Sometimes Shawn dreams about rewriting the past, and this is how it goes:
Cory understands suddenly, and he looks at Shawn with wide eyes. "It was never about Wisconsin or Penn," he says, a statement of fact, and Shawn just nods. He remembers the feeling from being small; staring up into all the darkness in Cory's bedroom and exacting the thousandth promise that Cory wouldn't go anywhere, wouldn't leave, would still be there in the morning.
"I want to go to college," breathes Shawn, because somewhere along the lines college has become something of a mythic dream, college, a place where the rules would be different and he wouldn't have to be ashamed of having fallen in love with either words or Cory Matthews. He doesn't have the grades to go to college and he's not sure which is more frightening – stagnation or solitude. "Don't leave me," he finds himself whispering in his eleven-year-old voice. "Don't go anywhere, not without me," because when he's rewriting the past he's allowed to be fragile.
"I'm still here," says Cory, and then "Let's go to Vermont. To watch the leaves change."
And so they both skip school to drive to Vermont, and it's imperative because if they wait too long they'll miss the colours and for some reason it doesn't matter that Cory's missing his interview with Stanford.
They babble about childhood remembrances, which leads them to stop on the way and visit a llama farm and Corey and Shawn both spend the entire tour giggling. "Do you remember my glasses," asks Cory; "Do you remember my freckles," asks Shawn, and both grow silent when the time comes to remember Topanga. They remember eating cake in Paramus Mall and Shawn turns the car through the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through and because he is driving Cory feeds him bites of chocolate cake and licks his sticky fingers afterwards.
In Vermont, they leave their car in a garage and wander through a park full of sunlight and yellows, oranges, golds. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," quotes Cory with a grin, and Shawn fills in the rest, "and I took the one that leads me back to you." Poetry, and Cory. Too much reminiscing leads to childish behaviour and suddenly they're running and tossing handfuls of leaves at each-other and collapsing in fits of giggles in the lawn and the world is so beautiful that Shawn can barely stand it. Perhaps they'll both go to Wisconsin, he thinks, and he'll become a poet and Cory will make movies and they'll both live happily ever after.
Cory moves closer, leans his head against Shawn's shoulder, and Shawn laughs. "Lie your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm," he quotes because he can't help it, and he can feel Cory's breath catch and suddenly everything is quiet and still. "I do love you," Shawn says, because it's the only thing to do. "I'm not ashamed," and this time he doesn't have intoxication as an excuse but this time it doesn't matter.
"Yes," agrees Cory, and he's tipping his head in closer for a kiss and this is as far as the story can go because Shawn doesn't dare to think any more of it because none of it could ever be true even if this is how he'd prefer to remember it.