-Lungs-

Ryder was smiling when he walked into the auditorium, and Jake gazed at him as he took his seat on the stage. He looked less jittery than he had before, less gloomy.

Just a few hours ago, when he'd texted him: Have you ever been in luv with your best friend? Jake thought his heart was going to stop. He'd told him the truth: Yes. The text felt like a lie in its truth; the moment it had been sent, Jake had become Katie. Jake had become a demon.

"I have, in my hands, our competition for Regionals," said Will with a proud smile. "Drum roll, please." The students stomped their feet and clapped their hands excitedly, and Will announced, "From North Central High School in Indianapolis, the Hoosierdaddies! And from Our Lady of Perpetual Loneliness in Battle Creek Michigan, the Nun-Touchables!"

"We got this!" Sam shouted.

"Mr. Shue, please stop talking, I have an announcement," said Brittany as she stepped in front of him. "I regret to inform you, a deadly asteroid is headed our way." Will shook his head incredulously, and Jake covered his face.

Not this again, he thought.

"Wait, didn't we just go through this at Christmas?" Blaine said.

"Yeah," said Tina, "and is it true that you and Sam got married? Did that happen?"

"Shut up, Tina," Brittany said casually. "I'm naming this comet Tubbington-Bomb, and it is headed straight for Lima."

"Wait," said Artie, "is it an asteroid, or a comet?"

"It's both."

"Wouldn't NASA know about this?" Marley asked.

"We can't trust NASA. I mean, last month a meteor exactly like Tubbington-Bomb hit Russia and we had no warning at all."

"Oh, so now it's a meteor," said Artie.

"That's right, Artie, and when this meteor hits, I will not be spending my time in this room preparing for Regionals. I will be spending my last hours making amends with somebody who I need to get right with. Somebody who I love very much." Her eyes crossed the room before focusing on Sam. "Lord Tubbington." Sam frowned. "So back to your homes, and hide your wife, hide your kids, and… hide your wife. McKinley High, I salute you." She saluted and walked away, leaving the New Directions directionless.

"Last Chances." That was their assignment for the week, and something about it rang true for Jake. He thought about closing the gap, telling Ryder the truth regardless of what Kitty threatened to reveal, and the thought made him feel nauseous and giddy. But then, he could at least talk to Ryder, connect with him; if he ever decided to tell him the truth, he didn't want Ryder to run away. He knew there was something there, and as he walked down the hall, his eyes searching for Ryder, he knew he wanted to see it himself.

Jake passed a frowning Sam in the hall, waving at him as he did, and made a bee-line for Ryder.

"Hey!" They both said; Ryder happily, Jake nervously.

"You look happy," Jake said.

"I have to tell you something," he said. Jake perked up.

"I'm listening."

"Remember that girl I've been texting?"

Oh god, no. "Katie, yeah."

"Well, I know for a fact she's a student here."

"Really?" Jake nodded as if he was curious, but his heart was beating so fast, a Congo drum in his ear.

"Yeah. I wasn't sure before, but last week, I saw a girl that looked like her in the hall. It was brief, and I thought maybe I imagined it, especially when I couldn't find her anywhere." Ryder's eyes were animated, and Jake felt the guilt grow stronger. "Until I spotted her at locker 1487 this morning."

"Whoa, slow down, dude. Are you sure that's her?"

"It definitely is. I can go talk to her."

"Are you sure you should?"

Ryder narrowed his eyes. "Why shouldn't I? We've been talking all this time."

"Yeah, but if she has been throwing off meeting you before, maybe you should do this on her terms. Wait until she's ready to meet you."

"If I wait for her, it may never happen." Ryder reached into his backpack and pulled out two slips of paper. "Did Marley tell you what Unique and Joe did for me?"

"They gave you their tickets, yeah."

"That was beyond cool of them. Well, I have two…"

"You do have two tickets." Jake held his breath, his stomach growing warm. A smile stretched across his face in anticipation, and he wet his lips. "What are you going to do with them?"

"Well, I hope this doesn't sound weird." Ryder frowned and looked at the ground.

"I'm open for anything. I promise."

"I thought that maybe, if I invited Katie, we'd have time to get to know each other in person. I mean, even through our texts, there are just certain things…" The rest of his words blurred out of existence as Jake spun into his reality, and he felt all of the air cascade out of his lungs, the rejection—no, the oblivion, knocking him in his diaphragm without mercy. That phantom returned, mocking his naiveté.

"Jake. Jake!" Ryder shook his shoulder, and Jake blinked back to life.

"What?"

"I'm about to go find her."

"Wait, I don't think—"

"This week's theme is Last Chances, Jake." Ryder inhaled real deep. "I know an asteroid isn't about to collide into the planet, but I still want to take this chance. You understand, right?"

