Connor sat on the arm of the couch, watching Adam watch him. He knew that his father wasn't going to speak first and so Connor sighed and rubbed Jellybean's ear.

"Dad, you've talked to Dr. Meyer and Ms. Adams and Stef and Jude and me and probably everyone else that has ever heard I'm sick. You've talked facts and opinions and actions and so now all you have to do is tell me yes or no. And I hope you say yes. Jude and Stef and Dr. Meyer and Ms. Adams and me all want you to say yes. Please, Dad? Can I?"

"Do you feel ready?" Adam asked. "If you don't, just say that I said 'no'. We can always try again, later. There will be a later, Connor."

But, would there? And what kind of later would it be? In two weeks, Connor would know whether or not he would have to go anymore cancer treatments – at least, for the time being. He could picture Dr. Meyer saying the words remission. But he had done that before. He had heard the word before. And then it had come back worst than ever. Connor always had to think about how he was feeling now because good days could go in the blink of an eye and then what?

"I feel ready."

It wasn't the total truth but for the part that Adam was concerned with, it was more than enough.

"Okay. I'll drive you. Did you pack?"

Connor nodded. "Already by the door."

"I'll be coming back for you at noon tomorrow. No later. And you have all of your medication."

"And then list. And when to take them. And the phone alarms will remind me. And the app will remind me. And I know. And I'm sure you've e-mailed the same list to Ms. Adams. And Jude knows my medication schedule probably as well as you do now. There's nowhere I'd be safer."

"Except here with me," Adam said.

"Dad, I think you're the one that's not ready."

Adam chuckled but he nodded. "Yeah, I think that's true. All right. Come on, before I change my mind."

Connor followed Adam off the couch and picked it up his bag from its spot near the front door. He rested it over his shoulder, holding it on his lap once they were in the car.

"I've stayed overnight other places before, you know, Dad. Not just the hospital."

"I know. But it's been a long time and I'm still scared to take my eyes off you, even to go to work. I just worry about you."

"Hopefully, soon, you won't have to," Connor said. "And I'll just be a normal kid."

"I want you to be a normal kid," Adam said. "That's all I want for you."

"And I'm going to be safe at Jude's house. And you're not that far away."

Adam stopped in front of Jude's house. "You can call me any time of night, you know? It doesn't matter when. It doesn't matter for what. Anything you need. It doesn't matter how dumb."

"I'll be okay, Dad," Connor insisted.

"Call me before bed."

"I will."

"And when you wake up."

"Okay, I will, but nothing will go wrong," Connor said.

"You better be right."

"I am," Connor said, trying to sound more confident than he really was. But it never did any good for he and Adam to be worried. And Jude had told him that he had to be the optimistic one and Connor was trying so hard for that to be true.

He waved to Adam one last time and then he walked up to Jude's front door. He knocked. Jude always just walked into his house but Jude had been in his house before. And Ms. Adams lived here. He couldn't be rude and just barge into Ms. Adams' house. That wouldn't be fair.

It was Stef who answered the door, a rag in her hands.

"Connor! Hi. We were just cleaning up for you. Come in."

"I'm sorry you have to do all that work," Connor said. "Jude could have just come over to my house. It would have been fine."

"It's no trouble," Stef assured him. "Jude's been excited to have you over and we wanted him to know he could have friends over here. It helps a place feel more like a home, I think."

"Yeah."

"Jude! Connor's here!"

"Are Mariana and Jesus here tonight?" Connor asked.

"No. It's hard to keep them here on a Saturday."

"Yeah, I bet." He turned as Jude hurried down the stairs.

"Hey! You feeling okay today?"

"Yeah. Not going to croak here, I promise."

Jude rolled his eyes at him. "It's still not funny."

"We're planning on spaghetti for dinner," Stef said. "Do you like it?"

"Yeah, that sounds great!"

"Come on," Jude said. "You can put your bag in my room. I'll show you."

Connor climbed the stairs behind Jude, staring at everything as he went. It was exactly like he had imagined Ms. Adams' house looking like – clean, bright, cluttered with family photos and mementos. He could also understand why Jude was so much happier here. That being said, Connor still felt like he was an intruder. It was Ms. Adams' house and they'd had such a close, personal relationship for so long that Connor felt like he shouldn't be here, even though it was Jude's house too and Jude was the one who invited him.

