~Well, I'm back, everybody. :) This new story is going to be more along the lines of Work in Progress: Study of an Evil Genius - a lot of a little vignettes that have some connection but can mostly all stand alone. Most will focus on Drakken and/or Shego, but I have plans for some Kim, some Motor Ed, some Hank Perkins. . . should be fun.

Quite a few will take place in the what-if universe created by the last chapter of Work in Progress - because it's just too darn enjoyable to picture Drakken as an uncle. However, there will be one D/S story (as an experiment), so don't go anywhere, hardcore shippers!

No real particular order to these. . . this one deals with seventeen-year-old Drew Lipsky on a very important day in his life. ~

1. Coming of Age

The Middleton Institute of Science and Technology.

Drew Lipsky grinned a secret grin down at the block letters. The pamphlet he held boasted bright, happy colors that said science was fun without making it look like a kiddie playplace.

Not that there was necessarily anything wrong with kiddie playplaces. Ball pits were marvelously fun to jump around in, as long as you could be scientifically certain no one was watching you.

Yes. Scientifically. Drew hugged the pamphlet to his chest in delight. That was the whole point now, the answer to everything.

After thirteen years of struggling through vocabulary words that reversed themselves somewhere between his brain and his pencil and PE exercises that left him panting on the sidelines, Drew Lipsky had finally made it into the college of his choice! There were accomplished scientists there, wonderful scientists, and their affirmation of his genius would trump everyone else's word on him. He'd be able to ignore random bullies and unsympathetic language arts teachers as if they were nothing more than a vague, unpleasant odor.

If they affirm me.

Drew squirmed a little inside the scratchy seams of his new dress shirt. Mother had worked so hard to be able to buy him new clothes for the tour, and the cut did seem to pad his scrawny shoulders out a little, expand the recess of his chest. Drew knew he had absolutely no reason to complain.

Except - boy, did this thing itch! Still, it was better by far than wearing one of Eddy's hand-me-downs that his younger cousin outgrew at age twelve. Sweat stains in the pits and everything. Yeccch!

Not that Drew wasn't well on his way to staining his own.

Sweat was starting to seep through the lines on his palms, too, and he released the right one's grip to glance down at it. Smudges of black and smears of red threw a sharp spotlight on just how pale and tiny his hands were.

The ink had run. Cheap ink. Was that an ominous, foreboding omen of forbodance?

No, no, no, no. Drew shook his half-grown shag of protective hair back over his neck. No - undoubtedly the grand people of the Institute had just spent so much of their budget on the most up-to-date science equipment that they had to skimp on their regular old boring printers. A penny saved was. . . one more penny that you hadn't spent.

There was a catchier way of putting that.

Then again, maybe it was an omen. Right at that moment, a burly hand dropped onto Drew's shoulder with so much gravitational force he was sure the joint would dislodge, fall right out of place to somewhere around his rib cage. And his arms wobbled and klutzed and ganglied enough when they were properly aligned.

Please, please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE let it be Eddy!

It wasn't. The laughter that speared toward him was too ugly to be his cousin's dopey "huh-huh-huh." Drew looked up into the ruthless faces of Carl Thompson and his band of thugs. Guys who had probably earned Punch-a-Nerd scholarships to Macho U, where they would study Having Muscles, Applying Aftershave, Doing Everything Smooth.

A couple of lavishing girls hung on each of Carl's arms like it was a symbiotic relationship. Good grief, had they missed the Women's Lib movement completely? His mother could have taken them all out with her purse.

Which would have been the most humiliating thing that could ever happen.

Have to get out of here. How do I get out?!

The possibilities swiped at each other in his mind, and Drew came up empty. Even as he commanded himself to remain calm, his very hemoglobin froze until he fully expected his skin to turn blue.

Carl took a step toward Drew, who instinctively backed up against the bank of lockers until a combination lock pressed into his spine. It was the daily (sometimes hourly) test of whether he could firm himself to the floor as they swagger-approached, and Drew always flunked.

"How are you doing, Drewbie?" Carl asked. The nickname was embarrassing enough out of his mother's sweet mouth, and coming from the guy who secondhandedly taught Drew every curse word he knew?

Unconscionable.

Drew pressed two fingers to his throat, at the approximate site of his vocal chords, stretching them to prevent their cracking toward child-levels. "Leave me alone, Carl," he growled in his best guttural attempt to measure up.

"Leave me alone, Carl," one of the nose-in-the-air girls mimicked. Her shrill snort bore a decided resemblance to Miss Piggy.

What about what he'd just said was funny?

"Looks like little Drewbie's all gussied up for something," Fred added. He reached out and pinched Drew's arm. His fingers could have wrapped around the entire thing. . . maybe twice.

A look that Drew recognized glittered through Carl's eyes.

Drew's mouth went dry, sandy. The Sahara Desert. Without the camels.

Not a swirlie. Not today. I have to look my best to visit the Middleton Institute of Science and Technology!

He'd heard some of the students there referred to it as "MIST," but that was far too unprofessional for Drew's taste. The unabbreviated Institute would, after all, be relying on their first impression of him to assign him classes, put him on the path to success, assure him a high-paying job in one of the country's top laboratories.

Drew dug his fingers into the locker's vents. A man - or the rough equivalent - needed that job so he could prove his tormentors wrong and kick their humiliation back at them, so he could contribute to the world by finding the cure for cancer or something.

So he could take care of his mother. Especially since Da - Richard had quit paying child support about six months back, apparently under the impression that Drew was already eighteen.

Because he forgot my birthdate.

Drew's entire body shut down, the way it always did when that came up. It gave Carl just long enough to snatch his precious pamphlet away and hold it out of his reach.

"'Middleton Institute of Science and Technology,'" Jason read from behind Carl's elbow. His eyebrows puckered at the pamphlet like it had been written by the ancient Babylonians. "What's this about?"

