"Can I bother you for a light again?"
Lorelei turned around, and slowed down her walk when she saw Teddy, smiling behind her.
"Is that the only pick up line you know?" she laughed, tossing him a book of matches.
"Nope, but it seems to work on you." He grinned, striking a match, lighting his cigarette and then putting out the flame with a flick of his wrist. "Wanna hear another one?"
"Oh God. Yes. Woo me."
"Do you have any French in you?"
"No."
"Would you like to have some French in you?" Teddy winked suggestively at her, pleased when she began to laugh.
"Clever, Teddy," she giggled. "Hey, where's Vern? Aren't you two joined at the hip?"
"Hell no." He shrugged. "He's stalking this chick he's got a permanent hard on for. He left me to walk home alone, the horny toad."
"I feel your pain. I usually get a ride home with whoever Anya gets a ride home from, but today she's decided to abandon me for Chris."
"Doesn't she already have a boyfriend?" Teddy asked, totally jealous. He'd always thought Anya was hot, but he knew she'd never go for someone like him.
"She's practically married," Lorelei exclaimed. "It's unfair and I'm mad as hell."
Teddy crowed, slapping his knee in delight. "You like Chambers!"
"What? No! Boys--Ew! Girls are better! Uh…I hate you, Teddy."
"Holy crap, your face looks like a tomato. One of those big juicy ones you just want to squeeze."
"I blush sometimes. And please don't squeeze me."
Still cackling, he poked her in the side. "You want to jump his--" he began to say, but sadly, he was cut off by a blow to the head. "Jesus! Dammit, Lorelei!" He rubbed the back of his head.
"I'm sorry," she grumbled. "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you. Then I'll sell your body to lonely truckers."
"Hey, we're friends. Friends don't tell secrets. And they more importantly don't sell my body to truckers so they can have sex with my lifeless body." He threw his arm around her shoulders.
"What are you doing? Are you lost or something?" she asked. He'd missed the turn to his street.
"By method of elimination, I'm the poor bastard who got stuck walking you home."
"Do you want a ride home, Gordie?" Brooke asked, passing by. He was sitting against the flagpole, alone.
"I'll just wait for my mom," he told her, even though he knew his mother would never get the energy to come and get him, and he'd just end up walking home.
Brooke ran a hand through her blond hair. "She won't come, Gordie…"
"Are you completely incapable of leaving me alone?" he demanded.
"Kinda," she murmured.
"It's pathetic, you know, how you've been trying to get me to pay attention to you for the past six years. You could have any guy in the school--so why don't you just piss off and bother one of them?"
"I'm pathetic?" she shrilled. "At least I don't have to hold grudges against people that never did anything wrong, just so I can be angry instead of sad!"
"Shut up, Brooke," he growled.
"It was my dad, Gordie!" she insisted in a pleading voice. "It wasn't me. It's stupid to hate me, because I was only eleven when it happened. I came to the funeral, remember?"
"You had no right," he whispered.
"You weren't the only one who cared. And you aren't the only one who can't forget." Brooke sighed and walked away.
It was the first time Gordie had ever wished she would stay.
"Chris?"
Chris had been watching Anya's dog run back and forth between the living room and the kitchen. He looked over at her, where she sat next to him on the couch with an afghan wrapped around her shoulders. "Yeah?"
She chewed on her pencil's eraser. "What the hell are the x- and y-intercepts?"
"You mean, in the problem you're doing, or just in general?"
"As in…I might fail grade twelve and never graduate and I'll be stuck in Castle Rock forever and I'll never get married because everyone will think I'm stupid!"
He grinned, sweeping his hair back out of his eyes. "Anya. This is only math. It doesn't mean you're never going to get married."
"No one wants a stupid wife! What if I mess up making brownies or something?"
"Send them to me. I'll eat anything." Chris brought his legs up onto the couch so that his feet were covered by the warm-looking afghan. "The x-intercept of a line is the x-coordinate of the point where the line intersects the x-axis."
"Agh!" Anya cried in horror. "WHAT?"
"You know, that y=mx+b formula? The x-axis is the numbers along the bottom of the graph. You should have plotted the points on your graph and--"
"GRAPH?"
"I'm sure you're good at other things!" he exclaimed.
Closing her eyes, she groaned and leaned into his shoulder. "The only thing I can do is tie cherry stems in knots with my tongue."
"I can't do that." Not sure what to do now that she was touching him, he decided to settle on patting her head. "That's a talent and a half, Anya."
"Sure, I can become a stripper and seduce men with my nimble tongue skills."
"I'm sure there's good money in that."
"Yeah, and honour, too."
"So, how does Reese feel about your exotic career aspirations?"
Anya sat up straight, although Chris noticed that now the blanket was covering both of them and her shoulder was still touching his. "Reese doesn't care what I do or what I want to do, you know? Just as long as it's with him."
"Well, that's not right, Anya," Chris said softly. "He's your boyfriend. He's not supposed to treat you like an object."
She looked at him. Her eyebrows were knit together like she was angry, but her light blue eyes were searching and compassionate. "People have no right treating you the way they do, Chris."
"…Pardon?"
She laughed softly when she saw the blank look on his face. "They don't even know you but they think they have the right to make you feel less than them just because they don't have to go home to the same family you do. I mean, I know I don't know you all that well either, but I do know you're more worth knowing than any of them. And, um, hehehehe…oh damn, I've gone stupid again…anyway, um, I think that if people would just open their eyes and forget what your last name was, you'd blow them all away with how great a person you are--to me, and to Gordie, and, um, hehehe…stop me anytime, please."
Chris did stop her. He kissed her.