"Well Marv, this is it; Shermer High School," Harry said, glancing out the window of the van. "Let's go in and see where Eddie wants us."

"Didn't he say he was the principal or somethin'?" Marv asked as they got out and headed for the door.

"Yep," Harry told him. This would be his first time inside a high school, as he had dropped out of school during fifth grade. Marv had had even less schooling; he'd stopped willingly going to classes at his orphanage at age seven, although the nuns had dragged him to class for another two years before he'd ran away and begun his life of crime. The tall thug now gave the front door a good push. It didn't open. "What's the story here?" he asked out loud, pushing with all his might.

"Um, Marv, if you'll look close, you might notice you're supposed to pull the door open," Harry pointed out, gesturing to the door handle and the large sign next to it reading PULL.

"Oh," Marv said sheepishly. He pulled it open and strode in...only to be stop by a security guard at the metal detector inside the front entrance. "This way please," he told Marv, leading him through the detector. It went off with a loud bleep.

"Put all metal objects on the table please," the guard instructed, gesturing to the table next to him. Marv sighed and placed his crowbar on the table. It was at this point that Harry realized that the gun he'd swiped off one of the prison guards during the jailbreak was still in his pocket. Before he could think of a way to get rid of it, the guard waived him forward through the detector. The blast of noise from the detector was so shrill that everybody around turned to look at him.

"Empty your pockets, please," the guard reached into Harry's pocket when he stood there and did nothing and removed the gun. "Can you explain this?" he demanded.

"Uhhhhhhh..." Harry thought frantically for a plausible explanation. Fortunately for him, Rooney happened to walk by at that exact moment and saw him standing there.

"It's okay, Gene; he's joining us," the principal told the guard. The guard gave his boss a doubting look but waved the burglars forward.

"Thanks Eddie," Harry told Rooney as the principal gestured Marv and himself toward the principal's office.

"Do me a favor and don't call me Eddie," Rooney said with mild irritation.

"It's Mr. Rooney as far as you're concerned. And just so I know, your names are...?"

"Oh, uh, Harry Lyme, Marv Murchens," Harry, pointing to Marv, who was eyeing a female teacher passing by in the corridor.

Mr. Lyme, Mr. Murchens, I'm going to brief you on your assignments for this school, first I'd like to introduce you to our superintendent," Rooney said, opening the door to his office. "Just wait in here, I'll be back in a minute."

"Gotcha," Harry gave him a thumbs-up.

"Hey Harry," Marv called out from behind Rooney's desk, "he's got at least a hundred bucks in the drawer here!"

"Put it back!" Harry snapped. "If we want a good payoff from this job, we gotta stay in Eddie's good graces!"

"Then how're we supposed ta rob the kids?" Marv inquired with a confused look on his face.

"Simple. We wait until there's nobody around, then we strike the lockers," Harry explained to him. "All we need to do is create some sort of diversion to get everybody outta here."

"Right, right," Marv reclined back in Rooney's chair. "Do you think we'll be able to get outta this to meet up with Sammy and Lenny this afternoon like we'd promised the day before the break?"

"It don't matter if we get off or not, we'll just sneak out and..." Harry was cut off as Rooney came back in. "Richard, may I introduce you to our new truant officers, Mr. Lyme and Mr. Murchens," he announced over his shoulder to the superintendent. Vernon took one look at the two burglars and motioned for Rooney to follow him.

"Ed, have you got insane?" he demanded once he and Rooney were inside his own office. "I could swear I saw those two gentlemen's pictures on the morning news!"

"So?" Rooney asked.

"So, they're from that big jailbreak from Joliet Prison!" Vernon fairly shouted. "When the school board hears that we've been hiring known felons, we're both going to be sacked!"

"Richard, what the school board doesn't have to know won't hurt them!" Rooney countered. "We don't tell them we hired them. And we don't have to have them on the payroll permanently; once they bring in everybody that we want to see caught, we just turn them over to the police for a big reward and pretend we knew nothing about it."

"And if they testify against us in court?" Vernon asked, still dubious.

"Richard, it'll be their word against ours, and who do you think the authorities are going to believe?" Rooney posed. "Come on, Richard, we're in desperate need of truant officers, and I think that people who know how to be very tough, such as those two, might be exactly what this school needs."

Vernon thought this over for a moment, then shook his head and said, "All right Ed, we'll hire them, but understand this is your responsibility if anybody asks."

"You won't regret this, Richard," Rooney said, giving him a slight smile.

"We won't even have to pay them full salary, because I can tell that they have no idea how much truant officers get paid."

