Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Michael didn’t realize that he had fallen asleep in the theater until he found himself holding a slushie in one hand, a gross package of sushi in the other, and singing in a high school hallway.

“Jeremy my buddy, how’s it hanging, lunch is banging, got my sushi and my slushie and more!”

Wait, what?

The dweeby looking kid in front of him laughed and knocked shoes with him in a complicated sort of masculine handshake. Michael would have to assume that was what they were doing, because the other option was that they were stamping exactly in tune to a strange beat thumping in his ears.

“The roll was Negimaki and I’m feeling kinda cocky cause the girl at Sev’ Elev’ gave me a generous pour!” That didn’t even make any sense - since when did the cashier pour your drink for you at 7-Eleven?

He broke out into a foot stamp and handshake routine to the beat, complete with a little synchronized dance, in perfect unison with the laughing, brown-haired boy. He looked almost familiar. Michael had read once that the faces of people in your dreams are always based off of people you’d seen in real life, so that made sense. Maybe that scrawny kid always playing Yugioh in the back of homeroom.

The kid snickered. Jesus, did this guy need some acne cream. “You’ve been listening to Bob Marley again, haven’t you?”

“No -” What did he look like, a stoner?  “- I’m listening to Marley and the groove is hella gnarly,” Who the hell says gnarly! “And we’re almost at the end of this song!”

The other boy nodded as if this was perfectly reasonable and that Michael made a habit out of loudly singing in hallways, and they did another weird footstamp routine for no freaking reason. They even beat out a nice ‘bu-dum-dum’ beat.

“That was the end, now tell me friend - how was class, you look like ass, what’s wrong?”

Something in Michael’s chest snapped back into place. The weird reggae beat that had been thrumming behind his ears cut out, the rhythmic masculine hand clap thing died, and Michael could finally exhale out of his weird singing.

This was what he got for falling asleep during musicals. Weird ass dreams.

Michael scowled, looking down at himself. He had never seen this clothing before in his life. Couldn’t think of some old ninth grade emo phase outfits, really? That signed basketball jersey he wore for two weeks straight until it smelled? We just had to go for the giant headphones?

But the guy had apparently taken his sung request seriously, because he sighed and pulled over his own painstakingly generic backpack. Someone had spray painted ‘BOYF’ in bold letters across the top. Ouch, dude.

“ ‘Boyf’?” The guy complained. “What does that even mean?”

Good question. Michael just shrugged, awkwardly juggling the weird convenience store food in both hands. “Sucks to suck?”

The boy scowled. “Very funny, Michael. Here, try turning around.”

Michael?

Hey, that jerk kid from History was named Michael. Weird name to dream yourself having, but alright.

Michael obediently turned around, craning his head around to try and read his own backpack, which had a bizarre tetris pattern. The boy read it out loud for him, impossibly even more desolate. “ ‘RIEND’. Someone painted ‘BOYF’ on my backpack and ‘RIEND’ on yours. I hate this school.”

“High school sucks,” Michael said evenly. He experimentally sucked on his slushie. It was bright red flavor, perfectly cold and icy despite how long it must have been sitting in his hand, and it was oddly perfect tasting. So far as a slushie could be perfect, it was a perfect slushie. “Who are you again?”

But the boy ignored him, forlornly rubbing a thumb against the mildly offensive graffiti as if he could rub the shame away. “I wrote Christine a letter telling her how I feel.”

“Good for you,” Michael said, uninterested. This hallway was a little generic, wasn’t it?

“I tore it up and flushed it.” He sighed. Poor heterosexuals. “That’s still progress, I guess.”

“Good for you,” Michael said again, as uninvested as ever. The sheer ordinariness of the hallway was incredibly distracting.

Normally his dream schools were a weird mismash of his elementary, middle, and high schools. It didn’t help that the public school system wasn’t really big on creativity or commissioning schools from architects that didn’t also make prisons. Good metaphor for high school life: a complete prison. You weren’t safe even in your dreams.

Still, he couldn’t help but be impressed with himself. He had never really gotten the hang of lucid dreaming, no matter how many weird WikiHow pages he read on it. Even if this was a really lame way of starting off a lucid dream. But now he could do whatever he wanted with it, right? Seems like a much better way to spend two hours than watching some dumb play.

He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking wing thoughts.

He experimentally waved his hands around, fingers slipping against the sweaty, unmarked slushie cup. No dice.

“Uh, Michael?”

“Shush,” Michael said, “I’m improving my life.”

“I thought you weren’t really into that.”

Michael opened his eyes again, put out. Something was weird. Like, dreams were supposed to be weird. They were dreams. But there was just something different about this. It felt so...real.

Well, real as anything could get when he was singing Bob Marley and dancing with random nerds in hallways.

There was a bulletin board behind the confused, lanky nerd kid. Michael sucked aggressively on his slushie as his apparent friend passively accepted how weird he was being, squinting at the bulletin and trying to figure out why the words looked blurry.

Of course they looked blurry. You can’t read stuff in dreams. Something about your parietal cortex and REM activation. There was totally an episode of Batman: The Animated Series about it.

Then Michael realized that he had glasses on. He had never worn glasses in his life. He slipped them off, holding the slushie against his chest to put them in his jacket pocket, and read the bulletin board across from him just fine.

It was about fractions.

Weird.

“Michael?” The guy craned his head over his shoulder, trying to find out what was so much more exciting than he was. It wasn’t hard, dude. “Are your glasses smudged? I have cleaner.”

“I don’t know, can I drink it?”

The guy’s eyebrows shot up for a brief second before he snorted, and Michael couldn’t help but laugh too. The situation was beyond bizarre, but the slushie was really, really good. Out of a weird impulse he offered the cup to the dream boy.

Only in the literal sense. Michael’s dream boy was way buffer, rugged, and was a trainee volunteer fireman on the weekends. This guy looked like he went to LAN parties on the weekends.

Then the kid gasped, eyes going wide as dinner plates as the perfect slushie went unheeded, and he immediately dove to hide behind Michael. It was a ridiculous move on a lanky teenage boy, and he just shot him an unimpressed glance as the kid practically squeaked.

“Look who’s signing up for the after school play!”

Wow, riveting. Michael turned around to see where Jeremy was pointing at a weirdly placed column at the far side of the hallway, and saw a girl awkwardly running up towards a gigantic sign up sheet for what was probably the school play.

Then the guy was singing again.

It wasn’t even great singing. The harmonic piano or whatever was back, chiming along in tune as he sung this girl’s name over and over again. The guy had the dopiest smile on his face as he sang, “Christine -”

“Hey,” Michael cried out, “it’s Christine!”

Even though it wasn’t.

It just figured that Michael was stuck holding gross convenience store seafood while the only other actual person in the dream was cast as a rockstar. A group of teenagers swept into the hallway, hoisting her up onto their shoulders so she could reach the bulletin board and sign her name in giant loopy letters. She beamed adoringly down at the crowd chanting her name, twirling her dress and ripping a sick pirouette as the guy completely lost his shit staring at her and forgetting all about Michael.

“Chris - tine! Chris - tine!”

But Christine wasn’t her name.

Michael opened his mouth to call her name, her real name, before she halted mid-pirouette and caught sight of Michael. Her eyes widened, the boy made a noise somewhat resembling a chainsaw in a porcelain vase, and she sprinted towards them.

“Michael! It’s you!”

“It’s what!” The boy squeaked, before clamping his mouth shut. His ears were glowing red.

“Christine!” Michael shouted sarcastically, “it’s you!”

But they both faltered, staring at each other wide eyed, and Michael knew that they realized in unison that they hadn’t shouted each other’s real names.

What a bizarre thing to forget in a dream.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Christine said hurriedly. She was wearing an outfit way cuter than Michael’s, with a nifty scarf and a dorky hairstyle that somehow went all the way back around into being stylish. “But you’re not dreaming right now!”

“Sounds likely for a dream Christine,” Michael said flatly. He took a hard drag of his slushie. “I think I’m subconsciously channeling you screeching with delight next to me.”

“I would be screeching in delight if I was joking!” Christine screeched, and the boy went full red in embarrassment and horror that he was treating the goddess of the school with such indignity.

Please. Christine, the goddess of the school? She couldn’t give a powerpoint presentation without clamming up.

Still, what Michael wouldn’t give for her to be clamming up right now. “Michael, you have to believe me, you aren’t dreaming.” She waved her hands around, as expressive as ever. “I thought I was totally in here by myself, but then I saw you and you totally looked like you, not even him - I mean, not that you two look any different right now. Actually, you and him actually look exactly the same. Just like...how your names are the same.” She faltered, eyes as wide as the other boy’s. “Michael, why don’t I remember your real name?”

Something cold creeped down Michael’s spine. Michael wasn’t exactly an actor, not like she was, and something about her characteristically overexcitable horror and fear cut to his heart. What a weird dream, that Michael couldn’t remember her name.

He focused, then focused harder, and he squeezed his eyes shut and woke up.

When he opened his eyes again he was still there, in an ultra generic high school hallway, Christine-Who-Wasn’t-Christine wringing her scarf in her hands as the boy was seriously reconsidering his life choices.

There was still a small crowd of students, awkwardly posing in front of the sign up sheet, and Michael saw them slowly relax out of their poses and blink around, confused. One or two of them started talking to each other, clearly a little creeped out, before shaking it off and going back down the hallway where he heard the strains of lunchtime and teens.

From next to him the boy had mentally written his will and signed off on it. He took a deep breath and blurted out, “Ch - ch - Christine! H - hi!”

Christine immediately pasted on a benevolent smile, making him go even redder. “Oh hi, Jeremy!”

Jeremy, apparently, squeaked again. Dude was like a rat in a cage. “You know my name?”

