A/N To those that want to know where is Hector..all will be reveled soon
I Am God
29 weeks
She is on the school bus. She's drawing a picture of nine graves with a grim reaper over it.
She's looking at Meg, Betina, and Peter, who all have their eyes closed and are soaking wet.
Rhonda walks past on the phone to Michelle, having the conversation she heard on Michelle's cell phone.
There is a loud crash and the screeching of breaks, as she squeezes her eyes shut.
She wakes up screaming.
Keith rushes into the room to find Eli already comforting her by rubbing her back.
"Eli? Honey?"
"Another one." he whispers only loud enough for her to hear as she calms down.
"I'm fine. It was just a bad dream." she says nodding.
"Did you watch "House of Wax" again? You know that Hilton girl gives you nightmares." her dad tries to joke. She laughs softly and leans into Eli. "You okay, honey?"
"I'm okay." she says rubbing her stomach.
Her dad nods and slowly leaves the room, reluctantly letting someone else take care of his little girl.
"Querida..." Eli whispers.
"Just hold me, please." she whispers.
"Always." he says laying them back down and wrapping his arms around her, rubbing her back and mumbling softly to her in Spanish until she falls back to sleep.
He hates the nightmares and wants them to stop. Shouldn't have told her about that damn drawing on the bus or let Felix give her a photo of it.
A teacher gives her a permission slip to leave class and tells her the school counselor would like to see her.
"You were sleeping in class. Mrs. Taft says she's reprimanded you three times for wearing headphones while she's teaching." Rebecca says. "Veronica, some are wondering if maybe we should have you finish your classes from home. You are getting closer to you due date."
"Mrs. Taft is reading The Golden Bowl...aloud, with a fake English accent."
"Alright, than how do you explain ripping down another student's poster."
"Am I being followed?" she snarks.
"Veronica. Is there something you want to talk about?"
"I've been having these dreams of everyone that was on the bus. Every time I close my eyes there they are, like they have something to tell me." she says taking the photos out of her bag and hands them to her.
"Cervando, the academically-inclined PCHer and great cuddlier. Betina, Dick's secret lover. Rhonda, the only thing I know about her is that she left her friend Michelle a phone message before she died. Marcos, of "Ahoy Matey's" fame, hence, the headphones. Peter, a gay student who posted the details of his unrequited love on the website. And finally Meg."
"When did the dreams start?"
"They started a while ago but have come out in full force since Michelle set that booth up."
"Is this all that is bothering you?" she asks seeing that there is more than this on her mind.
"I wish...I'm sure that you know that my friend Hector has been missing for a few weeks now and we got a call that his bike was found..."
"That's a good.."
"Under the rubble of Shark stadium. Just his bike."
"Oh.."
"Yeah, oh."
She is on the bus, underwater with fish swimming past.
Meg is sitting a few seats in front of her wearing a "Baby on Board" t-shirt.
She asks about Lucky, her parent's friend from church and Neptune High Alumn. They had him over for dinner, and he talked about the Bible and his recent tour in Iraq, and how he got hit with shrapnel, but Meg thought he was creepy.
Meg goes on to tell her that her parents thought Lucky was a saint because he sang hymns with his eyes closed and helped her father move an air conditioner once, but he is just a janitor that buys beer for people like Logan to hang on to his glory days.
Logan is at his locker putting his books away when someone comes up behind him and knees him in the back of the legs.
He turns, trying to keep from falling on his ass to find Ronnie.
"Yep, I have no idea what compelled me to do that." she says softly leaning against the locker next to him.
"Is it because you're five?" he jokes.
"I'm a little punchy; I haven't been sleeping." she says rubbing her stomach.
"Little man keeping you up?" he says making sure no one was around before he said it and gives her stomach a quick rub.
"I wish it was just him. Lamb called dad..."
"Ronnie?" he says getting closer when he notices the tears.
"They found Hector's bike in the rubble of Shark stadium." she says softly.
"No Hector, though."
"No sign of him."
"This is a good thing. Maybe he stashed his bike there."
She just shrugs her shoulders, keeping her head down. "What else?"
"Do you know a guy named Lucky? He's one of the night janitors here."
"Tommy Dohanic? Yeah. Why?"
"I've been reading some of the stuff that was on Meg's laptop. Seems daddy dearest was trying to hook him up with her. Why "Lucky"?"
