I was walking around in my Shew grandparents' house, just wandering aimlessly as everyone talked. Along with my grandparents, my parents and sisters were there. My grandma was reclined in the chair that is typically occupied by my grandpa, and he was sitting on the couch. My mom was in the kitchen and my dad and sisters were scattered elsewhere throughout the rooms. As I stood there with my hands on the chair with my grandma in it, I thought to myself that I really should spend more time with my grandparents now that Grandma was back. As it turned out, she wasn't really dead in the first place. I remembered that we were all so glad to hear that. I mean, who wouldn't be?

But there was something bothering me--a new question in my mind that had not previously surfaced. I walked into the kitchen where my mom was, and led her back into the corner. I whispered to her, "Mom...how did anyone know that Grandma was alive? How did she get out? If she would have woken while underground, she would have had no way of notifying anyone to dig her up. And if she woke while above ground where she could notify someone, what in the world was she doing above ground so long after death?" My mom broke eye contact. She looked extremely uncomfortable, and then said "Your grandma was having some tests done on her..." and I said "TESTS? What kind of tests do they need to run on a dead person?" She responded "But Grandma wasn't dead, remember?" I said "But they wouldn't have known that at the time of digging her up unless someone knew she had been buried alive!" She pushed me aside and said "Neal, let's not talk about this now," and walked into the living room.

The weekend was over and I returned to school. It was a dark, gloomy (beautiful!) day and time for advertising class. The lecture hall we used was a large, outdoor, five-tiered structure similar to stadium bleachers. With about an hour left in class (it is typically 1:15 long), Dr. Patrice Berger, head of the honors program at UNL, steps in front of the seats and yells "Class is dismissed! A seminar is being held in this hall so we need you to all leave." I yelled in response "But we are paying for an hour and fifteen minutes of class, and for you to cut our class short, you are cheating the students!" Then some girl two seats down from me yelled "This is a beaurocratic rip off!" Chancellor James Moeser stepped in and said "Yeah, you're right. Now everyone leave!" I said "What a jerk," and the girl who had yelled turned to me and said "Yeah, kinda like your dad!" At first I was mad but then I was like she doesn't know who my dad is so I let it pass.

As I started to get up, my backpack slipped out of my hands and down into the crack beneath my seat. It fell down to the tier below, just like if you accidentally drop something while sitting on bleachers it will fall to the ground. Well, with my luck, my backpack fell through the hole on that tier also. And the next. And the next. And the next. Finally the dense thud sound told me that it hit the ground.

I started looking around for it, but it was so dark underneath those seats that I didn't have a prayer of finding it. But then the outspoken girl from class walked by. I somehow seemed to know that she carried a small flashlight in her purse, so I asked her if I could borrow it long enough to find my backpack. She agreed, but instead of handing me the flashlight, she turned it on, walked over to a small closet beneath the seats, opened the door, and bent down. I didn't have the slightest idea what she was doing, but then I saw that she was opening up a small cabinet inside the closet. Sure enough, she straightened up and in her hand was my backback. I was like "Wow" because that's really all I could think of. How did she know where my backpack was? And how did it get in there?? I thanked her and we began talking and I walked her to her car.

A super-powered prince of some type was making his way across the country and Lincoln was directly in his path. He was not evil by nature. None of his intentions were malicious. He would wander in constant depression. He dreamt of using his powers to create something of beauty--something marvelous--but he could only create non-living things. So his focus was on architecture.

He would walk up to some open space where he could easily work and then stand completely still. With his head down, he would breathe deeply as his cape would rustle in the breeze. Then his he would lift his hands and the structure in his imagination would simply rise from the ground. But it was always flawed in some way, so he would then destroy it and leave behind nothing but a pile of rubble.

I had never seen him before but everyone knew the legend and all about why he did what he did. Mandy and Dietz and I went to a Dairy Queen type restaurant next to a wide open space hoping that he would come by there. We ordered some pop and sat and waited and sure enough, he came. He stood right outside the window and then raised his arms, just like the stories said. Soon, right outside the restaurant was a towering grey cathedral which greatly resembled Notre Dame only taller and with more spiney type towers. It was simply awesome. Everyone around him cheered, because we all thought he had finally achieved perfection and that his quest was over. But that wasn't the case. He turned away in disgust and we could tell from his body language that he wasn't happy. He then turned back to the cathedral and raised his arm--but people yelled out for him to stop. We didn't want him to destroy this--it was absolutely incredible. He said "How can any of you ask me to save this, when you destroy things you create by suppressing them! You over there," he said, pointing to some guy I didn't know, "are an excellent painter, yet you choose not to paint because why? Because you're afraid you will be made fun of. How is that any different from what I am about to do?" The man had no answer, and with one arm motion, the cathedral went down into a pile of stone. Everyone's spirits sank.