“How can I not!” She drew herself up in her usual ‘blab for thirty minutes about something nobody cares about’ expression before visibly reining herself in, settling for smiling airly at Jeremy. “I was just signing up for the school play. Were you thinking of signing up too?”

In lieu of an answer he just gaped at her. Michael sighed and took pity on the strange dream boy, elbowing him in the side. “Dude, you’re going to catch flies.”

“Yes!” Jeremy yelped. “Yes, I would - I would totally! Love play rehearsal with you. Love that play!”

Then he ran off to go sign it, shooting Michael a look of delighted horror that he probably thought was surreptitious.

It was pretty nice of his subconscious to cast Christine as the light and life of a teenage boy’s life. Give her that old self-esteem boost.

But her expression was as set as ever, and when she rounded on him the first thing she did was pinch him, hard.

The pain shot up to his shoulder, and Michael bit back a very unmasculine yelp before he realized that it had genuinely hurt.

Something pretty bad began to occur to him.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and yet again he willed himself as hard out of his body as he physically could.

He willed himself back into a surprisingly comfortable theater chair with plush velvet seats, settled easily back in his jersey and jeans as Christine bounced and flounced next to him, taking a thousand snapchats of her playbill. His own was clenched in his fist, the same fist that has probably loosened by now in sleep. He willed himself out of this baggy grungy hoodie and stained relaxed fit jeans, of the slushie that hadn’t yet begun to melt and the gross sushi clutched in his other hand like a dumbass.

In the distance, echoing from the other side of the hallway, a really douchey sounding guy yelled out, “Gay!”

Michael opened his eyes again. Christine was practically vibrating with emotion, either good or bad or scared or elated or just wigged out. Jeremy was jogging back to them, grin stretching his face, practically bouncing on his heels.

“Christine!” Wow, Michael was embarrassed just to be standing next to him. “I, uh, signed up for the play! Yep! Are you - are you in it?”

“I just signed up for it,” Christine said blankly. “Like, just now.”

“Ah!” Jeremy paused. “Well, gotta go!”

He ran off, practically sprinting. Michael and Christine watched him leave, Christine slightly impressed and Michael slightly shocked that this was really happening to him.

“Okay,” Michael said, wishing desperately that he even just remembered his own stupid name, “I’d really, really like to wake up now. Not that this is a nightmare, it’s just - I just want to wake up!”

“You’re the one who fell asleep during the play!” Christine hissed. “You were being so rude!”

“It’s not like I paid for my tickets!” Michael gestured expansively with his sushi. He didn’t even like sushi. “I just got them in some dumb sweepstakes! How good can a play even be if they’re giving away tickets for free!”

He hadn’t even wanted the stupid tickets. Today was supposed to be the anniversary, and instead of curling in bed and sleeping the day away like he had done for the past four years he had to drag his ass all the way to a stupid, crummy little theater with this dork. Talk about a waste of his time.

From the hallway faint echoes of a now frustratingly familiar piano tune echoed, and Christine wasted no time in grabbing Michael’s hand and towing her with impressive strength around the corner, where the tune grew louder as they approached the hallway the nerd kid had run down - Jeremy, right?

They heard him singing. He was singing. To himself!

“Christine talked to me and boy that was a thrill, but won’t someone just teach me how to be more chill?”

Michael and Christine looked at each other with mounting expressions of horror rising on their faces.

Well, on Michael’s face. Christine just looked ecstatic.

“I can’t believe it,” Michael whispered.

Christine squealed. “We’re in Be More Chill!”

It was pretty lucky that in teen comedies nobody ever actually goes to class.

Christine - out of lack of anything better to call her - explained that although classes were vaguely implied to happen through creative set pieces there was, in fact, no actual class to be had in a two hour musical. Unfortunately, Middleborough High appeared to actually exist beyond a few demonstrative pieces of cardboard and there were actual classrooms it was implied that they should go into.

They didn’t even know their schedules. Ridiculously, Michael felt a faint twinge of guilt about the fact that he was blatantly skipping class before he realized that none of the teachers were calling roll and that they didn’t seem to actually be lecturing about anything outside out of explaining what the periodic table of elements is and gesticulating with a triangle.

Michael and Christine - because apparently that were their names now - huddled inside the theater room. It looked like any other theater room. Conspicuous posters of Shakespeare were thrown around, groups of students were sitting around talking and nominally working on sketching out costume designs, and absolutely nobody cared that Michael was squatting near the back of the room with Christine. She technically also had math that period but nobody seemed all that worried about it, because apparently Christine Canigula lived and breathed theater, so of course she was in the theater room all the time. That was how that worked, right?

“So we’ve already thrown a wrench in the works by throwing ‘More Than Survive’ off the rails,” Christine said. They had parked themselves near a whiteboard, and she had already begun drawing out an elaborate flowchart of the plotline for the play. And their lives. Can’t forget that one. “That piece was supposed to end with Jeremy singing desolately about how he’s destined to be nonexistent on the school totem pole forever, but it instead ended on a joyous note with his super crush smiling and talking to him.” She paused, sighing dreamily and placing a hand at her heart. “Me. I’m the super crush.”

“Big whoop.” Michael had turned a chair around and was straddling it. He had shucked the way too big jacket for the plain black shirt underneath, and had dumped the headphones on the floor with them. Christine was already making noises about having to put them back on for ‘his scenes’. Whatever the hell those were. “If I escaped dancing in an ensemble number I’m happy. I’m not still convinced that this isn’t a dream, you know.”

Christine nodded empically and pointed towards an unmarked point on the board. She made a t-chart, titling it ‘Explanations For The Madness’.

She wrote ‘DREAMING’ underneath it.

They both stared at the word, harsh black lines underlined with cheap Expo marker, as if it would hold their answers. It was barely even an explanation.

“It doesn’t feel like a dream,” Christine said hesitantly.

“Is that enough?”

They stared at it some more.

On the other side of the t-chart Christine hesitantly marked down in blue, ‘Maybe?’

They both stared at it some more.

“God?” Michael offered hesitantly.

“I’m Buddhist,” Christine said.

Michael, who was raised Catholic and was now aggressively atheist, shrugged.

They stared at the t-chart some more.

Carefully, switching to purple marker, Christine drew a lot of frowny faces.

“Okay,” Christine admitted, “there’s absolutely no explanation for this.” She turned desperately to Michael. “Have you done anything lately that would deserve some kind of karmic comeuppance?”

“Have you bought any shady theater memorabilia from a guy in an alley?” Michael cried, exasperated. “Oh, wait. Don’t tell me you pirated the soundtrack to the musical!”

Christine paled. “Oh no.”

“Jesus Christ.”

It was pointless. Michael wasn’t about to sit here and ascribe conspiracy theories as to why he was having an incredibly vivid lucid dream about why he was in a musical with the girl in his theater class who was way, way too into theater.

Pod people hadn’t dropped him into a super hallucination. The Illuminati, evil scientists, that punishment from God his Grandma always said was going to come because he was gay, were not going to cut it this time.

Michael snapped his fingers. “Drugs!”

“It’s better than drugs, Michael,” Christine explained patiently, explaining nothing.

“No, I mean - maybe the tickets were LSD tablets or something!” He had definitely read about that on a Snopes page at three am. Granted, he didn’t remember if it was disproved or not, but there was a fifty/fifty chance, right? “Contact hallucinations? The playbill? Ringing any bells?”

“I’ve taken LSD,” Christine said, with a perfectly straight face, “and this definitely isn’t it.”

They stared at each other.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Moving on!” Christine scrawled another large phrase on the board: SUPERNATURAL EXPLANATION: Y/N?. She pointed to it significantly, raising an eyebrow at Michael. “Eh? Eh?”

“Definitely N,” Michael drawled. “Honestly, drugs are looking like our best bet.”

She put drugs down, although reluctantly.

Michael forced himself to squint at the other side of the board, the simple plot line with the overcomplicated additions, the charming stick figures of apparently all the people Michael was required to care about at this very second.

“So I’m Michael,” Michael said slowly, “and that nerd kid is Jeremy, right?”

Christine sighed dreamily. “My perfect cinnamon roll child.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve read so much porn about him it’s bizarre to see him in person!”

Jesus Christ.

Michael couldn’t help but nervously glance around the room, as Christine was physically incapable of lowering her voice and that was a deeply awkward thing to hear about someone. “Can you keep it down?” he hissed. “The whole school is going to find out that you’re a fangirl for some random loser that just so happens to be the main character!”

She sobered, snapping back to whatever passed for reality. “Right. I’ve written our theories up here,” she gestured empathetically towards the plotline, “and down here we have a to-do list.”

“Yeah,” Michael drawled as Christine began scribbling ‘GOALS’ at the bottom. “Our goals so we can get out of here. We can just wait for the play to end, right? How long does this take?” Something horrible occurred to him. “This isn’t one of those buildingsroman things, is it?”

From where she was dedicating a red colored marker to him and a green colored marker for herself Christine winced. “The timeline’s a little vague?”

“Never a good sentence.”

She just hummed and briefly skipped off, engaging in exuberant conversation with a generic looking background character, a girl with a pageboy cap and rainbow suspenders. Definitely a Theater Kid. Michael grabbed the marker and tried crossing out his fake Michael name to write his real name, and was still caught up in the impossible task when Christine skipped back.

“So the play ends somewhere after Halloween,” she started, then stopped. Michael shot her an unimpressed look. She hadn’t needed the consultation of Background Lesbian No. 6 for that. “And it’s currently, uh, the start of the semester.” She paused again. “So August 25th.”

“Are you serious!” Michael dropped the marker, rounding on her. “Two months? I’m not playing Brown Best Friend for two months!”

“Good vacation?” Christine offered weakly.

“Great.” Michael massaged his forehead. “So let’s worry about ending the play as quickly as possible later.”

“I’m not sure we can do that.”

