Max jumped back a bit, startled at his presence. "Jesus, Michael," he muttered. "Not to sound cliché, but you almost sent me into cardiac arrest." He examined his best friend's face. "Is everything okay?"

Michael shrugged casually. "Everything's fine. Why?"

"Well, you never show up at school past eleven, if at all, " he pointed out. "And it's five minutes before second period."

"What can I say?" Michael replied. "I'm developing a more profound school spirit."

Isabel approached them. "Hey, Max, did you--" She stopped short when she saw Michael, and did a double-take. She glanced down at her watch, and a look of worry overcame her face. "Is everything okay?"

-----

Maria sat at her usual seat in her history classroom. She pulled a small compact mirror out of her purse and looked into it. "Makeup still intact, hair still in place," she said to herself. She snapped the compact close and glanced at the empty desk next to her. She sighed and turned to look out of the window and into the school courtyard, wondering why she even bothered.

She was acting so stupid. Michael didn't even know what she saw in those flashes. She seriously doubted he had spent three sleepless nights wondering what she saw, as she did when she spent three sleepless nights analyzing each image to a bloody pulp. And Michael didn't even have the slightest romantic interest in her. When he did the whole look-into-your-future thing, he was just trying to be nice. A sort of favor in return for stealing her mother's Jetta. What the hell was she thinking? The new outfit, carefully applied hair and makeup. He's not going to even notice, much less show--

"Hi," a familiar male voice said, plopping himself down next to her.

Maria looked up in surprise. "What-- why--" She stopped, then tried again, hoping for it to go more smoothly this time. "I mean, hi. What are you doing here?"

Michael smirked. "I seem to be garnering that same reaction everywhere this morning."

"The keyword being *morning*," Maria replied. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," Michael repeated for the third time in the past ten minutes. "Can't a guy show up to his second period class without being interrogated?"

"Not when the guy hasn't been to a second-period class since, oh, I don't know... freshman year?" She paused, then asked again, "So everything *is* okay?"

"Everything's fine," Michael reinstated, amused. "Relax. The Armageddon is not near."

"I'm fairly certain you showing any signs of responsibility is a distinct sign of a forthcoming apocalypse," she quipped.

"I'll try not to make it a habit," he replied.

A petite, brunette woman in her late thirties breezed though the classroom door. "Good morning, everyone," Ms. Grey said, placing her briefcase on top of her desk and taking her place behind the podium. "Please open your books to the beginning of Chapter 5 and we can get started right after I take roll." She glanced down the class list. "Aspiras?"

"Here."

"Benton?"

"Here."

"Yeah."

"Damian?"

"Present."

"DeLuca?"

"Here."

Ms. Grey began to mark an X on the next name. "And Guerin's not here..."

"Actually, I am," Michael spoke up, causing the rest of the class to turn around and acknowledge his presence. "Here."

The usually composed Grey appeared a bit bewildered. "Oh, um... well, then," she said, erasing the X and moving on to the next name. "Hosenkamp?"

"Here."

Michael looked over at Maria, who was suppressing laughter. He smiled to himself, opening his textbook to Chapter 5.

-----

"I'm serious, Max," Isabel said to her brother as they walked down the hallways toward their third-period classrooms. "Don't you think it's slightly suspicious that Michael suddenly, out of nowhere, develops a fervor for education?"

"I wouldn't exactly say he's developed a fervor, Iz," Max replied. "He probably had nothing better to do. Or he underslept or something."

"Well, I still have my doubts," she said, hugging her books to her chest. "I mean, it could be--"

"Nothing. It could be, and is, absolutely nothing." Max tried to calm her down. "You said yourself you want a normal life. Well, you're not going to get one if you let yourself get so worked up like this." He reassured her, "Everything is okay. Don't look for something that's not there."

A look of worry still crossed Isabel's face. Her expressive brown eyes were full of concern, and her voice dropped down to a low whisper. "I can't help it. Especially since that whole thing in Texas. The one thing we learned about ourselves down there is that we have to be more careful. Kyle and his dad are not giving up."

Max exhaled, and said with as much calm as he could muster, "Look, I will talk to Michael and see if anything's up, though I highly doubt that something is. Okay?"

Isabel nodded her head. "Okay." She tried to regain some poise and began to walk toward the door of her geometry class. "I'll see you later."

"Bye," he said to his sister. He started toward the biology lab but was momentarily halted when he saw Liz walking in the opposite direction. "Liz," he called to her.

She stopped in her tracks, and seemed a bit agitated when she saw it was Max that had called her. "Oh, hi, Max," she responded, looking left to right anxiously.