"Well, he graduates. Then his parents file Chapter 11; he has to drop out of college. He signs up for Army Rangers. He gets sent to Iraq and four months in, he gets shot."
"Que? I'm confused how does getting shot make him lucky?"
"They shot him in the butt. Could be worse."
"I need a nap." she mumbles when the bell goes off.
He throws his arm over her shoulder and leads her to class when she starts in the wrong direction.
"Hey Opie." Weevil says coming up to them as they reach her class.
"Making sure she doesn't try to make a run for it." he says and heads to class.
Logan is sitting with Dick in class.
Mr. Wu announces he has a new class project. Whoever wins will get an A and be excused from the end-of-year GPA-killing final test.
They have to drop an egg from a tall height, and those who build the contraption that best protects it, wins.
"Boy, Mr. Wu must really like his egg-drop soup." he mutters.
"Ah, does this assignment come with potsticka?" Dick says loudly.
"That's does it. I'm assigning you partners alphabetically. Dick, I think it's a bad idea for you and Mr. Echolls to be working together." Mr. Wu says.
Dick gets put with Angie, an overachiever that gets on his, and others, nerves and Logan is paired with Wallace.
Wallace moves next to Logan.
"You're not gonna get all super-achiever on me, are you?" he asks the instant Wallace sits down.
"I'm just trying to avoid flunking. Hearst would yank my scholarship." Wallace replies. "We share a certain tiny hormonal blonde that can and will make our life a living hell if I lose this scholarship and that's on top of what my mom will do to me."
"Excellent. The bar is so low, we can step over it." he tries to joke.
She is sitting by herself in the quad when she notices Dick at another table.
Catching his eyes, she motions for him to join her.
He jokes that just because she wiggles her finger, doesn't mean he will come.
She smirks and writes "I know who you did last summer" on her laptop, turning it so he can see.
He hurries over.
She plays his phone message to Betina, and he slams her laptop shut.
"Everybody has their secret shame, Ronnie. You get tanked at the wrong party, stumble a couple of rungs down the food chain. I...mean..."
"Dick, I am very tired. Patience is dwindling."
"Sometimes you don't need the prettiest horse, just one that let's you ride bareback." he says trying to look everywhere but at her.
"Ever think, maybe, that was a little, I don't know, dangerous?" she says rubbing her stomach. His eyes follow her hand.
"She was on the pill." he says paling slightly.
"Dick, she played your messages for the whole bus on the way home from Shark Field. That's a woman scorned."
"I might have let her know that our arrangement needed to come to an end."
"Why?"
"I ummm...honestly I thought that it wouldn't look good to have a side piece if I was going to make a play for Gia."
"Dick...that's actually somewhat smart..for you."
"I even gave her a little gift that day: a Sharks premium ticket package, my Sharks memorabilia gift bag."
"Tickets they raffled off? You didn't win the tickets."
"Well, I saw that gay kid who won them toss them in the trash, and I thought Betina might like them. Or she could sell them. Pissed-off white trash ex-booty buddy, free tickets, it's a no-brainer." he says as he gets up. "Ummm, how's Ghost World?"
"You were doing so good. Dealing."
He nods and walks off.
She sees Betina's friend Maureen has arrived at her locker.
"Maureen?" she asks coming over to her.
"Veronica Mars. What can I do for you?"
"Hmmm...I'm trying to help Michelle with her yearbook tribute."
"I already gave her all the good pictures that I had of her."
"Is there any poems, artwork or stuff like that we add."
"No."
"Do you think her boyfrined might have anything?" she asks watching as Dick and Logan walk past.
"Betina didn't have a boyfrined." Maureen says shutting her locker.
"Oh..I'm sorry. I thought she was seeing Dick."
"Dick is the bastard child of Satan and treated her like a hooker."
Her eyes widen and she has to bite her lip because shockingly she wants to defend him.
"I know that Betina let him treat her that way but as her friend I am allowed to blame it on Dick. He was her ideal guy. Rich and completely indifferent to her. The joke would have been on Dick though."
"Why?"
"Betina was desperately trying to get pregnant by him so she could shout it from the rooftops."
And there is no way in hell Dick's dad would have let that happen.
Keith is sorting through the mail when she and Eli let come in.
"Hey Sheriff, did I happen to see you at school today?" he says as they sit down.
"Nope." Keith says holding up two envelopes addressed to her.
"What are..." she lets out a breath when they notice that they are from Stanford and Hearst.