Then they just stood there, all of them, telegraphing, You're not as smart as you think you are, Lipsky. Not as smart as us. You haven't even figured out how worthless you are yet. It was a message Drew had heard so many times, he suddenly saw no reason not to scream the inverse right in their faces.

"Give! That! Back!" Drew pounded on Carl's enviable pecs with one fist. His voice was climbing up the scale, and he tugged at his collar to guide it back down. "Ngggh! Aggh! Grrk!"

No sooner had fifth-grade Drew finally gotten rid of his stutter than the habit of spitting nonsense syllables moved in to take its place. It had done nothing for the mocking except to make it worse. Very unhelpful.

Especially with Carl and his cockiness bumping him until he cowered with a locker knob mingling with his vertebrae. "I wouldn't expect you to understand," Drew said, straining for a bit of cockiness himself. "I have a scholarship."

"So do we." Carl's gaze sank its fangs into Drew.

Not really. Gazes didn't have fangs. It was a - a - a - well, Drew couldn't remember the proper English-class term for it, but it was something cool, like the way a poet would talk.

Ah. Now he knew why he'd never tried to invert their insults back to them. He could barely do it without crying.

Drew squinched up his eyes to hold his tears hostage. Could tell a few were plotting an escape, though. He made sure to scoff when he said, "Sports scholarships. You're going to go throw balls through hoops and kick them into goals and run around head-butting each other, but you'll never understand what chemical constructs make up that ball or the laws of physics that allow them to bounce."

Carl crumbled the pamphlet easily with his Hand Of Strength. Really, how much more would it take to break Drew's whole lightweight self? "Why the heck would we need to?" he said.

Ulp. That's the question, isn't it?

Drew heard his heartbeat cresting in his ears like waves on the beach. It lost its control of his lips, however, to the fuse snaking its way through his insides. Next thing he heard was himself saying, "To show you're as smart as I am."

"Oh, yeah? Wanna read for us, Backwards-Brain?" Alexander called.

Carl shushed him with a finger. And, not two seconds later, he flung out an arm and hoisted Drew from the ground by the part of his shirt that Drew thought was called the "lapel" in fancy circles. Blobs of paint flaked off the decrepit locker and tumbled past his tag to prickle at his back.

When Carl spoke, it seemed to be squeezing through pit-viper slits. "Oh, I understand that you're jealous, Drewbie. Not everybody has what it takes to win an athletic scholarship. And not everybody has parents who'd be able to pay if you didn't."

Parents.

The pain was so instantaneous and so bad that Drew was half-prepared for death at any moment. Around him, the air went silent. As in, no giggles. As in even Carl's loyal little cronies wondering if he might have gone too far this time. One of the girls actually let go of his biceps.

In the silence, Drew caught a glimpse of his shadow on the wall, lengthening in the mid-afternoon sun that lingered more often these June days. Broken by hulking lockers and trash cans and the promise of ten big fists. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't scared of his own shadow - there was nothing scary about it, and that was what scared him.

"Seriously, Carl." Second-in-Command Jason tugged at the brute's perfect sleeve, the one that fit him like they were two halves of the same thing and was definitely not a hand-me-down from anyone except maybe Babe Ruth. (That guy was probably dead by now, but he was the only athlete Drew could think of.) "Track meet's in, like, five minutes. Why don'tcha just dump Drewbie in the trash can and be done with it?"

Drew hated himself - and everyone around him - for the fear he could feel springing his eyes. He was too weak to stop them from wandering down to the dress shirt now clenched in the Hand of Strength, checking it for spots or rips or anything else that might spoil its newness.

"No!" he hollered. "Not the trash can! Not the trash can!"

Grins, shark-esque things that were ready to chow down.

Errgghookkk! Why did I say that?

"Did - did I say 'trash can'?" Drew said, pitch snapping into fragments that went up too high. "I mean 'locker.' Not the locker! Don't stuff me in my locker!"

Evidently these people weren't as gullible as Mother, because Carl wrenched both of Drew's wrists back to meet at his tailbone and lifted him as if he were a feather pillow straight off the floor. Drew paddled at nothing with one foot (that was admittedly too small for his leg to do much good), but the shoving and the shifting didn't cease until he was straddling the powder-white letters on the green trash bin proclaiming it an "Official Waste Disposal Unit."

OWDU? Drew thought - to distract himself from the imminent mess. He had trouble balancing his focus between more than one thing at a time, and that could come in handy sometimes.

So could the school bell. It shrieked right as Carl was heaving one of Drew's legs over the side, accompanied by the words, "Last call for 4:00 Track and Field!"

It was as though they'd vaporized. The hall was abruptly empty, and Drew was hanging sideways, the flesh on his fingertips tingly as the sticky-uppy plastic from the bin's lip dug into them. The smell of overripe grapefruit walloped him in the nostrils.

This is. . . preferable. Only problem is, I have to move to get down.

And he didn't move very well.

Sheesh, he must have looked so much like a little stray puppy stuck in the fur-matting rain, complete with the general stench and the frozen cringe. Drew couldn't decide which was scaring him more, hanging on or letting go, and there was no one around to take a public-opinion poll.

Or, you know, rescue him.

Drew seethed, glasses biting into the spot where his eyebrows met. Man, if I ever get buff someday. . . Carl and those guys will be sorry! They'll PAY!

It wasn't the first time he'd imagined revenge, but it was one of the most vivid. Drew could lessen his chances of sobbing by twenty-five percent just by picturing Carl Thompson kneeling in front of a giant robotic arm that would give him the Wedgie of the Year. Fred getting acne laser-blasted onto his face and whiskers blasted off. Alexander discovering what it was like to have something more powerful than you close enough to static-shock you and knowing it could do so much worse than that.

Jason. . . maybe nothing much for Jason, since he'd sort of stopped Carl from going anywhere with the parent thing. Maybe he'd just have to wash all the test tubes for a week or something.