"Are you all right? You seem a bit tense--"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she replied hastily. "What would make you think otherwise?"

"The fact that your next block is biology and that you're heading the wrong way kind of clues me in that not everything's all right," he observed.

"Oh, I'm not in bio anymore."

Max's eyebrows knit in confusion. "You're not in bio anymore?"

Liz began to be more flabbergasted. "Oh, I am in bio, not just this bio... I mean, third-period bio. I transferred to a different class because... there was this... thing..." Her voice trailed off.

"A thing?"

"Right, a thing," she said. "But don't worry, I talked with the teacher and you'll be set up with a new lab partner so you won't be missing out on any of the assignments. And... um... I really should be getting to geometry. So... see you later, Max." Liz spun around and started to walk away.

Max gently touched her shoulder and turned her around to face him again. "You switched to a different geometry, too?"

"No, no. It wasn't like that at all," Liz insisted. "When I got assigned to a new bio, it just completely messed up my schedule and now all of my classes are switched around and... Max, I'm going to be late to math."

He nodded his head understandingly. "Right," he replied. "I'll see you later."

Liz scurried off to the door Isabel had previously entered, with Max just standing there in the now empty hallway, watching her disappear into the classroom.

And he wondered why suddenly Liz Parker didn't want anything to do with him.

-----

"The human face is a powerful thing," Mr. Cowan lectured, walking around the classroom. "It is full of character, full of life, full of emotion. It is your duty as the artist to capture all of this energy and passion into one single portrait, to capture the entire person with one single sketch." He stopped walking when he arrived at the center of the room, a circle of easels now surrounding him.

Gesturing toward the small table that displayed a bust of a somber-looking Greek woman, he continued, "Today, you will not be sketching this. To you, this bust is impersonal. You have no real connection with something made out of clay, so how can you capture emotion that is not even there? No, you will be drawing from your own personal memory and experience. It can be any person in your life. The important thing to remember is that you have no boundaries, no restrictions. Fire and passion is what we are looking for, not defined lines and structures." He clapped his hands together. "Now, to work, my young artistes!"

Michael stared at the blank paper in front of him, the piece of charcoal he held in his hand blackening his fingers. He looked around him, at his classmates filling their papers full of strokes. He rolled his eyes and groaned at the lameness of the assignment, but slowly and steadily, he began to do the same.

And it wasn't a geodesic dome he was sketching.

A pair of distinct hazel eyes, sparkling with the slightest amount of mischief. Soft, voluminous lips, shaped into a dazzling smile. Full, apple-colored cheeks. A cute button nose. Short stands of blonde hair framing a petite, round face.

Suddenly, the assignment wasn't so lame.

As the period progressed, Michael became more and more involved in his work. He forgot about time, about his surroundings. He was enraptured with what he was drawing. He didn't even hear the bell ringing that signaled the start of the lunch period. Unbeknownst to him, people began to gather their things and leave the classroom.

"Mr. Guerin," Mr. Cowan said as he approached him. Michael looked up, startled, and for the first time noticed how vacant the room had become. "I see you've given up on post-modern architecture as a subject."

"I decided to give something else a try," he replied as nonchalantly as possible.

"Not to downplay your past work, but this..." He examined the drawing and commented breathlessly, "This is magnificent. Reminds me of the later work of Renoir."

"Renoir?"

"Pierre Auguste Renoir," Mr. Cowan answered. "A fabulous Impressionist painter, inspired by the High Renaissance. Mostly known for his paintings of women and young children." He turned his attention back to the sketch. "She certainly is a beautiful young woman."

Michael reddened slightly and pretended to occupy himself with sharpening his charcoal to a fine point. "Yeah, she is," he mumbled.

"And you're a lucky man," he said, smiling. "Gifted, too. There is definite fire and passion in this." Mr. Cowan gazed at Michael's sketch a bit longer with deep satisfaction, then cleared his throat. "Well, I'm off to lunch. Take as much time as you need to finish up."

"Thanks," Michael said, and suddenly he found himself alone in the room. Before continuing the sketch, he took a moment to stare at Maria DeLuca's likeness.

-----

Alex sat at a table in the corner of the school library, books and papers haphazardly scattered across the surface. He furiously scribbled down words and sentences, praying to every available religious source to be able to finish this five-page written assignment by the end of lunch.

Maria sat herself down next to him in an empty chair. "Hey, Alex."

Not even bothering to look up and continuing to hurriedly write, he responded with an indifferent, "Hey, DeLuca, what's up?"

"Um..." Maria hesitated at first. "I kind of need your opinion on something."

