Hatchetfield.

a dissertation on the butterfly and its hurricanes

At the nauseating shrill of his phone alarm, Peter rolls over in his bed and slaps his nightstand, searching for the source of the noise. He finds it, turns off the alarm, and waits a few seconds before rising. Eyes still closed, he swings his legs over the bed's edge and shifts forward to stand, searching for the floor.

He doesn't find it. Before Pete can wake up enough to catch himself, his body pitches forward, and he hits the floor on his face. The pain stuns him. He groans softly, pushing himself to his knees.

No blood is a good sign. It would suck ass to break his nose within the first week of college life.

Curving sunlight comes in through his bent shutters. As Pete reorients himself to his surroundings, he runs his hands across the thick tufts of cotton carpet that had cushioned his fall. Oddly enough, he doesn't remember his dorm room having carpet. The floor is just hard concrete, as far as he remembers, and Ethan Green isn't exactly jacked on money to be splurging on decorations.

Neither is he; every dime he makes at his part-time theater job goes straight into the loans keeping his college career afloat. At least he was lucky enough to have Ted offering to cover his affordable housing, even if there wasn't much else he could do.

Pete rubs his burning eyes, glancing around the room. His first thought is his roommates were pranking him as a belated haze, or he just miscalculated how raised his bed frame was. Instead, he finds himself on the floor of his childhood bedroom.

It's odd to call it his childhood bedroom as if the time he spent in that suffocatingly small room was so far away and not that last summer. But he's found himself easily adjusting to the change; he'd already become accustomed to the prison-like dorm he shared with three other college freshmen, to the communal bathroom Pete only used at night or early in the mornings to avoid the crowds, and to the kitchen always stacked with dirty paper plates and a fridge full of alcohol they weren't allowed to have.

But no, this is definitely not the dorm. That shared living space has boring tan walls and minimal decor. His bedroom walls, on the other hand, are navy blue and covered corner to corner with sci-fi posters and the diagram for his three-body problem. Books from Hawking, Sagan, and Feynman line his shelves alongside knickknacks.

He glances back at his loft bed, his desk tucked beneath it. Everything looks exactly the way it did before he moved out for school. His armillary sphere turns slowly beside his stack of notebooks, his digital alarm clock a glitched-out mess of jumbled neon green lines. Eraser shavings cover the floor and desk chair, all his pens and pencils stuffed into a CCRP mug

Heavy footsteps approach his door. As the door swings open, Pete stares, stunned, at the blurry image of Ted, wearing dress pants and his undershirt, buttoning up his collared shirt.

"The hell are you doing on the floor?" Ted asks. "Tryin' to break your arm so you don't have to go to school? Because trust me, Dad never fell for that when I was your age. Good thing I'm ambidextrous."

The last time he saw his older brother was just a few weeks ago, during move-in weekend, when he double and triple-checked Pete's stock of snacks and insulin supplies. Ethan Green, not a bully but not exactly the nicest kid from Hatchetfield, proved to be a pretty damn good protector. Pete chalks it up less to do with his naturally good nature and more to Lex Foster's positive influence. That, and the threats on his life courtesy of Ted and Steph.

Ted stares at him, eyebrow cocked up, waiting for a response. "What, didja wake up deaf, kid?"

Pete must still be asleep. He blinks, rubbing his eyes hard enough for stars to form, and searches for his glasses on his nightstand. When his vision clears, he's still in his bedroom, and Ted is watching him with an amused expression.