Upon his return to school, Chester found himself predictably immersed almost immediately. It was quite the boon, to say the least, the distraction of regular assignments that he had enough skill to complete doing wonders for his self esteem, and to an arguably less important extent, his hair. He was standing taller than he had in years, the failures of his past and this town's ever-present underlying horribleness not forgotten so much as temporarily put aside. He started making regular visits to the gym again, working on more focused offensive techniques and self-defense rather than mind-numbing heavy lifting. He also did his fair share of cardio—just because—solving math problems in his head to pass the time during spin class.

With all of his assignments for the week completed, Chester had nothing more pressing to worry him on this Friday afternoon than the hole in his workout shorts. How had it even gotten there? He tried to linger after class without being obvious, hopping off of his bike when everyone had left the room, then heading straight for the lockers. Success. If he was going to start finding mysterious new crotch holes in his pants, no one else would ever know.

He should have guessed something was amiss when the door felt clammy under his fingertips, damp when the room was dry and cool, but he pushed at it anyway, anxious to shower and get home. It opened, not onto rows of benches and fluorescent lights, but into a desolate, rain-soaked shell of a building, the world beyond gray and dreary. Chester took a step back, but there was no gym to return to. Summer had ended in an instant, and he was all alone.

He didn't call out like some clueless teenager asking for trouble in a horror movie. Chester stood motionless, holding his breath and trying to keep from shivering. He had no idea where he was or what was going on, but considering he'd crossed paths with both an inhuman, telepathic chanteuse and a pack of werewolves... tangentially... within the past several months, he could only hope he would live to tell the tale this time. Third time was the charm, as they said.

When nothing happened for the next three minutes or so (his watch had stopped, so he had no idea how long it had actually been), Chester reluctantly inched forward, waiting for something familiar, something similar to what he'd encountered before. All was still. Had he not arrived here so abruptly and been aware of Ashdown's peculiarities, he might have thought he'd stumbled upon a lonely stretch of abandoned land in a perfectly normal town. But he was aware, and this was certainly not normal. On high alert, even though nothing was happening, Chester continued forward, wrapping his towel around his shoulders as a makeshift shawl. Why in the hell was it so cold here?

Once he had traversed the rickety fire stairs and was properly outside, Chester stayed glued to the wall of the gym, not wanting to venture too far lest he be plucked up by some monster and stolen away. But the longer he exercised such extreme caution in this desolate place, the more bored he grew. He had a world all to himself. A freezing, rainy world, but a world nonetheless. Sure, he was weirded out, maybe even a little terrified, but countless explorers had likely felt the same in the face of a strange new discovery. He had to push past this apprehension and be bold. He only wished he'd been carrying his notebook.

Even after he had chosen boldness for a goal, it took the better part of twenty minutes for Chester to decide which was he was going to go. In the end he closed his eyes and envisioned the gym behind him, Falk and Victor streets crossing in front, and with a clear picture of which way home was, he decided to head there. Without his bike it took a great deal longer than usual, and along the way he grew colder and colder, vowing to never again leave his house without a windbreaker, at the very least.

Some parts of town closely resembled the area around the gym, all silence and squalor, but most of it was far more put together, closer to what Ashdown would be if everyone simply left rather than if a bomb hit. It was creepy, but not creepy enough to dissuade him from exploration. He reached his front door with three rocks, a piece of jagged black string, and all the rainwater he could dream of drenching his skin. When he wrapped his fingers around the knob and pulled, he expected to see another gutted room inside.

Chester laughed, a single, giddy giggle, when the door led him home instead.