“That’s why we’re worrying about it later!” Michael snapped. “Look, I’m Michael now, right?” He spread his arms out, gesticulating to his entire nerdy, unhygienic glory. “I don’t even know my last name. How am I supposed to pretend to be this guy?”

“His last name’s Mell, if that’s a good start?”

That was not even a real last name. Michael squinted at his skin, pulling out a phone that he apparently knew the passcode for just by muscle memory and flipping on the front camera, squinting judgmentally at his appearance.

Was...that what he looked like?

Normally?

“What race is Michael, again?”

“His actor is Ecuadorian and Filipino,” Christine said automatically, “awesome diversity in a mainstream musical!”

They both stared hard at Michael.

“I think this is what I look like,” Michael said.

He stared harder into the camera, as if he had pictures of himself saved there, pictures of who he actually was.

“I think this is who I am,” Michael said.

He quietly shut the camera off and sat back down in his chair, wiped.

An awkward silence stretched between them, looking down at their shoes and away from each other, and Michael abruptly felt like a real jerk. Self pity was great and all when you had it worse than the other person, but even if Christine was ridiculously cheery about this whole thing it wasn’t as if she wasn’t also having a massive identity crisis.

Hey, they were teenagers! It’s how they do!

“So this is a storyline about finding yourself in high school,” Michael said slowly. “I mean, learn how to be yourself, right? Stay true to who you are, don’t hang out with your popular friends when you can hang out with your nerdy friends - which apparently is me, singular - and don’t drink the Kool Aid?”

“Basically,” Christine admitted, “it’s not very original.”

“How am I supposed to stay true to myself if I don’t even know who I am?”

They stared at the board again.

Around them high school reigned, adult authority locked in constant battle with the populist community of teenagers, and happy little lives bubbled in the theater room. Michael wondered if there was actually anything going on in the next classroom over, if it even really existed. If they even really existed.

Well. There was one person who didn’t exist who really, really needed to exist right now. That person was Michael fucking Mell, and if Michael Mell had to suck it up, sing his heart out, dance until his feet were sore, and play a sympathetic ear to a sweaty nerd in order to obtain peak Michael Mell-ness so Michael Mell could stop being Michael Mell and go back to whoever he was when he wasn’t being Michael Mell, then fine! They’d play that game!

“Okay,” Michael said, bracing himself. “Teach me how to be Michael Mell.”

Christine stared at him, eyes wide.

She slowly turned to the board and grabbed a rag and a bottle of spritzer, carefully wiping the board clean of all of their plans, plotlines, and pathetic prayers.

Then she wrote, in very large letters at the top,

‘MY FAVORITE CHARACTER: MICHAEL MELL’.

Michael stared at it.

“I thought your favorite character was Christine.”

“I’m Christine now so that’s cheating.”

Jesus Christ.

She had barely just opened her mouth to get very, very deep into it when the bell rang. They both flinched, the sound bizarrely exactly the same as their own school, and they watched the other kids break into louder chatter as they shoved binders in backpacks and began zipping them up. Michael reflexively looked around for his own backpack, grabbing it from under the desk where he had stashed it.

It basically only had three extremely generic notebooks in it, two generic pencils, and a generic pen. Also a lighter and a joint, but Michael had thrown those away immediately. He had sworn to his Mom that he would never do drugs.

Would that be necessary in the ruse? Would Michael have to smoke a joint to save the fabric of reality? Would that count as peer pressure?

Christine squeaked, abruptly grabbing Michael’s hand and shoving him out of the way. “I think Michael is supposed to go encourage Jeremy in this scene! You have to go, hurry!”

“Why did you even bother seeing the play again if you’ve already memorized it?” Michael asked, exasperated. He clutched his defaced backpack to his chest, already somewhat propietal of his only possession. “I don’t even know how to go home! I think I have car keys, but I don’t know my car!”

“Who cares about where you live!” Christine cried. “You have to go encourage your best friend! Don’t you care about him?”

“No, not really!”

“Well, learn! That’s step one of Michael Mell!” She pushed him as hard as she could towards the door, which was surprisingly hard. Had she always been this strong? “He exists to support the main character in whatever he does!”

“How is this guy the best character?”

But by that time she had already ditched him near the entrance and ran off to hide, which was apparently necessary. Or get into position. Michael wasn’t really big into the whole theater thing. Some other guys from the team were on it and he had just wanted to sleep in the back and talk about Othello or something.

Sure enough, when Michael threw open the door he found Jeremy already standing there. It had barely been a few minutes since the bell rang but the hallway was already clear of students - of course - and Jeremy had already worked up a massive sweat. He jolted when he saw Michael, and it was even interesting watching the play character reassess his entire existence yet again.

“Michael?” Unfortunately, yes. “What are you doing in the theater room?”

“I signed up for theater,” Michael drawled, leaning against the door frame and crossing his arms. Was this a very supportive best friend thing to do? What did Michael even act like? He felt pushed on stage without even learning his lines. Maybe because that was what literally was happening. “Since you ran off and left me with Christine? We bonded.”

“Christine’s in there?” Jeremy pulled at his collar, shifting from foot to foot. “Real life Christine. Oh man. I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You don’t have to do it!” Michael stood up and clapped Jeremy easily on the back. He was probably doing a really, really horrible Michael right now, but maybe Jeremy wouldn’t notice. “Of course, I’ll mock you forever if you don’t.”

Jeremy took a deep breath, then took another one, then took a slightly shallower one that was verging on hysteria. If Michael craned his head he could hear Jeremy muttering a song under his breath and the faint, muffled sounds of a peppy instrument in the rafters. “C-c-c’mon, c-c-c’mon, go, go!”

“Oh, for christ’s sake.” Michael grabbed his arm and shoved him into the room. This guy seriously needed to get laid.

Oh, no. He was going to have to get laid with Christine!

God, he hoped this was a PG musical.

Glad that was over with. Michael rounded on his heel, briefly remembering that he took off two of his few possessions and left them the theater room before remembering that he didn’t care, and was already halfway down the hallway before the guilt set in.

He and Christine were supposed to be in this together. Maybe he should go help her out with Jeremy duty. She was probably just as wigged out as he was, if way more secretly.

Wait. He didn’t even know if Michael was supposed to be in that scene! He can’t ruin the entire scene by not pushing Jeremy and Christine into each other’s arms or something.

Michael doubled back and just barely restrained himself from bursting into the room, carefully opening the door and sliding into the now abandoned theater room to find Christine sitting at a small collection of chairs that definitely wasn’t there three minutes ago, Jeremy standing awkwardly in front of her.

Actually, they were both staring awkwardly at each other. Jeremy looked ready to about vibrate out of his skin and Christine was gaping like a fish, struggling with something that was also ramping up her anxiety notches. Michael didn’t know that much about her, but he was pretty sure her anxiety meter could go pretty high.

When Christine saw him her anxiety meter visibly went way up. “Michael! What are you doing here!”

“Play rehearsal, apparently,” Michael panned. He crossed his arms. “Are you two okay? You’re just sitting here staring at each other.”

They both flushed red, looking away.

Surprisingly enough, it was Jeremy who found the courage to talk first. “I mean, maybe you didn’t hear me? I asked if this is where you meet for the play.” He paused, widening. “I mean that’s such a stupid question, of course this is where you meet for the play it’s the freaking theater room - forget I said that.” He glanced around wildly, a  gazelle in front of the charmingly short lion. “I mean, how are...you?”

“Swim team!” Christine blurted, suddenly looking very pleased with herself. “This is where we meet for the swim team, I’m joking!”

“Oh.” Jeremy stared at her, flushed. “I’m Jeremy!”

They stared at each other again. This was as cringy as The Office.

“Okay.” Michael clapped his hands. Brown best friend powers: activate. He strolled up and carefully put a hand on Jeremy’s arm. Even if he wasn’t in this scene this was way too painful to watch. He had to save Christine from herself, Jeremy, the play, and the mysterious cosmic forces that put them in that position. He patted it reassuringly. “Christine, this is my...this is Jeremy. He always sweats this much.”

Jeremy glanced at him, horrified and betrayed. “Michael!”

“Jeremy,” Michael said loudly, “this is Christine. Not that you didn’t already know that.” He pasted what was probably a horribly fake smile on his face. “Let’s bond!”

Everyone stared at each other with mounting levels of awkwardness.

“Can I talk to Michael?” Christine said hesitantly. “Alone?”

Thank god. Michael nodded supportively at Jeremy, clapped carefully on a sweaty arm again, and gestured for him to go stand by the door. Jeremy, apparently easily pliable, gladly went and took the chance to catch his breath near the door. When Michael ducked closer towards Christine he saw that she was genuinely red faced. This was a disaster. They weren’t even done with the first day, and Christine was already losing her mind. Michael had no idea how they were going to handle two whole months of nonstop cringe.

“I forgot my lines,” Christine hissed. She looked about ready to cry. “He asked me if this was where the theater room was and I just totally freaked out. I got stage fright just like I freaking always do and now I ruined the whole play, just like I always do! This is why I’m not an actress!”

Oh. He had thought that it was actually something serious. She had worried him for nothing. Michael shot her an incredulous look. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters. What kind of fan am I?” She looked miserable, poor dear. Even her scarf was drooping. It was a cute scarf. Michael kind of wanted to steal it. “How are we going to recreate this play line by line?”

Michael stared at her, pausing a beat. Finally, he offered, “Do we have to?”

They simultaneously glanced back at Jeremy, who was obsessively checking himself in his phone’s front camera. Nothing for that but a lot of acne cream and a prayer, Jeremiah. “I guess so long as we hit all the plot beats,” Christine said cautiously. “I love the musical, but I didn’t memorize every line to the letter. I guess we have no choice. We just have to do the best we can with what we have.”

