OK Fixing this up a bit, I do that. This story is AU, many character will show up eventually, complete families are changed, the first 2 chapters are in thrid person and then it will go straight to first person. This is a coming of age story with a little bit of humor, romance, pairings you love and pairings you hate probably because I am sure when we get to that part of the story (did I mention this is kind of long?) I may get negative reviews but as far as I'm concerned negative feedback is still feedback, but hopefully it will be constructive. I do hope you enjoy this and will update quickly as possible. I' from Canada so this story is set in the states! Enjoy

The title has been changed to 'Wake Me Up' by Avicii for it makes more sense to the whole of the story. And I'm hoping to get more Reviews!

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"Today is the greatest, day I've ever known, can't live for tomorrow, tomorrow's much too long." ~Smashing Pumpkins

1

For Andrew Torres finding the men's room in the Epitome Mall was no more than a puzzle. It was getting there, through the holiday shoppers who, like his mother and sister, still hadn't finished their holiday shopping on December 23, 2010, that was the real challenge. Finally making his way through the crowd he found his destination along with the only place in the mall that was wholly devoid of life. Drew stepped up to the farthest left of the three urinals and was standing there, taking care of the business that had summoned him, when he heard the door bang open.

Etiquette required that he continue staring at the wall in front of him, although etiquette also required that this new visitor use the right-hand urinal rather than the one in the center. Apparently he hadn't heard that. Drew could sense him stepping up next to him, leaving them separated only by the shoulder-to-knee metal divider.

"Ho-ho-ho," The stranger chuckled, "so what are you wishing for this Christmas, young man?"

Drew glanced over. He was obviously the mall's Santa, on a break from posing for pictures with tiny tots with their eyes all aglow. "Santa," he acknowledged him with a grin as he returned his eyes to the front. He had no idea his red suit had a zipper in the front.

"Well?" his booming voice reverberated inside the tiled room. "There must be something you want!"
"Can't think of anything," Drew was still grinning. Apparently the guy really enjoyed this role. Although probably they'd fire his ass if one of the customers caught him smoking in the men's room and complaining about some little girl who'd just gotten a little too excited all over his nice suit. Drew finished up and walked over to the sinks to wash his hands.

"So you've got everything you want in life already?" he asked, still with the loud voice. "Everything's perfect?" "Well, no," Drew said. "All right, you know what I'd like, Santa? Instead of just starting high school, what I'd really like is to be finishing it."

'That way, I could avoid all the assholes, the bullies, the jocks, the bitches, the sniping, the teasing, the gossiping, the backstabbing — instead of three and half more years of this crap, I'd be just about finished.' Drew thought to himself while trying to straighten his brown unruly hair to the side.

Degrassi Community School was not Drew's idea of a good time. Like any typical high school (Well at least in movies) There was a core of jocks (male and female), cheerleaders, and the generally cool; orbiting planets for band members, newspaper and yearbook types, comics, theatre freaks, and druggies, who were at least connected.

Then there were people like Drew, a bottom of the totem-pole freshman, whose orbits occasionally brought them uncomfortably close to the solar system but who generally preferred to stay out among the asteroid fields. He was currently on one of his forays to the center, where he seemed to have been appointed the target-of-the-month by the freshman and sophomore football players and their tart-tongued girlfriends. The juniors and seniors, thank God, thought him so far beneath them as to not even be worthy of attention

It didn't help, actually, having an older brother who was one of those seniors, bound for Arizona State next year on a football scholarship. The gym coach was constantly expecting Drew to show even a fraction of his brother's athletic ability; the teachers were constantly expecting Drew to be as much a goof-off as he was; and the girls, even in his own grade, were constantly comparing his six-foot-two, 220-pound frame to Drew's. At five-foot-seven and 140 pounds, Drew was constantly disappointing them.

"That's a pretty tall order, young man," Santa laughed as he joined him at the sinks. "So basically you just want to skip all this annoying adolescence and go straight on into adulthood, huh?" 'Was Santa Claus mocking me?' He thought as he looked at him in the mirror, but he still wore the same jolly expression, even on his breaks.

"I was more mature at six than most of the guys in his high school will be when they're thirty-six," Drew said. "Maybe so," he laughed again as Drew dried his hands and pulled open the door. "Have a Merry Christmas, young man!" "Yeah, you too," He mumbled as he let the door close behind him.