After all, this was the Enlightened Eighties! Anything was possible.

You just keep remembering that, and you won't cry.

Yes. Well. That was all proton-positive, but Drew didn't like how close to a mad scientist he was suddenly sounding.

"Drew Lipsky?" said a woman's voice.

Drew gasped and prepared to be eaten alive.

Please don't let it be Mrs. Hart! I'll be in detention for the rest of the millennium!

Drew glanced up into a wonderfully shiny gold name badge that read "Lauren Daniels," pinned to the front of the woman's white top. The letters "MIST" marched across the front, but the full versions of the words were vertically arranged below the big letters. That was acceptable.

Oh, right. Lauren Daniels. Of the Middleton Institute of Science and Technology Reception Committee.

(Actually, Drew had no idea whether they employed the term "Reception Committee." It had such a professional trill in his head, though, that he chose to use it.)

Oh, no - and here he was balancing on the edge of a trash bin, like he was about to vomit his guts. Oh, no - oh, this couldn't look good!

"I'm not drunk!" Drew hastened to clarify as he swung his leg out of reach of the garbage and back over the side, pulled himself upright. The scramble to his feet was a little too soon, however, and he wound up goggling against the wall, which didn't help validate his non-intoxicated claim. "I've never drunk an alcoholic beverage in my life! Well, I did eat a strawberry that I think was a little fermented once. . ."

He stopped. The woman had her fingers pressed together over her lips as if she were snuffing out a smile. Not a scornful one, though. A motherly one, despite the fact that she could have only been about twenty-five. That was old enough to be a mother, but not his mother. (Drew knew more about those things now.)

On the whole, Lauren Daniels appeared kindly enough that Drew zipped up to meet her. At five-foot-nine, he towered over her, but she had that kind of 180-degree angle to her posture that made a person appear taller. One of the 490,007 goals he hadn't achieved yet. Why bother around here? The straighter you stood, the harder you fell.

Still, maybe that was all about to change. Carl and those guys would go off to Basketball School - or whatever - and learn absolutely nothing while he was bettering mankind, and with any luck their paths would never cross again.

Lauren's gaze, clinical as a doctor's, swept Drew from the waves of hair that wouldn't quite tame to the brown dress shoes straight from Goodwill. His greatest hope was either that she saw the please-rescue-me begging in his own eyes, or that she didn't - there was no verdict in his frozen-up thoughts. And, of course, they both paled in comparison to the hope that his slacks weren't unzipped.

They must not have been, because Lauren stuck out a hand and introduced herself as Lauren Daniels and said some other things that Drew missed because he was busy studying the happy helices of DNA twisting on her pants.

Those pants turned and swished down the hall, and Drew had to follow the call of science. Was this how literary rats felt when literary pipers played them a literary song and they fumbled mindlessly into a literary river?

Who knew? Literature was never his strong point.

And none of that mattered once they were outside and in front of a scientific-looking, slate-colored van, with the kind of bowl seats Drew wasn't certain were groovy anymore (or, for that matter, if anyone still said "groovy"). But they were cozy, and he nestled into one in the backseat. Clipped his seat belt on. Took the hand, all slim veins and agile muscles, that extended toward him from the driver's seat.

"Nice to meet you, Drew," said the tanned guy behind the wheel. "I'm Eric."

What a nice name. Strong and masculine. Drew couldn't imagine even the most determined bully fashioning some nasty nickname out of Eric.

Not like Drewwwwwwwwbie.

Drew almost pulled his knees up in front of him to clutch before it struck him like the rays of sunlight (precisely positioned to stab his eyeballs) how utterly childish that would be. He stood on the cusp on manhood, right here and right now. Only what kind of man shaved just once a week. . . and with his mother's lady-razor?

He'd have to get one of his own for college.

Yeah. Now was the time to man up, own up, grow up. Mother would not be tossed aside like an empty soda can someone at least should have bothered to recycle, not again. She'd done such a superb job raising him alone for the last nine-and-a-half years she deserved to be able to retire youngish and be well-cared-for the rest of her life.

Her pain and his were as tightly woven as those double helices - maybe if Drew could get rid of hers, some of his would decrease, too. He'd had more than enough.

Drew spent the short trip with his face pressed to the window, one hand spread like an awning over his forehead to keep the sun from blinding him. And the brain that worked just fine, no matter what darn old Alexander said, was churning out a plan in easy steps.

Step One: Use your adult voice. It impresses people, and no one will mistake you for a twelve-year-old.

Step Two: Ask questions. Make sure you get all the rules straight so you can't break them by accident.

Step Three: Be pleasant. Be patient. Keep thanking them.

Step Four: Let them be the ones to mention your grades. Arrogance is for Carl and those guys, and you're so much better than them.

There! That was a good plan. Settled Drew's nerves. Only a few jolts over potholes in the road had his stomach clenching, and that was a purely physical reaction.

When the van came to a stop, Drew gasped again - a high, fluttery sort of sound that defied Step One. It wasn't fear, not quite. His fingers tingled and didn't start threading through the black straggles hanging down his neck. His chest was swept with something like nostalgia, but for something he'd never had.

Colleges didn't have appendages, and they couldn't offer you an embrace. And yet Come here and let me give you a hug, was Drew's immediate impression. Every windowsill, stair step, and doorknob was both instantly familiar and excitingly new.

No building had ever pumped his energy up to a sugar-worthy rush before. His own house, as shrunken and skinny as Drew himself, was welcoming, but it tucked into itself with shame and beckoned him to do likewise. This campus proclaimed, Come in, Drew! You belong here!

Wow!

Up the delightful steps, through the perfect door, into a carpeted hall. Drew was convinced that (A) he'd never get his mouth closed again, and (B) he'd stumbled upon a long-lost shrine to Knowledge (with a capital K).

