Notes: One quote snagged from A Knight's Tale, which is an awesomely brilliant movie. And if you're confused at the end, don't worry - so am I. This is NaNo, after all.

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Chapter One

CRACKED

(Which Could Probably Go As A Prologue, But That Tends To Put People Off For Some Reason, As If Reading Something Seemingly Unrelated To The Rest Of The Story Is Too Much Like A Waste Of Time To Them, The Bastards, So Chapter One It Is.)

If you were to describe Paul Jones in one sentence, “flamboyant” would probably show up at least once, if not more. It wasn't so much how he acted – like the world was his party – or even how he looked – for some reason, a white peacock with a shaggy turquoise wig came to mind, and it was a be-wigged peacock that seemed to have Style simply oozing through its pores – it was the fusion of these two that made him the perfect target of everyone else's contempt.

Paul Jones, personally, found this all perfectly all right. More than all right, really – he revelled in the dirty looks and the cheap comments, living by the philosophy of “all attention is good attention”. So what if they were shooting him disgusted looks and comments – they were looking at him, and it gave him a wonderfully warm feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Lately, though, his heart hadn't been quite in it.

It was strange, Paul thought, as he failed – yet again – to concentrate during one of his classes, that he should be feeling so funny lately. After all, the last time he did anything really wrong was more than three weeks ago.

Still. He kept getting these flashes, like when you have a fever and your body can't decide whether it's hot or cold, and his head felt like someone had nicked his brain and replaced it with a wad of cotton, generously topped with battery acid. It was not quite agonizing, but if you squinted, you might take it for painful, or at least aching. At the moment, it was beginning to get seriously annoying.

To make things even worse, Paul was suffering from freak short-term memory lapses. Okay, so it was only one memory lapse, but it unnerved the hell out of him; he couldn't remember anything from last weekend. He remembered leaving school on Friday afternoon, smirking at the gossiping girls in his class as he went, and riding his bike – a lovely thing, with a frame that was all shiny red and silver, and had cost more than some cars – home. And then...

Then there was a great big gaping hole in his memories.

The next thing he remembered was waking up on Monday morning, feeling perhaps a bit sore, a bit dehydrated, a bit weary, like he had been worked to the bone. And there was this annoyingly persistent feeling of being lost, as well – it made him feel uncomfortable, like his skin was stretched too tightly around his body. At first, it had felt hard to breathe.

Paul was a logical person – he knew, of course, that this was all because of his imagination. If he hadn't been seventeen, he might have blamed puberty, because Paul had never actually considered that he might even have one. (An imagination, that is.)

“Mister Jones, how would you solve this problem?”

The unpleasantly oily voice made Paul snap out of his thoughts. Christian Maria Santos Browning, Professor in Maths and Bad Taste, was looking at him expectantly over his gigantic, seventies style glasses. Paul, who had no idea what the problem was in the first place, decided to play it safe by getting the hell out as soon as possible. He met Professor Browning's stare with his best angelic smile.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he said, mixing carefully measured respect with regret, “but I think I'm going to throw up.”

Without waiting for an answer, Paul pushed his chair back and got up. The room tilted slightly, and seemed to be swimming a bit, but he brushed it off as one of his flashes, and made to make his way to the door.

When he did throw up, two point four seconds later, no-one was more surprised than Paul himself. Or at least, no-one would have been more surprised than him if he'd had the time to be surprised; as it was, he fainted less than half a second later.

- - -

There are few things, Paisley thought, that are worse than having to live without magic.

“'Sley, love, where have you been hiding all day?”

This might be one of them, he reflected, and braced himself. Not even a second later, he was practically being asphyxiated by something that was pink, soft, and ridiculously frilly. Paisley tried not to breathe in. When, after a good four minutes, he was released, he had to force himself not to run away screaming.

“Miss Crystalle Mon-Shaine,” he said instead, imagining a mask of Politeness glued to his face.

“Don't let's be so formal, 'Sley,” Miss Crystalle Mon-Shaine said. She had a sort of pitch to her voice that was more commonly heard during boy band concerts when someone removed their shirt. “You know you can call me Crystalle.”

Paisley smiled like a dead man, which is to say, very stiffly. “I would feel as though I were sullying your name, Miss Mon-Shaine.”

“Oh, don't be silly, love.” Miss Crystalle smiled, every single, pearly tooth shining in the sunlight. Paisley suddenly felt very inclined to be silly.

“For the sake of propriety, Miss Mon-Shaine.”