Drew made his way back to where he was supposed to meet his Mom and sister Imogen, noticing along the way that Santa Claus was already back at his station, making yet another kid smile as he bounced her on his knee. Probably knew some sort of mall shortcut.

His pissy mood evaporated as soon as he saw them standing there, two women for whom the Christmas season seemed to have been designed. They were comparing what they bought, Mom a present for a new family in our community with a newborn baby, and Imogen a couple of presents for two new girls in her circle of friends in the eighth grade.

"All set, Andrew?" Mom asked. "Sure you don't want to get anything while we're here? You have presents for everybody?"

"I think so," I said, pretending to go over the list again. "Dad," — that would be a set of offset screwdrivers — "you," — a bathrobe he'd actually picked out last summer — "Jay," — a copy of the new Madden Football game — "and Maya" - a pair of earrings for his fashion-conscious seventh-grade sister. "That's everyone!" he grinned.

"Jerk," Imogen smiled at him. "Oh, and Imogen," he said. "I must have gotten a present for Imogen. Still, too late now, huh?" "Jerk!" Imogen smiled again slightly hitting him with one of her bags.

Drew had spent the most time picking that one out, a sweater that perfectly complemented her brown eyes. He would tell her that, two mornings from now, and she would ask how anything could complement eyes hidden behind glasses as thick as hers, and he'd kid her that her boyfriends would notice, and she'd ask which boyfriend, the older college-age one or the younger high school one. Then they'd both laugh. Neither Imogen nor Drew was ever going to be among the school's beautiful people. Unlike Jay, for instance, the jock of jocks, who seemed to have a different girl every week, or Maya, who was already reveling in the attention she was attracting from high school guys, to the point where she wouldn't even consider dating an eighth-grader, let alone a guy from her own grade.

Imogen and Drew were different.

Imogen would start dating when she found a boy smart enough to look beneath her shy quirkiness. And maybe when she got a different pair of glasses; it wasn't so much that they were thick as that the frame did nothing to hide that fact. And, in truth, she could use a little bit more developing, just like Drew could. Just like he got compared to Jay, she got compared to Maya, about an inch and a cup size to Imogen's detriment. She was constantly getting teased about her "little" sister, and the stuff Drew heard when she wasn't around was even cattier. But he loved his sister, and he knew that, even if she kept the same glasses and the same bust, someday she'd find a guy who thought as highly of her as I did.

Drew would start dating when he found a girl like Imogen.

"So what are you doing tonight?" Imogen turned around from the front seat of Mom's car to ask him. "Why?" He rolled his eyes. "Clare's coming over," she shrugged. "I just thought —" "I'm busy," he said. "Oh, stop it," she laughed. "Clare's nice." Drew held up his hands, "I never said she wasn't," he protested. "But I don't know, chubby little metal-mouth Clare Edwards and me? Can you see that?"

"I think you two would be a very cute couple," Mom piped in from her seat. "Don't you have driving to do?" he pointed ahead for her. "Stop signs, lights, all that?" "She's not chubby anymore," Imogen protested. "And she gets her braces off next summer." "Yeah, I know," he said. "But she seems so, I dunno, desperate."

"She likes you," Imogen objected. "Who knows why?" "So what are you doing tonight?" he asked her after a suitable pause. Imogen smiled, he couldn't fool her. "We're gonna listen to some tunes and then walk around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights," she said. "You wanna join us?" "Wouldn't that make either you or me the third wheel?" I asked. "Yeah, one of us," she admitted with a smile. "But you know how much I like helping you out." "Helping me out?" he raised his eyebrows. "You mean helping Clare out." "Next fall, Clare's gonna have to beat the guys off with a stick," Imogen pointed out. "She doesn't need his help."

It was true. Drew left them alone for the music portion of the evening, but allowed himself to be coaxed outside for the walk. Once there, Clare's gloved hand had shyly made its way into his as they strolled beside Imogen and listened to her commentary on which of their neighbors had committed serious Christmas decorating errors and which had gotten it right.

When we they were back in the house, after Clare had discarded the scarf and wool hat she'd been wearing, Drew was struck by the suddenly clear vision of how pretty she was, in fact, going to be next year, she glanced at him for a moment and blushed. Drew didn't notice though he was entranced by her eyes. He knew if he waited until next fall he wouldn't get close enough to be hit with the stick.

