A/N: On to chapter three!

Chapter Three –

You've Got Me Hooked:

It takes Andie five minutes to locate the donations log in the back storeroom, hidden among the files and boxes of paperwork and mailing. It takes her another two minutes of rifling through the large binder to find a trace of what she's looking for. There, in black ink, and type-printed on the carbon invoice is the name and date of their most recent benefaction. She scrolls down the list of names and organizations, skimming over irrelevancies quickly until she finds exactly what she thinks she's looking for.

FROM:

Lost Boys Children's Foundation.

588 Avenue of the Americas

New York NY 10011

INVOICE:

Donation of 12 books to The Harrison Book Annex as of: 9/13/17. Invoice received by Marissa Harrison. Books listed as:

- "Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?" – Dr. Seuss

- " Slam!" – Walter Dean Myers

- "Bud, Not Buddy" – Christopher Paul Curtis

- "The Catcher In the Rye" – J.D. Salinger

- "Lord of the Flies" – William Golding

- "The Grapes of Wrath" – John Steinbeck

- "My Name Is America: The Journal of Ben Ushida"

- "My Name is America: The Journal of Biddy Owens"

- "The Things They Carried" – Tim O' Brien

- "The Call of the Wild" – Jack London

- "Peter And Wendy" – J.M. Barrie

- "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" – Jules Verne

She tastes the small victory sweetly on her tongue as she unclips the binder and photocopies the invoice in the small storage room. The name of the foundation from which the book arrived oddly lost on her quickly moving fingers. In another three minutes she's emerged from the back room victorious, brow gleaming with the perspiration of desperation as she clutches tautly to the Xerox sheet.

She finds Quinn exactly where she left her, only the blonde is now perched quietly on the carpet, her legs tucked underneath her Indian-style, her back leant up against a wooden stack, her hands still gripping onto the same worn jacket. Her eyes staring at the tag as if glancing into a far away land where the answers are all there and waiting for an absolution that the blonde is sure will come.

"I think I've found it…"

Andie's words are whisper soft in the silent book shop, and yet it feels as if her lungs are screaming the words, expelling them from her body as she hands over the paper. Quinn looks up and her face pales. She snatches the paper quickly, her eyes raking over the invoice with an unbridled fervor. And now she's laughing – quite mirthfully while a hand rakes through the tufts of hair that have fallen out of her cap. She's laughing so hard that her sides are beginning to hurt, and Andie is looking at her with a hyper accurate sense of concern. As the brunette should be – because who goes from dramatic crying to hysterical laughter in the span of fifteen minutes quite so effortlessly? Quinn Fabray does apparently.

"I don't understand, what's so funny about an invoice?"

"Nothing. Actually it's quite the opposite."

And Quinn is still clutching at her ribs while she attempts to catch her breath. Andie is staring at her wide-eyed, and the blonde suddenly feels likes she owes the woman an explanation for her uncalled for amusement.

"The invoice says the books were donated by the Lost Boys Children's Foundation. That's one of the biggest abandoned youth homes in Manhattan."

"I'm aware…"

"Well, the book you gave me is J.M. Barrie's "Peter and Wendy." If I recall, J.M. Barrie also fashioned a horde of youthful minions to accompany Peter on his adventures and conquests through Neverland…and their collective name was...?"

And suddenly Andie is gasping and clutching a wrinkled palm to her chest. And Quinn has to smile yet again at the sheer brilliance of her current mind's obsession.

"Well then…this is seeming to become less and less coincidental as the time passes."

Quinn smiles halfheartedly, grabbing for her jacket and satchel off of the floor. She silently reaches for the book out of Andie's hands before slinging the satchel over her shoulder and placing gloves onto her slender fingers. She folds the Xerox pristinely into quarters before tucking it carefully into the breast pocket of her seersucker oxford. And just before she turns to leave - her eyes land sadly on Andie's expectant russet ones.

"How easily the ignorant are swayed…"

Andie sighs and bristles before settling her piercing light brown eyes on hazel once more. This time there is a transferal of understanding passing between them. Of course, Andie can never truly understand Quinn's plight – and the blonde is much too prideful for sympathy - yet Quinn cannot, and does not directly tear her eyes away.

"Good luck Quinn."

Andie remarks quietly from her position, and Quinn nods silently before her hands are gripping the large oaken front door and swinging it ajar with a new purpose, and even more questions than answers swirling around in her restless head.

The train takes much too long when you're in a hurry Quinn decides as she pushes her way through the Subway car doors, ascending the underground steps towards the freedom of the New York City evening sunset. And once again, as Quinn makes her final trek home for the day, she is assaulted with how different New York evenings are from New York afternoons.

The atmosphere is dim, and the energy is electric – but instead of the coffee laden, early morning rushers – she is confronted by the night owls, emerging from their caves to wreak havoc among the wide streets and city blocks; The children from earlier yawn into their mothers' waiting arms as they are carried up to apartment buildings for dinner and rest.