“Rubbish,” Miss Crystalle Mon-Shain said, and suddenly she looked quite fierce. There was a glint in her eyes rarely seen outside the eyes of psychopaths or spoiled little kids. It was a look of DESEED. (Which is to say, an extreme mix between DESIRE and GREED. There's not room for a lot of other things in there, because of the size of it, and it should perhaps be noted that even though it sounds a whole lot like “deceit”, these things are not, in fact, related.) “We're going to marry.”

“What?!”

There was a deathly pause. Everything was silent, except for a bird somewhere that wasn't taking the hint, or perhaps it just wasn't inclined to give a proverbial shit. Paisley Thyme and Miss Crystalle Mon-Shain stared at each other, both pale faced and wide-eyed, but for very different reasons. Finally, Paisley got back to his senses, and coughed awkwardly.

“I mean, what do you mean, Miss Mon-Shain?”

Miss Crystalle smiled, and her smile was sweet enough to kill a diabetic from two hundred yards away. “Oh, nothing,” she said, as innocent as any angel.

If the angel in question is a fallen one, at least. Paisley's stomach twisted slightly. She was up to something, and it involved him. No matter what she was planning, this was bad. He wondered if it was possible to turn her into a frog without anyone noticing, but of if it was that easy, people'd be up to their necks with toads.

What a pain.

“'Sley,” Miss Crystalle cooed, “have you decided what to do for your Final yet?”

Paisley winced. That was another area of his life where he was treading on thin ice at the moment.

“It's ... progressing,” he said, giving her a pained smile. She swooned at him, and he very nearly rolled his eyes. Women.

And then it felt like his heart was being impaled by several sharp and pointy things at the same time. And then it felt like his brain imploded.

And then, there was a whole lot of black.

- - -

He woke up.

Sunlight streamed from an open window, conveniently positioned so that it fell across his face. It felt like it was attempting to stab his eyes out, or possibly burn them to crisp.

Bottom line: it hurt like bugger-all.

There was a low, whining sort of noise – after a few seconds, he realised that it came from him – as he attempted to find a position where the sun didn't try to assassinate his eyeballs.

“Look!” someone – a girl, probably – said. He winced at the loudness of her voice. “He's awake!”

“Fag's prolly too stoned to work properly,” someone else said, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. There were general noises of agreement. They were being obnoxiously loud.

All right, he thought, feel free to burst my eardrums. I don't mind, really.

“Mister Jones?” The voice was male, and distinctly oily-sounding. The Oily Man knelt beside him, casting a shadow across his face – thank the Queen – and bent close enough for wafts of hot, stale breath that smelled vaguely of coffee and something that may or may not have been road kill sometime in an earlier life.

“Gnn,” Paisley moaned, as his memories rushed back into his head. It felt like his brain was being hit by a train – multiple times, and in rapid succession. Cautiously, he opened an eye, and then quickly wished he hadn't.

Professor Browning's face was approximately four inches from his nose.

“Are you feeling all right, Mister Jones?”

I just fainted in a pool of my own vomit, old man, Paisley thought, what do you think?

“A little ill,” he said instead, and tried to ignore the smell wafting from the stain on his shirt.

“Very well,” the Professor said. Then he sighed heavily, and moved away a few inches. Paisley tried not to make an audible sigh of relief.

“I think – I think I need to go home, sir,” he said. Even to his own ears, he sounded pitiful – which was appropriate, seeing as this was how he felt.

When the Professor didn't say anything, Paisley got to his feet and staggered – staggered? Where had his co-ordination gone all of a sudden? - out of the classroom. No-one spoke, which was good, because then they'd be making noise, and Paisley felt that if there was one thing he really didn't need at the moment, it was more noise.

After changing into his Physical Education T-shirt, which was elephantine both in size and colour, and always seemed to smell slightly like sweat and rubber no matter how many times he washed it, Paisley went home. Well.

That was his intention, in any case. As it turned out, he was a bit too ... preoccupied to look where he was going, because really, this new situation might be a bit of a Problem. (Note the capitalized spelling – it's used for extra effect.)

Paisley wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but he did get the general gist of it;

1. He was not Paul Jones.

2. He was stuck in Paul Jones' body, with all of Paul Jones' memories.

3. There was, at the time being, no way he could get back home.

4. In summary, Paisley Thyme was completely and royally fucked.

So really, he figured that he was allowed to be seriously disoriented, confused and in denial for the rest of the day. He could start being angry and lost tomorrow. Right now, he didn't even have the energy for that.