"Maria, normally I would gladly offer myself to you and let you talk my ear off, but now is not the greatest time," he answered with evident amounts of stress in his voice. "It's probably the worst time in my entire existence. You see, I have to write a five-page paper on Jefferson's influence on the American government that's due in less than an hour and I've barely filled up one sheet of college-ruled loose-leaf paper. Maybe you should try Liz. She's responsible and does all her homework. She's probably free."

"I know you're busy, but if you could spare, like, 45 seconds of your time, it would be greatly appreciated," Maria pleaded. "I need advice strictly from a teenage male's point-of-view."

Alex looked up with interest and dropped his pen down. "Well, now you have my complete attention," he said, completely focused on her now. "What's going on?"

"Okay, speaking as representative of your gender..." she began. "If you were romantically interested in a girl, would you do things that you wouldn't normally do? Say, for example, show up to a class you usually cut on the basis that she's in that said class?"

"It's highly feasible," Alex answered. "I mean, I'd want to spend as much time with this girl as possible."

Maria contemplated this quietly for a moment. Alex, curious, asked, "So who's the guy?"

"Would you mind terribly if I told you when I had a better idea of his feelings for me?" she responded. "The whole thing is still kind of if-fy right now. I'm not even sure myself how I feel about him."

"Why?" Alex questioned. "Is it someone who you normally wouldn't think you'd end up with?"

"Yeah," Maria said, nodding her head. "You could say that." Suddenly, she winced and began to rub her forehead gently with her fingers.

Alex noticed this almost immediately, and his friend instincts took over. "Hey... you all right? Do you want to go to the nurse?"

"I'm fine," Maria waved it away. "These headaches I've been getting lately..." She winced again, and a small groan escaped her lips.

"That's it, we're going to the nurse," he said, standing up.

"No, no, no," Maria insisted. "I'll be fine, I just need to take some aspirin."

"Maria--"

"I'll be fine," she said again. "It's no big deal."

-----

Maria stood at the water fountain, drinking some of the liquid and stopping to swallow the pill. She stepped back and wiped away some moisture on her lips, sighing as she walked away. As she strolled toward the doors leading out into the courtyard, she passed the art room. Maria was surprised to see Michael in there. His back was facing her, but it was obvious that he was concentrating hard on what he was doing, his attention solely focused on his work in front of him.

As she neared toward him quietly, what he was drawing became more and more clear to her. When Maria finally realized what it was a sketch of, her eyes widened with amazement. Her shoes accidentally squeaked across the linoleum floor, and Michael turned around abruptly to see the intruder.

When he saw it was Maria, he glanced back at the drawing and then again at her. "I hope you don't mind," he said quickly. "We're doing sketches of the human face, and..."

"Mind?" Maria asked incredulously, her whole face glowing. She came up closer to the drawing of her to get a better look at it. "Nobody's ever drawn me before. Unless you count the caricature at Disneyland when I was eight, but that could never even compare."

Michael smiled, pleased with her delight.

"Do you think I could..." she began to ask, then changed her mind. "Forget it."

"What?"

"I was just wondering if..." Maria hesitated. "Well, that after you're finished with it, and after it's graded... can I have it?"

"I could draw you a better one," Michael replied, suddenly noticing flaws in his sketch. "I could--"

"But I want this one," Maria said.

Michael stood still for a moment. He nodded his head. "Sure, but I really could draw one that's better than--"

"I want this one," she repeated, smiling the exact same smile he had captured on canvas.

Michael nodded again, unable to speak. Her closeness had this effect on him, where he'd forgotten how to talk.

-----

Maria hummed to herself happily as she wiped the Crashdown Cafe counter clean with a rag. Liz came out from the kitchen with some clean plates and silverware to set on it. "Somebody's in a good mood," she observed, smiling at Maria's happy disposition.

"And I have good reason to be," Maria said, smiling wickedly.

"What are you not telling me?" Liz said, practically squealing.

"I'll tell you later," Maria said cryptically. "In private."

Liz's excited smile disappeared when saw out of the corner of her eye Max and Isabel enter the Crashdown. Maria turned around quickly to see what had caused her sudden change in mood.

She turned back to Liz. "You want me to cover their table?"

Liz nodded solemnly. "Thank you."

"I guess you really are going to stick to this 'Stay away from Max' solution," Maria said.

Liz sighed. "I can't be around him, Maria. Kyle's getting more and more suspicious. It's for his and Isabel's and Michael's own good to just stay away."

"But it's not for yours," Maria replied. "Liz, this is killing you. And from what I can see..." She casually glanced toward his direction. "It's killing him, too."