"Good, because the senior class's demands for decorations for the Christmas Eve dance is really starting to cut into the school's budget," Vernon grumbled as they walked back to Rooney's office. "Five hundred dollars for their damn strobe lights, eight hundred more for the damn lighted floor, nine hundred for their damn smoke, six..."

"I get the idea, Richard," Rooney cut him off as they came back into the office.

The Wet Bandits, who had been fiddling with Rooney's computer, quickly jumped back into their seats. "Gentlemen, Mr. Vernon, our superintendent here, has formally approved of your hiring," Rooney told them, gesturing toward his superior. "You'll be starting immediately."

"Sounds great, Eddie," Marv said.

"I said DON'T call me Eddie!" Rooney barked.

"Sorry!" Marv cowered like a wounded puppy. Rooney strode over to his filing cabinet. "For your first assignment, gentlemen, I want you to bring in this miscreant." he pulled a file out of the topmost cabinet and showed the burglars the photo inside. "His name is Ferris Bueller, and he delights in making a mockery of authority. Now I want you to find him and tail him like a fox, so once he breaks a rule--and believe me he will eventually--you can just swoop down on top of him and haul him into this office."

"Right on," Harry said. "Where's he now?"

"If he's stuck to his schedule so far, he'll be in Economics in Room 213 about now," Rooney told him.

"Gotcha. Have him for you before the day's out," Harry rose and shook Rooney's hand. "Come on Marv, let's go get this Drueller guy."

"Bueller," Rooney corrected him.

"Whatever," Harry shrugged him off. He waved for Marv to follow him out the office door.

"Now let's see if they're on time with their big predictions," Rooney murmured, glancing at the clock on the wall. "Bueller's not as easy to catch as they think."

"I'm sure they'll find that out in the end," Vernon mused. He was also looking at the clock. "And speaking of being on time..."

Buck could feel Cecil licking his face as he always did in the morning. There was a difference this morning, though. Usually Cecil licked him in an even pattern; today, however, he was more erratic with it.

"I'm up, I'm up," he muttered, rolling over onto his side and opening his eyes. Cecil barked softly and walked to the door...staggering slightly from side to side as he went. Buck had come home late after Chanice had taken longer than he'd wished to finish catching up with Mr. Rich Stiff Tarquin and hadn't really seen his dog at all before he'd gone to bed, but it was clear that Cecil had consumed too much alcohol the previous day and was now in the middle of a hangover.

"Cecil, I thought I told you not to overdrink!" he called after the German shepherd. As he turned to look at his clock, he noticed the time: 8:40.

"YIPE!" he yelled, jumping about three feet off the bed, "Richard's going to have my head for breakfast!"

"He picked up the first pair of clothes he could find off the floor and dashed into the kitchen, leaping over a still-inebriated Cecil in the doorway. He grabbed his brown coat and hat (for a change of pace from his usual gray) and briefcase off the table, ran to the garage, jumped into his car, and hit the gas. It was only at this point that he realized that he'd forgotten to open the garage door. The car slammed through it at about twenty miles an hour.

"Oh geez!" he groaned looking back at the big hole in the door, "that's going to cost me a lot in repairs!"

He zoomed across town as fast as he could. There'd be no time to stop for the kids now; he'd have to hope Bob and Cindy handled it for him today. As he pulled into the Shermer High parking lot, he noticed with great disappointment that his usual parking space was taken up by the Wet Bandits' van. "Perfect!" he muttered, swerving into the first open spot he could find, "Just my luck!" He looked around. No one had noticed he was there. Buck headed for the side entrance. The last thing he wanted now was to get caught late.

"Taking your time this morning, huh, Buck?" came Carl's voice as Buck entered. The janitor was busy cleaning out the nearby water fountain.

"Listen, uh, Carl, I'd like it if you didn't tell anybody about this," Buck pleaded with him.

"He doesn't have to, Russell, we already know," came Vernon's voice from behind the janitor. The superintendent was looking at his watch. "Congratulations Russell, you are officially one hour and forty-seven minutes late," he continued. "If I'm not mistaken, this is the ninth time you've come in late this year. What's you're pathetic excuse this time?"

"Uh..." Buck thought long and hard for the best one he could think of, "...would you believe, Richard, that my...?"

"You know what, don't even bother," Vernon interrupted him. "Let me clue you in on something, Russell. This school takes pride in the fact that its faculty is always on time for classes. If you think for one minute that I care to have guidance counselors who don't show up when they're supposed to, you're dead wrong. Now get to class."

"Can I just go the bathroom first?" Buck implored. "I would have back at home but as you know, I got hung up."

Vernon checked his watch again. "You have three minutes; go!" he snarled and stormed off.

