Elizabeth pounded on Gordie's front door impatiently later that night. Finally, Mr. Lachance opened the door, a tired look in his piercing blue eyes. "Hi, Elizabeth."

"Hi!" she exclaimed, somewhat out of breath. "Kay, quick question, is Gordie home?"

"Yeah, he's up in his room."

"That's nice. Can I see him?"

"Be my guest."

Thanking him energetically, Elizabeth slipped past him, kicked her shoes off and dashed up the stairs to Gordie's bedroom. She went in without knocking.

"Holy damn!" Gordie cried. "You scared the bejesus out of me. Don't you know how to knock?"

"I forgot in the midst of all this breaking news!" she said. "Hi, Chris, when did you get here?"

Chris grinned at her from his spot on the floor. Papers surrounded him so she assumed he was doing his homework with Gordie. "Before you did, evidently. How strange."

"My stupid brother is taking stupid Ren out for dinner as we SPEAK!" she exclaimed.

"Didn't take him too long to move in on his prey did it?" Gordie laughed.

"No, this is horrible!" Elizabeth wailed. "My brother is an ogre! He's a relatively nice and gentle ogre, but he's stupid and he's just not Chris!"

"What's that got to do with anything?" Gordie asked. "You're weird, Ellie."

Chris replaced the lid on his pen. "Ren likes me, Gordo."

"Hahahahaha!" Gordie laughed.

"It's not funny, you insensitive shit head!" Elizabeth barked. "She really does like him and the only reason that she's going out with Zeke tonight is because she figures Chris will never care about her like she cares about him so why bother waiting around for something that's never gonna happen and why can't you just stop being a stupid boy with your stupid boy-ness and just go throw Zeke out a window and profess your love to Ren?"

"That was one of the longest run-on sentences I've ever heard," Gordie said. "I don't remember much of what was said."

"Elizabeth," Chris said. "Ren would get hurt if she ever went out with me, you know that right? She'd never hear the end of it, and the girls at our school aren't very nice to her, and her brother's a fucking asshole…"

"But it would be like Romeo and Juliet," she whined. "Star-crossed lovers who triumph in the end--"

"They kill themselves, Elizabeth."

"They do?" she cried, aghast. "What a stupid story! Anyway, back to my story. Who cares what people say? You're going to miss out on something good just because you're scared of what some stupid people might say?"

"It's not what they say, Lizzy," Chris said, looking at her significantly. "You wanna know something? That night I walked her home, Ren's brother and two of his goons kicked me in the balls and in the ribs. And then when I got home, my old man kicked the shit out of me for being with her. So it's not just what people say, alright?"

Elizabeth and Gordie exchanged small glances. "I didn't know that, Chris--" Elizabeth began to say.

"It's okay. But I just don't want anything to happen to Ren. I don't want someone to hurt her because if they did, it would be my fault."

She lowered her head. "I know what you're saying."

"Yeah." He kept his eyes on her even though she was no longer looking at him. "So don't get your hopes up."

Shrugging, she said, "Don't you think that you could protect each other though? It's not like you'd be alone, you'd have each other."

The light in Chris' eyes changed colours for a moment. But then he just looked back at his homework and said, "She'd still get hurt."