Eric stopped midway through one long stride to toss a grin back at Drew. "You like, huh?" he asked.

Drew nodded, chin still hanging to his top button. No words were necessary - which was good because all the phonics he'd ever learned had vanished from his brain with - with - with - with -

What was that thing called? Excitement? Nah, that wasn't grand enough. . .

"You'll be getting a tour of the main building first," Lauren said. "The dining hall, the workout room. . ."

That would have been the appropriate time to flex a bicep. If he'd had one.

"Where's the lab?" Drew asked. His adult-voice teetered precariously, and he cleared his throat twelve times to strengthen it. It was hard to stay calm when you could already feel drool forming on your chops.

Lauren's eyes twinkled at him. "We have a community computer lab in this building. Each of the dorms has their own smaller individual lab. You're in Da Vinci."

Da Vinci. The man who had probably accomplished more by the time he was seventeen than most people did in eight entire decades. It was so fitting, and that did things for his self-esteem that bulging biceps never could have.

The workout room wasn't really all that special, either. Some pulley-machines. Some treadmills. Some bikes that went nowhere. Drew had the mechanics of all of those figured out by age six, back when Richard used to take him to the gym with him sometimes.

Drew blinked himself dry. Moving on.

All the furniture in the computer lab looked like it had been filled in with a blue crayon, the first-ever proof he'd seen that something could be All Business and still seem warm and inviting. Drew plopped himself down in a state-of-the-art wheeled chair and resisted the very, very strong urge to twirl in it. He was above such juvenile nonsense now.

Man, computers had shrunk over the years. (Or had they shrank? Shrinked, perhaps?) They'd been compressed (ah, see, that was much better!) down to a square screen small enough to actually fit on a desktop and a chunky prism that could be stored underneath.

Fascinating. Drew ran a finger down that prism and longed to open it up and study its circuitry. Eric and Lauren were already looking at their watches, though, so he gave it a pat, promised it soon, and hurried to catch up with them.

The whole walk to the dining hall (which sounded so much more elegant than a cafeteria), Drew skittered to keep up, holding fast to Steps Two and Three. Especially Two. He never wanted anyone in this beautiful place to get mad at him.

"Well, since you've already brought it up," Lauren said, a soft laugh sparkling in her eyes again, "there's no alcohol allowed on campus. Students who are of age may drink off campus, but they can't bring any back where their underage friends could get it."

Drew bobbed his head, which was already spinning with something that had passed excitement about three halls back. "Yes. Of course, of course. That makes perfect sense! And you don't have to worry. I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not even old enough to smoke."

Why did I just divulge that? He had the sinking feeling he might as well have just stuck his thumb in and started sucking.

"Not that I would smoke anyway," Drew continued. The sentences panted, exhausted, but they had to press on, had to cover all traces of the kid who was still all arms and pimpled chin. "My cousin tried that once when we were kids - "

Ugh, that was the wrong word for his audio to squeak on.

"- and he coughed until he - until he - he - he -" Drew hesitated, unable to recall the medical term for reverse digestion and too embarrassed to use any of the slang ones - "well, he coughed a lot," he finished stupidly.

Lauren was still looking at him as if she wanted to adopt him. "You don't strike me as the rule-breaking kind, Mr. Lipsky."

Hold up! Mr.? And her grin wasn't sarcastic.

Ipooka, was all that came through Drew's tangled synapses.

Before he could plug them back in the right slots the way he would with the fuse box back at home that was always burning out, the shoes in front of him stopped. Drew screeched to a halt of his own that pitched him forward. Hands fumbling for something to grab - do NOT fall - do NOT fall - grabbing something - twisting it - spilling into a room.

Staying upright. That was the most important part. . . oh, goodness!

This had to be the dining hall, which did look a lot like an upgraded version of a cafeteria. The starkness of the white walls almost burned, especially compared to Middleton High's, which were yellow and age-touched like some weird great-uncle's knuckles. Stainless steel trays were stacked in perfect rows at the end of a long line of options. No poisonous mystery meat fumes hung in the air.

It couldn't have been any more modern if they were serving astronaut food - which Drew had heard was pretty disgusting, anyway.

He hadn't realized he'd breathed "Wow," until Eric was draping an arm around him. "Pretty nice, huh?"

Drew agreed, ducking out from under that arm. It was so big and tough and male, the type that he was accustomed to being pounded with. "I'll get to eat here every day?" he asked.

"And how," Eric said. "You could use a little meat on your bones, Drew."

Drew scowled. He was entirely ungrateful for the reminder his reflection in the glass sneeze guard was already giving him. How it was supposed to keep you from sneezing, he'd never figured out.

Could his future truly include good labs, a good dining hall, and no bullies? Had the Law of Infinite Probability finally tipped in his favor?

"Is the food. . . good?" Drew said, just to show that he wasn't completely naive, that he was aware appearances could theoretically be deceiving.

Eric gave the dining hall a sweep with his eyes, which could sweep quicker and happier than a broom. "Well, it isn't exactly Mama's home cooking. Not that you would expect it to be, right?"

Drew let out a snort full of purpose - unfortunately, purpose got a little, erm, gooey. Mother sure made some fantastic lasagna.

"But I can personally guarantee it's a hundred times better than that junk they're serving you in high school right now." Eric looked at the dining hall so lovingly, Drew would have bet he wouldn't have minded taking a broom to it.

Well, it had some loyal devotees at least. Then again, so did punk rock. . .

Drew crossed his fingers and stuck them in his back pockets. Much as he'd be glad to be out from under Mother's roof, he would miss her cooking.

And a few - dozen - other things.

"So who am I rooming with?" Drew asked as they entered Da Vinci dorm. It was decorated with wallpaper that looked splotched on purpose, and the ceilings were high in a way that made Drew stamp his feet to create echoes. He could get used to this place.

