He was going home.

It was funny, in an awful, ironic kind of way, that this thought was what passed through his mind as he looked out the rain-slicked window to his right, watching the state unroll beneath him, barely visible through the heavy cloud cover. Only a scant few years ago, he no longer thought of this place as home. He'd been eager, desperately so, to escape it, to escape the terminal velocity of mediocrity that he saw as inevitable were he to stay in his home town.

Back then, six years ago, TJ honestly felt like the whole world was just waiting for him out there, and had leaped at the chance of going to an out of state college. He saw his pallid reflection grin in the reflection of the window. TJ. Although he'd lost the moniker after high school, eventually settling on Theo, (it was weird, but not so weird that it was alienating, he'd always thought it would seem kind of cool and strange to his own generation, and more refined and dignified to the older generations), he'd never, in his head, or his heart, stopped thinking of himself as TJ. No one had called him that for a long time now.

Well, no one before yesterday, anyway.

As he heard the pilot announce that the plane was on its final approach now, TJ turned away from the window, tried to turn away from the strange sense of dislocation that had settled over him, and closed his eyes.

He needed to gather his thoughts.

He needed to center and ground himself.

He was tired of walking around feeling like a man in a dream, or like a constant miasmic haze of confusion was hanging around his brain. No, he needed to focus, to find himself again if he was going to do this right.

Whatever this was.

TJ was twenty four years old now. When high school had come to a close, he'd gotten accepted to a college and had gone promptly there, intending to get a degree in politics. But somewhere along the way, he'd gotten...lost. Politics became business. It was safer, more certain. Staring down the barrel of actually living life on his own, of paying his own bills and owning his own car and furniture and habitation...well, safer seemed saner. He found that his mind was surprisingly adept at business and office work, even if he didn't enjoy it at all.

He'd known that Jimmy, or James as he liked to be called now, had gotten accepted to the college as well. They'd ended up getting an apartment together two years in. TJ had always wondered why, but he thought he knew. In some bizarre metamorphosis, Guru Kid had become Jimmy in high school, and then he became James in college. James was prudent, James was smart, James was cautious financially. TJ had the idea that James and Menlo would've gotten along very well. Which was what had confused him.

Why would someone like James want TJ as a roommate?

He didn't think that he was wild and crazy and irresponsible, but he also wouldn't describe himself as prudent.

Or, before this year perhaps he wouldn't have.

TJ thought it was a moment of weakness on James's part. TJ was a relic of his past, comfortable only in his familiarity, and so he had accepted his annoying tendencies in exchange for a modicum of comfort by proxy. TJ had always been grateful for that. Hell, they lived together to this day...although that might change.

Everything might change.

There were stories, he remembered, of people waking up one day and realizing they were forty five years old, and hadn't actually done anything with their life. They had let life happen to them rather than actually lived it. He'd never really understood those stories, never really knew what that actually meant, intellectually or even emotionally.

And then, about two weeks ago, he'd had a nightmare.

In it, he was back at his old elementary school. Back at good old Third Street School. And he had gone out onto the playground, onto the blacktop that suddenly seemed almost painful in its familiarity and the nostalgic comfort it provided. There were kids everywhere. He knew most of them. He'd gone looking for his friends, but he couldn't seem to find them anywhere. And what was worse, everyone he talked to didn't recognize him.

No one even knew his name.

And he had eventually found them, but they didn't recognize him either. They hardly even acknowledged him. Not Gus nor Vince nor Gretchen nor Mikey. Not even Spinelli would admit to knowing who he had ever been.

TJ had awoken from that nightmare with a scream trapped in his throat and it had been some strange combination of luck and willpower that it hadn't escaped. God, how hard that would've been to explain to James and probably most of the other people in their building if he had woken up screaming bloody murder.

Initially, he had mistook that nightmare for a spiritual wound, and thought that he was still feeling its effects days, weeks later. But recently he'd discovered the truth of the matter. That nightmare was not a wound, but a needle that had penetrated the real, much older wound that had been growing swollen with spiritual and emotional toxicity for years and years now. It had, in effect, lanced it, and let the infection begin to spill out.

And he was seeing all that tumbled out.