"I understand." Jake bit his lip and nodded, then said, "Ryder, just know that I really care about you." Ryder's eyes widened, but Jake did not falter. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt you, even if my attempts not to have… failed."

"Does this have anything to do with that stuff I said last week?"

"Yes, no. A little." Jake sighed. "I have a lot to tell you, but I'm going to let you do what you need to do. I don't want to be the one pulling wool over your eyes." Jake abruptly turned and walked away, already regretting everything he'd said.

Ryder almost turned around, but he couldn't do that. He couldn't abandon his chance to find Katie; what if she magically disappeared, plucked from the earth by a ghostly hand in the sky, returned to her realm of angels where she belonged like a prodigal daughter.

He saw her at the end of the hall, a waterfall of golden hair spilling down her back. She laughed at a friend beside her, exposing her profile. It was definitely her. As Ryder approached her, she recognized him and her eyes lit up.

"H-Hey," he said with a nervous smile, trying to go for charming. "How ya doing?"

She looked around, surprised, before pointing at herself and saying, "Me?"

"Yeah, you. I've been dying to talk to you."

"Seriously?" She was grinning from ear to ear, her eyes sparkling.

"Yeah, I saw you walking by my class last week. I almost ran out of a test to come meet you."

She was nervously laughing. "I'm kind of freaking out right now."

"That's cool. So am I. Sorry, um, I should really do this properly." He held out his hand and winked. "I'm Ryder Lynn."

"Yeah, I-I know who you are," she said, almost beset with giggles.

"Would you mind coming with me?" She took his hand gently, tingling when his thumb caressed her skin. Then he led away to the choir room.

Jake held Marley's hand tightly as they walked through the hall. He could see thoughts racing through her mind by the twitch of her eyebrows.

"You okay?" He asked.

"I need you to be honest with me." She glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes, and Jake felt imminent dread. "Can you tell me what's going on with you and Kitty, and what it has to do with Ryder?"

"I told you, they're not my secrets to—"

"I know, but it's kind of bothering me. You've been differently lately, possessive, even, and it's freaking me out. I just want answers. I want things to be plain and simple."

"Wait, possessive?"

"The extra kisses, the constant touch."

"You're my girlfriend, what's wrong with that?"

"I feel like you're compensating." Marley shook her head. "That's not the right word. It's like you're hiding something."

"Can we talk about this another time?" Jake implored with his eyes, and Marley nodded. Little did he know, "later" was a matter of seconds.

"Hey! HEY!" Ryder burst through the crowd of students until he reached them. "Which one of you was it? Huh, which one of you screwed me over?!"

"Whoa, dude, calm down," Jake said.

"What's going on?"

"Katie isn't real! Stringing me along online, pretending to be someone else, getting me to send you… pictures." He squeezed his eyes shut to taste the bitter word then opened them, glaring at Marley. "Because you still like me, and this is your warped way of showing it, well that's real messed up, Marley!"

"Ryder, I swear to you, it's not me," she said, her eyes already wet with tears.

Ryder's gaze flashed to Jake. "Then it was you."

"Dude, I wouldn't do something like this—"

"Look, I get it, alright." His eyes were hot with tears, and Jake felt responsible for every drop. "I get that you didn't like me back. I get it that I crossed the line." He glared at Jake, his lip quivering. "I get it I said some weird stuff to you. But you didn't have to humiliate me. You didn't have to make me feel so pathetic." He spat out the words, all of his hurt scrawled across his face. "I thought you were my friends."

"We wouldn't do that to you," Marley said.

"Then who was it, huh? It had to be somebody who knows me, who knew how to get me to trust them." His face crumbled as the tears poured out without control.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Marley asked, reaching for his hand.

He jerked back. "I don't want anything from anyone. Especially from either of you." He hurried away, one arm covering his face, and Marley fell against the lockers with a frustrated sigh. Jake watched Ryder go, his muscles and bones encased in ice.

"Jake, what did you do?"

"I didn't do anything. I tried to stop this."

"You knew! The hell, Jake!"

"Look, Kitty was doing this for I don't know how long. She…" Jake looked up and down the hall, searching for Cheerios uniforms. "She has to pay for this."

"Kitty did this? Hold on, start at the beginning."

"I told her if she hurt him, I'd kill her." He stormed down the hall, Marley trailing behind him.

"Jake, what is going on? At least tell me!" He ignored her as he rounded the corner to a row of lockers, his eyes searching for Kitty. He found her laughing with another Cheerio by the water fountain.

"KITTY!" He yelled. Kitty sent her friend away fast, then wore an innocent expression.

"Hey, Half-and-half," she said. Jake balled his hand into fists as he approached her, and Marley grabbed his arms and restrained him.

"Please, please act like normal people for five seconds!" Marley said as she stood between them.