Who cares about that! Michael would give his headphones not to have to sing again. “Can we avoid the musical numbers?” He asked desperately. Please. Please no singing.

“But the musical numbers are the best part!”

Okay, whatever. Michael straightened, stepping away from Christine so he could paste a smile on his face and call Jeremy’s name, internally snickering when Jeremy jumped a foot in the air and zoomed over.

Christine pepped up at the sight of her ‘precious cinnamon roll’, quicky rubbing at her eyes and beaming the best she could at him through her stage fright in the middle of the theater room after school. “It’s really nice to meet you, Jeremy,” she said, all authenticity. “I’ve been teaching Michael how to do play rehearsal, so we’re in play rehearsal now. Just like how you’re in play rehearsal!” She stared at him, taking a deep breath. “Neat!”

“S - s - since when does Michael do p - p - play rehearsal?” Jeremy shot a half-hearted glare at him. He just shrugged. “Did - did he mention me? At all?”

“I feel like I’ve known you my whole life!”

Christmas had come early for Jeremy, and it was wearing a scarf and badly hidden anxiety. “You’ve been teaching? Michael, play rehearsal?” He stared at Michael in a new light, as if his best friend had been transformed into somebody from the real, actual world who had no desire to be here. Somewhere along those lines. “Michael talked to a cool kid? A real girl?”

“I have tons of chick friends, they aren’t aliens.” Wait. Jeremy shot him a skeeved out look. Of course, Michael didn’t have any other friends. Forget making fun of Christine, he wasn’t any better at this. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I mean, Christine’s teaching me how to play...a part.”

Jeremy cocked his head. “Why did you take off your glasses, dude? You can’t see a thing without them.”

Michael and Christine shot each other panicked looks. Michael quickly cut in, “I got contacts yesterday! I just didn’t tell you.”

Amazingly, Jeremy’s best friend marching off-step distracted him even from a fidgeting Christine. He even looked a little wounded. “But you tell me everything.”

The memory of squinting at the bulletin board to see it perfectly clear snapped back to him, and in a warm rush Michael remembered that if the real fake Michael needed glasses and the fake real Michael didn’t, and he could still see, so maybe he was still in his real body! A little! Maybe!

“Christine really, really needs to teach me how to play a part.” Michael glanced at her, unable to hold back his own ramping anxiety. “Like, now.”

“Good thing we’re in play rehearsal!” Christine cut in. She giggled, desperate to divert attention. “I love play rehearsal!”

“Good for you.” Michael patted his pockets down, looking for his glasses before he remembered that he had left them in the red jacket. Think of it like this, Michael: Michael was a character. He needed props. He needed to keep to the same outfit he probably always wore if he was going to blend in. Maybe Christine teaching him out to act probably would help.

“Because it’s the best! Because it is fun!”

“I get it.” Michael walked forward, grabbing his jacket and his dumb headphones as Jeremy hesitantly sat down next to Christine from where she was sitting, eyes wide as he looked into the face of his god. “Look, can’t we just -”

“I love play rehearsal! And I get depressed, as soon as it’s done!”

Was...that a glockenspiel?

Michael turned slowly, unable to keep down the horror on his face, only to see Christine leaning forward grinning at Jeremy, who was matching her grin for horrified grin. She threw out her arms in front of Jeremy, jerking into a rush of song. “But not depressed as in kill yourself depressed, no I’m not into self harm, here I swear dude check my arm!”

Crap. Crap! The music in his ears was growing louder! Christine was singing along obediently to it as a shocked and dazzled Jeremy nodded along, and Christine was finally putting her acting skills to work as she threw herself into the song. Michael had the sneaking suspicion that her giant grin was real.

“See, I just use the word to emphasize a point, show the passion that I’ve got, I am passionate a lot!”

It was a little bizarre, now that he was getting Christine’s character exposition, how similar Christine and Christine were. Maybe that was why she had been such a big fan of the play. His Christine was also passionate about musical theater. Way, way too passionate. He had heard it was one of those ‘special interest’ things that people on the spectrum had, but for the time being it just made her really overqualified to be dumped in a real musical.

“I have mad gigantic feelings, mad and frantic feelings -”

There she went again. Michael slowly backed away as Christine rushed out a stanza, waving her arms around in that stimming thing she did that he severely doubted the real Christine did, and Michael had just begun carefully hiding behind a desk so he wasn’t sucked into a musical dance routine when Christine jumped out of her chair, turned a perfect pirouette, and bowed at Michael. He stiffened as Christine sung directly at him.

Was she supposed to do this? She hadn’t mentioned if Michael was actually in the scene or not yet, but he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t.

“I love play rehearsal, because you are equipped with directions and text!” She twirled, reaching out and taking Michael’s hand. Before he could stop himself he twirled too, caught in her energy, caught up in the song. “Life is easy in rehearsal. You follow a script, so you know what comes next!”

Did it? They were shooting without a script now. Michael had no idea what was coming next and it scared him, even as it thrilled him, even as it let him dive headfirst into a churning sea with eyes wide open buffeted by the powers of song.

“Anyway, what I’m trying to say, is that that sometimes life works out the way, it works out in the play.” His voice was deep and melodic, contrasting against Christine’s peppy tunes. “Like how now we get to be the center of attention, with a cool song of our own invention.”

Christine broke free of the song, breaking the sea for open air.

“Michael and I have really been collaborating on how to best portray the disaffected youth, that we think that nobody else really understands, you know? There’s a lot of communities marginalized by society and we really want to portray the new generation of teenagers rebelling against the machine.”

Jeremy blinked at them. Michael elbowed Christine in the side. She elbowed him back. Then she burst out into song again.

“And no matter how hard I try! It’s impossible to narrow down the many reasons why ay ay!”

Then she was dancing again, leaping over to Jeremy and hopping on top of a chair so they could lean in like their own co-conspirators and sing the rest of the song.

But when she sung the next few lines it was sad, almost wistful, and Jeremy leaned in in response to the tone change. Interestingly enough, the music changed too, slowing down from the glockenspiel into the piano.

“Most humans do one thing for all of their lives. The thought of that gives me hives.” Michael stared down at his hands, suddenly awkward. What he wouldn’t give to only be one person for all of his life. “I have so many roles that I want to pursue. And I guess I’m telling this to you.” She smiled at him, broad and kind. “It’s a good thing that I want to.”

Jeremy’s eyes were sparkly. “Really?”

Then she made a lot of weird noises, jumping up and down and stimming randomly, and by the time she came to a clear end by shouting ‘Starting!’ a lot Michael knew well enough to slip into a random seat next to Jeremy and smile broadly.

“So,” Jeremy started cautiously, bolstered by the presence of a song and his best friend, “where’s everyone else?”

They all looked around. Christine’s eyes crossed as her mouth moved, trying to remember her lines, before she hesitantly offered, “I think someone else is going to come in soon…?” Jeremy’s face fell and she rapidly followed up with, “Or maybe it’s just you and me! And Michael.”

Michael waved.

“Oh.”

Poor guy. Michael patted his arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I bet they’re just NPCs.”

Then the doors burst open and the screaming started.

Floods of generic looking popular people crashed against the shores of the theater room, yelling generic popular people things and basking in the literal fanfare that accompanied their entrance. Jeremy practically began cowering in his seat, white knuckles gripping the plastic chair, and Christine quietly switched seats so Michael was in the middle and she could lean over and whisper in his ear. Jeremy, bereft at the obvious preference of Michael over him, only grew more desolate.

“The girl with the brown hair’s Chloe Valentine, the top bitch. I like to write her as secretly a strong, powerful, and confident women in my fanfictions, but in reality she’s just kind of a bitch.”

“You mean in the play,” Michael said flatly. “Play reality.”

“Sure, whatever.” She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at Chloe, who was busy shouting about how she had never realized that there was a theater room before - really? - and flipping her hair three times a minute for no reason. “You know, she’s not half bad during the last song. Maybe a redemption arc is in her future.”

“Yeah?” He quirked an eyebrow at her, slouching in his seat. “Going to follow the twelve step plan for being a three dimensional character, just like in your fanfictions?”

Christine looked sketchy. “Maybe.” She pointed towards two similar girls in the back, including a surprisingly fat one. Michael didn’t know that there were fat people in musical theater. Of course, he didn’t know that there were brown and asian ones too. “The girl in purple is Jenna Rolan, a huge gossip. Try not to act like a weirdo in front of her.”

“I’m the weird one?”

“The one in the giant sweater’s Brooke Lohst. She’s secretly nice, and very insecure. Jeremy dates her.”

Michael looked at Jeremy, then looked at Brooke, then looked at Jeremy. “Okay, sure.”

“I’m serious! The SQUIP rockets Jeremy to superstardom.”

An actual, real life adult came through the door behind all of the actual students, with a thick beard and a surprisingly nice suit. Michael hummed, crossing his arms and slouching deeper in his seat. “I’m not really in the mood for more seafood.”

Christine’s jaw dropped open. “Don’t tell me you don’t actually know the plot of the play.”

“There’s a plot? I thought that I was just going to be witness to Sweaty Nerd Boy scores Cute Girl No. 3342.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Hey, that’s my line!”

Then the adult broke into a boring speech about how he was Mr. Reyes (Hi Mr. Reyes!), recognizable as the theater teacher and/or Hobby Lobby associate (Wow!), and how Michael was going to have to memorize freaking Shakespeare for the dumb - okay, whoops, it’s Shakespeare with zombies.

Well, it wasn’t as if he was planning to actually participate anyway.

Christine, who had perked up at the Shakespeare and pointedly collapsed at the mention of the zombie play, cautiously made a point of being The Play Rehearsal Girl, throwing herself into enthusiasm wherever she saw the need. If Michael turned around he could see all the other characters rolling their eyes or playing around on their phones, as uninvested as Michael was. He felt a supreme sense of connection with the NPCs, even if they were as douchey as you could get. The short douche looked promising. There was something about him.

