Thanks to everyone who read and to MelsieR, Ghostwriter, and Callisto's Moon for reviewing.

Jamie glared down at the book in front of him. This was stupid. And cruel and unusual punishment, too, since his last final had been Friday and he wasn't supposed to have to even think about homework again until next fall, but mostly stupid. Alex had said that he'd let him off the last two pages of his book report if he did two pages of Dr. Laura's stuff instead, but he wasn't really seeing the bargain right now. Even when he flipped ahead of the first section he only found more stupid questions—practically essays, some of them—and it wasn't like there was any point in thinking about most of this stuff anyway. And he didn't figure that he'd like Alex's response if he tried to pick two random pages without any questions on them.

Stupid.

"Jamie?" Alex asked, coming back into the main room from the kitchen. "Are you about ready to head for the store?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"How's it going?"

Jamie scowled.

Alex smiled. "Give me five minutes and we'll head out."

Jamie sat up, shoving his pen into the book and dropping it on the coffee table behind him. Maybe he'd just finish the book report.

Alex disappeared to his room for a few minutes and came back with his keys, and Jamie grabbed his jacket and followed him out to the car. Theoretically they were right at the start of the sunniest part of the year, but you wouldn't know it today.

"Split this for us, would you," Alex said, passing the shopping list over before he started the car. "There should be a pen in the console if you need it."

The top half of the list went to Alex no question, and Jamie moved the rest of the vegetables onto that half as well because he never knew which ones qualified as good, but he had no trouble picking out cookies and ice cream and sandwich supplies so those stayed with him. The rest of the list wasn't hard to split either, and if he wasn't as neat as Alex would have been about splitting it by sides of the store, the item count looked about balanced so he figured that it was good enough. "Here's yours," he said, offering Alex his half of the paper as they found a parking spot at the back of the lot.

"Thank you." They headed for the store, grabbing a cart apiece at the entrance, and then Alex nodded towards the line of registers. "I'll meet you up front when we're done, all right?"

Jamie nodded and headed directly for the snack aisle. He didn't mind crowds nearly as much as Alex did, and even if there were quite a few people in the aisles he was able to find everything on his list relatively easily. Alex finished at around the same time so he must not have done too bad a job with the list, and after Alex paid Jamie grabbed their single re-loaded cart to push out of the store before Alex could. Alex said he was fine, but this kind of weather tended to be the sort that bothered him.

"You'll have to tell me how to get to Kenny's house," Alex said as they loaded up the trunk. "You might have told me his address at some point, but I definitely didn't write it down."

"Oh." Jamie hesitated. It would definitely be easier if Alex dropped him off since taking the bus from Alex's neighborhood was more along the lines of doable than convenient, especially if it started really raining, but Kenny's neighborhood was not a good one. He'd know. He really should have said 'no, thanks' when Alex had first offered.

"Jaim?" Alex asked

"I—yeah. Are you sure you don't want help unloading the stuff back at home, though?"

"No, I'll be fine. But do me a favor and put the cart back, all right?"

By the time Jamie had handed the cart off to a woman heading into the store and got back to the car, he'd decided that he might as well just make the best of it. It wasn't like Alex would have any reason to even get out of the car anyway; Kenny would certainly never invite him in.

Alex looked at him expectantly as he buckled his seatbelt, and he gestured towards the far side of the building. "We need to go south, so it's probably better if we head out that way."

About like he'd figured Alex didn't look very happy as they approached Kenny's neighborhood, especially when they turned the corner by the smashed up motel—Jamie wasn't about to admit that he'd helped with some of the window-smashing over the years—and even less thrilled when he pulled over in front of the building that Jamie indicated. "Are you sure that this is where you want to be?"

"Yeah. Kenny and his mom live up in 3B."

"All right," Alex agreed after a moment. "But you know that you can always call if you need to, right? And you've got your taxi money with you?"

Alex must not have found that from the last time Jamie had snuck it back onto his desk, which explained why Jamie hadn't gotten any looks about it yet. "I'll be fine," Jamie said rather than agreeing directly. "I used to live down here."

That didn't seem to appease Alex in any way, but he did nod. "Okay. I was thinking I'd order pizza at about six. If you think you'll be later than that getting home, give me a call."

"Okay," Jamie agreed. "I don't think I'll be here that long, though."

"And you know that you're allowed to invite your friends back to our house if you want, right?" Alex said before he could climb out of the car. "You don't always have to come here. Or go to their houses."

"I...okay," Jamie echoed after a minute. It wouldn't even have occurred him to ask, not any more than he'd have asked about the phone if Alex hadn't brought it up directly, and he didn't even have to think to know that he'd never invite Kenny back to Alex's place. Caitie sure, or maybe Micah or Faustus or one of those guys, but Kenny...he just didn't think that it would be a good idea. "I'll see you later," he said, climbing out of the car quickly.

"See you later," Alex agreed. "Be careful."

Alex didn't pull away until Jamie reached the main door of the building, and Jamie wished again that he'd found a reason to decline Alex's offer of a ride over. It just made things awkward for no good reason.

Too late now, though, and as Alex turned the corner at the end of the block Jamie let the heavy door swing shut and headed for the one open staircase. There were a couple guys on the first landing, but no one who'd bother Jamie, and he continued on up to Kenny's floor. Unfortunately no one answered at his knock—well, mostly unfortunately, sometimes one of Kenny's mom's boyfriend's answered and they were usually assholes—and he frowned. There were a couple other places that Kenny sometimes hung out, but given the weather Jamie had sort of figured that he'd be home.

After a minute he headed back downstairs and outside, skirting around the edge of the building to the fire escape on the west corner. The ladder from the ground up to the first platform had been torn off probably before Jamie had even been born, but he'd used this version of an entrance more times than he could count over the years, and he scrambled up the broken brick until he was in a position to kick over and catch the edge of the platform itself. The metal was a little damp from the rain, but not enough to bother him as he swung up further to catch the lowest bar of the railing and from there climbed up and over onto the grated platform. The window here led into some second floor apartment that Jamie didn't care about, but the next ladder led up to the platform in front of Kenny's window, and he pulled the bar grating up and leaned close to peer in the window.

And about like Jamie had figured, Kenny was just barely visible sprawled out on his bed. Jamie rolled his eyes and knocked on the glass. "Kenny! It's me!"

Kenny didn't move, and he banged on the window again. "Kenny, come on, wake up! Let me in, it's gross out here!"