Lauren glanced at him over her ruffled shoulder. "I'm glad you asked," she said. "Our enrollment rates have skyrocketed since last year. We're hoping to expand soon, but until then, some of the larger dorms are being asked to double up."

Double up? All Drew could picture was squaring an integer.

"There'll be four of you," Lauren explained. She had yet to sigh or groan or scrub at her temples.

"Oh." Drew knocked his fingertips together. Three other boys? His vision of a quiet, distraction-free workplace was growing dimmer. . . or was that the flickering bulb overhead?

For Da Vinci's sake, Drew, he told himself, you survived sharing a tent with Eddy, remember? No three other boys could be as loud, rowdy, and obnoxious as him! They could even be -

Drew pinched his own arm to shut that thought down. It was too early to assume the final perfection would fall into place. "Who are they?" he said instead, in his adult voice, without a note of pleading.

"Let's see." Eric glanced at the pad of paper he and Lauren had taken turns carrying for the past two hours. "We've got James Possible, a senior. Bob Chen, a sophomore. And - well, the first name is smeared, but I know he's Ramesh and he's a junior."

Lauren grinned. "So with a freshman, they'll be a complete set."

Now nerves were firing in Drew's gut. This sounded so promising, and he wished more than anything he could believe Lauren's grin, framed by her spangly hoop earrings. But if he was the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong model - the set wouldn't be complete at all.

"Are they. . . are they nice?" he ventured.

Lauren toyed with an earring. "Well, I can't make any promises. But so far, they haven't had any conduct infractions. They never sass the professors or the RAs. And they're very serious students."

It was that last piece of information that had Drew's heart leaping for joy.

Possible. Chen. Ramesh. They didn't sound hateful - then again, neither did "Thompson." Parents probably didn't name their children "Attila the Hun" anymore.

What a shame. If he were going to be evil. . . no, that was ridiculous. If he were going to pretend to be evil - maybe once he'd established himself as a world-famous chemist, he'd be asked to play an evil, potion-carrying wizard at kids' birthday parties - he'd choose a name that was so overtly menacing, people would at least be tipped off that they were supposed to fear him.

Eric interrupted Drew with another dancy-eyed look from under his sportswear hat. (Drew wasn't entirely certain of which sport.) "Let's just say, they're the kinds of guys you'd even let your little sister date," he said.

Drew nodded solemnly. And then un-nodded, just as solemnly. "I don't have a little sister. But I understand," he put in, because Eric was the only guy of equal-or-greater age who hadn't disrespected him with every movement of his lips, and pleasing him was fast moving up Drew's priority list.

Even as he said the words, some strange forces stirred Drew's emotions like chemicals in a flask. He'd always wanted a little sister himself, someone to tickle and tease and take care of. Someone to divert some of Mother's touchy-feely devotion. Someone to admire him, to think he was brave and handsome and brilliant -

It was Lauren who cut him off this time, and this time he was grateful. Besides, it couldn't really be labeled interrupting when they had no way to perceive whether you were finished with a thought or not, right? "And this," she said, "is your room."

Huh? His room? Drew looked around in confusion. His room was at home, in the basement, near the clunking furnace -

Ohhh. His new room. Heh - that'd take some getting used to.

Good thing he'd already had plenty of practice in the art of Sleeping Without Your Baby Blanket.

Eric clicked a key into the lock and turned the knob. The door came open, and Drew gaped like a fish out of water.

The room was large and whitish and looked as if it had been tidied up in a rush. Carpet vacuumed to a slight rubbery odor. Desks set proportionately to the square footage. And there, pressed against the east wall with scientific security, were twin sets of -

Bunk beds! With ladders and everything!

Drew was two skips across the floor before he remembered that was not mature behavior. He turned back to Lauren and Eric and adjusted his glasses in that way that wasn't geeky from one scientist to another. "Can I - I mean - may I?" he began and didn't have the words to finish.

Lauren's motherly face fought off a laugh, he could tell. "You go for it, Drew."

He would have flicked his index finger in response if he hadn't been convinced it would land a film of sweat on her.

Drew crossed the room as slowly as if he were moonwalking, and not in the way Michael Jackson did. Placing one reverent hand in front of the other, he crept his way up the ladder and onto the top bunk.

Soft blue sheets were folded down into square corners. Drew could count every speck in the ceiling plaster, but it didn't loom low enough to set off an attack of claustrophobia. . . that he didn't really have anyway anymore, not really.

And that window! Whoever had designed this room had been a geometrical genius. The window was positioned at the perfect degree to pour sunlight over you in the morning and gradually become your alarm clock, only without the screams that made you bolt up in terror. And College-Designer Einstein had also calculated peak study times to make sure that the light wasn't blasting onto the desks during them.

Ha! He'd like to see Carl and those guys solve that with football helmets and brute force.

Drew flopped onto his belly and stretched in the sunbeam like a drowsy cat, even though his pulse was anything but sleepy. "I always wanted a bed like this! For research purposes," he said quickly, lest they think he might not fit in with his roommates that well after all.

That was the main reason he didn't evaluate the mattress's bounciness. Well, that and the fact that he could have mashed his head right through those plaster tiles that had never looked all that sturdy to him. He just grinned out at the sky and the Magnificent Hill every campus must have been required to have.

Lauren finally urged him down with a wave of her mood ring. Drew kind of hated having to climb backward to the ground, and not because he was clumsy enough to worry that his feet would just flare out from under him. . . .okay, maybe that was part of it. A very teeny-weeny part.

"We've got just enough time to show you your lab," Lauren said.

That did it. Drew hustled to the door behind them and probably would have led the way if he'd had the coordinates to the place. As it was, he jogged to keep up, picking up another beat-per-minute with every fire escape and staircase they passed. He was so excited that the letters on one rally poster twisted out of shape and all around each other.