She can smell the presence of food swirling into the decaying air, and as she finally makes it up to her apartment – Apartment B54 – after five flights of grueling stairs she groans when she opens the door, collapsing into a frustrated and ubiquitously tense heap atop her sofa.

She would have fallen asleep if it weren't for T.K. jumping onto her back and clawing the back of her sofa like a scratch post. She shoves him off before he can destroy her simple furniture any further, and then she reaches for her cellphone in her jean pocket – the necessary phone calls she needs to make announcing themselves softly as she boots up her Macbook solemnly.

When she opens her browser her fingers grace the keyboard purposefully. She searches for "Neverland Thrifts & Goods" and finds an unavailable link. She calls the number listed on Google and gets the familiar beep of "I'm sorry, the number you are trying to reach…" in a monosyllabic androidian slur. She tries , and upon reading both savory and unsavory reviews that should be of no concern to her, she finally finds something that could be of help.

Posted: 1/06/2013 by: ThrifterMan

So, I used to go this thrift store ALL the time when I lived out by Lima. I luckily moved out of Ohio (thank goodness) but I have to admit that Neverland had

the best steals and bargains. So, I was in the area a little while back visiting a friend, and I decided to visit all of my old haunts, and sadly Neverland wasn't

there anymore! I was flabbergasted. There's still a thrift store there now, but I think it's called "Hook and Sinker thrifts and tackle" or some shit like that now.

Either way, it was a total let down."

This user rated Neverland Thrifts & Goods at: **** four out of five stars!

Quinn rallies with the new information, turning it over in her mind, carefully and calculatedly before searching the new name. She finds a new webpage with the same contact address, and she calls the number. The phone rings three times before an older sounding man is answering on the receiving end of the line; His voice deep and brusque, as though he's spent a lifetime chewing tobacco and smoking cigars at his elderly leisure.

"Hello, Hook Thrift's and Tackle."

"Hi…I—I um. I'm calling from New York City but I'm actually from Lima, and I haven't been back in a while. I was wondering if you could tell me anything about Neverland Thrifts & Goods and what happened to it?"

"Ma'am we're just about to close right now and that's kind of a long story if I do say so myself. We're a thrift store ourselves, so I am sure we can assist you with whatever you're looking fo—"

"I'm sorry. I should have clarified. I was just calling to ask a question, not to buy anything, and if you've got the time, I've got the time."

"…Uh…I guess I can do that."

Quinn can hear the older man take a tired sigh on the other end of the line and she suddenly feels sorry for taking up so much of his time at the end of the workday. She hopes that the information he's about to give her is worthy of their surely shared exhaustion.

"Alright well, Neverland was this shop before they closed out back in mid-2013, early 2014 or so. I came in thinking that the store folded what with the bad economy and all – but from what I hear, it was actually bought out by a private investor, and whoever bought it packed up and left, but not before leasing us the property."

"Huh…that's interesting."

"You got that right. Well, the lease price was good. And at the time we didn't think too much of it, cause we figured it was a financial decision. It wasn't until we signed all the paperwork to actually lease the place that we realized that whoever bought out the property had some demands of ownership."

"Demands of ownership?"

"Well, it isn't technically our property. We're leasing it, and when you do that you have to meet city specifications and owner specifications. And my, oh my – did we have some weird little specifications to adhere to. But don't get me wrong, this is a great place, and great owners, it's just kind of weird if you ask me."

"Like what, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Well for starters, we didn't pick the name. We loved it since we're a tackle shop, but 'Hook' seems kind of campy. We're stuck with it now…and secondly there was a lot of stuff stored here that we keep stored from after the owners bought the place. And all the boxes have a name on 'em. Fab- something, I don't remember."

And Quinn's eyebrows scrunch forward as her fingers tap out a rhythmic beat against the grain of her coffee table. She's quite certain that she wants to hear the rest of this information, and she can't help the flashes of brunette hair and auburn eyes that assault her wavering vision.

"Is the name Fabray?…"

"Yea, yea that's it. Fabray. There's some special box that we've been keeping especially. And we've been told to hand it over as soon as this young lady pays us a visit. The name starts with a Q-something, but that's irrelevant really since you –"

"Quinn."

"—Can't possi – wait? How do you know that name?"

The old voice on the end of the line is gruff with confusion. Quinn can almost smell the cigar on his tongue as he breathes heavily into the receiver.

"Because it's me. My name is Quinn Fabray, I'm twenty two years old, I graduated from McKinley class of 2012, and somehow… someway… I'm calling you right now."

"Well I'll be dammed."

Quinn glances curiously at her jacket again, face scrunching up in scrutiny of its origins and its significance in her short life. She brushes an errant strand of hair behind her ear as she listens on her end of the line for the old man to continue – her eyes widened with rapt attention.

"We've been waiting for your phone call for damn near five years…. If you don't mind my saying, there's something very special waiting for you here…the name's James by the way. But all the guys around here call me Captain for short."

"It's a delight to meet you…Captain."