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My phone wakes me up. I ignore it stubbornly, wishing I had ear-lids. It finally stops vibrating, but starts again almost immediately. I reach for it without opening my eyes, and knock my alarm clock off the bedside table. I flip it open, ready to give hell to whomever is on the other end.

"WHAT?"

"Where are you?" Dylanne sounds worried, relieved and amused all at once.

I open one of my eyes a crack to check. Oh, right. "At home. What time is it?"

"It's like one-thirty. Why the fuck are you at home? We've been looking for you everywhere."

"I think I walked home last night."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I was smashed. Don't ask me why. Bring me coffee."

"Well come back. We're going to the diner for lunch."

"Come get me."

She snorts. "You are such a boy. You better be ready in five."

I grunt and hang up. It takes me a minute or two to gather myself and get up. As I shuffle to the bathroom, the terrible ache in all the muscles in my body brings last night crashing back down on me. I can't decide how I feel about it. It certainly didn't live up to my fantasies. Still, I don't feel shell shocked, or panic-stricken. I really just feel kinda numb. As I sit on the toilet, I look down and notice a few spots of blood on my boxers. I ball them up and leave them in the back of my closet before I get dressed.

Greg honks once when he pulls up to my house in his destroyed forest-green hatchback. As I climb into the back and Greg starts driving, I notice that he looks as fine as I feel, which is not surprising since as far as I know he only smoked last night. Dylanne has dark circles under her eyes when she turns around in the front seat to look back at me, and she looks a little green, but she has a mischievous smile as she surveys the car.

"We all look so gross."

I look over at Mark and Brian next to me. They are both leaning their heads back against the seat with their eyes closed, and they both look rather like they slept in a puddle in the yard and then pulled on last week's dirty laundry. Mark whimpers at Dylanne's words.

"Shut up. No talking. I hate you all."

Brian picks his head up and squints at me. "How are you not hungover? You were so trashed! You were dancing!"

That makes me grin, very slightly. "Oh, I'm hungover. A little bit."

Mark gives me the finger. Dylanne giggles.

* * * * *

I'm sure the entire diner knows why we're there the second we step in the door. The hostess says "Five?" and then asks "Five coffees?" before we've even sat down. Mark answers "Yes please," before collapsing in the booth and putting his head on the table.

When our waiter finally gets to us, I catch him rolling his eyes subtly as he asks if we're ready to order. I've seen it before. We tend to bring that reaction out in adults over thirty.

Looking around the table, I realize that to a stranger we must all look pretty much the same: band t-shirts, bad hair cuts, destroyed sneakers. Today, we've added filthy and hungover.

To me, we all look completely different. Brian likes to wear unbuttoned short-sleeved collar shirts over his t-shirt; Greg has the Jew-Fro, and the nose, and the boney elbows and the skinny wrists that look even skinnier because of his huge digital watch; Mark has blue eyes that sparkle, and a dimple, and his bad hair cut always has that yes-I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-but-you-know-you're-jealous-that-I-look-perfect-anyway quality that you have to be born with (Stop. I know what you're thinking, and no. Ew. I never liked Mark. That's just — ugh. Moving on now.); and Dylanne — Dylanne has blonde dread-locks (which are currently purple on the ends), an eyebrow ring, and the most extensive collection of chandelier earrings I have ever seen. Today she is wearing the large, black ornate ones that look like lace that she was wearing last night.

And me? I'm sure I'm currently scowling into my mug, so I probably just look grouchy and unfriendly.

"So what happened to you last night?" Brian looks a little better, now that he's hydrated and not in a moving vehicle.

"I walked home." I don't really want to answer their questions.

"When? Why?"

"I don't know. Late. I just got tired, and my brain was like 'Bed Time!' so I walked home and passed out." Even though I came up with that off the top of my head, it comes out completely even. I'm good at lying. I always have been.

"What the hell?" Dylanne is smiling as she shakes her head. "We looked for you everywhere. It was actually kinda funny, before it got scary. We were wandering around calling for you, expecting you to be in a closet or something, and Mark just kept telling us to shut up cause we were being too loud."

I shrug. "I don't know what to tell you."

Brian looks troubled, and like he's about to press me for more, but to my relief the universe decides to take that moment to intervene and repay me for some of the shit it put me through, in the form of Greg pulling a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket in complete confusion. We spend most of the rest of lunch trying to decipher his weed-induced scribblings, which include words like "Kinnesthetics" (meant to be kinesthetic, which Greg remembered he wanted to look up later cause at the time he wasn't sure it was a real word) and a rhyme that reads: "It definitely improves it, there's a reason people use it" with the word (lube) in parenthesis at the end. When the check comes, Brian uses his card for our joint account and I leave a double tip under my coffee mug.

* * * * *

Fuck my life. I ate too much. I always eat too much.

I lean over the toilet. I feel so sick. My stomach feels like it's backed up in my esophagus. I hate the diner. I just want this food out of me. It's gross, heavy, dead weight.

Slowly, experimentally, I put my hand in my mouth and rub the back of my tongue with my middle finger. My body heaves, jerks in and up, and out it comes. I cough a few times, spit, and do it again. I taste french fries, and acid. At least it's gone now.