"You used a picture of a girl who goes to this school?!" Jake shook his head. "Why would you do that? He just found out you've been catfishing him. You broke him. Was that what you wanted? To break him?"

"Marissa didn't go to this school until last week," Kitty said quickly. "I found her picture on Instagram. I didn't know she'd transfer here."

"Oh yeah, because that makes everything right. You didn't know the blade was poisoned before you stabbed him!" Jake huffed heavily, his breathing hot and slow, his body tense. He wanted to hit something, to do anything to fix this.

"So you are the one who was texting Ryder?" Marley said.

"Yes." Kitty's voice was flat, and she looked away.

"Why would you do that?" Marley wiped at her eyes. "You have no idea, that look on his face, how humiliated he feels."

"I didn't mean for it to get this serious," Kitty said. "I was just playing around when it turned into… this."

"You're gonna fix this!" Jake growled. "You're going to tell him what you did, you're going to apologize. For this, for Billy Idol week, for everything."

"I can't do that," said Kitty earnestly.

"Oh, you will." Jake uncurled his fists. "Glee, today. In front of everybody. I told you if you hurt him, you'd pay. This is only half of what you owe—you can't afford the other half. What you did to him, what you did to that beautiful boy—" Jake broke off and cleared his throat, his eyes tearing up, too. Marley gazed up at him, her gaze hot and searching, but Jake didn't return it.

"Alright, I'll fix it." Kitty sighed. "At least let me start with something. Give me the phone."

"No. I'm doing damage control; you be there afterschool. Tell everything."

"Everything? Even Riley?"

"Who's Riley?" Marley looked at Jake again. "Is that the girl in Doosenberry's second period?"

"She's someone I met a while ago. That's it."

"Oh no, that's hardly it." Kitty march up to Jake, right in his face. "Like you said, I'm telling everything."

"Who the hell is Riley?" Marley said in vain as the bell rang.

"So how's this score going, Jake? 2 for the Wildecats, then: Endgame. See you at Glee." She waved with a sour smirk, then she skipped off, her ponytail bouncing behind her as if she were an innocent schoolgirl.

"Jake." Marley grabbed his hand and forced him to look at her. "Whatever it is you're hiding, I'll try to understand. Were you with another girl?"

"No, this was way before the Sadie Hawkins dance. We weren't together."

"Did you sleep with her?"

"Why does that matter?"

"I just want to know. No one seems to want to tell me anything around here." Marley threw up her hands. "Know what? I don't even care. I don't care about anybody. Nobody tells me anything, I'm somehow in the middle of everything, and I just don't care." Bitterly, she said, "See you at Glee."

Jake stood there for a moment, shocked, until a teacher urged him to get to class. How did it come to this?

Ryder almost didn't show up at Glee, but he'd been a quitter before, and he refused to be that guy. However, that meant facing Jake and Marley, and after shouting at them in the hall like an idiot, he didn't know how he could. They hadn't done anything wrong to him, but he didn't trust them. He'd been so careless, so weak, and he'd told Katie everything.

He'd gotten a message from Katie as classes ended, and he wanted to ignore it. He ended up reading them: I'm so sorry Ryder. I lied about my name and my face, but not about the things I wrote.

Don't ever talk to me again.

Please, I'm going to explain everything soon. Don't push away your friends because of what I did.

Ryder didn't reply, and when he got to the choir room, he was the only one there, except for Will and Coach Beiste.

"Mr. Shu," Ryder said with a shudder. Will looked at him with a casual smile, then he saw Ryder's puffy, red eyes.

"Ryder, what's wrong?"

"I'm sorry for skipping out on Billy Idol week," Ryder said as calmly as he could, but his voice broke.

"No, don't even worry about it. I had a talk with Joe yesterday. Is everything alright?"

"Mm hmm," Ryder lied. He didn't trust his tongue, and he narrowed his eyes to hold back the tears. "I didn't want to keep missing rehearsals, so can I just sit in the back?"

"Yeah, yeah go ahead." Will frowned and watched Ryder pluck down in his seat, his shoulders and head limp in defeat. Will shared a look with Coach Beiste, who whispered, "We can work on that after rehearsals."

Ryder hugged his backpack to his chest and sunk low in his chair as the band members entered. They fiddled with their instruments, and the sound of the tuning drove him crazy. Finally, the room filled up with the New Directions. He tried not to look at Jake and Marley as they walked in, but he ended up catching their eyes anyway. He looked away immediately and smothered half his face with his backpack, leaving only his eyes visible. He saw Jake and Marley coming up the seats towards him, but Will directed them to the front row.

Thank you, Mr. Shu, Ryder thought with a sniffle. He felt someone plop into the seat beside him, and he looked up to see Blaine watching him with concern.

