"What do you think?" Lydia says, holding the strapless midnight blue dress up to her chest. "Too much?"

"Where are you going?" Allison says from her place on Lydia's bed. "I thought it was just a house party."

"Yes, but I want to maximize my chances of having sex tomorrow night," Lydia says candidly, holding the dress at arm's length to examine it critically. "Ideally my outfit should leave no room for interpretation. Kevin is not exactly the brightest bulb in the box."

Allison rolls her eyes at Lydia's horrible taste in men.

"I saw that, Allison," Lydia says, flipping back her hair and grabbing another dress from her closet, a black and red v-neck that looks like a shirt more than a dress. "No judging. Some of us haven't had sex in months and it would be such a waste not to take advantage of the college boys before they all go back to school in two weeks."

I guess it's better than Aiden, Allison thinks, but wisely does not say.

"There's really no one our age you're interested in?"

"Oh, honey," Lydia says, turning to give her a patronizing look. "You lucked out with Scott and your incredibly vanilla romance, but some of us want a little more...variety and less commitment."

"Oh, I see," Allison says, trying and failing not to smile. "Teach me more about the Lydia Martin guide to romance."

"Romance, hah," Lydia scoffs, grabbing a backless purplish-silver dress. "No, Allison, you're much too young and innocent for that. I would break your poor brain."

"I'm more than a year older than you, you know," Allison says, trying not to laugh.

"Details," Lydia says flippantly. "Now does this necklace with this dress make my boobs look too big? That can actually be a concern with college boys, as strange as it seems."

Lydia's questionable relationship choices aside, Allison is glad she's seemed more like herself lately. Now that most of the problems with her mother have seemed to die down, she seems back to her old self. It's nice to hang out with Lydia, try on clothes, and talk about boys again. Hopefully things will stay quiet in Beacon Hills and it can be like this all the time. Not that that seems very likely.

"I had sex with Isaac last night," Allison says, as Lydia sorts through the necklaces on her necklace tree.

Lydia goes very still and then turns around, staring at her face for a second as if she's not completely sure she's being serious.

"You..." she says, flabbergast. "What?"

"Yeah," Allison says with a shrug, tracing the green flowers on Lydia's bedspread absentmindedly.

Lydia looks at her like she's never seen her before. "Why?" she says, as if she can't imagine the answer. "Allison, you cheated on Scott? Does he know?"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure he knows," Allison says.

"You told him?" Lydia says in shock, looking very concerned, and Allison has to admit she's a little touched at Lydia's investment in their relationship.

"I didn't so much tell him as much as he was, you know, there," Allison says, blushing a little at the memory of the look on Scott's face as he watched them, his pupils dilated and his hands clutching Isaac's sheets.

For a second Lydia looks horrified, like she thinks Scott caught them, and then she catches on, her eyes going very wide.

"You," she says slowly, as if she's not sure she should continue, "had a threesome with Isaac and Scott."

Allison nods, grinning a little helplessly despite herself.

"Oh my God," Lydia says, dropping her dress on the floor and plopping down into her vanity chair. "When? Why?"

"Last night," Allison says again. "...and yesterday. And a couple days before that. And a couple days before that."

Lydia makes an unattractive gaping fish mouth, which is actually kind of hilarious.

"And Scott was okay with it?" she finally says.

Allison grins. "Oh, Scott was more than okay with it."

Lydia gapes at her, looking as if Allison had just told her the earth was flat after all.

"Oh, my God," she says again. "Scott's...I didn't know he was into guys."

"Yeah, I didn't either," Allison says, leaning back onto Lydia's bed, trying to act casual. "But he started it, you know."

"What?"

Lydia doesn't even seem to know what to do with herself, her face a perfect picture of shock.

Allison tries not to laugh. "Who's too young and innocent now?" she says and smirks at the horrified look on Lydia's face.

Lydia demands details and Allison obliges wickedly, enjoying the appalled look on Lydia's face as she tells her exactly what'd she spent many of her summer days over the past two weeks doing, though for Isaac's sake she doesn't tell Lydia that he was a virgin. She can tell Lydia doesn't like the idea of a threesome even once, much less as a recurring thing, or whatever they're doing, but she doesn't try and convince Allison to stop doing it or make any judgmental remarks.

"I mean, I knew you liked him and he liked you, but I had no idea that Scott..." Lydia says, lying next to Allison on the bed and staring up at the ceiling half an hour later. "I just thought he was being friendly."

She turns over to look at Allison, leaning her head on her elbow. "Is it serious?"

Allison grimaces at the thought. "I," she says, mulling it over. She thinks about the unguarded way Isaac smiles when he's with them, how good he looks sandwiched between her and Scott in Scott's bed, the way his blond eyelashes flutter when he wakes, always relishing curling into her or Scott when he sleeps. It's all embarrassingly non-sexual. It's not hard to come up with an answer. It's the consequences that she doesn't want to deal with.

