Author Note: Hey y'all! I thought I should straighten several things out before jumping into this. First off, Columbine, Wisconsin is not a real town as far as I know. I've never been to Wisconsin, so I'm sorry if I get the atmosphere, flora and fauna wrong, but such is life. Second, I closed Sam and Dean's age gap to several months instead of several years to make everything work better. Sam and Dean are unrelated in this story, so technically this ain't Wincest 'cause there's no incest, but it will eventually be Sam/Dean and if that still bothers you, then I trust you to make your own safe choice about whether or not to read on. Finally and most importantly, I did not make Sam a girl (Samantha) because I have anything against them being gay together — there's only one Supernatural pairing I ship that isn't gay — but I really wanted to try writing Sam as a girl. ;)

Sorry for that very long statement… now on to the story.

CHAPTER 1: WELCOME TO COLUMBINE

I'd never been to Columbine before in my life, but I still got a strong sense of déjà vu when my dad and I rolled into town. There was this tiny square park (really just a lawn with a few trees and benches) surrounded by oldish-looking shops: diners, bookstores, town hall, a few clothing places for girls… It was like a mash-up of every other Midwestern town Dad and I'd ever hit, and I was bored of it before we reached the house. But hey, we had a house for once instead of some crap-ass motel room, so this job wasn't totally without perks. It wasn't even some shitty shack-type deal; when the Impala stopped, I found myself staring at a real house. Flower garden, rose bush tangled up the wall, gnomes, new paintjob and all. Seriously, a real fucking house.

"Dad," I said. "What is this?"

"It's where we're staying," he said, unhelpful as always.

"You serious? It looks like people still live here."

"They're out of town," Dad replied as he swooped off the driver's seat and around back to pop the trunk.

Huh. Well, that was totally cool with me. I had my own room. We had a working fridge, running water… Heck, we even had a fucking flat screen! After bringing everything in and making a full sweep of the place, I dropped onto the couch with an appreciative sigh. Jesus, the cushions were comfortable!

"Stand up, Dean," Dad ordered when he noticed. His thick lips tucked up into a frown. "We're not here to relax; we're on a job, and you know what that means."

I didn't actually. I mean, I had a general idea, but exactly what he wanted me to do right then and there? No clue. I wasn't a mind reader.

Apparently the blank look on my face said it all because Dad's scowl deepened. "Research," he growled and turned to walk into the kitchen. He'd made it to the archway where carpet switched to tile when he remembered something else and tacked on, "But don't stay up too late. You've got school tomorrow." He actually smiled when he said this, like he could hear the deafening vibrations of my mental groan.

Research and school? Forget the house; Columbine had been constructed by the devil as a personal hell.

Dad had already disappeared into the kitchen, but I couldn't help myself from trying, "You sure you don't need my help on the hunt?"

"If I needed it, I would've asked," the deep voice rumbled through the wall. "You're getting educated." There was a short pause before he added, "I mean that by the way. High school wasn't invented to pick up girls; you better be paying attention in class."

"Of course," I said, but I didn't spend too much energy trying to make my tone convincing. Come on… Dad didn't really expect me to try and work out what the hell was going on in all those random classes when we'd be packing up and hauling ass in just a week or two anyway. There was no way. So it seemed to me that the most productive use of my time in the educational system was, in fact, to pick up girls, and that's exactly what I intended to do.

…

After completing the two-mile walk to school — Dad had laughed when I'd asked if I could borrow the car — I was confronted by a set of crisp brick structures on the side of the road. They seemed to be screaming "preppy" at the top of their peach-pink lungs and I couldn't help but make a face. Well crap. Frowning at the neat metal doors of the administrative building that I was going to have to enter in a few minutes, I turned instead to scan the flow of students slogging their way across the central quad. It was still early autumn, not so cold that the girls who wanted to couldn't wear those cute little shorts that just begged you to stare at their asses, and, well, who was I to deny such pretty pleas? Some of the blue-jean babes were doing decently themselves, and even a few of the chicks who'd given in to the prep of their surroundings and wore plaid skirts managed to make prude look pretty hot.

My eyes followed the neat side-to-side twitches of a pair of daisy dukes up the stairs to the largest building, and then, once they'd disappeared inside, trailed a nicely fitted shirt down the same staircase. After that I switched to watching the animated shivers of some girl's long blond curls until I decided I really couldn't delay going inside any longer, and, with a sigh and a little jerk of my backpack, trudged over to the smug brick building.

"Hello how can I help you," the middle-aged woman at the front desk recited as I stepped up. Her mouth was creased in a dull line and the look she gave me was the same look older people always give youth-culture things like rap and graffiti. "Fuckin' kids," it seemed to say. I never understood why people like that worked in schools, but hey, maybe employment options were pretty slim around here.

I arranged my mouth into a close-lipped smile. "I'm new," I told her, bending down to rest my elbows on the edge of her desk. "S'posed to come here to get my schedule?"

Her dead eyes gave me a totally non-plussed look and she dragged her hand over to open a filing drawer as if I'd asked her to clean up some kid's barf. After fingering through half the folders and narrowing in on her prey, she smacked it down onto the stretch of wood between us and snapped it open.

"Winchester. Dean," she read off the top sheet. God, the woman's voice was flatter than ten-year-old tonic water.

"That's me," I confirmed.