"So, what do you think?" Jude asked, pushing out the door to his room.

Jude didn't have a lot of stuff, so it really could have been anyone's room, but, as far as Jude had ever told Connor, this was the first time that he had ever had a room to himself and Connor knew that he was the first friend that Jude was ever showing off the room too.

"It's amazing, Jude. It really is. You need some posters or something, though."

"Yeah, I know. I can't decide on what I want, though. There's nothing I like enough to want to stare at every day."

Connor put his bag down next to the desk, where Jude had his own backpack sitting. He sat in the desk chair, trying not to think about the fact that Jude saw him every day. It was because they were friends. And Connor was trying to really know that. But it was hard to know it when he felt something so different every time he looked at Jude. Love, coloured with the shame of being rejected before he had even fully put the words out.

"But, they're keeping me, so I'm sure I'll find something eventually." Jude nudged his toes against the floor. "Callie said on the phone this morning that the trial starts next week. The terms of her deal were finalized. Five years and then she'll be free again. She said she's going to be staying in the juvenile detention centre for now but by the time the trial is over, she'll probably be transferred to the adult side and, um, who knows if she'll be close after that."

Connor moved to sit by Jude, squeezing his hand.

"No matter what, it's okay. Hey, I can learn to drive soon and then you'll learn and we can go as far as we need to. We can visit her. You know I'd go with you."

"I know. But, I can't imagine learning to drive. I can barely ride a bike."

"Well, when Dad gets over the fear of me falling down, you can prove it."

"Right. Well, hopefully that takes a little while so that I have more time to practice. Jesus said that I've tipped over so much that he should probably get me a new helmet."

Connor laughed. "Well, that's okay. Better to get it out now in case you do learn to drive."

Jude rolled his eyes. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" Connor asked.

Jude opened his closet door, pulling out a softball and two gloves. "Bike riding isn't the only thing I've been learning."

Connor grinned; Jude had never mentioned that! He had been telling Jude about how he had and Adam had been practicing lobbing the ball back and forth again, but Adam had been keeping his bat firmly away from him. Connor was just looking forward to when his father was going to take him to the batting cages again. He missed doing that with Adam; it was where he had his favourite memories with his father.

"All right. But, I'll warn you, you don't stand a chance."

"I've had a pretty good teacher," Jude said, leading Connor back down the stairs. "You might not know what hit you."

"Why didn't you ask me to teach you?"

"I'm tired of you teaching me things. We spend enough time doing homework together that if you had to give me one more instruction, I was going to scream."

"Are you calling me annoying?"

"Yes," Jude said. "But I knew what I was signing up for from when I first talked to you."

"You're more annoying."

"I thought I was stubborn."

"You can't be both?"

Jude shrugged and he had Connor took their positions, several feet apart.

"You're the one that talked to me first."

"I don't regret it … Most of the time."

Jude laughed and hefted the ball, throwing it to Connor, who caught it easily.

"You've actually got a pretty good arm," Connor called.

"I told you!"

"Catch!"

Jude didn't catch the ball as easily as Connor had, but he did catch it.

"Almost missed."

"Your bad throw caused it," Jude accused.

"Did not, throw it back!"

Jude laughed and did so, wasting away the afternoon.

(-.-)

"Yes, Ms. Adams."

"You can call me Lena, Connor."

"No, I can't. I will never be able to," Connor replied. "Sorry."

She just laughed and listed off the last of Connor's night medications.

"Took them all," he promised.

"All right. Good job. Your father was worried about making sure you took them."

Connor shrugged. "Yeah, I know. But meds after a transplant are more important than before, if that's even possible. I don't blame him for being worried, even if it is kind of annoying."

Ms. Adams was clearly amused. "Well, you took them, and I can tell him that you did it without being reminded. I'm sure that'll make him happy."

"If anything about this can," Connor griped. "The closer we get to seeing Dr. Meyer about my cancer and future treatments and if the last one worked and if I won't need future treatments, the crankier he gets. I guess I get it. I don't want to be back in the hospital like that either but it's kind of driving me nuts."