The entire deal was unsettling as hell. All of the people were uncanny valley, all of the backdrops were generic, but something about the guy and his tie dye eye tank top was as unsettling as you could get.

Michael turned back to the front, thoroughly creeped out, just in time for the play to run its usual and cut the adult time to practically Peanuts wah-wah-wahs. The teacher zoomed off, the popular kids scattered to the winds, and all that was left in the room was Michael, Christine, Jeremy, and the tall douche.

He had just shrugged on his backpack and patiently given the star struck Jeremy his own belongings when the tall douche bounced up to Christine like a golden retriever with a giant, dopey grin on his face. Christine and Michael, who had generally been avoiding talking to the cast members who weren’t the poor sucker practically hyperventilating next to him, stiffened awkwardly as Christine pasted a big, fake smile on her face.

“Hey. You were in that play last year, right?”

Christine laughed, unbelievably awkward. “Apparently!”

The tall douche grinned. What a happy play. “You, like, died, right?”

“That describes a lot of plays,” Christine said. Her eyes widened. “You mean Romeo and Juliet! I was totally in that, I was totally singing that just a moment ago - wait, was I?”

“Okay!” The tall douche ruffled his hair, still smiling. From beside him Jeremy was pointedly texting on his phone, scowling. “It was so depressing when you died, man. Can I, like, say something stupid?”

“Oh, feel free.”

“When I saw you die in that play last year, that was like the saddest I’ve been in a long time.” He actually reddened a little, and when he ruffled his hair it was more nervous than cool. “It was like everything in my life, all the pressure to be the best all the time, suddenly got so small. And when you got up for your victory dance -”

“There’s no dancing involved in the bow,” Christine said, twitching. “Like, at all.”

He ignored her. “I was totally thinking, ‘I’m glad that girl’s not dead’. Not before I had a chance to know her. Stupid, right?”

Christine’s heart visibly melted. Michael didn’t blame her - the tall douche was giant, sweet, a blustering moron just like everybody else in this ridiculous play, and was massively jacked. “It’s sweet. And stupid. Thanks, Jake.”

“No problem, Christine.” He saluted her awkwardly. “Some of us are going out for practice. You should, like, join.”

“That sounds great!” Christine said enthusiastically. “But I have to...wash my cat.” Michael winced. Nobody sign this girl up for ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway’. “So not right now. But later! Much later. So much later.”

“Cool!” Jake gushed. Jake. Of course Christine already knew his name. He probably had a boyfriend in her gay fanfictions. “I’ll see you later!”

Then he bounced off, like a literal golden retriever, and he stopped to glance at a Jeremy practically curled up in the fetal position and a very unimpressed slouching Michael. “Dude, you two totally have ‘RIEND’ and ‘BOYF’ on your backpacks.” He squinted at them. “Like, what does that even mean?”

Michael silently rearranged the backpacks so they were in the right configuration. Jake’s mouth dropped open in recognition. “Hey! It’s cuz you’re faggots! Sweet!”

What the fuck?

Michael jumped up from his seat, face red, heartbeat thumping. He didn’t care what kind of casual homophobia was rampant in play land, in real life that kind of shit got you expelled. Or Michael getting his gang friends to beat you up. Victor totally owed him a favor. “Fucking excuse me?”

Jake blinked at him, mystified. “Chill out, dude. Like, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Do you even know where that word comes from?” Michael demanded, working himself up into his standard spiel whenever anybody even mentioned that word in his vicinity. “When the puritans were burning gay people at the stake with all the witches and shit -”

But Jeremy jumped up instead, clamping a hand over Michael’s mouth and leaving him to grunt and kick frantically at Jeremy’s kneecaps. “Sorry! I’m sorry, he’s sensitive! Don’t punch us!”

Tension thrummed in the air, Christine gasping and holding her breath, Michael glaring bloody murder at a very confused Jake. Jeremy’s hand over his mouth was sweaty, as usual, and Jeremy felt him shaking from where he was pressed up against Michael’s back. Michael’s hindbrain perked up, but the situation totally didn’t call for that right now.

Finally Jake just rolled his eyes, shooting a glance back at the visibly distraught Christine. “Whatever, nerds. I got better shit to do than whale on a punk.” He left, somehow making it a victory stride instead of a retreat, and as he pressed open the theater room doors he couldn’t help but call over his shoulder, “Fag!”

Then he left them alone, Christine’s face buried in her hands, Jeremy finally releasing Michael’s mouth and rounding on him.

“What’s wrong with you!” For the first time since he walked in he was totally ignoring Christine. His face was red with embarrassment and anger. “You don’t just talk back to people like Jake! Now he’s going to beat you up behind the locker room! Again!”

Wait, Michael got beat up regularly? Shit. He didn’t know that happened to people in real life. Nowadays people just doxxed you or filled up your locker with shaving cream. You know, the normal ways people were bullied. Not actually beat up.

Pretending that he had stood up to Jake out of bravery instead of ignorance, Michael crossed his arms and stood his ground. “You can’t let those assholes walk all over you, Jeremy. You’re always going to be ground under their heel unless you stand up for yourself. You can get those guys in serious trouble if you tell a teacher that they’re throwing around the f word.”

“He’s right,” Christine jumped in. “You deserve better than being bullied around and just sitting there and doing nothing about it. Why didn’t you say anything?”

At the end of the day Christine didn’t really know anything about boys. Jeremy flushed, fists clenched, and Michael saw to his horror that he seriously looked about to cry. “I’ll meet you at your car, Michael.”

Then he turned around and clearly just barely refrained from running out the door.

They both watched him go, vaguely embarrassed, slightly desolate.

“Great,” Michael said flatly. He picked up his headphones from the ground and slung them around his neck. “Way to make the main character feel like a moron in front of his love interest.”

“I’m more than a love interest,” Christine snapped, “I’m a person! Christine is one of the most well developed characters in the play and I don’t appreciate you simplifying her to the role of a love interest.”

“To Jeremy she is!” Michael gestured at the door Jeremy had just ran out of, exasperated. “Now some dumb jock is going to be the obstacle between him and the love interest, you’re going to go out with him because you fall for bad boys or whatever, and I’m going to be stuck listening to him pine for hours. Probably days. Probably two whole months!”

“I’m not going out with Jake!” Christine shuddered, a fair reaction to Jake. “I don’t care if we want to keep it to the play, I’m not dating somebody I don’t even like. I don’t care if I’m the love interest - which is a grossly reductionist view of a great female lead in the musical - I’m not leading somebody on I don’t even like. What if they want to,” her voice dropped into a horrified whisper, “kiss.”

Well. It was fair. You can’t ask a girl to date somebody she doesn’t want to date. His mom had always beat that into his head with a two by four. Not to brag, but Michael was the expert in respecting women.

“You have to get together with Jeremy at the end,” Michael said flatly. Hey, there was an idea. “You don’t want to go out with Jake, right? Just ask out Jeremy. Instant gratification. Everybody knows that the play ends when the boy and the girl get together.” Hey, this was a great idea! Michael slammed a fist on his palm. “Then the play’ll end! Every play ends with the kiss of true love! Or, like, teenage hormones! I’m a genius!”

“You’re very convinced of that,” Christine panned. “That’s a good idea, but you kind of have a problem there. I don’t love him.”

They stared at each other.

Finally, Michael hesitantly offered, “Can you pretend?”

“That’s not a part I can play, Michael.” She looked down at her ends, clenching and unclenching them slowly. “We can do the song and dance and play the part, but I feel like this is the one thing we can’t act out. I’m not even that good of an actress, you know.” She laughed bitterly. “Christine is everything I want to be. She’s proud and happy and she dances everywhere and she just loves being herself. She said so at the end of the play. There’s nothing wrong with me, right? She’s so lucky.” She clenched her fist. “Now I’m Christine and I get to pretend to be her. But that won’t actually let me be the kind of girl who the jock asks out. Jocks are the ones who are mean to me and make up mean rumors about me. Not Christine.”

Michael blinked at her. “Wait, that thing about the shampoo bottle wasn’t true?”

“I’m ace,” Christine said flatly, “I just can’t. Besides, I never bought into the ending. It rang way too heterosexual for me. I always felt like the play really ended…”

She trailed off, eyes widening. Her jaw dropped, and she stared at Michael like a sculptor at a hunk of marble, a playwright beating out a new script at their typewriter.

“I have it,” Christine whispered. “I know how to beat the play.”

“Okay,” Michael said, creeped out. “Look, I need to go catch up with Jeremy. Give me your number and we can try to figure this out later. We have time, I guess.”

“Two months of it,” Christine said desolately. “We’re so screwed.”

Michael took a deep breath and screwed his courage to the sticking place. He reached out and, with agonizing slowness, clapped Christine on the back.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said carefully. “Uh. We’re...together in this?”

Her eyes shone, and that almost made the very uncharacteristic display of affection worth it. Almost. “Michael and Christine: Partners in Crime.”

“Concept: no.”

But it sounded a little nice anyway. Michael had never had a partner in crime before. And even if it had to be the super shy girl always stimming in the back of the room while Michael hung out with his teammates, then that was who it had to be. There were worse people to be stuck in a play with.

Probably.

Hopefully.

Or maybe they were just screwed. That too.

Sure enough, the entire car ride home Jeremy burst out with all of the repressed angst he had been holding in while his true love, the girl who watched way too much Hetalia in the anime club room and who sat by herself at lunch everyday, had graced him with her presence.

It was a stroke of luck how Michael had found the address for Jeremy’s house already bookmarked on his maps app. Or maybe it wasn’t that much of a stroke of luck - once Michael pulled up outside of Jeremy’s painstakingly generic two story suburban home house he climbed out of the car and shot a confused glance behind him at Michael. “Aren’t you coming in?”