"Small for acceptance." she jokes as her dad hands them to her.
"No matter what I'm proud of you." Keith says.
Eli just wraps his arm around her a kisses her softly on the top of her head.
Taking a deep breath she open the letter from Stanford first.
"I got in." she whispers.
"What about Hearst?" Eli asks handing her the other letter.
Keith sits down in front of her as she opens the next letter.
She quietly reads the letter and smiles. "I got in."
Stanford or Hearst?
She sits down in front of Clemmons, slightly confused why he wanted to speak to her and Angie.
He tells them there has been an error on the class rankings, which only affects the two of them that remain in the running for the Kane Scholarship. It seems that Angie took a college class over the summer, so she should have been awarded a 5-point A not a 4-point A, which has pushed Angie above her in the GPA rankings.
So because Angie's parents bought her a class, I'm going to lose out on a scholarship. Dammit.
"I doubt that Angie is as bad as you are making her out to be." Rebecca says the instant she is able to.
She had burst into her office the instant Clemmons and let her go and started ranting about Angie.
"I don't know why I am surprised about his happening. Things were going to good. Got into two schools, Eli and I are doing great. Bad dreams aside, things were looking up and some rich bitch comes along to slap me back to reality." she says sitting down.
"Still having the dreams?"
"Yeah, and I am no closer to figuring out who drew the picture..."
"Picture?"
She reaches into her bag and takes out the photo of the drawing of the headstones saying 'I am God'. "It was drawn on the back of one of the seats."
She, Wallace and Thumper walk towards her next class, telling them about Angie.
"Nothing about you screams second place." Wallace tells her.
"Apparently, the grades her parents bought her are worth the same as the ones I earned." she said yawning.
"Still not sleeping?" Thumper asks.
"Not well." she said as he throws an arm over her shoulder and she leans into him.
"Querida, you okay?" Eli asks joining them wrapping his arms around her as Thumper moves out of the way.
"There's a possibility that she could lose the Kane scholarship." Thumper whispers.
"Shit." he whispers.
The come up to the poster that has the photos of the the ones that didn't make it off the bus on it
"When I die can you raise money for a spread in..." Wallace starts.
"Didn't I tell you? You are not allowed to die." she tells him.
"Its funny the most innocent photo was 'hell on whells'." Wallace says pointing to the photo of Rhonda. "That girl, Rhonda, and her sister Natalie were in Clemmons' office all the time. Always in trouble, for huffing paint, stealing, fighting, anything to reinforce the P.W.T. stereotype."
"There's a Pretty Young Thing stereotype? Do I fit it?" she asks as the boys start to laugh.
"P.W.T. Poor White Trash." Thumper says. "And technically..."
"Shut it." Eli growls.
"Oh, them. So can you point Rhonda's sister out to me after school?" she asks looking at Wallace and ignoring the boys behind her.
Wallace nods and heads to class.
Mr. Wu enters and tells Angie she has a gift from her parents that is obviously more important than his class.
She leaves to see what it is.
"Logan, you and Wallace are up." Mr. Wu says calling one of them up.
"I could go find Weevil and rub his head for luck." Logan jokes.
"You could try." Wallace says with a smirk.
Angie burst into the room with balloons just as Wallace is about to drop the egg.
"I'm in. I got into Stanford." she exclaims.
"All right! Veronica Mars needs someone to sell her answers too. Angie will keep her in business for awhile." Dick snarks only loud enough for those around him to hear.
"Veronica Mars got into Stanford?" Angie asks confused.
"Yeah. Veronica Mars. Stanford." Wallace, Logan and Dick say.
"Well, I guess somebody has to do the football team." Angie sneers causing most of the class to laugh.
Logan, Wallace and Dick all look around to see who thought it was funny.
"I'll be sure to tell her best friend, who can hack into anything and her boyfriend, who knows a lot about cars about that the next time I see them." Dick nearly snarls at her and the ones that laughed.
"Echolls, Fennel, you've got what all cruising seniors desire: a passing grade. If you'd like to aim higher tomorrow, I won't hold my breath." Mr. Wu says seeing that the egg Wallace dropped didn't break.
Mr. Wu calls on Angie to the front. She goes and grabs her project and gets her and Dick a passing grade as well.
"Congratulations. You've single-handedly fulfilled the Stanford bitch quota." Logan snarks as everyone leaves when class ends.
"Enjoy trade school, Logan." Angie replies.