Of course, he still had the energy to walk around town, but it was the mindless sort of walking done mostly by zombies and people in possession of an iPod or similar music playing technology.

Then, suddenly, Paisley stopped walking.

He wasn't sure why, exactly – it just felt like the right place to stop. There was a shop in front of him; a shiny sign in black and white plastic announced that this was Brass Music – Everything Brass, Everything Music. Paisley raised an eyebrow at that – okay, so he might be disoriented, confused and in denial, but his capability to judge harsher than the harshest critic wasn't about to leave him for something so simple as being stuck in someone else's body.

In the shop window, various instruments – most of them, obviously, were brass – and Paisley could make out several music books on a table inside, as well as a rack of CDs. He grinned slightly. Nothing like a little music to light up a bad day, right?

The inside of Brass Music was cool, brightly lit and spacious. Also it smelled vaguely of fish, but Paisley figured that it was one of those things you simply ignored. He trudged – to trudge; the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life other than the impulse to simply soldier on – over to one of the CD racks, his shoes squeaking slightly against the white, tiled floor. The only sound, other than the ones he was making, was that of the air conditioning system. It was strange – Paisley wondered briefly where the cashier must be, but decided not to worry about it; he had better things to do, like inspecting the CD rack. Which, as it turned out, consisted mostly of jazz, blues and Michael Jackson.

Paisley picked up a CD at random – the O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack – and almost laughed, because it was so appropriately ironic. (Paul had seen the film a couple of times – Paisley, unfortunately, was stuck with the memories.)

“Unless you're going to buy that, I suggest you put it back on the rack and then back off. Is that okay?”

Paisley nearly dropped the CD in surprise. Cautiously, he put it back on the shelf, and then turned around. At the far corner of the shop, by a door that probably lead to some sort of back room which Paisley hadn't seen before, was a girl.

The girl looked like her voice – shrewd, no-nonsense and vaguely pointy. Her hair was short, dark brown – Paisley was reminded of the sort of chocolate that makes you sick after two bites – and curly. She was thin as a stick, and there was something vaguely ambiguous and confused about her, like she couldn't decide quite who or what she was. If you squinted, you could easily take her for a boy – the slouching posture, Paisley thought, did not really help. She was carrying a book the size of a medium sized encyclopaedia, and there was a faintly annoyed look on her face.

“I was just looking,” Paisley said, feeling the need to point out the obvious in a mildly “you've got a problem with that?” sort of voice.

“Don't,” the girl said, “you don't like this sort of music anyway.”

Paisley glanced at the O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack again. “True,” he admitted.

“So you can get out and go back to your pop rock and your death metal and your hard metal and your grind core, yeah?”

“Grind ... core?” Paul, despite oozing style like only a wigged peacock can ooze style, was sort of out of the loop when it came to music.

“Well, that is the sort of music you people listen to, isn't it?”

“Us people?” Paisley raised an eyebrow, somewhat affronted. “And who would that be, hmm?”

“You know,” the girl said, waving an arm vaguely to illustrate whatever her point was, “ravers. Gothic people. Whiny emotional guys who sit up and angst all night while writing awful poetry.”

Paisley chose not to say anything, as Paul had in fact sat up all night and angsted while writing awful poetry on more than one occasion. He just felt that it was somewhat unfair to have this pointed at him.

“People like you,” the girl finished, looking slightly accomplished. There was a long pause, as they looked at each other with easy-going hostility.

“Actually, I quite liked Les Miserables,” Paisley said. Paul had seen it once, three years ago, when visiting London with his not inconsiderably wealthy parents.

“You would,” the girl said, and her voice was as dry as the Sahara during a drought, “seeing as everyone dies.”

“Not everyone.”

“You have four survivors, and only two of them are main characters,” she said. “Les Miserables is just like a really old slasher film.”

There was a pause in which they both considered this.

“Except, you know, it's not really a film, and there's no serial killer per say,” the girl added as an afterthought, “but otherwise, they're practically the same.”

Paisley didn't quite follow the logic here. He supposed that, if this was the girl's average behaviour, very few people could.

“Right,” he said, doubtfully.

- - -

He didn't know it yet, but this – an almost chance meeting with a strangely ambiguous girl in a music shop in a town that was almost too small to be considered as a town – was the beginning of the rest of his life.

And also an adventure worth telling his currently non-existent grandchildren about, too, but that's sort of implied.