Great. Michael sighed and parked the car. Looks like he was getting in more family bonding time with the best friend.

Honestly, he had expected to just disappear once he walked off campus and get warped back to the front of the school the next day. It was pretty lucky that there was this whole world outside the high school. It really was just a normal suburb. Trees and nice houses and urban developments under construction. There was even a small, completely fake lake.

It was a very, very normal suburb.

Jeremy kept rambling on while they walked to the door, Jeremy fishing his keys out of his pocket. “You know, I think we honestly really connected, for about two seconds? I think she actually looked into my eyes and she said all that nice stuff about play rehearsal.” He unlocked the door, turning to look at Michael. His eyes were practically glittering. “She really saw me, Michael! Not just through me, not just around me, really at me!” Then he sobered as reality set in, stepping inside the house and pulling off his shoes to throw them at a random corner of the house.”Then I was a total pansy in front of Jake and now she thinks I’m a loser again.”

Support? Support! “Don’t be like that, man. She secretly...digs you.” Michael walked in behind him, looking around the house. It was…

A little dirty, actually. Strike that, really dirty. There were old plates scattered everywhere, the dining room table was covered in random clutter, and Michael saw to his surprise that it wasn’t even fake clutter. It was real clutter, from a real life. Old school work, old toys, briefcases and folders and big cardboard boxes from Office Steve holding manilla envelopes and an entire container of Sic pens.

Michael found himself lingering near it, flipping through the old school work. Jeremy was smart enough, with okay grades. He was good at english but not great at math. It was just that there were so many papers, stacks and stacks of old tests. Stage plays did not need that much detail for props.This was...real. So much as anything could be real here.

“Want anything to eat?”

“Yeah,” Michael said, ghosting a finger over a page of notes. “Sure.”

He looked closer at it. There were class notes back and forth on the front, in two different types of handwriting. This must have been notes scrawled to each other as they sat at a table together, bored in class. Bored in a class that just recited the periodic table of elements at them and frequently broke into not doing anything in the middle of class. Or, if Jeremy happened to be there, a dance number.

A messy strain of handwriting sprawled against the top, matching the rest of the notes: What does equilateral mean?

Michael rolled his eyes. But under that was different handwriting. Familiar handwriting. With a cold sinking feeling in his gut Michael realized that it was his writing. His literal, actual handwriting.

Lol idk still stoned

Michael!!!!

Lol just jealous ;)

….a little??

Michael stared at it, only realizing that he was clenching the paper and crumpling it. He carefully released it, smoothing out the notes as if they mattered at all, and replaced it on the dining room table exactly as he found it, as if someone would notice or care.

In its own weird way it was scary, because it was a reminder that Michael existed. A little. Not really. Now Michael was…

“We’re out of soy milk, is almond okay?”

He hated the weak milk, for the weak. “Just water’s fine!”

When he entered the kitchen, to no surprise, he found dirty dishes everywhere. Jeremy was scrubbing two caked over glasses clean, a bag of chips already opened and sitting on the counter. Michael carefully withdrew a Dorito from the bag, munching quietly.

As Jeremy cursed over the glasses Michael checked the cabinets. Old jelly, snack food, empty. He opened the fridge. Take out, snack food, empty.

“Dude, where’s your food?”

“The M&Ms are in the vegetable crisper,” Jeremy replied absently. Man, if this was the guy’s diet no wonder he had acne. “So do you really think Christine knows who I am? Were you the one who told her? Because, man, you are such an ultimate wingman I’m forever in your debt. You own my first born child.”

“Obviously.” Sure enough, a very generic looking bag of M&Ms were in the crisper along with a half-empty pack of potatoes. “She’s not that scary, dude. She’s actually just a bit of a nerd.”

“Easy for you to say.” Jeremy sloshed water over the glasses, splashing it on the tile as he rubbed a towel over them. He poured more water into Michael’s glass and just grabbed a soda for himself. Mountain Dew. Gross. “You don’t even care about talking to cool people. If you don’t care so much, why were you even talking to her?”

“Because she’s a person? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” Michael withdrew the bag of potatoes, already digging some butter up from the butter drawer. “Hey, can you clean a pan for me?”

“It does matter!” Jeremy’s voice rose, and he slammed his coke on the counter. Michael straightened, confused. When he saw Jeremy’s face it was drawn tight, his hand clenched in a fist. “I’m trying so hard and just because you don’t even care that you’re friends with Christine? This is so unfair.”

“Dude.” This guy was ticking Michael off. He had no idea how he was going to play the supportive best friend. “It’s called talking with her. She’s actually really nice. It’s her whole thing. I think. If you just talk with her then there’s no problem.”

“It’s not that easy!”

“Do you need instructions?” He ripped the potato sack open, clumsily ruffling through Jeremy’s cabinets for a potato peeler and masher. Hey, there was a measuring bowl. It was even clean. Guess they didn’t do a lot of cooking. Shocker, shocker. “First you open your mouth. Then you vibrate those old vocal cords and exhale a little, then boom! Put one foot in front of the other, Jeremy!”

“Why are you being such a dick today?” Jeremy snapped. He rounded on Michael, who was way too busy to get into a glare fest. Cutting board, cutting board - there you go.

“I’m a dick every day.” Michael dumped some potatoes on the cutting board, and unceremoniously began peeling them with quick, even strokes. “Besides, I’m stressed.”

“Michael, please. I thought you always got me about the anxiety stuff.” Michael aggressively looked at his potatoes so he couldn’t see Jeremy’s face. It may have been sad. That wasn’t his problem. “You know I’m - you know I’m scared all the time. Freaking out’s my okay. You’re always there for me and pushing me, but today you’ve just been pushing me away. If I did anything wrong, I’d appreciate it if you just told me.”

Crap. Michael put his potatoes down, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked up, finally looking at a Jeremy with a crumpled expression and hugging his arms to himself, and yet again Michael felt a little bad for the guy who he wouldn’t have given the time of day in real life. “Look, man, I’m sorry. I’ve had a really rough day. It’s nothing on you. I just think it’d solve a lot of our problems if you manned up and talked to Christine, you know?” He smiled hesitantly at him, trying not to think about how fake it had too look. “Here, I’ll help. I’m with you all the way. I will be there at every second of the day making sure you talk to Christine a lot. And that you two get together. And fall in love.”

It was worth it, in its own odd sense, to see how Jeremy’s face lit up. What an emotional guy. “Obviously. Hey, what’re you making? You can’t cook.”

“I can make mashed potatoes,” Michael said dryly. “You seriously need some vitamins in your diet.”

“Vita what now?”

Jesus Christ.

As Michael directed Jeremy on, you know, how to actually cook for himself, Jeremy continued keeping up his constant stream of chatter. But this time Michael noticed natural pauses in the conversation where he naturally expected Michael to jump in, probably with some kind of quip or joke, something that Michael didn’t really know how to do. He wasn’t funny. He wasn’t even lighthearted, like he was beginning to suspect Michael was. Michael was fully aware that he was a bit of a sadsack killjoy, and he didn’t know how to be happy in such a horrible and crazy situation for this guy.

“Man, I saw this crazy post on Reddit this morning, about a dog that can play tennis! He holds the racquet in his jaw! What a good boy, right?”

“Very good boy.”

Michael mashed the potatoes as Jeremy prattled on for ten minutes about how cute dogs were.

“What about you? How was your day?”

The potatoes simmered on the stove, and Michael halted from where he was slicing butter in. “Uh.”

“You’ve been really quiet. If you had a bad day you should totally vent. That’s what you always do, and it seems to work for you.”

“Uh, okay.”

They stood in awkward silence, Michael manning the stove as Jeremy actually did dishes.

“Michael?”

Okay, make something up. Don’t talk about your actual day. Not hard.

“I guess I just zoned out most of the time,” Michael said loftily. “Just another day at the high school salt mines. Ha, ha.”

“You aren’t upset for no reason.”

People didn’t interrogate him in real life so much about his feelings. Because he was there, because he asked, Michael actually burst out with the truth. “Have you ever felt like your life was happening without you? Like every day is the exact same, day after day? You’re always talking with the same people and they all do the same things, and then you go to cross country practice again and you run around in that same track freaking again and again?” He paused a beat. “I mean play video games.” Jeremy nodded fastidiously. “You’re so sick of it you just want to jump off a building. You just feel so - so lost and trapped. And then you have to go to home and cook all of your own meals because your parents never come home - I  mean, play more video games - and work out so you can...play video games again and again and again until suddenly it’s a week later and you’ve hung out with all your friends - I mean hung out with you - and you’ve played all your weekly father-son softball and you’ve done all of your stupid homework and it’s like this long dream that you never wake up from.” His throat choked up, ashamed that he was telling anybody this, ashamed that he was admitting it. “You keep on thinking that when you wake up from it she’ll be - she’ll be…”

Then he really did choke up, and Michael had barely a few seconds to wallow in his usual self-pity before Jeremy was wrapping him in a tight side-hug, as close as he could get while Michael was manning the pan. He was slightly wet, and his damp clothing pressed up against Michael’s side, but the hand around his shoulders was warm.

“I know just what you mean. It’s like how all of this is so dumb and...how it hurts so much, and you keep on looking for something that’ll make it all worth it. But nothing’s there, right?”

“Yeah,” Michael said in wonder. “Yeah, exactly.”

Jeremy grinned at him. “I know you better than anybody else alive, dude. Best friend of twelve years talking. Whatever you’re feeling - I’ve been there. I’ll be with you.”

“Just like me,” Michael said. “Just like how I’ll always be there for you.”