Wallace makes plans with Logan to work on the project some more before he heads out to the parking lot to meet up with V.
She calls Keith and tells him she is thinking about some great advice he gave her — follow the money. She asks him to check the financial records of the families of the children that died on the bus crash. He agrees, but says he is in the middle of an important meeting.
"I think that's Rhonda's sister. Natalie?" Wallace says pointing to a trashy-looking girl that gets into a flashy car..
" Are you sure there's a "P." before that "W.T."?" she asks.
"That's definitely her. Last year, she offered to make out with me for cigarette money." Wallace says not able to meet her eyes.
He watches as she goes over to talk to Natalie, after a few minutes she rejoins him.
"You can take the girl out of the trash, but you can't take the trash out of the girl. Oh, the time and effort she's saved me." she says with a smies as she gets out her phone to call her dad.
"And a good day to you, too, sir. Just thinking about some great advice you gave me...'Follow the money.'"
Logan tells Wallace to chill while he goes to the bathroom, and he throws him a remote control as he leaves the room. Wallace flicks through the TV until he finds the Tinseltown Diaries episode about Aaron Echolls. He watches for a moment, until Logan pops back in to tell him they show it twice a day, it being their highest rated episode.
"We magnify the drag, decrease the velocity, minimize the force, and decelerate..." Wallace says pacing in front of Logan.
"Decelerate yourself. Four is officially your espresso limit." Logan jokes.
"So, I know why I'm trying to help out V. I don't want her to lose the scholarship."
"Kind of the same thing. Also I really want to stick it to Angie. Why don't you chill while the glue dries?" Logan says getting up and leaving the room.
He flicks through the TV only to find that the episode about Aaron Echolls is back on Tinseltown Diaries. He tries to switch it before Logan comes back into the room.
"It's the highest rated episode. Plays at least once a day."
"Sorry man."
"Hey did you notice that you and i weren't the only ones to defend Ronnie?" Logan says sitting down as Wallace turns off the TV.
"Yeah, I think that fact that V can destroy him has finally sunk in." he jokes.
Logan just nods agreeing with him.
She follows Eli into the apartment and nearly collapses on the couch.
"Find anything?" she asks her dad seeing him in the kitchen.
"Love in my heart. Chili on the stove. Oh, and I ran those financial records. I am a great father. None of the families made any money on the insurance, they just got enough to cover the funeral." he tells her as he dishes out the chili for the three of them. "However, Rhonda's family won a separate lawsuit with a two million dollar payout. Woody Goodman paid them in secret after they found a finger in their food at Woody's Burgers."
She and Eli push their bowls of food away.
"Sorry." Keith says.
She lets herself into the office with her set of keys. Eli is so going to be mad. But I need to see if there is anything in their files to help me.
She finds the files as she hears someone at the door. She hides in the closet, and Mr. Clemmons and Keith enter the office.
They speak about the case Keith is working on. Students keep being diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder, which means they are section 11-23, by the same doctor. The teachers have to offer them deadline extensions, make-up tests, and unlimited time of tests.
Keith says he hopes to have something for him soon and goes to get his coat from the closet. "My coat?" he asks.
"Right. It's in the closet." Clemmons tells him.
She looks around the closet and of course her dad coat is right next to her.
He spots Veronica, who hands him his coat.
"Yep, that's mine all right." he says as she tries to smile and look innocent at the same time.
Going through Peter's posting she notices that he was attracted to Mr. Wu.
She goes to speak to Mr. Wu. Telling him that Peter was gearing up for the outing of all outings and wonders if it was him.
Mr. Wu replies that not all well-dressed, articulate, detail-orientated men are gay. Many are just Asian. He tells her he knew Peter had feelings for him. Peter told him when he ran into him at a gay bar, where Mr. Wu was celebrating a cousin's birthday. He also explained the whole incident to Mr. Clemmons at the time.
"Sorry just trying to make sense of..."
"Veronica, it's understandable. Things like this make everyone question things."
She is on the bus with Peter. Disco music is playing and colored lights flash.
Peter plays with a baseball before asking if she believes Mr. Wu.
She says she does, but if Mr. Wu was gay, she doesn't think it would qualify as the outing of all outings.
Peter laughs and informs her that she is asking the wrong questions. He thinks she should be asking why Peter was on the bus in the first place.
Why would he be interested in going to a baseball stadium?
She looks through Cervando's file and is confused to find that there was an incent between him and Cassidy during summer school.