"Hey," he said with a sad smile. "I heard what happened."

"You heard about how I'm the biggest idiot in the world?"

"I heard that someone took advantage of how honest and sweet you are," Blaine said. "You don't have to feel ashamed; we all make mistakes."

"I like, broke Internet rule #1: stay anonymous."

"At least you didn't lie to yourself. Katie may not have been who she said she was, but you are, you always were. Take pride in that."

"I guess."

"And what about Jake?" Blaine gestured to the back of Jake's head below. Ryder buried his face in his backpack. What about him? Ryder could feel the coiled up emotions within him springing loose, everything he'd said to himself to keep from falling apart. The worst was that he'd put his all into his textlationship with Katie, turning his every thought about Jake into a glimmer of Katie, and that glimmer vanished, a conjuration by a magician, and all that remained were his bunched up feelings of twisted affection for a ghost and a friend. There was nothing to distract him from how he felt. Seeing him with Marley left him green and envious; wanting to be that wedge made him feel like scum.

"I want him," Ryder whispered, quiet as the slither of feathers. Blaine's eyes widened and he made a sound like all the air was leaving him. That's how Ryder felt when he looked at Jake; like all of the air was drawn out of him, siphoned by a spirit thirsty for the breath of life.

"Sitting with the cool kids today," Sam said cheerfully as he came up to where they were seating. He plopped down on Ryder's left. "So, what's up? Haven't seen you in a bit, mini-me."

"Sam, exnay," Blaine said in a low voice. Sam made an "o" with his mouth and nodded.

"At least you know what you want, now," Blaine said to Ryder.

"That doesn't mean he's mine."

"He?" Sam asked as discreetly as possible. Ryder cringed, and Blaine shook his head erratically. "Wait, is this like that thing with you and me? I didn't hurt you like this, did I?"

"It's not like that at all. Kind of." Blaine patted Ryder's leg. "Hey, Sam is cool. You can trust him."

"I trust everyone; that's my problem."

"Hey, you're talking to the guy who got jumped for going to a Sadie Hawkins dance with a guy," Blaine said in a hushed voice. "I know what it's like to feel humiliated, broken, and really stupid because, wow, I could've just not gone to that dance."

"My family lost their house, and we had to live in a motel room just off the interstate," Sam said. "I was so ashamed, I didn't want anyone here to know, but they all slowly found out, and they helped me. They actually helped me."

"I don't regret what I did because I was happy," Blaine said. "I had the time of my life at that dance, even if it ended with some jerk cracking my nose."

"My family had to move, but my dad found a new job, and I took up a, um, fun job to help around the house."

"We've got your back, Ryder. And believe it or not, this too shall pass."

"Whoa, King Solomon over here," said Sam with a grin. He wrapped an arm around Ryder and squeezed. "See, things will get better. No frowning, no sad faces. This boat runs on happy faces."

"Do one of your impressions," Blaine said. "That cheers everybody up."

"Alright, you want Sean Connery, Batman, or —just for you—Mr. Shue."

"Oh gawd, Mr. Shue," Ryder said, giggling. For a moment, he felt a little life return for him, and as Sam declared that they were doing straight-disco for Regionals because he's a hardass, he actually laughed. Jake reacted to the musical sound and glanced behind him, but Ryder paid him no mind.

"We need to work out what we're doing for Regionals," said Will. He was staring down at his paper. "Going with our theme of Last Chances, I was thinking of an all-or-nothing approach."

"Wait, Mr. Shue I have to use the bathroom!" Brittany waved her hand frantically, then she hurried out of the room. Will sighed and shrugged. "I can wait til she gets back."

"While we're waiting," said Jake loudly, "I believe Kitty has something to say." All eyes turned to Kitty, who was sitting on the far edge of the room, a black sweater concealing her Cheerios uniform in an attempt to make her less conspicuous.

"I didn't even notice her sitting there," Sam whispered.

"Okay, come up here and share," Will said as he checked the clock. Kitty gulped audibly and rose from the seat. Ryder watched her cross the room until she was standing in front of the piano.

"Hi, everyone," she said with a small wave, and under her breath, "At least Joe isn't here." The kids were silent. "Um, I have a few things to say."

"Get on with it!" Jake shouted. Will shot him a look and hushed him.

"First, um, to Ryder, well—" Pop! The students froze. Will jumped toward the door and switched off the lights, and Coach Beiste led everybody to the floor. Ryder felt like he was moving in reverse as he followed Sam out of their seats to the floor below, where the piano had been pushed into the wall. His heart pounded in his chest, the panic evident on everyone's faces as kids ran by the choir room. Then the second gunshot fired.

A friend once told me that when I die, she wants to keep my brain in a jar of fluids. I laughed and told her she can't outlive an immortal.

—"Sir" Blackbyrd