And that was why he could never call Ms. Adams 'Lena'. He had met with proper, licenced therapists before, and he could admit that they had helped him through a lot of hard things, but he had never been able to fully connect with any of them the way that he had with Ms. Adams. He had been able to tell her about everything – not just his grief over his mother, not just his issues with his father, not just his pain with the cancer – but everything. The others had been about one, concentrated issue, but Ms. Adams was there, his school counsellor, through everything, from the moment that his mother had died.

"One day, it'll be all over with."

"It better be. I don't want to live my whole life like this."

"You won't," Ms. Adams said, and he was closer to believing her now than had ever been in the past.

Jude tumbled back into his bedroom, then, teeth properly brushed and his pyjamas on.

"You two both ready for bed?" Ms. Adams asked. "It's getting late."

"We don't have school tomorrow," Jude said. "Does it matter how late it is?"

"It does, because you're both teenagers and you need your sleep. No running around the house all night."

"Okay but if we're quiet …"

"If you can quietly bounce off the walls of your room, go ahead," Ms. Adams said. "Goodnight, boys."

"Night, Lena."

"Night, Ms. Adams."

She gave Jude a kiss goodnight and then closed the bedroom behind her. Jude flopped backward on his bed.

"Are you tired?"

"It's eleven o'clock."

"I know. But usually you're passed out by, like, nine-thirty or ten. And we've done a lot today."

"I've got more energy. I feel pretty good," Connor assured him. "It's a good thing."

Jude's grin was so wide at his words that Connor felt his heart swell at how much Jude cared about him. And, again, it felt like a punch in the stomach at the same time. Jude cared about him so much that it was hard for Connor to believe, sometimes, that Jude didn't like him in the same way that Connor liked Jude. But maybe it was just because Connor had never had a friendship like this before; he had never had a friend love him so strongly that he'd go through surgery for him. It was what he had to keep telling himself, lest the words come exploding out of him, finally, and Jude got defensive and rejected him again. Connor couldn't take Jude's rejection.

"You're tired now, though."

"Yeah, I am."

Even though they were in Jude's bed and not Connor's, they still stuck to the sides of the bed that they normally slept on. Jude turned out the lamp and, in the darkness, they turned so that they were facing one another.

"Thanks for coming over. I know you were nervous."

"I wasn't nervous. I just knew it would be weird."

"It wasn't that bad," Jude said.

"It was kind of bad," Connor said. "Not that being here was bad. It's just weird to see Ms. Adams outside of school. And, now, when I go back to school, it's going to be weird to see her inside of school."

Jude was laughing at him. "My new mom is going to be my vice-principal. It's going to be weird for me too. And there's going to be more weirdness."

"Cancer kid returned will distract the rumour mill. And Brandon and Mariana and Jesus seemed to do okay with Ms. Adams being the vice-principal."

"But they grew up with it. They had more time to get used to it."

Connor found Jude's hand, his heart fluttering as he felt Jude's fingers, warm against his own. He wondered when that would stop. He wondered if his crush on Jude would ever completely go away. He wondered if he would ever be able to move on – or even want to move on – when Jude was always going to be right here in front of him, because Connor was never going to give his best friend up, not for anything.

"You'll get over the weirdness."

"And you'll just have to keep coming over so that you can get used to the weirdness too."

"I'll keep coming over," Connor said. "If you want me here."

"I want you here. Plus, you know, I gave you a kidney. So, you have to do whatever I want."

"Not how that works."

"Pretty sure it is," Jude said. "What do you know? You've never gotten a kidney from anyone else before."

"You've never given a kidney to anyone else," Connor retorted. "You don't know either."

"Whatever."

"That means I won," Connor said.

"It does not."

"It does."

And they carried on into the night.

If you have a song that reminds you of The Island Of Misfit Toys and would like it to be on the playlist, send it in and let me know! I'd love to hear your playlist suggestions. This week's songs are: Fingerprints by Eric Saade; Only One by Smith Westerns; and Promise Keeper by Breaking Point.

So, on tumblr I'm: we are all of legend now (with dashes between every word). If you want to find my replies to anon reviews, add backslash tagged backslash anon dash replies. If you want to see anything I post about The Island Of Misfit Toys, go to my tumblr URL and add backslash tagged backslash the dash island dash of dash misfit dash toys. Punctuation is spelled out due to Fanfiction's restrictions. If you're having any trouble accessing the tumblr content please send me a pm and I can format it for you in a different way.

~TLL~