She goes to join Cassidy at his table where he is sitting by himself.
"Need to talk to you."
"Ronnie. If this is about Mac..."
"I am not getting into that. That is between the two of you but I will say that you were a jerk and are being an idiot. No, I need to talk about what happened between you and Cervando this summer."
"Oh, that."
"Yeah. Spill."
Cassidy sits listening to Cervando telling a story about how he got his new jeans.
He is talking about a pool game with Liam Fitzpatrick and his cousin.
Liam thought he was doing well, but Cervando won and purchased $200 jeans.
Dick appears at the door and squirts water at his jeans with a water gun.
The teacher closes the door on him.
"Cervando was normally a cool guy for a PCHers, but the next day he was on the warpath. There was bleach in Dick's gun." Cassidy tells her.
Cervando storms into the classroom and shoves Cassidy against the wall. He demands Cassidy gets him a new pair of jeans and gives him a piece of paper with the size, color, and style on them.
Cassidy protests that he didn't do anything, it was Dick.
Cervando says he doesn't care.
Mr. Clemmons catches them and demands that Cervando come with him.
"Most people evening the score with me. Dick is the one that messes with them but I am the one that gets the fallout." He packs his books and leaves.
Keith gives Clemmons a recording of the doctor offering to diagnose Veronica with General Anxiety Disorder for $1000.
Students in Mr. Wu's class are dropping their egg projects.
Angie's egg survives the drop.
He and Logan are the only students left.
He climbs the ladder to twelve feet and drops the egg holder.
It bounces on the ground and flips over. Mr. Wu holds up an intact egg, and they smile.
He turns the egg around to reveal a crack on the other side, Angie won.
Mr. Clemmons announces over the PA system that due to recent abuses, people will no longer get special exemptions.
Cervando, in his bleach-splattered jeans, asks Veronica how she got home the day of the crash.
She tells him Weevil took her home. Cervando asks whether she thinks that it was weird that the bomb didn't kill them.
It killed the driver, but it was the bus crashing onto the rocks that killed the rest.
He points out that neither killed him; he drowned.
He starts drawing on the classroom chalkboard.
He says that if a person wanted to just take out the bus driver, they could have done it anywhere along, but they had to do it at exactly the right point to make the bus go off the cliff.
This means they would have to have been close enough to see where they were.
A song loudly plays, the lyrics saying, "I am God."
She jerks awake with a gasp. The song still plays on Ahoy Matey's, which she has been listening to.
She goes over to a computer and types in "I am God" on a website called Music On Tap.
A CD cover pops up, with the song by a band called The Wannabes.
The cover art is the nine graves with grim reaper over it that was drawn on the back of the seat.
"So that's it? The tombstone art work was just an album cover?" Rebecca asks.
"And Rosebud was just a sled. I didn't just ruin Citizen Kane for you, did I?"
"No, no."
"Good. So, are we done?" she asks collecting her stuff.
"Well that depends. Do you think you're through being haunted?"
"I better be."
"And your friend?"
"Until I see a body, Hector is out there and I will bring him home one way or another." she says walking out of the office.
Eli gets up from where he is waiting for her a with a soft kiss they head home.
She sits looking at the artwork on the bus, which this time is flying in the sky.
Marcos asks if she is disappointed that the artwork wasn't a suicide thing, but from a song he liked.
He says it must have been comforting, thinking the crash was meant for someone else.
The bus plummets towards the ground as a cell phone begins to ring. Marcos holds it out, saying it's for her.
Betina stands behind him, once again on the phone to Michelle.
She jerks awake, out of Eli's arms as her dad walks in through the door.
"I've been think about what you said." he starts.
"Que?" she and Eli reply.
"Following the money. The money wasn't on the bus, it was in the limo following it."
"So whoever crashed the bus might have been hoping that someone in the limo should have been on the bus." Eli says.
"Richard Casablancas took out an insurance policy on his sons three days after marrying Kendall. Dick and Cassidy are worth more dead than alive."
"Well shit." she and Eli mutter.
"So even your so called best friends think you're dead. No one is looking for you. You belong to us." Molly said looking at the boy, bloody and beaten, dangling in front of her.
The boy laughs softly.
"What is so funny?" Liam asks.
The boy raised his head and looked at them.
"If you actually believe that Veronica Mars thinks I'm dead..you are as stupid as you look." Hector says smirking.