* * * * *

We're doing mathematical proofs. It's Monday, it's math class, and we're doing mathematical proofs. Not geometric or logic proofs — those I can do. These ones, you have to use an equation, and move things around, and I really don't get it. When Mr. Flannagan gives us a set of problems to work on alone or in pairs, I can't even finish the first one before the equation stops working out and I feel hopelessly stupid.

I sigh exasperatedly and slap my pencil down on the desk. Jake looks at me, opens his mouth, and then closes it, and looks away. I just continue to glare at my notebook. He finally speaks.

"Need help?"

"I need a new brain, is what I need."

The corner of his mouth quirks up. "Come on, it's not that bad …"

"Ok, then what am I doing wrong?"

"Well, do you know what you're proving?" He shifts slightly, angling towards my desk, and studies my paper.

"I'm proving that I can climb a ladder to the moon. Which is completely ridiculous, so of course it's not going to work."

He snickers. I glow a little inside. I made him laugh.

"And did you get the whole bit about how you prove that one works, and then you prove you can get from one to two, and then you state it works for any number?"

I blink. "Uh…what? No?"

"See, first you have to prove that the first rung exists, by substituting in one, like this." He writes it out in his notebook, and works out the equation in clear simple steps as he talks.

"Ok, yeah, that makes sense. The substitution, I mean."

"Good. And then you prove that you can get from rung one to rung two."

"And how do we do that?"

"Like this." He works out the second part, but the second half of the equation comes out of nowhere.

"Wait, you lost me."

He stops. "Where?"

I point on his page. "Here. Why did you put that there?"

"Because it's equal to the first half. See?"

I frown. No, not really, but I don't want to say so. "Ok, but then what?"

"You finish it, like this."

"How was I supposed to know to do that?"

"Hopefully, if you it do enough, you'll recognize the patterns and it will be more obvious."

"Can't I just say that it's true because they never give us a problem that isn't?"

"Isn't that like circling 'x' and writing 'here it is!'?"

I snort. "I did that once."

"Really?"

"Yup. Ninth grade, Ms. Klein's class."

"And how did that go over?"

"She said that I would have gotten credit if I'd been the first one she'd ever seen do it. But she was cool; she gave me another shot at the problem so I wouldn't fail."

He smiles at that. "Yeah, that's cool."

An awkward pause descends. He looks back at his paper. I want to keep him talking, make him laugh again, but I don't know what to say, so I try to remember what he just explained and I start another problem from the set. Five minutes later, I'm totally lost and completely loosing it.

"Never mind. I give up." I close my notebook and push it away. I open up the copy of The Two Towers that I brought with me instead. Gandalf has just freed King Theoden from the control of Saruman when Jake speaks up again.

"I never read those."

I smile absently as I keep reading. "You're missing out."

He answers off-handedly. "I've never seen the movies either."

"What?

He just laughs. "Aren't they all like, three hours long?"

"So not the point. You can't just skip out on a piece of culture that big 'cause they're long. Besides, they're not half as long as The Dark Knight."

"I know what you mean. That movie was so confused. It climaxed, like, three times."

"Yes! It did! No one else agrees with me. The only reason I even went to see it in theaters was to see Christian Bale two stories tall doing push-ups."

I see his eyes flicker over my face. He's guessing, but he's still not sure.

For the last ten minutes of class, we trade favorite movies and books. He assures me that I have to read The Alchemist, and then The Witch of Portobello. Who knows; if he brings me a copy, I just might.

Jake is back to action movies. "I like the Matrix."

"I only saw the first one."

"That's the only one you have to see. The others are kind of, I don't know, redundant."

"Doesn't he die thought? Neo? Don't you need the second two to complete the Jesus metaphor or what ever?"

"Oh yeah, right, he does. I guess. It's not really that important. It's just their way of saying, 'Look at us, we're more than just nerds, we're deep nerds.' "

I grin. He's really cool. And surprisingly easy to talk to. When the bell rings, I'm really tempted to blow off my next class and just go to his. Oh, wait. I have lunch next.

So I continue to follow him, down the hall, away from the lunch room.

"So where are you headed?"

"Uh, English …" He starts to answer, but he's interrupted by Dylanne, who appears out of nowhere and plants herself in front of me.

"I need your math text book."

"Here. Please, take it." I shove it into her arms.

"Cool." She falls into set next to us.

"Didja forget yours?"

"No, Greg has it because Mark has his."

"And Mark forgot his?"

"Mark lost his three months ago."

"Oh, right! In the park."

Jake is smiling, but looks totally lost. "What?"

"Mark is still emotionally about thirteen, and I'm not his mom. That's Brian's job," Dylanne supplies.

"Brian's my brother," I clarify.

Dylanne looks at me pointedly. "Going to do the honors?"

"Oh, sorry. Dylanne, Jake, Jake, Dylanne." Killer social skills, no?

Dylanne extends her hand across me to Jake as we walk. "I've seen you around. They've got your painting up in the art wing. It's fantastic."

Jake blushes very faintly. "Oh. Thanks."

Against my better judgment, I am intrigued. "You're in art?"

He nods. "Painting and Drawing II, with Fiato. Oh, and I'm in Portfolio next quarter, with … um …"

"Hudson? I'm in that."

"Yeah? Cool." He stops walking by room D12. "Well, this is me …"

"Ok. See y'around?"

"Yeah. See you tomorrow." He smiles, and then he walks into the classroom.

Dylanne giggles. "He's nice."

I scowl. "Shuttup."