Title: Only Crazy Will Do

Chapter: 1 (The Day of Flying Pigs)

Author: fonduehamster

Summary: Bryan Glenn Mitchell is miserable.  But he won't let you know that.  No, he'll gloss it over with a sarcastic remark and laugh.  But then he falls in love.  Damn.  That screws everything right up.  Oh wait.  No.  It was screwed up before that.  But loving Dylan Mackenzie could be problematic.  But what isn't in high school?

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Two bodies, entwined upon the bed, writhed beneath the sheets.  Hands met lips met faces met skin.  Words only suitable for bad pulp fiction came to mind as the two forms moved and seemed to melt into one.  Errant gasps and stifled moans filled the room as, in one explosive moment the entire world collapsed with——

Buzz.

Wait.  No.  That's wrong.  Hot and heavy sex didn't involve buzzing of any sort; it involved the bed, me, and at least one man with unbelievable stamina and strength.  Not buzzing.  So what the hell was a random "buzz" doing in the middle of——?  Shit.

I woke with a start, but that would be putting it mildly.  Damned alarm clocks.  I rubbed my eyes very toughly before realizing that I was hurting myself.  Let me reiterate: damned alarm clocks.

"Bryan Glenn Mitchell, if you do not get out of that bed in ten minutes, I'm leaving without you!"

Let's add "parents" to the list of damned things, shall we?  With much stiffness in my joints and much bitterness in my tongue, I managed to get out of bed and change into a pair of old jeans and a shirt with the words "Storm Approaching", although this was done with a string of curses following each action.  As I began walking down the stairs, that's when I noticed: major bulge in the pants.  Swearing again, a habit that I had conveniently forgotten to remind myself to forget about, I repeated the word "baseball" in my head.  But then I realized that baseball players wore really tights pants.  Pants that accentuated the a——

"Shit."

"Bryan Glenn Mitchell!  This is your last warning!  Get your breakfast, then we're going!"

I quickly flicked off the ceiling before bounding down the stairs and dashing into the kitchen.  My mother stood there, giving me her best death glare.  It worked.  I was six feet under by the time I took my seat at the kitchen table.  Scowling, I grabbed my bowl of oatmeal and shoved a spoonful into my mouth.

"This is cold," I complained, not caring that bits of oatmeal were dribbling out of my jaw.

"Then you should've woken up when your alarm woke you.  Before you slapped the snooze button.  Five times," she stated rather knowingly before putting my sandwich into a brown paper bag: the same exquisite meal that I'd been having for lunch for the last six years of my life.

I grumbled again as I continued eating my oatmeal, which earned me another death glare and pushed me down another few feet in the cold, hard earth.  Oh yeah, I'd be paying for this one later.  When I finished the bowl, I grabbed my backpack then headed out to the car, shivering in the cold while I waited for my mom.  She strolled out rather casually, with the poise of a woman who had been hit on plenty during her life.  Great.  First I was horny and now I'm Oedipus.  The day certainly was looking up.  Shaking the grotesque idea of my mom in a singles bar out of my head, I called out.

"Mom!  Hurry up!  It's cold!"

"Then you should've worn a jacket like I always tell you to," she snapped back while calmly jingling her cars keys.

One would think that parents actually receive training on how to be cruel from Vlad the Impaler or something.

"Well, get in, Bryan.  If I'm going to break the speed limit going to work, I might as well do it getting you to school, too," she sighed, although the grin gave her ulterior motives away.

I firmly believe that parents are like kids, only bigger and with credit cards.  My mother, though this fact may be hard to believe, loved her BMW as much as most Catholics love the pope.  She wasn't a motorhead and she didn't buy a plethora of expensive parts, but she still loved that car.  She loved it even more when her car pushed past seventy because, according to her, it had a "sexy rumble".  Wait.  Wasn't I trying to get away from that whole Oedipus thing?

But I had to put my mom, her car, and whatever psychological complexes I suffered from aside; I had a bigger problem on my hands.  I was going to school.  Now I wasn't a bad student or anything; I kept my grades up, I stayed out of as much trouble as my attitude would let me, and I made sure I didn't get mixed up with the wrong crowd.  But maybe that was the problem.  Perhaps if I had just allowed myself to mix in with a clique I would've lost all sense of individuality and none of my problems would have come up.

"Bryan."

I was roughly jerked out of my reverie by my mother's voice and the less than smooth transition of the BMW from a good sixty miles per hour to a complete stop.

"What?" I mumbled, fighting off the sleep that threatened to drag me back to blissful unconsciousness.  That's what you get for staying up until 1 in the morning only to wake up six hours later.

"We're here," she pointed out her window at the school gates, a perfect chance for her to show off her French manicure.

"Right, right."

Slinging my backpack over my right shoulder, I braced myself and opened the door.  It wasn't the cold wind against my face that took me aback.  It was this place.  Now, I'm always one to joke, but the best I could do when describing this place was nervous laughter.  When I think of "prison, but not quite", I think of Windham High School.

"Get out.  You always act like going to school might kill you," she criticized, shooing me out of the car.

I suppose parents are also trained to be as insensitive and cruel as possible, opting for "let nature kill the weak ones" over "nurture".  But I couldn't get mad as her, much as the homicidal little boy in me wanted to, because none of my school problems were really her fault.  Well, maybe it was.  My mother was a sensible, empathetic person who raised her son to be a sensible, empathetic person so that his choices and actions in life would be sensible and reflect upon empathy.  Sad to say, high school was not about sensibility or empathy.  It was about sex, drugs, and popularity; three ingredients for a social cocktail the likes of which the world had never seen before high schools were invented.

Managing a weak smile that let her know I was trying (but not as hard as I could) to make the most of the situation, I closed the door, waved goodbye, and took a deep, long breath before making for the steps.  Sneakers were made for sneaking and I put my pair to good use.  I planned out my course in my head and eased myself into as fast a walk as I could manage without drawing any attention to myself.

Point A: locker.  Shuffling to my locker, I quickly turned the knob to 12, then 21, then 22 and opened the door.  I pulled out my Math book and quickly slipped it into my backpack.  Moving on.

Point B: through the hallway towards the aptly titled M building.  I darted through crowds, weaving past a girl talking animatedly (almost to the point of being a caricature of herself) on her cell phone, a punker whom, ironically, was wearing a shirt that said "Don't Call Me Punk" and listening to his CD player, and a counselor casually conversing with a teacher.  Now that I had passed through that gauntlet, I was practically at my goal.

Point C: Room M3.  I was almost there.  Maybe today was going to be a good day.  Maybe today I wouldn't have to put up with extraneous amounts of bullshit.  Maybe today was going to be a day where everything went all right.  Maybe——

"Hey Cinderfella!"

——Maybe today would be the day that pigs flew and that I'd start puking up diamonds.

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Author's Notes: These characters are all mine: Bryan, the sexy mom, and even the random nameless, faceless people who inhabit this word.  Seriously.  Copyrighted and all that jazz.  Read the bottom if you aren't taking me seriously.  Touch one strands of literary hair on any of their heads and I will go hunting for your sorry, unimaginative, uninspired carcasses.  Oh, and love to those who read and review, I guess.