A smidge of doubt shivered in Drew's chest. Speaking of fish out of water, he was starting to feel like one. Not in the sense that he was about to dry up and die. More like he wasn't sure if he belonged where he was going.

"So did you get my grades?" Drew could only tell the words were his because they rumbled right against his doubt. "Were they good?"

Bad Drew! That was a clear violation of Step Four!

While he was busy mentally handcuffing whatever dumb impulse had decided to say that, Lauren treated him to a return stare. One that didn't appear to be a red pen, ready to mark up his spelling and grammar mistakes, at all.

"Yeah, your grades were fine," Lauren said. "You seem to be a very bright young man."

It wasn't the "Oh my gosh, this kid is a genius!" Drew had been waiting for his entire adolescence. But it was a start.

His tour guides steered him down a flight of stairs, through a darkened hallway, and stopped in front of a promising door. A Door, with a capital D.

If it were scientifically possible to have magical portals that transported you into fantasy-lands, Drew would have bet his comic book collection they would have looked just like this one. He was marginally disappointed when Eric unlocked it and sparkles didn't come flying from the keyhole.

Then the Door was opening, and Drew was stepping inside, and the light was thrown on. And everything that hadn't been strapped down got blasted straight out of Drew's mind.

This place is utopia! he thought in a wonder-struck daze. No - check that - it's a me-topia! Utopia just for me!

Not that he wasn't willing to share.

This room, this marvelous, shiny room, was long and deep enough for hundreds of other college students, and littered with tables, as though it had been eagerly anticipating their arrival. Every shelf and cabinet was royal blue, the walls brushed in a lighter shade. Those must have been the official colors of science. They certainly didn't represent the football team this hallowed institute wouldn't even have had.

Textbooks were stacked like Lincoln Logs on some of the tables. Flat, newfangled chips of circuitry lay on a few others. And still others - Drew felt his nostrils quiver with every heated breath -

Still others were decorated with test tubes - beakers - vials - even ones connected with those squiggly little tunnels! In the bright lights glinting off their surfaces, Drew almost got the illogical notion that these inanimate objects were winking at him.

Must. . . get. . . closer. . .

Even though Drew's heels were kicking and springing, his walk seemed stronger and surer than when he was approaching the bunk bed. The tiles, with soot-stained patches that ushered him across, didn't stumble beneath the low traction of his dress shoes.

Forget fish out of water. They belonged together. He and this lab, they were soul-mates.

Well, at least sole-mates.

The instructions that popped into Drew's brain were rapid-fire and translated in pictures, without any words to trip over. "Goggles!" he cried. "We'll need safety goggles first thing, of course. And some protective gloves - let's see, in high school, they were usually under the sink. . . "

Yup. Here too. Drew tugged on a pair of gloves seven sizes too big for him and snapped the equally-big goggles down over his eyes. Everything in the room was magnified, bulging at him. "Get out everything you need for the experiment before you begin," he continued, zipping back to the table. "Never breathe any chemical too deeply. Always trust the meniscus over the majority, even if you have to crouch down and squint to see it! And keep a fire extinguisher ready at all times!"

Lauren's jaw fell. In a good way.

Hmm. Drop a girl's jaw in a good way. That was a goal he'd come thiiiiiiis close to giving up on.

It was so overwhelmingly good that it broke him out into song as instantly as poison ivy broke him out into a rash. "Hydrogen, helium, lithium," Drew sang to a rhythm he invented as he went along. "Now it's time to split the atom."

Eric's toned neck vibrated with a chuckle. "This dude's a natural!"

Dude. Not kid. Dude.

"Are you happy, Drew?" Lauren said.

Drew scanned his databanks for a way to communicate, That is the stupidest question you could possibly ask, without actually saying, That is the stupidest question you could possibly ask. Spit out the first one he hit upon - "Is the Pope Jewish?"

The jaw that had dropped earlier was now clamping to hold back laughter. Drew appreciated the attempt, but it didn't soothe how stupid he felt when she said, "Um, no."

Of course. Catholic. The word was Catholic. He thought he remembered hearing that he had both somewhere in his ancestry - but that kind of thing didn't get passed down, at least not through the genes.

He might have just come apart right there, if it wasn't for exactly where "there" was.

This is precisely why you're a science major.

Drew pressed one gloved fingertip to a vial. The belonging held him there even while pure raw energy burned in his legs. "And when you're done, extinguish all open flames, seal all test tubes, and wipe up any spills - before you run down the hall and announce you've changed the course of science!" He beamed at them, since they seemed to enjoy that. "I have trouble remembering that part."

Eric smiled without snickering. Lauren didn't reach down and ruffle his hair the way Drew had kinda expected her to.

Only one word fluttered into his mind - one he'd first seen on the cover of one of Julie's fairy-tale books and had to look up:

Haven.

Right here in this building, Drew felt the potential coursing through him. The chance to make a name for himself. To prove his genius to the world and maybe help cure cancer or something while he was at it. The chance to escape from Carl Thompson and his band of creeps, who had even this afternoon walked up and pinched his arm and said, "I don't feel any muscles yet, Drewbie."

He didn't see any, either, not when he glanced out the window and caught his reflection in the pane. Drew Lipsky was still a Popsicle stick of a person who could fry onion rings off his oily skin.

But for the first time, Drew knew what he looked like with his shoulders squared.

"Well, Drew, I think our time's just about up." Lauren tapped her watch with a white-tipped nail. "It's been fun. Can't wait to have you here."

Can't wait to be here, Drew thought with a squirm. He was finally being treated like the studious almost-adult he was, and he wasn't eager to go back to Mother's cheek-pinching and babying. With reluctant hands, he removed his goggles and gloves and arranged them in a neat pile next to his beloved beakers.

"Before you go, do you have any questions? Any concerns?" Lauren asked. She and Eric started for the door, and Drew dragged himself after them.