"You know Carl, I think Richard's really getting a bit more stricter lately," Buck confided with the janitor.

"Don't worry about it, Buck, he's like this every Christmas," Carl reassured him.

"I think we get more detentions now than at any other point during the year."

"Really? Well, I'll talk to you later Carl; I'm down to about two and a half minutes by now," Buck said as he started for the nearest restroom.

"Enjoy yourself, Buck," Carl called after him.

"Oh boy is my bladder killing me!" Buck moaned to himself and he dashed into the bathroom. He jumped into the first stall available and dropped all his stuff and the floor. As he was busy relieving himself, he became aware that there was someone in the stall next to him, and that person was crying hard.

"Who's there?" he turned and saw, with horror, a rope tied to an air vent just above the stall. Although the distraught person wasn't visible, it was clear he was about to hang himself.

"Don't do it!" Buck yelled and ran out of his own stall. He yanked on the door of the adjacent one. It had been locked from the inside. The person inside it took the plunge with a loud sniff. Realizing he had mere seconds, Buck got down on his knees and crawled under the door, a tight squeeze for a man of his dimensions. Before he'd even gotten fully in the stall, he reached upwards, grabbed a hold of the person's feet, and lifted him up. "Hang in there, pal, I'll get you out of this!" he said.

"No please, just let me die! Just let me die!" the person begged.

"I can't let you die here and..." it was now that Buck actually looked up at the person whose life he was saving. His jaw hit the stall floor; it was the last person he would have expected to see in a predicament like this.

"BRIAN!?" he gasped as he finished squirming his way into the stall and removed the noose from around the brain's neck. "How...why...what...?"

Before a tearful Brian could answer him, the bathroom door slammed open.

"Russell, I gave you three minutes to go the bathroom, not disturb every class on the first floor!" Vernon bellowed. The superintendent yanked on the stall door. "Open this up right now, Russell!" he demanded.

"Richard, just let me explain!" Buck pleaded as he opened the door. "You see, I was just going like you asked, and I..."

But Vernon wasn't listening to him. He stormed past the counselor and grabbed hold of the noose. He gave Brian a very stern glare.

"What is this?" he demanded. "I thought I made it perfectly clear last time that weapons are not permitted in this school!"

"Mr. Vernon. please, I..." Brian began, but Vernon didn't let him finish.

"It's detention for you, my friend!" he shouted and turned to leave.

"Just wait a minute, Richard!" Buck demanded, jumping in the superintendent's path. "He's just tried to kill himself, and all you can think about is punishment!?"

"Russell, if you would have taken any time at all to read the manual when you took this job, you would have noticed that weapons of any kind, nooses included, are strictly forbidden from this school!" Vernon shot back. "And for your information, this is not the first time that Mr. Johnson there has broken this rule. I'm just doing what the rules say. Now if you'll excuse me, I need make some calls about this." He stormed out of the bathroom.

"Who did you marry, Nurse Ratched?" Buck muttered after him.

"What was that!?" Vernon snapped, turning around.

"I said, uh, 'Why can't we just bury the hatchet?'" Buck said quickly, wishing deep down he could really bury the hatchet (his own) with the superintendent.

"Because you make it impossible to!" Vernon growled and slammed the bathroom door after himself. Buck made a funny face after his boss, then turned back toward Brian, who was now sitting on the bathroom floor with his head in his hands. "Are you okay there, buddy?" he asked the brain.

"No," Brian sniffed, "why didn't you just let me die?"

"Because you don't need to," Buck took Brian's hand and helped him to his feet.

"Why don't you come into my office and we can talk about what's so wrong." He led Brian out of the bathroom and across the hall to his office. "Hold all my calls, Janet," he asked his secretary as he closed the office door.

"Tissue?" he offered, holding up a box on his desk. Brian shook his head. Buck put the box down and took his seat behind his desk. "So, what's driving you to kill yourself?" he asked.

"Well," Brian took a long pause before continuing, "last night I was one the academic team in the big competition, and we were down to the last question, and I buzzed in before the moderator had even finished reading the question, and then...then...then I just totally blanked out until time ran out and we lost five points. The game ended right after it. We lost by one point." He buried his face in his hands again.

"So?" Buck couldn't see what was so wrong with this.

"So, I've been waiting my whole life to win one of these competitions, and now I'll never have that chance again!" Brian moaned, giving Buck a look that hinted that he couldn't guess how the counselor couldn't have seen his point of view right away.

"Okay, I can see that, but is it still something to kill yourself over?" Buck inquired.

"No, there's more," Brian continued, sniffing heavily. "I found out this morning that I spent too much time practicing for the competition, and it cost me in my best class."

