Hi.

I'll make this quick. School isn't easy. Please bear with me as I adjust.

What can I say? Mr. Copeland was a bad man. He was going to kill one of my kids... Well you can blame me, sir. I'm the one that shot 'im.- Yep. Sam Gerard does care.

I think he likes you.- T today for mentions of drug use and things.

Ezra McCouliff peered warily around the corner into the cubicle assigned him. No fake cobwebs. No buckets. Not even a tripwire. He made a sigh of relief. Nothing to worry about.

"Hey, kid."

He looked across the way to see the fellow that had shown him to Gerard's office. "Huh?"

"Hehe. Worried we rigged your cubicle?"

"Ummm... OK. I'm not going to be ashamed to say it. Yes. First day with the Chris and the Suburbanites, they rigged my first file to go up in flames when I touched it. I'm still a bit wary."

The man chuckled. "Haha! Rightly so. My first day on the job, they soaked me with a water bucket. Ah, those were the good old days." He extended his hand. "By the way, I'm Cosmo. We're cube-mates."

Ezra shook Cosmo's hand. "Ezra. But you probably knew that already, didn't you?" He smiled.

Cosmo chuckled and sat down at his chair.

Ezra gave a laugh. It had been a long day, and he had been on his feet for most of it. He plopped down on his chair- a little too hard, he assumed. The tin on the back of his chair impacted his head with a loud, SPLOORT!

"OI!" He continued shouting, in Swedish, no less, as he leaped up from his chair. "Dumma spratt! Det var vispad grädde !"

Cosmo turned his chair around burst into a maniacal fit of laughter at seeing the back of Ezra's head plastered with whipped cream.

Ezra whirled around in fury to see the man nearly doubled over in his merriment.

Cosmo continued to laugh. "Gotcha!"

"Whipped cream? Really? Now I gotta clean all of this off!"

"Heh. Gotcha."

Ezra promptly swept his hand over his head, wiping most of the froth away. "Yuck!" He tore the tape off of the chair, then tossed both the tape and the pan of cream into the trash bin.

Cosmo laughed. "It's tradition. That whole thing was Noah's idea, actually." He burst into fits of laughter between talking. "Biggs pranked Savannah with salt in the sugar packets, but Noah got to choose the next prank on the new guy... When he was new, I set fire to his pants, but he didn't want to repeat that one. So you got whipped cream. I guess he didn't count on you having almost as much hair as he has."

Ezra slipped a comb out of his pocket and began to scrape the foam out of his thick blonde hair. "Nasty. And a waste of perfectly good cream, too." He sat down.

"Have fun."

"Thanks." He rolled his eyes.

As Ezra combed the whipped cream out of his hair, he looked around the cubicle. It was fairly simple- just a desk, a computer, a few photos, and a couple knickknacks. He wiped the comb on a tissue, then slipped it back into his pocket. He took a closer look at some of the photos.

He picked up one of the framed pictures. It was a man with long curly hair, smiling brightly in a sideways glance at the camera. "Hey Cosmo," Ezra began.

"Yeah? You need help with the computer?" Cosmo stood up. "I never understood Noah's obsession with making his computer so hard to-" He stopped when he saw the new kid holding Noah's picture. He blinked.

Ezra looked up at Cosmo over his shoulder. "Is this Noah?"

Cosmo nodded soberly, all traces of the laughter from a few minutes ago vanished.

"You- err... You don't usually get to see a picture of the person you're replacing. I never got to see Joe Cresham, though I know he meant a lot to the Suburbanites." I... I guess you didn't really get a chance to... take all this stuff... but could I have some of it?"

"That stuff is Noah's. He's going to want it back."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean-" Cosmo swiped the picture and set it back down on the desk. "Noah isn't dead. And if I know him, he doesn't have an intention of being so any time soon."

Twelve hours later...

Noah looked up. He was counting how many rectangles were in the pop-ceiling. He knew it was going to be forty, just like it was all of the other one hundred and twenty- seven times he'd counted. He was so bored, it really didn't matter to him if Biggs and Savannah were there to pester him or not. He would like to have at least some company. If it were doctors or nurses- he honestly didn't care. Sure, he was supposed to be sleeping at Nine O'clock at night, but he really couldn't.

Of course, if anyone thought it was just the boredom, they had something else coming. He had turned his morphine counter down a few hours earlier. He had been adjusting it down gradually, and now it was almost completely off. Yes, it did hurt. Most people would think he was insane. But he knew what drugs could do to a person. His foster brother Cole had been on heroin and cocaine, among other things, for almost fifteen years until, and probably continuing throughout, his arrest and imprisonment. Cole had almost convinced Noah in favor of substance abuse. Needless to say, Noah was rather cautious when it came to addictive substances.

He began counting the ceiling panels again. Just like all of the other one hundred and twenty- eight times he counted. Noah sighed. He was bedridden, bored, and most likely permanently disabled when all he wanted to do more than anything was jump and run. Run away from all of this. But his legs wouldn't move. The muscles wouldn't heed. All because of one bullet. Noah was beginning to wonder if Royce hadn't meant to kill him, but force him to live half a life. Half a life from the waist up. Sure, he could learn to do things with his lower half out of commission. There were obviously programs for the disabled to participate in sports and things. Still, knowing that he would never run or walk or stand on his own again seemed even a tad bit more than daunting.

Another set of forty panels. Another minute. Another second. Another moment that he wasn't sleeping. He sighed.

What would Sam say? If your thoughts aren't sleeping, think sleepy thoughts! Noah smiled. Sam had a quip for everything. No matter the situation, Sam always had two bits to put in. Yes, sometimes he'd go all off on his tangents, but that was just a part of the quipping. You couldn't stop it. It was like... having a sundae without chocolate syrup. It just wasn't done. Every sundae had chocolate syrup, and you couldn't get out of Sam's tangents unless you wanted him humorless. And no one wanted Sam Gerard humorless. Ever.

Noah imagined jumping sheep, complete with a little brown fence. He began to count those instead of the forty ceiling panels. After six thousand sheep, he decided that jumping sheep weren't the best thing for him to thing about. He re-imagined it, with him sitting down on a grassy field counting sheep as they contentedly grazed on the lush, green grass. He imagined counting them and naming them as they casually walked past. He ran out of wakefulness before he ran out of names.

Hehe... An interesting one, yes.

And yes, I did look up the Swedish words.