Her nub-tipped fingers flicked the sheet across the surface towards me. "That's your schedule. Welcome to Columbine High."

I slid off her desk with the paper in hand. "Thanks," I said, praying to God that not everybody in the whole damn town was like Mrs. Zombie-Mom there. After just eighteen hours in Columbine, I was already bored out of my mind, and if the people were as dull as the place, then I might as well shoot myself in the head and go to the real Hell, where at least something happened.

But I didn't have to wait long for things to heat up. First period was twelfth-grade English with one Mr. Lang, who didn't notice me walk in late and slip into the outer circle of desks. I slouched down and half-listened to what was going on — some sort of debate or discussion thingy — with all the girls in an inner ring of desks and all the dudes around them. Weird. But hey, it seemed like only the chicks were allowed to talk for now, so that was a plus as far as I was concerned.

"I think it's symbolic of race relations," a girl across the circle was saying, "how we — I mean white people — dug black people into a hole. Like, metaphorically. Since it takes place in like the thirties or something—"

"Twenties," a different chick corrected.

"—Twenties, whatever," chick number one continued with an acknowledging nod towards her editor. "So it being about race makes a lot of sense because it was like… bad for black people then."

"Yeah," another girl broke in. She was sitting up really straight with her legs tightly crossed. One of the skirt-wearing girls. "—but just because it was written by a black woman doesn't mean everything in it is about race. To me it seems like she's trying to make a more universal point about how humanity craves destruction—"

"Sure," girl one cut in, "but we're just talking about the hole right now—"

"Exactly," preppy girl said, reasserting her position as speaker. "Didn't you notice the way they dug the hole? They didn't just dig it; they tore up the grass and the dirt. It was a very violent act. Anyway, since both of the people digging it were black, I don't think it makes much sense to say it's about white people metaphorically burying black people."

"I think we should be looking at this through a homoerotic lens," a new voice drawled over the others.

I could feel the collective eye roll that swept around the room.

"You think we should look at everything through a homoerotic lens," the first chick said with a less-than-subtle sigh. "Newsflash: not all literature is about sex."

"But this totally is," the drawler insisted, although the lagging pace of her voice still seemed to indicate that she didn't care all that much. "Two girls digging a hole together with sticks? And then they break the sticks? And then bury the evidence? What part of that doesn't say forbidden lesbian love?"

"The part earlier on where they're talking about how much they like the boys staring at them, maybe? They're not lesbian."

"I agree with Raina," yet another chick stuck in. "Not about them being lesbian—" she shot a small, apologetic smile at the drawly girl. "—but about it being about sex. And I think that actually goes along with Caroline's violence idea." She nodded towards the preppy redhead. "If we're primarily looking at this through a deconstruction lens, then it makes sense she'd be putting sex — love — and violence — hate — together to show that they're not really polar opposites at all. Like, hate and love are actually interlaced and you can't ever love someone without also hating them. Something along those lines."

"Exactly," the skirt-wearing girl, Caroline, nodded, like this had been her ultimate message all along.

The first speaker allowed her head to tip forward in recognition, but said, "I think Sam has a point, but I still think that Morrison's, like, overarching goal had to do with deconstructing race, too, and I'm not convinced that the hole has nothing to do with it…"

…And I realized that I must be in the wrong class. Fuck, those chicks were smart! I mean, I had no clue what book they were talking about, but the way they were talking about it was giving me chills — so snappy back and forth, like their brains never stopped spinning, like they were hiding golden treasure troves inside their skulls. I mean, not like I'd ever say this out loud, but I dug smart chicks, and before I made myself look like an idiot in front of a whole room full of them, I had to get out.

So I raised my hand.

The conversation stopped instantly. Everybody turned to look at me. I could feel the brain power focused up behind all those pairs of different-colored eyes, all focused on me now.

"Are you in this class?" Mr. Lang asked, seemingly more surprised than anything. The look he gave me from his watery brown eyes wasn't entirely self-confident, like it was possible I could've been his student and he just hadn't noticed over the course of the past month.

"Uh, I'm not sure," I swallowed. Everybody's eyes were crawling over my skin like little creepy critters. "I'm new, and I thought my schedule said to be here, but…"

Mr. Lang slid out of his hunkered position on his stool and tottered over to me. He was a tiny dude, like the wind could blow him over, and I felt like maybe I should be meeting him halfway to spare him the effort, but before I could do more than straighten my back, he was there, hand out-held. "Can I see your schedule?"

"Sure." I released the paper into his wiry-fingered grasp, carefully not looking around the room. Shy wasn't one of my emotions usually — ever, really — but I felt out of place knowing that all the kids around me were, like, fifty times smarter, so for once, shyness it was.

"Ah," the teacher said, prompting me to look up. "It's just the room number that's wrong. Mr. Lang and I decided to switch." The man — who apparently wasn't Mr. Lang — tugged a pen out of his pocket and bent over my desk. "I'm Mr. McDonnel, and this is AP Lit. You want to go to this room." He slid the paper back across the desk towards me with a small smile. "Sorry for the confusion. I can write you a note if you'd like… to explain why you're late."

"That's okay," I said, scooping up my stuff as quickly as I could without losing my outward cool. "I'd've been late anyway." I shot him a quick upturn of my lips in thanks, and then scooted my ass out of there. Leave the geeks to their geeking; I was gonna find some people on my own level.