyone who came near. He also wore mismatched shoes—one being a sneaker, where the other was a beach sandal—and whimsically-designed socks on both feet.

Amazingly, it was not one of these things that planted the wild look of utter confusion on Monty's face. It was the guitar strapped around the boy's body. Phoenix didn't play guitar; Monty knew that much.

Phoenix seemed to notice the odd looks he was receiving, proving that he still held some amount of sanity left in that corrupted brain of his. "Like the outfit? Yeah, I picked it out myself."

Chandie was the first to reply. "Are you . . . ? Are you stoned?"

"No. I'm just creative," Phoenix said with a smile. "And definitely not sad anymore." He giggled. Actually giggled. It wasn't a laugh; it wasn't a chuckle. It was a giggle.

"Good for you?" Chandie replied, though it sounded more like a question than a congratulatory message, like she wasn't sure how to appropriately respond, and Monty could perfectly understand why.

Now it was Monty's turn to speak. "Since when do you play guitar?"

"Since today." He picked up the guitar and held it completely wrong, his hands not even close to where they were supposed to be. Monty wasn't a guitarist, though even he could figure out something was very wrong about Phoenix's hand positioning. He had his left arm wrapped around the neck of the guitar, and his right hand was lined up for chords that didn't even exist. He began to strum, looking and sounding like he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, which was most likely the reality of the situation.

Then came the singing.

I know it was a bit of an odd way to end a chapter, but the reason I ended on that line is for a couple reasons. First, I have to write some lyrics. I didn't want to delay posting this chapter because I have to write some strange song. Second, I feel almost as if this works as a cliffhanger. You guys will have to wait until my next update to get to see the lyrics to the song.

I also have a small announcement. I'm considering beginning another Friends fanfiction story called "The Truth Behind Eddie Menuek". I plan for it to be a fairly short story which explains why Eddie—one of Chandler's roommates during the run of the show—seems to be so dark and psychotic. If I were to write this story, Transgendered Past's updates may begin to come a bit slower, though I don't plan to update The Truth Behind Eddie Menuek nearly as often as I update this story. Feedback on whether this would be a good idea or not will be much appreciated.

The last thing I want to mention is something that I was wondering if anybody has noticed. Before and after every chapter, you can see that I have an italicized section of me speaking directly to you readers—like now. What you may not have noticed is that I always find a way to end each chapter with one of my "signature" winky faces.

I was just wondering if anybody noticed. If you did, you probably have a pretty good eye. ;)