A/N: OK so I'm sure you've all noticed that I disappeared for the better part of the past year. This means that I haven't seen the second half of S4, and the only S5 episode I've seen is the opener. I tried to keep this chapter time-neutral, hoping not to violate any new canon facts, but please excuse any that have slipped through. Oh, and both Sammy's Noodle Shop and the peanut butter sandwich restarant (whose name I can't remember) do, indeed, exist in southern Manhattan. I recommend Sammy's highly.

"Ok," Grace's voice breaks into thoughts five minutes later. "All done? Great, we'll move on. Now, would each of you reclaim your own stories for a moment and mark the back of each with a T for 'true' or an F for 'false,' then give them back to your partner story-side up. Partners, don't turn the papers over to check."

A short commotion of shuffing papers and scratching pens fills the room, shortly replaced by snorts and muffled laughter as everyone checks their partner's evaluations. I'm not surprised to see that Sara got mine right, considering that she'd been present for the true one and knew very well that she had shared her gummi worms. After quickly confirming this, I turn my attention to her, hoping for a sign of whether I'd gotten her statements right or wrong. A small smile plays at the corners of her mouth - not good.

After a few seconds she raises her eyes to meet mine. I can tell she's trying to keep her face impassive. "So . . . how'd I do?" I ask weakly.

"Everyone's looked at their papers?" interrupts Grace. "Now I want you to spend from now until lunch - that's about half an hour - discussing why you wrote what you did, why you made the decisions you did about your partner's papers, and what the right answers are. Try to come up with a formula to diffentiate true from false."

"Let's start with you," Sara suggests sadistically. She knows my statements hardly need to be discussed; she just likes torturing me. "Where'd you come up with 'I was mugged by a little old lady'?"

I shrug. "First thing that came to mind."

"A psychological basis, perhaps?" she asks playfully. "Perhaps you're intimidated by the type of woman who doesn't look threatening, because you can't pigeonhole her?"

I resist the urge to give her a Look. "Not the last time I checked."

"Nightmares about little old ladies?"

"No."

"Then why?"

"I told you, it was the first thing that came to mind!" I say in exasperation. "I do not have some deep-seated psychological horror of females - of any type."

She smirks. "I might argue with that...but I won't. Let's move on to why you picked something so boring for your true statement."

I sigh. "It was the only thing I could think of that wouldn't implicate anyone I know in something they'd rather not hear told."

"Are you telling me that sharing candy was the only non-threatening thing in your mental inventory?"

"Well, under these circumstances, I thought..."

"What circumstances?"

"These." I wave my hand toward the room at large. "Large public gathering of people we don't know."

She seems to accept that. "Ok, so under these circumstances you thought...what?"

"Honestly, Sara, I don't think Grace meant 'interrogate' when she said 'dicsuss'."

"I'm attempting to discuss, Grissom," she says tightly. "But talking to you is like pulling teeth, as a rule."

"Bloody, painful, and full of horrific noises?"

"Something like that," she says, but she seems to relax again. "Now tell me."

Tell her what? I think back. Oh, right...she wants me to tell her why that was the only safe story I could think of. "Would you rather have had me tell them about the rigamarole I had to go through to get you here in the first place, perhaps? Or maybe about..." I pause, trying to think of something. "...About your attitude toward Sharon? Or how about last night in the hotel room..."

Her hand slashes through the air, cutting me off. "There are things in your life that don't involve me. You could have discussed one of those, something that wouldn't have been completely transparent when I tried to evaluate its truth."

"My life centers around CSI, Sara, and you know how gossip moves in there. Anything noteworthy in my life would have happened there, and would probably have been passed on to you long ago."

"Not everything."

I look at her with raised eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Like those two weeks you took off last year? Your 'vacation time,' when we all know that you don't take vacations?"

"Enough." I don't want to get into that. Even if I'm no longer afraid of losing my hearing, I don't want Sara - or anyone - to know that I handled it so badly.

She looks at me curiously, and I can almost see her making a mental note to press me more about my time off when she has me alone. "Oookay..."

"Let's talk about your stories. Did I get it right?"

She smiles. "First, tell me your logic."

"You made it difficult. I tried to compare the line counts of your stories to my own, but the pattern in yours didn't match the pattern in mine."

"So how'd you decide then?" She reaches over and grabs her papers back. " 'Doesn't use the f-word'?" she reads off her story about the suspect attack. "That was your logic?"

"There's more," I say defensively.

She keeps reading. " 'She wouldn't be that stupid'? 'Sara doesn't know the meaning of the word "wait"'?" She looks up at me. "Tell me how you really feel," she says sarcastically.

"I told you, your line counts didn't match mine. I had to go on my intuition and what I know about you."

"And your intuition tells you that I wouldn't go impulsively into a scene but I would date some guy who claimed to be a cop?"

"Well when you put it like that..."

She looks down at the second story again and reads on: " 'Typical Sara'? 'Perfectly Sara'? Guess you know me pretty well, huh."

This isn't headed anywhere good, that much I can tell. "I told you, I just had to rely on my intuitions."

"How long have you known me, Gris?"

I think for a moment. "Ten, twelve years?"