We went back to drinking our pop and talking. I mentioned to Dietz something about my grandma, and he responded by saying that he didn't know she was alive. Then Mandy goes "Your grandma's alive???" I said "Yeah, didn't you guys know that?" and obviously no, they didn't. Dietz asked me how she was alive. Well, while we were talking, people were begging the magical prince guy to rebuild his church. He overheard them and then made a connection. "You didn't have her artificially brought back to life did you?" and before waiting for an answer, he went on to say "Neal that is just WRONG! If people are dead they're supposed to STAY dead!" "Dietz," I said, hoping to calm him down. "That's not what happened. I'm not sure what exactly _did_ happen, but don't worry. It was natural." Then we heard a loud noise and all looked over to see the prince rebuilding his church.

A few days later, my friend Bart and I met some kid in a cafe-style restaurant. We sat and talked to him in a booth with me on one side, the new kid on the other, and Bart on a stool at the end of the table. After talking for a while, the kid says "I've met you before." I said "Excuse me? Sorry, but I don't remember you." He said "You know Craig, right?" "Yeah..." I said. "Craig has told me a lot about you," he responded. I asked "So you're a friend of Craig's?" and he nodded his head yes. Then he said "Has Craig ever mentioned his friend Jesse to you?" I answered no, because he hadn't. Then he said "Well you've met her too. She's another good friend of his." I asked "Is she tall?" He began nodding his head. "Does she have brown hair...probably about shoulder length?" He continued to nod as I asked each question. Finally I asked "Is she taking an advertising class this semester?" and he smiled as he completed his nods. "Figured out where you met her, eh?" he asked. Of course I had. Now, not only did I know her name, but I had a mutual friend. If nothing else I could get to know her better and end up with a cool friend. Then the guy said "Actually, she's supposed to meet me here any time now." And wouldn't you know it--the chimes on the door jingled and two girls walked in. I whispered to the guy "Are either of those girls her?" because I didn't recognize either of them as the girl from class. Well, he didn't answer me. His gaze was focused behind me on one of them as they walked in and past our table. He got up and walked with the taller girl to another booth while the shorter girl sat by herself in another booth. Bart followed the two to their booth and sat with them. So now we had a booth of three and two booths of one, and everyone but me seemed to know what was going on.

There was no reason for me to be there so I left. I walked down the street several blocks and ended up down by the docks (?? I thought I was in Lincoln, but you never can tell when you're in my head). The sky was still overcast on this day with a heavy fog over the water. I saw a person struggling with some "things" I couldn't identify so I thought I'd go help him out. As I got closer I saw that it was Dietz carrying two couch cushions. I asked him if he wanted to go running and he said that he would. HOWEVER he first needed to find some place to set his cushions so they wouldn't get stolen. I told him about the restaurant just up the road so we headed away from the dock up towards the store. We could see the backside of the building with the orangeish glow of their back door lights. As we got closer, we saw that Sheri, a girl from our high school class, was standing outside the back door. "Can we leave these cushions here for a while?" I asked. She snapped at us and yelled "No way! Get those out of here!!" I was like "We just need to set them somewhere for a little while" but it didn't make any difference. She wasn't going to let us sit them there. So then I asked "What are you doing out here? Why aren't you inside working?" and she replied "Mandy's inside! I can't let her see me!" as if she would be disgraced or something. I didn't really understand what was going on and I don't think Dietz did either so neither of us really felt compelled to ask her questions.

Then a middle aged man came up to us and told us that he could give us a lift wherever we needed to go. We explained that we didn't need a ride anywhere, just a place to sit the cushions. He responded by saying that he could give us a ride if we helped him fix his truck. Dietz said "Oh well, I know how to fix trucks, so we might as well help him."

This guy looked like the type of 45 year old you would find at a high school football game without any kids in the game. The type who still wants to think he's a rock'n'rollin' high school stud even though he can't see his feet on the other side of his beer belly. The type who can sharpen his steak knife on his whiskers. But we were going to help him anyway.

There was some sort of triangular thing that needed to be on the underside of his truck. I think the problem was that it wasn't on the underside of his truck. Dietz was tinkering with it with his screwdriver and the man turned to me and said "Heh, I bet you don't even know how to use a screwdriver, do ya?" And I said "Nah...I only know how to stick 'em in stupid people's eyes." He looked at me funny so I said "Actually I do know how to use them, I just don't know what the heck that thing is," referring to the triangle thing. He looked at me with a half smile as if to say "I'm not going to turn my back on you." Sometimes I really wish I didn't scare people. It's not intentional. It just happens.

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