Taylor lies flat on her bed, staring at another unopened letter. She wishes Summer were here.

She doesn't dare open the letter. After she'd read the last one, she'd dreamt about Henri-Michele for a week. Ryan had noticed that she was acting weird, and she was sure that reading this letter wouldn't help matters.

Speaking of Ryan, where was he? Weren't they supposed to go out to the diner today? Maybe he's mad at me for something. She stands and goes over to the trashcan and drops the letter in, then picks up the phone to call Ryan.

He doesn't answer. She sighs and sits back down on the bed. Five minutes later, she can't stand to wait anymore, so she calls him again. If he doesn't answer this time, I'm going over to his house. This time, Ryan picks up. He doesn't even get a chance to say hi before Taylor demandingly questions where he is. He says, "Home."

"Why? We were supposed to go out, remember?"

"Yeah. Sorry, something came up. I gotta go." He sounds tired and slightly pissed off.

"Ryan-" But he's already hung up. Fine! If he wants to be that way, fine! She grabs the letter from the trashcan and rips it open, reads it voraciously. She feels better after reading it; Henri-Michele was always good at making her feel better when she's down.

It's Ryan's fault anyway.

Still, now she's feels guilty and wants to know why he was so gruff earlier. She takes her purse and runs out to her car. She's going to the Cohen's house.

x x x x x x x x x x

Seth leans on Summer's shoulder, muttering, "What do we do now? What if it gets worse?" Summer doesn't know what to say; she's still kind of in shock herself, because Seth has just told her that the Kirsten has cancer, which is news she never expected to hear so now she's at a complete loss for words. So she lets her boyfriend lean on her and wordlessly pats his shoulder in a way that's supposed to be comforting but probably isn't.

"Summer?"

"Yeah?"

"Your shoulder's really bony. It's kind of hurting my head."

Summer rolls her eyes and pushes Seth off. "Cohen!"

"What? How am I supposed to appropriately agonize over what to do about my mother when your shoulder's piercing through my skull? I didn't remember your shoulder being so sharp."

"Whatev." Summer bends down and picks Pancakes up off the floor, cuddling the bunny to her chest and petting his ears. At least Pancakes likes me. Seth sits down on the floor and leans against the wall. "Hmmm...You know what we need to do?" He says, and his tone of voice worries Summer, because it's the I've-got-a-plan tone.

"What?"

"We need to make her feel better!"

"That's it? That's your plan?"

"No, not exactly. I mean, she's scared and worried and all that, because she knows what treatment is like, right? So what we need to do-" Seth jumps up and starts pacing, his hands gesticulating wildly as he speaks- "is give her one day where she can completely relax and forget about the cancer, y'know? Like, we take her shopping, out to eat, get her a massage, the works. She won't have to lift a finger. And we'll have to do it before chemo starts, because then she'll be really tired all the time and'll start throwing up, which I don't think I'll be able to deal with because puke kind of weirds me out, but the point is, we need to do it tomorrow."

"When does she start treatment?"

"The day after tomorrow."

"Oh. Hey, Taylor and I can do the whole shopping part of it, unless you wanna help your mom pick out clothes."

Seth shakes his head. "It's probably best if you handle that."

"'Kay. Let's go tell Atwood and Taylor." Summer puts Pancakes back in his cage, feeding him a lettuce leaf before she and Seth leave.

x x x x x x x x x x

Julie watches Kaitlin skating away with the Ward twins. She wonders when her daughter became so punk, and what Jimmy would think if he saw Kaitlin now. Kaitlin, with her long dark hair and her t-shirts with band names splashed across the front. Kaitlin, with her fake IDs (yes, Julie knows about them- she'll never forget when Kaitlin saw her in the club dancing with some random guy) and her crazy friends. Julie knows that her daughter smokes pot(it's kind of hard to miss the smell), but allows the girl a little leeway, because Julie herself smoked a lot of pot when she was a teenager. Besides, it's only normal for teens to experiment with drugs. As long as Kaitlin doesn't get into it as deep as Marissa did.

The redhead sighs and takes a sip from the cup of coffee in her hand. She has work to do. She drains the rest of the semi-cold coffee and goes upstairs to get dressed.

At the NewMatch office, Julie is not surprised to see that Kirsten isn't there. Julie makes a mental note to visit her friend later today to see if she's feeling any better and could possibly come back to work soon.

Julie's still behind in her work, so she sits at her desk and starts to flip through the folders on her desk. By lunchtime, she is thoroughly bored, so she decides to visit Kirsten. She packs the folders and grabs a cup of coffee on her way out.

When she gets to the Cohen's driveway, she is surprised to see that there are already two other cars there: Summer's and Taylor's. She can't park in the driveway because there's no space, so she parks by the curbside and gets out, stumbling as her heel hits the grass. She rights herself then goes up to the house.

Sandy answers the door, much to Julie's surprise. Shouldn't he be at work? This, along with the fact that everyone else is at the Cohen's, makes alarm bells go off in her head. What's going on? Inside, Kirsten is lounging on the couch, looking paler and thinner than usual, with dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. Has she been crying?

"Kiki!" Kirsten winces slightly at the nickname, but stands to receive Julie's embrace. "How are you? What's going on? I saw the girls' cars outside, and Sandy's home instead of at work, so what's happening?"

Sandy excuses himself and wanders out of sight, and Kirsten settles back down on the sofa. Julie sits next to her, not taking her eyes off the blonde. Kirsten says, "How's NewMatch working?"

Julie is slightly thrown by the fact that Kirsten answered her questions with another question, but she quickly recovers and says, "Oh, fine, fine. Business is great. When'll you be back?"

"I don't think I'll be able to go back."

"What? Why?" Julie is utterly bewildered. Something is going on here that she doesn't know about, and it's driving her nuts.

"There's really no easy way to say this. Julie...I have cancer, I start treatment soon, there's no way I'm going to be able to work."

Julie stares. I misheard that, right? "I'm sorry. Say that again."

Kirsten sighs. "I have cancer."

Shit. Just then, the back door opens and Seth, Ryan, Summer, and Taylor all parade loudly in, looking rather proud of themselves. Sandy rushes in. "What's all that noise?" He sees the kids and says simply, "Oh."

Seth steps forward, grinning widely. "Mother, we have a surprise for you..."