"And these represent what you think you know about me?"

"In these limited circumstances..."

"Answer," she orders.

I glare at her. "I thought I said that this wasn't supposed to be an interrogation. Let's move on, and you tell me if I got it right or not." The more I have to nag her about it, the more nervous I get that I had the right answers after all.

"What do you think?"

"Obviously I think what I wrote were the right answers, or else I'd have answered the opposite." I look at her expectantly. "Just tell me."

Rather than do as I ask, she looks at me, cocking her head to the side, and appears to ponder her options. Then, slowly, she puts one sheet of paper back on the table and holds the other out to me, turning it over so I see the large 'T' on it but not which story it is. "Last chance to change your guess. Going once . . . twice . . ." Just as I'm ready to jump up from my chair and wrestle her for the damn paper, she turns it face up again and drops it in front of me.

I read the first line: "I carry a gun. I'm a crime scene investigator, and since we sometimes walk into iffy situations, we're assigned the weapons. Unfortunately, the gun didn't do me any good until I was given it, four years ago. Until then, I was on my own at crime scenes - and they can be dangerous places."

Its the story about her being attacked by a robbery suspect - not the story about the policeman-cum-hero. I try not to let out an audible sigh of relief.

When I look back up at her, she seems to be studying me. "Guess you don't know me as well as you thought," she offers, and I can't tell if her tone indicates disappointment or sarcasm.

"I never claimed to understand you."

"That's true," she says flatly, "you didn't."

"So, uh," I begin, trying to pull us out of whatever conversational morass we appear to have fallen into, "you really let a suspect get the drop on you?"

"Yeah. I was young."

"I'm not exactly one to judge," I remind her. "A suspect got the drop on me and Nick, and I can't even say it was because I was young."

"You really thought I was dating some cop? Don't you think you'd have noticed if there was always the same officer at scenes with me? Not to mention that the only policeman I know named 'Jim' is Brass." She pulls a face and adds, "And I'm definitely not dating him."

"Well I didn't know how long ago this happened," I argue. "It could have been in California, in which case I obviously wouldn't know him."

She gives me a disbelieving look. "Do you realize that if you follow your own logic, you're saying that I was cheating on my hypothetical boyfriend, not once but twice? For long periods of time?"

Hmm. There was that EMT; she has a point. But who's the second? I ask her this and her open expression suddenly closes. "Nevermind. Suffice it to say you're wrong. There were enough inconsistent details in the story that you could have figured that out, even without thinking about the actual boyfriend part."

I get the hint loud and clear. She doesn't want to tell me who else she dated. Or is dating. I sigh inwardly. Maybe I can e-mail Catherine. No, I decide mere seconds later. Contacting Catherine and attempting to find out about Sara's social life is just a sure way to start a rumor that she's seeing someone and that Grissom is concerned with that fact.

"Sessions's over," a female voice says from behind my left shoulder. "You guys want to get some lunch?"

Without even looking behind me, I can tell from Sara's face that the voice must belong to my red-haired friend. "Sharon," I say, turning to her. "Who were you working with?"

"Some guy from Canada," she says carelessly. "Apparently he teaches this stuff too, which pretty much defeated the purpose of the exercise."

"Gee, that's too bad," Sara cuts in. "Grissom and I were just having a really good time discussing the truth about ourselves."

We were? I wish she had told me that! I just nod and smile.

"You guys like Chinese?" Sharon offers. We both nod, and she continues: "I hear there's a really good place a little bit further north. Sixth Ave and West Eleventh. It's called Sammy's Noodle Shop."

I start to accept her offer, but cut myself off when I feel Sara's thumbnail pressing into the skin of my forearm. "Sorry," she says sweetly, "but we already have plans."

"Sara..." I begin, determined to clear up whatever feud is going on around me.

"Oh, ok." Sharon doesn't sound terribly disappointed. Maybe she was just being polite. "Enjoy yourselves, then. I'll see you after lunch." Without waiting for an answer, she turns and walks toward a man, presumably the Canadian she had mentioned.

"What, can't she make up her mind?" The acid in Sara's voice comes though loud and clear.

"Make up her mind about what?" I say tentatively.

"About who she's chasing."

Chasing? I blink. "I beg your pardon?"

"She should know - at her age - that you can't go after two men at the same place at the same time."

This is interesting. "I don't think she's 'after' anyone, Sara. I think she's just being friendly. And she can't be much older than you."

She snorts. "Doubtful. I'm female too, you know. I can tell these things. She's after you."

She says this with such vehemence that I'm puzzled. It's not at all like Sara to talk about who's after whom, and even if it were, it's certainly not information she'd ever consider sharing with me. At a loss for a response, I just look at her and shrug. "So, uh . . . where do you want to get lunch?"

"I hear there's a good peanut butter sandwich restaurant around here."

"A...what?"

She grins. "Peanut butter sandwich. You can get just about anything you want put into a PB&J - with or without the J."

It sounds a little iffy to me, but I'm not going to get into a fight with her about it. "Lead on," I say, scooping up my notebook and turning back to face her.

A smile spreads across her face and she nods at me. "Great."