He was about to shake his head - no, and I want to keep it that way - when they walked by the textbook table. In thick black type, the green cover yelled, Cehmistyr 101.

Drew's stomach tightened into a knot of twine (twine being much more poetic than "intestines"). That was supposed to say Chemistry 101, and maybe it did - to everyone but him. His neurons were scrambling at top speed, and they had no patience to sort out all those letters.

And now that hung over his head like a hatchet, waiting to drop.

He wanted to ask if that was normal. He wanted to be reassured that it was. He wanted to open up to Lauren, whose bright red lipstick was pursing sympathetically at him. If they'd already decided he was a "bright young man," that wouldn't change - would it?

Would it?

Wouldn't it? It was something Lauren and Eric had been unaware of when they'd accepted him. And now they'd already been exposed to his Pope-related ignorance.

Too late to kick him out; he'd earned the scholarship - but wouldn't there always be an asterisk in their minds next to the name Drew Lipsky? And a footnote saying, "Smart enough in science, but he can barely read when he gets worked up, so there must be something wrong with him"?

That would be a very long and unwieldy footnote.

"Drew?" Lauren wrinkled her made-up brow at him. "Any concerns?"

Fake it. He could fake it. Almost every science word was so important to Drew that he'd memorized its distortions, recognized them for what they were written to be. It was when they started reading from Shakespeare or Steinbeck that the trouble started - only when would that ever come up in chemistry class?

"Drew?"

Drew startled a look up at her and felt his Adam's apple jerk to the side. "No," he said. "No concerns."

And he squeezed it all back down.

Drew was off the bus, across the street, and onto the sidewalk before the doors even sighed shut behind him. Well, not really sighed. More like quacked, which didn't have the same flow to it. It filled his head with thoughts of ducks - but then, there were worse subjects to think about.

Like the Black Death of medieval fame. Or hefty football warrior bullies looming over you.

Or the swamp his armpits had become. It kept sparking in Drew's brain like an incomplete circuit - should he have told Eric and Lauren about words turning his intellect slushy? Maybe they could have helped him -

Except, when had anybody ever helped him?

Drew did his best nonchalant amble down the sidewalk, not even bothering to vault the cracks for dramatic purposes. That would have been childish and superstitious, two qualities never found in a professional scientist. Mixed-up in the noggin was bad enough.

On the one hand, he couldn't wait to leave and go off to college. He felt like a fish who'd born out of water, flopping on the scalding sand for seventeen years, who'd finally struggled his way to a tide pool. And the instant the water lapped over him, his scorched scales were revived, his fins began to work, and he wasn't the mutant freak he'd been above sea level.

It wasn't a perfect description - any fish would be dead after seventeen years on shore, for one thing - but Drew was proud of it anyway.

He stopped at the edge of his driveway and looked up at the tired little muddy-brown house, kept from being a shack only by his mother's continual care, and sighed heavily. That was the other part of it - the other hand, as the saying went. It was the only home Drew had ever known, even if it always leaned sideways and had doors that didn't fit in bad weather and still smelled like moss from the spring rain. An interesting, scientific smell, but then so was nail polish, and you weren't supposed to get too big a whiff of that either.

Mother always wore hers strawberry-red. Her nail polish, that is, not her moss -

Mother.

Drew swallowed around a hitching lump. She was the one who gave both hands equal ammunition.

She didn't understand all of his problems - partially because Drew never shared the bits that would worry her too much - but Mother always knew just how to comfort him. She would give him a kiss on the forehead that he automatically forgave because of the accompanying cookie, and she would tell him what a good boy he was, and he would be snug in her love. Who would do that for him in college?

The narrow row of grass that passed as their front yard suddenly seemed like a nice Pondering Place, and Drew rushed over, crouching above-ground so he wouldn't stain his dress pants. No, this issue didn't just have one hand and the other hand. It was many-many-many-handed. Sort of like an octopus.

Well, octopi didn't really have hands, not in the truest sense of the word. . .

Whatever. Unless he got some very domestically-inclined roommates, Drew wouldn't be awakening in his dorm to steam condensing on a bowl of oatmeal at his place and a fresh set of clothes laid (or was it lain?) across his chair. Not that he was too lazy or too incompetent to do it himself - Drew squashed the thought as if it were a roach.

There was just something so. . . so secure about your mother whipping it up with her special touch while you slept.

And all right, if he were completely honest - that security could tempt him into staying forever. You could only dwell in in your childhood basement for so long after graduation, though, before people started whispering words like "maladjusted" (or "Mama's boy," if they weren't intelligent enough to know psychological terms).

Besides, it would have been selfish to mooch off Mother's generosity forever. She needed Drew's help - more than that, she deserved his help. Mothers took care of their little boys, and then the little boys grew up to take care of their mothers. It was the natural cycle of things, and he would be honored to take his new place in it.

Just maybe not immediately.

Drew rubbed at the lenses he'd only now noticed were smeared. Still, at college you shall ("shall" was so much fancier than "will") have friends. Maybe. Possibly. Imagine that - your own little band of friends! You might even be able to share your problems with them.

That would be a relief. There was so much stuff he'd never spoken of stuffed inside Drew it could burst and leak the way the blisters did when you poked at them too hard.

After all, they were the kinds of guys he could even trust with the little sister he'd never had. Not like Carl, who seemed to think girls were made to hang on him like medallions. How could they be mean?

Possible, Chen, Ramesh, and Lipsky. Now there was a sequence that flowed!

Drew cocked his fist to knock on the front door. Then he stopped, foot frozen in mid-descent above the porch that had done battle with its fair share of termites. Then nestled his elbows into a cross-armed hold.

Did he really want to go inside, where his mother would call him "Drewbie" and "Baby" even though he was a head and a half taller than her, and his good mood would squander into upset? Where she'd greet him with the inevitable cheek-pinch, too, and he'd have no choice but to squall, "Moth-ER!" and lose every last drop of maturity? Every time, his voice chopped in two, and the pieces raced each other to the heights.