“Duh!” Jeremy stepped back and ruffled his hair, making Michael grunt and try and duck away. Jeremy laughed and reached harder, and it became a game of elaborate keep away from the hot pan on the stove and of Jeremy diving to manhandle Michael’s head.

Before he knew it he was laughing, and Jeremy was laughing, and their joy slotted so easily into each other’s it was as if they had always known each other.

In the true sense, and not just in the fictional sense. In this weird topsy turvy world, where Michael’s handwriting was sprawled against old class notes and a nerdy teenage girl could belt her undying love for play rehearsal, anything could happen.

Even somebody like Michael could have a real friend. A close friend. A best friend.

They ate the mashed potatoes on hastily cleaned cracked plastic plates, sitting on top of cleared counters and knocking their heels against cabinets, chatting about their favorite video games. Michael just decided on agreeing with everything Jeremy said about eighties retro video games, and then flipping to disagreeing with everything he said when that got boring.

Jeremy’s kitchen really was filthy and it was personally offending neat freak Michael, so while they were talking he began surreptitiously cleaning it up and making a shopping list on his phone. Jeremy, once he caught on to what Michael was actually doing, helped as best as he could with putting everything back in their proper places

Eventually they had devolved to having giant yelling matches about the best character in Street Fighter III when the only video games Michael regularly played was League of Legends and Fortnite, and Jeremy grew so offended at some of his new opinions that Michael had to laugh.

Then Jeremy had to laugh with him, and they were laughing together, and as Michael pretended to have strong feelings on something for the first time in a long time he considered that it was, you know, kind of fun.

“So,” Jeremy said, gulping down the last of the potatoes. He passed the plate to Michael. “Can we actually go play video games now? I love you, man, but I’m not really in the mood to clean my whole house.”

“That would take way longer than my attention span,” Michael agreed wryly. “Fine. Let’s go play our favorite video game that...I know how to play.” Wait, shit. “Uh, can we play a new video game? That, hypothetically, we haven’t played before?”

But Jeremy was already leaping up the steps to his room, and Michael resigned himself to following. Get ready to have to explain why you suddenly suck at your favorite video game, Michael. Lots of fun. Get ready to play some really boring retro video game on the SNES or something for probably six more hours.

Michael checked his phone. Yep. It was seven. Six more hours. Joy.

Jeremy’s room was, predictably, a disaster area.

It was a different kind of disaster area, though. The clutter was obvious, filled with the detritus of a teenage boy life, but he could see clear method to the madness. It was cluttered, but not dirty, and there was nothing disgusting or grimy about it. Just a teenage boy’s room. Just like the house looked strongly as if only a teenage boy was living in it.

Maybe this was one of those musicals where the parents didn’t exist and everyone were mysteriously orphans because the parents just weren’t mentioned. Or maybe this was one of those musicals where everybody’s parents died of the plague or tuberculosis or something, like in La bohème.

It was probably a sign he had been here too long - half a day was way too long - because he began slowly drifting towards the line of photographs on the dresser.

It was a timeline in miniature. Two gap toothed little kids clutching long strands of Chuck E Cheese tickets, a white boy playing soccer, a brown boy blowing out the other boy’s birthday cake. Michael traced their lives together, how they had lived a life together. There were a few pictures of an older man and a woman together with the boy, but by far and away almost all the pictures had Michael in them. Not his parents. Surrounding the photographs were little knick knacks that looked weirdly familiar.

Michael reached out to poke one - a little toy robot, the same style from the old 50s sci-fi B-movie Forbidden Planet. Hey, he knew nerd stuff too. It was more Michael’s style than Jeremy’s, and he knew that Michael had given it to him.

The closet was probably full of pairs of shoes Michael had left there, the dresser crammed with a swirl of socks whose owners they couldn’t remember. Michael looked around the room in wonder as Jeremy  set up a very generic gaming console, at a life lived split in two but joined together.

Must be nice.

He had just walked over to join Jeremy at the game console when he heard a sick thump and saw, to his horror, a large, uncomfortable looking bean bag drop down from the ceiling. Michael had barely enough time to gape bizarrely at it before another one cracked over his head, making him stumble to the side and curse as the second, identical bean bag landed on the floor. Jeremy, from where he was bent over the console, didn’t notice.

He hated fucking musicals. He hated fucking musicals! Learn some set design, assholes! Suspension of belief who?

Jeremy laughed, hollering obnoxiously. “Apocalypse of the Damned!” He collapsed backwards in the bean bag, not even noticing how it wasn’t there a second ago and raising a hand to high five Michael. Michael quickly dived for the bean bag next to him, grabbing the controller and belatedly returning the high five. “Level nine! The cafetorium!”

“Yay.”

At first Michael thought it was the tinkling 8-bit music from the TV that was turned up way too loudly. The video game itself was ridiculously generic and simple, somehow necessitating giant gestures and Jeremy exaggeratedly leaning back and forth. Michael, who had shame, didn’t even bother to try and reciprocate.

Then the music got louder, more instrumentalized as Michael found himself swaying to it. Then he found his toe tapping to it. Then when Jeremy gestured Michael gestured with him, and when Jeremy leaned to the side Michael leaned to the side, and Michael began to notice that something was really, really wrong.

Then he and Jeremy opened their mouths and began singing in perfect unison.

Shit.

“Find the bad guy and push him aside, then move on forward with your friend at your side!”

Shit! No! He met Jeremy six hours ago, he wasn’t going to sing a friendship song!

“It’s a two player game so when they make an attack, you know you got a brother gonna have your back!”

This isn't even a good friendship song! This was so cringy and embarrassing! Michael dived to the left as Jeremy dived to the right, his limbs jerking almost of their own volition as he moved his legs in dumb, unnecessary ways, as he hopped forward in dumb, unnecessary ways, oh god this was hell, he was in hell -

“If you leave your brother behind that’s lame,” in no universe, real or otherwise, should a white dude call anyone brother, “Cuz it’s an effed up world but it’s a two player game, hey!”

Michael and Jeremy stopped and gasped, and Michael abruptly was able to move his limbs again as Jeremy rapped a button with his tongue between his teeth, leaning forward with utmost sincerity.

If Michael looked closer than he could see that the way Jeremy was tapping the buttons had nothing to do with the way that the game was turning out. Experimentally, Michael stopped pressing buttons altogether and watched unimpressed as his character kept shooting the zombies. It was a pity he wasn’t doing Christine’s job, because then they could just replace him with a sexy lamp and he could run off and do something else. Anything else. Please, anything else.

To think he had been feeling bad for Christine when she had to belt on about play rehearsal for two minutes. Singing about how great video gaming was -

Michael shuddered. Well, at least that was over.

“So,” Jeremy said, faux casually. “I ran into Rich in the bathroom.”

“People do tend to go to the bathroom, yes.” Michael mimed pressing some buttons as his character very effectively shot zombies. Good job, character. Now if he could finally get in character then that would be great.

It would help if he actually knew who his character was. Or who Rich was.

“He cornered me and ranted on about some kind of miracle pill. I mean, like, while he was peeing. It was really gross. For a guy who keeps calling me gay he has, uh, no shame.”

“Yeah?” Michael asked, disinterested again. Everyone in this play was a nutjob, so Rich should join the club. “That’s nice.”

“I’m serious. He was really on about this miracle pill.” Jeremy paused to shoot some fictional zombies. Zombies more fictional than he was. It was turtles all the way down. “Apparently it get inside you brain and tells you what to do. It’s from Japan or something. Makes you mega cool, teaches you how to rule, all that good stuff. He said that he’d sell me it for six hundred bucks. He says it’s the reason he’s so cool and popular.”

“It’s a scam, dude.” Michael experimentally waved his controller around, same way that Jeremy kept doing it. It definitely did not have motion control. It was just a normal controller. There was no need to be dancing everywhere. “Freaky scam, but a scam.”

“This could be huge!” Jeremy protested. He was sweet, but as stupid as everybody else in this ridiculous play. Poor guy. He never stood a chance. “All I have to do is give the school asshole six hundred bucks and…” he deflated. “Okay, he’s definitely scamming me. But think about it. Can I afford to say no?”

“Can you afford to say yes? He wants six hundred bucks.”

“I’m going to be a loser until the end of the world,” Jeremy said glumly. Wow, we’re back to that again. The theme of the night. The theme of the day! The theme of this play. Gather around, everybody. We’ll paint your name in lights:

Jeremy Heere, the loser!

Michael Mell, who’s forced to hang out with him and sing along to his dumb friendship songs!

Michael opened his mouth to say something unfairly biting, to say something insincerely placating, to be very honest and say that he was a bit of a dipshit. A weirdly nice dipshit. A dipshit who listens to him rant and lives in a broken home. But a dipshit.

“Dude, you are cooler than a vintage cassette. It’s just that no one else but me knows that yet!”

Fuck!

“You’re just a nothing in this high school scheme, but it’s no big because you and me are a team!”

This. Really was a friendship song.

Fuck, he had to get out of here!

Michael jumped up, ready to race to the door, but found himself sliding and doing a jig instead. God, he was so glad the guys from the team weren’t here. He’d never live it down. “We like out of print games, retro skates!” He slid over towards Jeremy, brandishing an arm. “I’ve got a Pac Man tattoo!”

Jeremy blinked at his arm, and the music fizzed and cut out, leaving a harsh static in Michael’s ears.

“Dude,” Jeremy said, “what happened to your tattoo?”

Michael was an everyday person, and his initial response to seeing that he didn’t have a Pac Man tattoo printed on his legitimate skin was relief. His second response was panic.

He was supposed to be Michael, right? Or Michael was supposed to be him?

His third response was elation. He really was in his own body! Take that, teenage dysphoria! Now he didn’t have to walk around terrified that he was rocking another guy’s threads. Meat threads.

His fourth response was -

“Uh,” Michael said intelligently. “It’s right there.”