He tossed a crumpled up piece of paper onto Buck's desk and turned away in shame. Buck picked it up and examined it. It was a Calculus paper, and right at the top was the grade 31% in big red marker along with the words I'M VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, BRIAN. I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED MUCH BETTER FROM SOMEONE OF YOUR CAPABILITIES.

"Well, it's not so bad," the counselor said optimistically. "I mean I've seen worse..."

"WHERE!? WHERE COULD YOU HAVE POSSIBLY SEEN WORSE!!??" Brian shouted so suddenly that Buck jerked backwards in his seat from shock. "There's no way on earth I can get this up to a passing grade by the time the semester ends in January, so I've failed my best class!"

He completely broke down into tears. "Can't you understand?" he asked between sobs. "Getting good grades has, is, and always will be my life. Without it, I'm nothing, absolutely nothing. I'm utterly worthless right now, and my parents will disown me when they here about this (Buck flinched ever so slightly at the word "disown")! I have nothing more to live for!"

Buck felt utterly helpless. He had never expected when he'd signed on that he'd have to be dealing with someone so completely suicidal as Brian was right now.

He was at a loss for words on what to say next, but then his intercom rang. "Miss Chandra Oaks is here again; she's in pretty bad shape again," Janet announced. Buck sighed. The last thing he wanted now was to be face-to-face with another emotionally broken human being. "Send her in," he answered. "If you'll just hang on a second, we can get back to you in a minute," he told Brian. Brian nodded ever so slightly.

Chandra came in, tears ripping her face apart as well. "I guess you haven't made any new friends since we last talked," Buck said, hoping he didn't sound antagonistical.

"No," Chandra sobbed. "The bullies haven't forgotten me, though. "A couple of them pinned me against a locker and called me a freak, and everyone around just laughed! I can't take much of this anymore!"

"Can you identify your attackers?" Buck asked.

"Only the leader," Chandra told him. "It was John Bender. He has some kind of grudge against me!"

Brian snorted in the seat next to her. "I knew he'd never really change!" he stated.

Chandra turned at the sound of his voice. Her eyes widened at the sight of him.

"What are you doing here like this?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

Before Brian could answer this, the intercom buzzed again. "Mrs. Johnson's here," Janet announced.

"Oh no!" Brian slumped his head in misery.

"What's there to be worried about, pal? She's probably just..." Buck began, but before he could finish, the door slammed open and Mrs. Johnson stormed in. Buck hadn't seen anybody so angry since last February when Chanice had thought he'd been cheating on her. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Johnson," the counselor said with a smile. "I'm sorry we have to meet this way, but..."

"You and me both!" Mrs. Johnson snapped. She gave her son an icy stare.

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself this time!?" she demanded. Brian said nothing and lowered his head in shame.

"This time?" Buck asked, now thoroughly worried. Although he'd been listening when Vernon had said it had happened with Brian before, he hadn't taken the superintendent all that seriously.

"Yes we've been through this before, and I'm frankly getting very tired of it!"

Mrs.. Johnson jerked her son to his feet. "Come on, we're going!"

"In that case, Mrs. Johnson, I think we'd better have a little talk about this

sometime in the next couple of days," Buck said quickly. "Whatever!" she called over her shoulder.

"Is he going to be all right, Mr. Russell?" Chandra asked with great concern.

"Oh, I think so," Buck told her with a forced smile. "You see, he's had a rough twenty-four hours, but he'll be over it." Then his expression fell and he added, less optimistically, "I hope."

The sound of a rooster crowing, appropriately enough, awoke Kevin from his slumber. He stretched and threw off the hay he'd covered himself with, sending a few chickens scurrying down the hayloft. He hoped to get a good start on his way back to Chicago...only he didn't have a clue how. First he had to figure out where he was to begin with, as he'd been inside a crate for most of the journey to where he was now, his bearings were all off.

From outside came the sound of a car horn honking. Kevin ran over to the barn window and saw a yellow Volvo pulling up to the front of the farmhouse. An elderly man carrying several large wrapped packages got out of it and waved to the farmer, who had been waiting on his front porch. An idea formed in Kevin's mind. He waited until both the farmer and this new man had gone inside the farmhouse, and then scrambled down the ladder to the barn's ground floor. Exiting the barn, he rushed across to the car, crawled underneath it, and grabbed a hold of the muffler. It wouldn't be the most comfortable way to travel, but at least he'd get a free ride back into Wichita...provided of course, that was where the older man was going.

It seemed like an eternity to Kevin, but finally the elderly man came back out of the farmhouse. "I'll be over Christmas Eve at six," he called out. "It'll take me a while to find a stand-in to run the motel for me, but I won't be late."