No. Drew backed away, powdery puffs of dirt crunching under his heels. No, I don't.

The next swallow, he could feel his larynx and his epiglottis instead of a huge (and possibly cancerous) bulge of longing. With his throat strong and capable, Drew slowly rotated his body and turned his back on the door, eyes closed so he couldn't watch his childhood disintegrate.

It took all his might, which was why Drew was so surprised to be caught by a huge gust of more when his lids opened again to take in the neighborhood. The view was the same, despite the fact that nothing would ever be the same again, including the new, adult vision he was using to pan his surroundings.

Okay, that might have had something to do with cleaning his glasses.

The welling of strength, though - that was new. Entirely. Drew hadn't known maturity could come over you that fast and iron out your backbone in the process. And yet here he was, standing perfectly vertical and abruptly mature.

Not student-mature. Warrior-mature. Like someone desperately needed help, and he was smart enough - maybe even strong enough - to provide it.

Yes, bring on the obstacles! He could climb every mountain, ford every river, domesticate every wild beast! Even clean his room.

For the moment, Drew Lipsky could do anything.

He gave the neighborhood a quick scan to see if any of the good citizens of Middleton happen to need assistance. If he were Superman, there would be some little old lady who'd passed out on her driveway for him to do CPR on.

Nothing.

Well, he was no Superman anyway. He still had the pipsqueak chest and the ribs that stacked as if they were sticks waiting to be thrown in a fire, and his chances of growing into himself were as slim as his shoulder span continued to be. And he'd never done CPR before, except on the dummy in health class.

Drew's drooping gaze landed on a - a - a something in the center of the road. It was flat on the edges and kind of humped in the middle, like a hubcap. Had Eddy been dissecting his dad's tires again?

As if cars were summoned at the thought of Eddy's name, a pickup revved a wide path down the street, barely rocking the whatever-it-was between its tires instead of under the front left one before disappearing around the corner with a screech.

Drew cringed, wondering how this guy had gotten his license and then double-cringing at the memories of Driver's Ed. At least there was nothing in the "bed" of his pickup (which appeared to be one of the least comfortable places to sleep in the whole world) to go flying out.

Meanwhile, the hubcap began to inch closer to the driveway. Drew blinked six full blinks, but the movement didn't stop.

Science said it couldn't be so. Either he'd wandered onto the set of Night of the Living Car Parts - rated R for graphic engine failure - or. . .

. . . or that was not a hubcap.

"No! Of course not!" Drew was on his feet in a millisecond. "A turtle!"

It wasn't exactly the type of rescue that got you on the front page. Even the tiny Middleton Weekly wasn't that desperate.

But it was a fellow creature. And it was in need.

What else was a guy without a little sister supposed to do?

He looked both ways - because Mother didn't raise no fool - tore out into the street and looked down at the turtle, with its little legs churning as quickly as they could and what Drew could swear was fear in its beady eyes. When he scooped it up in his palm, it retreated back into its shell, much the way Drew himself had often wished he could retract himself into his baggy hand-me-downs.

The fate of this creature was entirely up to Drew. He wasn't such a pipsqueak anymore, not in comparison. It was a prospect that had him puffing up and straightening everything he could puff up and straighten.

"What happened to yielding for slower pedestrians?" Drew hollered at the car that wasn't there anymore, shaking a fist after it. It did absolutely no good except to poke air holes in his stored-up anger before it boiled over.

The shell was sturdy and smooth in Drew's hand, the texture fascinating. He cradled it to his shirt and gave in to the desire to stroke it, the way he would have when he was a child. Twenty minutes ago.

"It'll be all right, little guy," Drew said - in a tone he'd never heard himself use before, almost a coo. "You're out of the road. I'll put you in a spot where there's some nice. . . err . . .grass to eat. You like grass, right?"

No response, as expected.

"Well, when I'm a world-famous chemist, I'll have some clout. And I'll make sure no one will ever run you fellas over again." It was sensational to finally say it aloud, even if it were just to a turtle.

At the end of the block was a vacant lot with grass and clover and other assorted plant-type things sprouting all over it as though to make up for the lack of lawns. Drew tucked the turtle into a patch of weeds at the spot most mathematically distant from the street and patted the shell one last time. "There you go."

The turtle poked its nose out. Drew decided that meant "Thank you" in Turtle.

He rubbed his stomach. Wow, this adult thing really worked up an appetite! And he knew Mother would have something simply scrumptious at home.

Drew turned and walked back toward his own house without any dread to drag his feet. Because independence would be his for the rest of his life, but this kind of support would only last a few more months. And if independence meant no more home-cooked meals, Drew planned to savor every one of the however-many he had left.

Which would be - let's see - breakfast and dinner for the last couple weeks of school. So that's two a day for three weeks, plus three a day for three months -

Of course, there were many variables involved. Whether or not they splurged and went out to eat to celebrate his graduation. Whether anyone in Mother's bridge club invited them over for dinner. And did leftovers count as one meal or two?

The odds were happily adding themselves up in Drew's brain as he hopped-skipped-jumped onto the porch and almost went through the floorboards. He'd found where he belonged. . . and for once in his life, he'd been able to protect a being other than himself.

He wanted more of that.

Forty-five miles away, in a delivery room inside Go City General Hospital, a doctor held up a wet little bundle with a mop of dark hair and said, "It's a girl."

~Note: I really wanted to show how sweet little Drew transforms into his demented alter ego without him coming across as a junior villain. What I tried to get across is how much this "fresh start" means to him, and now utterly devastated he was when it went wrong, too. The kid is coming unglued, and he couldn't hold all the hurt back too much longer. . .

Anyway, enough psychological analysis. Hope you enjoyed - and with any luck my chapters should be shorter and update more frequent. Yay, right? ;) ~