So later that evening, while Imogen was making hot chocolate for the three of them in the kitchen, Drew sat with next to Clare on the back patio and made inane small talk. 'What was I doing for Christmas?' 'Oh, nothing special.' 'What was she doing for Christmas?' She was leaving tomorrow with her family for Medford, where her grandparents lived. Clare looked up at the stars, "Do you like stars?" Drew smirked looking up himself "I like looking at them." Then he looked back at her, she smiled shyly.

Finally, as Drew heard the teakettle start to make noise he knew Imogen was pouring the milk into the mugs, he tentatively leaned in for his first kiss. "Finally," Clare agreed in a sigh as she pressed her mouth against his, her soft lips self-consciously pressing out to make sure that he couldn't feel her braces with his own lips. "Hot chocolate's done," Imogen announced from the kitchen, giving them a full five seconds to disengage before she bustled outside with the three mugs. "So?" she asked. "True love yet?" Drew blushed, while Imogen and Clare burst into giggles.

Later that evening, while Imogen made a big production of washing out the mugs in the kitchen and carefully drying them, Clare and Drew shared two more kisses, and agreed that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if they ran into each other when she returned in the New Year.

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"So, did you and Clare have a nice time last night?" Mom asked innocently at breakfast the next morning. "Yeah," Drew grunted. "Sure." "And did you have a nice time with Clare after she went home?" Imogen whispered when Mom was out of earshot. "What are you talking about?" he could feel himself blushing. "Squeak, squeak, squeak," she whispered. Drew felt his cheeks burning as he tried to find something — anything — in his cereal bowl that was worthy of intensive study.

"Don't worry," Imogen said, "she did it, too." he looked up in astonishment. "How do you know?" he whispered. "She called me last night," Imogen smiled. Drew was finally able to close his mouth. "And, um, she didn't tell you that sort of, um, in confidence?" he asked. "And, um, she asked me, um, to tell you," Imogen mocked him with a big grin.

They spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, one of Mom's bugaboos. Jay helped by staying out of the way, while Imogen and Drew, and to a lesser extent Maya, dusted the cabinets, vacuumed the floors, and cleaned the kitchen counters. When Santa Claus came to the Torres house tonight, he was going to find it spotless.

Drew's day got a little bit better late in the afternoon when they got their report cards. At dinner that evening, the family's traditional Christmas Eve roast, Mom made a big deal about Drew's across-the-board A-pluses. His father grunted his approval, but he was far more interested in re-running the film of the state championship football game two weekends ago that Degrassi had come within a field goal of winning thanks to his brother's 300 yards passing. While he and Jay watched the tape, the rest of them would be spending Christmas Eve decorating the tree, and then attending the 10 p.m. service at their church.

"I don't know," Mom teased me by cupping her hand to her ear after Dad and Jay left the dinner table. "I think I hear NYU calling." "Mom," he reddened.

Drew's Uncle Derek married to Mom's sister Stephanie, was a tenured professor of history at the New York University, and he described it in such glowing terms that even though it couldn't possibly all be true, he'd never lost his dream of going there one day. 'And Mom's right, these grades wouldn't hurt.' He thought to himself. The odd part was that he hadn't given a lot of conscious thought to them last semester. Instead, once his teachers had gotten past the 'me-as-Jay's-brother' thing, they'd turned out to be a pretty good bunch. His English teacher in particular, Mrs. Dawes, was amazing. She had led these discussions of Charles Dickens that even had some of the druggies participating. So to the extent he got good grades, it was because he'd actually enjoyed doing the work.

"Calling all geeks, calling all geeks," Maya interrupted Drew from his reverie. He stuck his tongue out at her. She was capable of being a good student herself, and she'd actually done well last semester: three B's, an A-minus, and an A. Imogen had just missed straight A's with a single B-plus. Jay? Well, it was a good thing it was an athletic scholarship, not an academic one. Still, he wasn't in any danger of not being able to play when he got there.

Drew went to bed that evening just before midnight, with the lights of the tree still illuminating the stairs leading up from the living room. He lay there for a while, his hands behind his head, thinking that maybe he'd been a little hasty the day before in the men's room at the mall. Really, if Clare Edwards was going to be around, if the teachers were actually bringing this kind of work out of him, then high school might not be that bad.