"Okay Daddy, I'll see you then," called the farmer.

"Right," the older man got into the car and started it up. The moment it started moving, Kevin realized he'd made a bit of a mistake getting under the car, for it immediately began hitting potholes and splashed mud all over him. But it was too late to turn back now. He clung to the muffler as tightly as he could, braving tight turns and uneven roads for close to fifteen minutes, until finally his fingers could hang on no longer.

Taking a deep breath, he let go and fell to the street, rolling out of the way of the rear tires. He got to his feet and shook himself off, thankful that he wasn't seriously hurt. Taking a look around, he was overcome by the desire to get moving again, as the neighborhood looked very bad. The buildings all along the street he'd landed in were run down, trash blew in the streets, and abandoned cars were everywhere. It was the kind of neighborhood he'd been warned to stay out of by his parents too many times to count.

There was the sound of an engine gunning right behind Kevin that made his jump slightly. Turning around, he found himself looking at a large and burly man on a motorcycle with long hair and a beard and wearing usual biker clothing. This man was giving him a rather evil look. Without thinking about it, Kevin took off running toward the nearest alley he could see, praying it wasn't wide enough for the biker to come into. He flattened himself up against the alley wall and waited until he heard the sound of the motorcycle's engine zooming away into the distance. He breathed a huge sigh of relief that it was over with.

"Did you get enough trash, Danny?" came somebody's voice from the alley behind Kevin. Kevin turned around and saw a trio of youngsters about his age huddled around a small fire near the alley's back wall. He was immediately hit by a strong pang of sympathy. He walked over to them. "Hi," he said.

The three of them turned to look at him. Confused looks appeared on their faces.

"I've never seen you around here," said a sour-looking boy with curly hair.

"Uh, no, I'm not from here," Kevin admitted. "Where are your folks?"

Three forlorn looks answered his question. He felt a strong wave of pity. Although he had no idea of knowing how long these kids had been living on their own, he did know that their lives were worse than his Christmases alone. It was a few moments before he was able to collect himself. "Listen, I'm trying to get to the Wichita airport," he told them. "Would you happen to know the way?"

"The airport's clean on the other side of town," said an African-American boy who was feeding trash onto the fire, "but the train station's a couple of blocks down the street. They don't take human passengers, though."

"Oh, it doesn't have to be a passenger train," Kevin explained. "I just need to get anything that's going to Chicago."

"Chicago? You're from Chicago?" asked the third member of the party, a girl who Kevin thought bore a strong resemblance to a younger, blond Hermione Granger.

"Yes," he told her. "It's a long story as to how I got here, though. Thanks for your help."

He turned to leave, then stopped. Something was screaming at him that he couldn't just leave these kids here as they were. He turned back around. They'd already gone back to trying to make their fire work.

"Say," he asked them, "how would you like to have some money to get through the holidays?"

The kids turned back around. "You'd be willing to give us money?" the African-American boy asked, incredulous.

"Yeah, it's Christmas, and besides, you need it more than I do," Kevin said. He dug out his wallet and produced five of his fifteen dollars. "Here," he handed it to the African-American boy, "use it wisely."

"Wow!" the girl exclaimed, taking a peak inside Kevin's wallet, "you're rich!"

"That's nothing!" snorted the curly-haired boy, looking over her shoulder at what the fuss was about, "I've seen people with ten times as much as that!" "Really? Well, I'm sure..." it was at this point that another idea hit Kevin. He wasn't completely sure it was a completely good one, but deep down he felt it would be a good one for everybody. "Something else just occurred to me," he said. "How'd you all like to come with me?"

"Come with you?" the curly-haired boy asked, surprised.

"Yeah, I mean, there's obviously not to much for any of you here, and I know some people back in Chicago who might be interested in adopting you," Kevin said. "It's all up to you; if you don't want to come with me, it's fine, but it'll be better than a thousand-mile journey by myself."

"Hold on while we confer," the African-American boy said, waving his companions over to the alley wall. They talked over what to do for a good minute before coming back over to Kevin. "We'll accept your offer," the African-American boy told Kevin with a wide smile.

"Great," Kevin grinned. "I'm Kevin McCallister, by the way."

"Danny Isaacson," the African-American boy introduced himself with a shake of Kevin's hand. "This is Kayla Goldstein and Skylar O'Sullivan," he gestured toward his companions.

"Pleased to meet you all," Kevin said. "Which way to the train station again?"

"Follow me," Danny took Kevin's hand and started leading him out of the alley.

Kevin smiled to himself. Maybe getting lost this Christmas wasn't going to be so bad after all.