Terry woke up in his bed, the fleeting wisp of a dream still fleeing his mind. Something important niggled at him, but the idea kept just out of reach. Whatever it was, it would have to wait; he had to get to school.

Terry headed out to the kitchen to grab a quick bite before leaving, but something about the walk from his bedroom to the kitchen seemed strange and far away. Everything looked the same, just like it did yesterday and the day before, yet it felt…wrong somehow. Shouldn't the kitchen be closer?

He shook it off and continued with his day.

The strange feelings followed him all the way to school. For some reason, he had a strong desire to teleport to school. Except that that's impossible without that boomtube thing the Justice League used. Terry wasn't anxious to try that thing again, yet he still felt agonizingly slow on the twenty mile per hour train.

For the third time this week, Max was already at Terry's locker, waiting for him. It was like she stayed overnight, just to show him up.

"Hey Ter. You're here early," Max commented, her voice new and familiar at the same time.

"Hey Max. Yeah, I woke up early and couldn't really go back to sleep. I'm feeling kind of…weird this morning." He pulled open his locker and started pulling out his books for the next few periods.

"Oooookaaaaay…Well, hopefully you'll feel better by third period. Remember, Mrs. Schweitzer's giving us that test today."

"That's today?" Terry reached back into his memory and pulled a vague reference to that. Applied Physics?*

"Tch, tch, tch. Terry, Terry. When will you ever learn? You need to study to pass tests," Max mockingly chided. Then she smiled and struck a pose. "Unless you're awesome, like me."

Terry smiled. He'd missed this. The friendly banter. The small, unimportant concerns of a normal life. And just…well, the security of knowing that the world wouldn't end tomorrow, that home was waiting for him and that he was surrounded by friends and family that actually liked him. It was startling how much he missed being liked. Today was just like the day before. And the day before that. And the day before that. He'd been around people who liked him then too. Max, Dana, his mom, Wa—well, actually, Terry wasn't sure Wayne liked him. More like tolerated. It still didn't make any sense that Terry would miss something that he'd never been without. What was going on here?

—oOo—

Terry tried to concentrate. The air was thick with the clattering of computer keys. Garish classroom lights glared down from the ceiling. Mrs. Schweitzer's eyes darted around the classroom, trying to spot cheaters. Terry stared at his laptop, struggling to make his eyes focus and unblur the black and white pixels.

What is a muon? Is it:

a. an electron

b. a lepton

c. a neutrino

d. None of the above

What? Terry struggled to reach any mention of muons in his memories, but his brain was uncooperative. It was like those dreams where you think you're in school and you have to take a test, but you didn't study, and then you look down and realize you're completely naked.

Wait—dreams…Terry looked down. No, still in the same pants and shirt from this morning.

Still a little suspicious, Terry tested the theory. The brain is sluggish during sleep, so if you pick something unfamiliar and test yourself, it should take longer than normal to remember things. Okay…Life cycle of a cell…Interphase. There's also Anaphase…Prophase…three more…come on, they're all phases—Wait! cytokinesis. But…what are the rest? Terry couldn't reach the information. He was also pretty sure he knew the phases of a cell better than that; it shouldn't have taken so long to come up with the first three.

The next test he could remember was memory. No one ever remembers how their dream starts because it starts as a random series of thoughts and images, then it writes and rewrites itself until it becomes a more cohesive story. Before I was here, I was in the hall. Before that, Mr. Hall's for History. Then Ms. Jensen for Calculus. My locker with Max. The train. Home. Bed.

Nope, nothing was missing. There weren't even time skips, like in the movies when a lot of boring day-to-day minutia happens that isn't important to the movie, and instead of going through it all, the scene just changes and suddenly you remember you've already done it. Another classic sign you're in a dream.

This last one was always the most conclusive. When everything else felt too real to tell, Terry knew he could count on this test to set him straight—

"Five more minutes, class. Finish putting in your answers."

Five minutes? Was that really a whole hour? Terry rushed through the test, just marking answers. Better a one-in-four shot than nothing.