Drew woke up at 3:00am, with a desperate need to visit the bathroom. He had no sooner gotten out of bed than he tripped on something lying on the floor. Swearing quietly, he pulled himself up and quietly walked down the hallway to the bathroom he shared with Jay. After he was finished, he washed his hands in the bathroom sink. Then, with just the barest of glances at his reflection in the mirror over the sink, he jumped back and flipped off the light. He flipped it right back on again and stared at the mirror.

Holy shit! He had no idea who he was looking at.

Drew was on the verge of a freak-out, he waved to himself in the mirror not believing his eyes, it was his blue eyes, same brown hair only now cut shorter. Whose ripped pecks were those? Whose muscled arms were those? And, just as a matter of general information, whose five-foot-eleven inch body was that?

He continued to stand there for another five minutes, raising his arms to make sure that the mirror was reflecting properly, and then touching his face, his arms, and his chest to see if they would disappear. Drew was fully awake now and eventually forced himself back into the hallway, still lit with a faint glow from the tree downstairs. He flipped on the light in his room, hoping that somewhere inside was a clue to his startling transformation.

If there was, it certainly wasn't going to be easy to find it. His room was a pigsty. What he had tripped on when he'd gotten up was a pile of clothes that easily topped the mattress on the bed. Other than that, he appeared to have gotten extremely lucky not to have tripped on the baseball between the bed and the door, not to mention the pens that littered the floor, lying among a set of notebooks.

Drew made his way over to his desk, uncluttered with anything that looked like schoolwork, and pulled out the chair. He sat down and looked around. There were clues everywhere now. It's just that he had no idea what they meant. There were all sorts of newspaper clippings pasted to the mirror that hung above his desk. According to the headlines, the Degrassi Community School baseball team appeared to have had a phenomenal year. Drew didn't even know Degrassi had a baseball team.

On the shelf directly below the mirror was a picture of a Degrassi baseball team, with the two guys in front, who looked like Johnny DiMarco and Derek Haig holding up a large trophy. They were two sophomore jerks who were also on the football team, and who'd been among his tormenters this past week. Drew was in the picture as well, in his new body, he was standing in the back with an arrogant grin on his face, holding up a much smaller trophy. That trophy, he suddenly realized, was also sitting on the shelf. A baseball player perched atop it, and according to the inscription on the plaque, it had been awarded to "Andrew Torres, MVP — State AAA Tournament, 2013."

He stared at it in disbelief. It was 2013? What had happened to 2011 and 2012? Had he been asleep? Well, no, apparently he'd been playing baseball. Wait, he's a senior, his conversation with the mall Santa. What the hell? Drew fired up the computer sitting on the desk; fortunately it was the one thing in the room, along with the bed and the desk itself, that didn't appear to have changed. He jumped when he opened his browser, and discovered that his home page was now a pornography site. All of his bookmarks, in fact, were porno sites. He finally had to type in the URL for Google to get something that looked familiar.

From there, He found out that it was, in fact, 2013. Barack Obama was still President, the economy was still a wreck, and politicians on both sides were still fighting over something or another, but it seemed people cared more about celebrities and gossip, nothing new there. Drew typed his own name into Google and he came up, finding all of the articles in the local newspaper about the baseball team. Among them were articles that discussed the terrific recruiting war between Giants and Diamond Backs for his services, which appeared to include a 95 mile per hour fastball and a devastating change up. And the Yankees and the Red Sox were interested as well, since baseball prospects could get drafted straight out of high school. 'Wow. No wonder I looked arrogant.' He thought.

Then he found the brief article that broke his heart, dated June 26, 2012.

Audra May Torres, Community Activist

Audra May Torres died this past Tuesday of cancer at Mercy Hospital. She was 40. Mrs. Torres was a noted community activist. Among her causes was the successful 2006 fight to establish what is now known as Sunrise Hill's Park, built on a site that the city had been touting for development as a chemical processing plant. She was a member of the Vestry of the St. James Episcopal Church, and had served as the Vestry's Senior Warden in 2006-2007.

Survivors include her husband, Omar Torres, and her children, Jason, Andrew, Imogen, and Maya, all of DeGrassi, OR.

Drew was in tears when he finished reading, he couldn't believe it, didn't k