This story is semi-canonical! Imagine today's world, but where everyone has superpowers - all the rest of the facts are the same. Enjoy! ----- In a world filled with superheroes, what little Sean can do just seems... useless. He's rejected from everything, everyone looks down on him. There just doesn't seem to be a place where he fits in. But when he finds Sector Eight, an elite school for the heroes with the best powers who hide in plain site on a website where they are guaranteed success, despite the fact that he is so useless, he can't help but feel like he belongs, like he's finally part of something. Maybe it's possible for him to find a true home that accepts him, but he'll need a little help to believe it... To the world, you are one person. To one person, you are the world. ----- BOOK 1 OF THE 'SECTOR EIGHT' BOOK SERIES

It's the lake in November, and the move closer to the ocean, and Gerard's fixation, and Gerard's compulsions like tidal waves dragging him down, and Mikey's more distant than ever: like they're drifting out into the middle of the ocean, whereas Gerard's just stuck there: water turning to quicksand around him, drowning. And it's the letter; Frank finds it on the floor of the boys' bathroom on the first floor. It's dropped in accident, perhaps from a pocket or something, and it's drenched in what Frank hopes is tap water, and the words: scrawled in blue ink are difficult to make out as the words join together in a fuzzy inky mess. The only paragraph legible is the final one, and even still, it barely is: 'I've been underwater for a long time now, but I'm not drowning, I'm beginning to think I can breathe like this, but I can't, I'm gasping for breath, and I have to do this, Mikey, I have to end this myself. I'm going to the lake on the 1st of November, don't wait for me... I'm not coming back.' And the name signed at the bottom is little more than a smudged mess of blue ink, and there's nothing Frank can do about it, but he knows for certain that the one thing he can't do is ignore this letter, and he reminds himself of that as he folds it into his pocket. It's a suicide note, Frank's stupid, but not stupid enough to brush over that fact, and whoever this person is, Frank knows that they most certainly don't deserve to die. And Frank isn't going to let them. Because he's going to find this person; he's got time now at least, and he can save them, he will save them - Frank promises himself that. But one person in a whole school, it's like a needle in a haystack, but he's got time, it's November 1st in thirty days, and he can only hope that it will be enough. He's got one month: the date is October 1st.

Austin, a warm and caring person, applies for a position in a mental hospital far away from his home in Phoenix. Looking to make a difference, and to really start his life, he takes the job. Alan, a 16 year old diagnosed with undifferentiated-type schizophrenia, is just trying to coast and find his way through the hospital without going into an episode when he meets the new orderly, Austin. Austin is taken with the young inpatient's beauty, and finds himself just wanting to be near Alan, and to help him. Alan feels an undeniable attraction to the older, but is ever held back by his paranoid delusions. How will he overcome? And how will Austin deal with his conflicting feelings?

Alan thinks he's going to be spending all summer on his own, until his older brother's friend, Austin, finds a way into his life. Together, they begin a series of secret trips at night, when neither can sleep.