Disclaimer: Borrowing, borrowing.

Author's Notes: I wrote this about nine months ago, and let it sit, and sit.. and then I found it. Yes, it goes against canon to an embarrassing magnitude, and just for that reason I shouldn't have written it, because I'm a canonwhore. But I wrote it anyway. And I tried to explain the canon relations as best I could. Reviews are appreciated; flames will be laughed at.

Hypothesis

Just think that maybe, for just a minute, this isn't all about Angela Chase. Because even though it seems like every passing moment in my life centers around her, it doesn't. In fact, maybe it's never been about Angela.

Okay, maybe that last part is kind of a lie.

For a long time, it was all about Angela, and that I'll admit. I mean, what do you expect? Think about it in terms of you-and-me. In beginning, when you're young and stupid and have your first crush, you fall for the person you've known the longest, or, at least that's what you believe because that's what everyone says happens. And you believe that girls are the way to go because that's what everyone says you should believe. And yes, you do get an erection when Delia Fisher touches your hand on a microscope, and yes, the same thing happens when you stare at Rayanne Graff's legs on Halloween, and yes, the same thing happens again when you're alone at night and you see Angela Chase's silhouette in the window, but teenage boys can be so sex-starved that anything can give them a hard-on.

And then one day you wake up. Like that story from Vic Racine's English class that we read out loud. Why do I even remember his name if I hated him so much? I don't know, but whatever. One day you wake up, and that's the point. You wake up and you realize that everything you once thought was wrong. When you got jealous seeing Angela Chase kissing Jordan Catalano in the hallway, you weren't jealous because you wished you were the one kissing Angela.

You wanted to be the one kissing Jordan Catalano.

Okay, sorry, I'll try to get away from the you-and-me stuff. I wanted to be the one kissing Jordan Catalano. I want to be the one kissing Jordan Catalano. I want to be the one driving around in his car with him, going to the practices for his band -- Frozen Embryos or Residue or whatever the name is this week. I want to hear him talk about Tino and have him take me to the boiler room where we can do the things I've heard he does with all those girls…like Angela Chase.

I know her name keeps coming up, but I'm trying to explain just why this really isn't about her.

I realize these things haven't happened, and they probably won't, because that's just how I am and that's how he just is. To him I'm Brain (it's like an endearment to me now), that socially awkward guy who got paired up with him when he was failing English. I'm just the tutor, and now I'm the ghostwriter too, or whatever term you want to attach to that. Which brings me to the subject of the letter.

I really hoped Rickie would figure it all out, and for a minute I thought he did, because he's the same way as me (just more open about it, if that's possible). But no…it never works out the way I want it to, I guess. Rickie thought the whole thing was about Angela, because he just assumed that's how the whole thing is, that the rest of the world is proper and straight even when he isn't, and I still can't believe he told her. Now everything is just a mess.

No matter what I told myself, I never did it for Angela. When I wrote the body of the letter, I wrote it with clear blue eyes and soft brown hair in mind, not a fake redhead. And when I had to put the names on it, that's when the trouble began, because for the first time, I wasn't just hiding it. I was out-and-out lying about it. When I headed the letter with Angela's name, I was denying everything I really felt, and when Jordan signed his name at the bottom, in a way he was signing a letter to himself.

And all of this has gotten me nowhere. I never did it for Angela, but somehow, everything happened for her when it could have (maybe even should have) happened for me.