They both looked at it, Jeremy visibly growing wigged out. He grabbed Michael’s other arm, pushing his sleeve up so he saw his identically clean skin. “Where did your tattoo go? Did you lose it?”

“How the hell do you lose a tattoo?”

“Did you honestly cover it up?” Jeremy gaped at the arm, as if it would reveal its unmarked secrets. Michael couldn’t imagine how he was feeling, seeing his best friend of umpteen years transform into a stranger who he no longer understood.

Wait! He didn’t care!

Time to cover your ass. “Of course I didn’t cover it up,” Michael blustered. “You know that place we went to was total shit. It just faded.”

“Overnight.” For someone who was willing to believe a miracle pill he sure wasn’t buying a mysterious overnight tattoo disappearance. “Your tattoo disappeared overnight.”

“I spilled bleach on it.”

“Michael!”

“I spilled bleach on it, I soaked it in hot water, then I - uh, soaked it in vinegar,” Michael’s bullshit abilities were getting pushed to the test today, “and I did a bunch of other sketchy stuff to my skin from a WikiHow page I found online and when I woke up the next morning it was gone! That’s why I’ve been so grouchy today.” He nodded solemnly. “I missed my lil Pac Man buddy.”

Kill him.

Jeremy still looked skeptical, as well as deeply wigged out. “Michael, I really think -”

Quick, stall! Michael kicked his foot on the ground so the music started up again, like he was prodding the needle on the vinyl back on track, and this time when he felt the singing pick up again he did it as loud and as obnoxiously as possible.

“Nobody here appreciates, but soon we’ll be together where they do!”

He dropped himself back down on the bean bag and took Jeremy’s face in his hands, singing as earnestly as he could. Jeremy’s eyes were wide but otherwise accepting of this turn of events.

“Because guys like us are cool in college! Cool in college, this I know!” Jesus, how pathetic was he. What was worse: singing about how eventually maybe at one point in the future he wouldn’t be a loser, or singing that to distract his best friend slash main character from the fact that he was just pretending to be his best friend and also that they were all in a musical. “Guys like us are cool in college. We rule in college, listen bro!”

He pulled the dorkiest moves, waving his hands around and flailing his hands in a way that somewhere the real fake Michael had probably thought was cool.

Michael stretched out, as if he was reclining on a Laz E Boy. Like a moron. “High school is hell,” this was hell, “but we navigate it well! Cuz what we do is we make it a two player game!”

Personally, Michael like RPGs better. But that was just him.

Then Jeremy got really into it, and they made a lot of expressive noises along to the beat that probably constituted a song in this ridiculous musical.

Finally Jeremy jumped up, and Michael sagged as Jeremy walked around behind him. He let the game push itself along as he randomly mashed buttons.

“As losers we have fought together for years. Both Nintendo zombies and our popular peers!” Holy shit, where they dropping out of generic name brand land? Were they paying royalties to Nintendo for this? “Now we’re stuck at a level and I want to move on.”

Distracted, Michael called back, “Can’t wait til this number is gone, and you realize that guys like us are cool in college. It’s all the same!”

“High school matters to me,” Jeremy said, frustrated. “But -”

“Guys like us are cool in college!” Yeah, dude, so stop worrying. In college nobody cares about how cool you are.

Jeremy dropped down onto the bag next to him.“But we’re not in college!”

“All the same,” Michael paused his game and grabbed Jeremy’s arm. “High school is whack,” in a burst of strance synocrity he and Jeremy threw and caught each other’s controllers in the air, and Michael couldn’t help a sincere giddy grin. That was perfectly in sync. They had been singing in sync the whole song. “But we have each other’s back. It’s me and you, we make it a two player game!

Knocks at the door interrupted the beat and Michael was kicked out of the song, left gasping even as the music dimmed to a faint murmur and Jeremy yelled something about an actual father.

Well. At least that was over.

A tall guy with a full beard that looked startlingly similar to Mr. Reyes walked in, wearing nothing but a bathrobe, a stained tank top, and underwear. Michael, who was only into non-fictional older guys, hissed and covered his eyes as a mortified Jeremy collapsed back into his beanbag. Michael had the distinct feeling that if Christine was here Jeremy would have been sweating enough to fill the high school pool. The apparent father sipped at his mug of coffee as Michael and Jeremy, in the grand tradition of teenagers everywhere, pretended that the older man didn’t exist. It wasn’t hard for Michael, as in the very technical sense he didn’t exist.

“Is that a girl? Are you in here with a girl -” he paused, off put by Michael having shucked his red jacket, headphones, and glasses a while ago. “Oh hey Michael. Didn’t recognize you without your uniform.”

Michael craned his head back and scrutinized the guy as best as he could without looking below the belt. “Dude, why aren’t you wearing pants?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Jeremy hissed, “good question.”

“They didn’t need me at the office, so I stayed home.” Yeah, Michael had the feeling that he did that a lot. Jeremy looked mortified, but not surprised. That was...a little sad. “I was going to order pizza, if you boys want anything -”

“I already ate,” Jeremy snapped. “Mashed potatoes. Michael and I made them.”

“Oh.” Mr. Heere blinked at them before shrugging, taking another pull of his coffee. “Nice. So do you want any pizza?”

“The kitchen’s clean too,” Jeremy said pointedly. “If you even noticed.”

“Oh.” Mr. Heere looked around, as if he could see the kitchen from Jeremy’s bedroom. It felt like he was messing up the place even being inside. “So...pizza?”

Jeremy ignored him, flipping the game back on, and Michael hesitantly followed his lead in ignoring the adult until he shrugged, yet again, and wandered away, muttering something about a good talk.

“So,” Michael said awkwardly, well aware that if he and Jeremy had been friends for twelve years the guy was probably like a second parent to him, “is he always like that?”

Jeremy hunched over the controller, not answering him.

“Has your mom come home from work yet?”

This time Jeremy did pause, straightening to look at him incredulously. “Not funny, Michael.”

Shit. His mom was dead. Shit! Why didn’t he ask Christine for a character background!

“Yeah,” Michael said awkwardly. “Uh. Sorry.”

They played in silence a little, Michael feeling even worse and worse. No wonder his house was such a wreck. A dead mom, a depressed dad. For a generic high school musical in a generic suburb with a generic house, his home life was weirdly sad.

“You know,” Michael said, fully aware that it wasn’t any of his business, fully aware that he didn’t care, “it really shouldn’t be your job to take care of the house.”

Jeremy hunched further over the controller, ignoring him.

“That really pisses you off, right? Parents should be there for you and crap.”

“Yep.”

“You shouldn’t have to tackle this highschool battlezone with only one guy. That’s a lot of pressure on me. And you.”

“Probably.”

“So then why don’t you care?” Michael paused the game again, turning around to frown at him. “Get mad at your dad! Get mad at the world! Trust me, I’m the expert in anger and taking it out on people who don’t deserve it. You need a lot more of it instead being so - so passive all the time.”

Jeremy didn’t answer him.

Finally, as Michael refused to resume the game and as Jeremy refused to look at him, he finally sighed and threw the controller down at the ground. Michael dropped his too, glad to be rid of it, and Jeremy kicked the ground like a two year old.

“Rich said his hookup is at the Payless. We should go and check it out, just to see if he’s being legit or not.”

That was obvious. “Drugs aren’t the answer,” Michael lectured. “They just make more problems.”

“It’s better than drugs!” Jeremy kicked the ground again, pathetic and desolate. “I deserve something better than - than my ridiculous father. We deserved better than - and damn it, I’m going to get what I deserve!” He was breathing deeper, almost like one of his constant freakouts at school, almost different. “And everybody’s going to pay attention to me.”

Michael was silent, identifying the pity that rose in his chest, wondering where it came from.

Maybe he hit on the actual conflict of the play. Maybe this was one of those anti-drug messages, like Requiem for a Dream, or Trainspotters. It was about a delicate flower of a teenage boy ruthlessly clutched in the white knuckled fist of opioids.

Maybe all he needed was a friend wearing a DARE t-shirt.

It was ridiculous. He was a main character. The entire play was about him. He was the one standing at the front of the stage, belting his heart out, singing all of the songs and pleading his case to the adoring crowd. The show was all about him. His actor was the headliner. Why was he pretending that nobody cared about him?

As if Michael wasn’t right there?

“What about then?” Michael asked, strangely broken hearted. “Will you be too cool for me?”

Jeremy smiled, impossibly fond, as nobody had ever looked at Michael before. “No way.”

The music kicked in, but Michael was too distracted to care. He was caught up in Jeremy, everything Jeremy, at the main character, at the hero, at the star. At the victim. “You know that you’re my favorite person, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still dream.”

Michael knew that he had a line, that there was something vaguely cocky and flippant he was supposed to say, that he was supposed to brush it off. As if Jeremy had ever said it to him before, as if anybody had ever felt that before, as if stupid, loser, lucky Michael took Jeremy’s love for granted.

“Really?” Michael asked, afraid to believe him. “I’m really your favorite person?”

Jeremy grinned and reached out to ruffle his hair and Michael laughed, ducking to avoid him, and Jeremy kicked out as he pretended to dodge. “We’re never not gonna be a team!”

Really?

“High school is shit,” Jeremy sang, high and clear, beautiful and piercing. “And you gotta help me conquer it. That’s just what we do -”

Michael joined him in perfect unison. “ - we make it a two player game!”

As if something old was slotted into place, as if two familiar pieces were joined, Michael had a best friend. He had a really, really cute best friend.

As if he had always had a best friend.

As if the whole thing wasn’t just a weirdo musical fever dream, where Michael was only pretending to be Michael and Christine was only pretending to be Christine and everybody was singing and dancing how they felt about each other and their secret, open, overflowing love.

He fucking hated musicals.