"Yeah," she tells Lydia quietly, turning over on her side as well to face her, her head on Lydia's pillow. "It's serious."

Lydia gives her such a pitying look that Allison almost laughs. "I know, right?" she scoffs, rolling her eyes. "Like Scott and I didn't have enough problems. Just when things were getting back to normal...we didn't do it on purpose, you know? It just happened."

"You and Scott do tend to make things difficult for yourselves," Lydia says with a sigh and then her eyes go wide and large again and she grabs Allison's shoulder in panic. "Allison! What is your dad going to say?"

Allison bursts out laughing.

Lydia has to leave early tomorrow for her leg wax, so Allison doesn't sleep over and instead goes home. She and her dad eat dinner and have one of their conversations that manages to avoid anything to do with their lives or their emotions and then Allison stays up until midnight watching stupid online videos and updates her new Facebook profile before she goes to bed. Lydia told her people left messages for her on her old profile after she died. Allison refused to look at them and made Lydia delete it for her. She doesn't want to know what they said.

She has another nightmare. In this one she's running away from the witches in the woods, but she never runs into Isaac. Instead she runs into the oni and they stab her over and over again, their wounds inflicting nothing but pain because Allison isn't even alive yet, just a corpse that somehow has managed to stumble back into the world of the living. Allison can't move, can only scream and wait to die for the second time.

She gasps awake, sweating and shaking, but as far as she can tell she didn't scream in her sleep. Allison brings up her knees and buries her head in them, wrapping her arms around her calves and breathing heavily.

"Just a dream, just a dream," she mutters to herself and then stops when she realizes she's started to rock back and forward like a crazy person.

She looks around her room helplessly. She doesn't want to be here anymore, it's so empty. She wants to climb into bed with her dad, but she can't do that anymore because she knows he'll just try and get her to see a therapist in the morning. Should she go to Scott's? He'd just worry too, though. Allison already feels so guilty for what her death put him through.

But there's another option, she realizes in relief. The best one. She grabs her pillow and doesn't bother to get dressed, just grabs her car keys and her phone and tip-toes out of the apartment carefully. It's barely four o'clock, there's probably no one awake right now in the whole apartment building, but she still feels kind of weird riding the elevator down to the garage in her pajamas. She shakes a bit while she drives, but there's no cars on the road and all the lights turn green ahead of her. She makes it to Isaac's house in less than ten minutes.

"Isaac," she says in her normal voice, coming to stand under his window a couple feet to the right of his front door. "Isaac, wake up."

She waits a couple seconds, still shivering slightly in her pajamas even thought it's still pretty hot outside, but nothing happens.

"Isaac," she says a little louder, glaring up at his cracked window. "Don't make me find pebbles to throw at your window, because I will if I have to."

A few seconds pass and then Allison sees the window open further, a dark shape that is probably Isaac leaning out. Isaac's porch lights aren't on, but she can see his arm on the window illuminated by the street light.

"Allison," Isaac says, sounding confused. "What are you-Is something wrong?"

"No," Allison says, trying to sound confident and at ease, even though he can probably tell that she's really freaked out. She lifts her pillow. "Can I stay with you?"

"Uh, okay," Isaac says, and she can't see his face, but she can imagine he looks very puzzled. He disappears and a minute later the front door opens. Isaac is wearing his usual white shirt and boxers and Allison can't understand why when she gets to the second floor and a whole another heat wave hits her. He must be dying. How could anyone sleep in this stuffy heat? Why is he even still wearing a shirt?

Isaac doesn't say anything when she curls into his chest, sticking her pillow under her side. She'd brought her own pillow because Isaac's is so thin he'd probably be better off bunching his sheets up and using them as a pillow instead, but she guesses she doesn't really need it if she can just sleep on Isaac. She knows he's surprised, but he doesn't say anything, just wraps his arms around her and leans down to kiss her forehead. It's a bit uncharacteristic of him, and after a second Allison realizes that he must have gotten it from Scott. For a second it's almost like both of them are here.

Isaac is a little sweaty, for obvious reasons, but she revels in the solid feel of him against her anyway. It feels so good to be held without conditions or judgment. She feels safe and protected, like she did all those months ago when she first came back, even if Isaac never touched her. It's always quiet, with Isaac. And sometimes Allison needs that.

It's hot and stuffy in Isaac's room, and Allison's nerves are still frayed from her nightmare, so they don't fall asleep for a long time, but that's okay. It's enough to just be here, in Isaac's house, which has always been a safe place for her, even though she knows it has never been for Isaac. Isaac just holds her and strokes her hair, and eventually Allison drifts off, the rise and fall of his chest against hers lulling her to sleep.

A/N: Lol, I had way too much fun writing Lydia's horrified reaction. Scandalizing people never gets old, never stop, Allison. Please review!