He'd begun to cautiously probe its depths only very recently, and it had led him to...this. It was last night, a Friday night, that everything had come crashing down. James was out of town, on some business trip, and he'd had the run of the apartment. TJ had been crashed out on the couch with pizza and wings and beer trying very hard to just check out, turn his brain off, since it had been spinning like a top all day.

All freaking week now.

He was marathoning Darkwing Duck since he'd bought all three seasons on DVD last month. That was, he realized now, looking back on it, the worst thing he could have done. He had honestly thought that the simple nostalgia of watching his old favorite cartoon would help him zone out, but instead it had ripped open his slowly seeping emotional wound. Like a dam giving way in a sudden, violent eruption, it had nearly given him a panic attack. All of his fears and worries and doubts and anxieties had come bursting out.

TJ had gone to his laptop suddenly and, unsure of what exactly it was he was going to do, had checked his e-mail. It was second nature by then, just something he did almost without thinking about, and there had been a single new message.

From Spinelli.

At first he'd almost deleted it, thinking it to be spam, because he didn't recognize the address. But the fact that it said I could really use some help made him at least pause and then open it. He was so, so glad that he had, because, as it turned out, it was from Spinelli. All it had said was TJ, could really use someone to talk to right now, and we haven't talked in a really long time. Do you think you could give me a call?

Followed by her number. He'd immediately grabbed his cell and punched in the number, but it went straight to voicemail.

From there, he hadn't exactly been at his most rational. This sudden injection of mystery into his life had spurred him into action, and all at once he'd bought a plane ticket back home. It had been torture waiting until he could leave for the terminal. He'd ended up taking a taxi there four hours early, had gone through security and all that jazz and had ended up waiting close to three hours before his flight was ready to be boarded.

The only mercy he'd been afforded so far was that he'd slept through most of the three hour trip. Now he was awake and kind of fidgety. Local time when they touched down would be around four in the afternoon.

He jerked slightly as the pilot began speaking over the intercom, announcing that they were now entering their final descent. TJ took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his eyes inexorably drawn to the window again. They were descending all right. It made his heart hammer in his chest. He'd never liked airplanes. Well, being in them. There were obvious reasons as to why, but honestly he thought a lot of it had to do with a movie he'd seen a really long time ago. Back in ninety-five, there'd been a two-part, lengthy adaptation of a Stephen King book called The Langoliers. It had both captivated and terrified him. The plot revolved largely around people on a plane.

TJ stopped thinking about that and made himself sit back. He closed his eyes. There was enough to make him nervous and anxious right now. Instead, as the plane descended, he thought about what he was going to do. After going through the BS of getting out of the terminal, he was going to take a taxi to Spinelli's parent's place. He obviously didn't know where or if she'd moved, and figured that her parents would know.

God, was she even still in town?

He thought he would have heard about it if she'd moved that far away, but...well, maybe not. They hadn't exactly been staying in contact recently. Well, either way, that was his plan. The fact that he hadn't realized until he'd actually gotten to the terminal that he hadn't brought anything but what was in his pockets was a testament to how freaked out he was. It didn't matter, though. He had money, he could buy whatever he needed. It wasn't like he was going to be here forever. TJ felt himself tense as the plane touched down.

He was back home.

TJ looked around the terminal.

It seemed too bright, a confusing proliferation of people coming and going to and from a hundred different locations. He felt strangely numb as he turned his phone back on, walking out of the walkway and into the terminal at large. He'd half-expected to see a missed call or a text from someone, but there were none.

He supposed at this point no one even knew he was gone from the city he lived in.

TJ felt strangely isolated as he moved through the shifting crowd, listening to several hundred voices overlap and wash over him. At that moment, he felt that same sense of longing and painful nostalgia hitting him, and he thought that he would have given a fair amount to see even a single familiar face.

He finished getting through the terminal and as he stepped outside into the chilly October air, rain falling from dead gray skies, he scanned the row of taxis and cars that were lined up in front of the varied exits...and froze.

His gaze fell upon a familiar face, and he suddenly wondered if perhaps he had been incorrect in his assessment as to how much he wanted to see someone, anyone from his past.

"Hello, TJ," Randall said, a cigarette dangling from his lips, "long time no see."