chapter 1 - what do you want me to do, to do for you to see you through?

Daniel knocked against his shoulder when he went in for another handful of popcorn, hard enough that Nick snapped, "Ow, man, that fuckin' hurt," but not hard enough to really warrant an apology. Daniel wouldn't have given him one anyway, just given him that shit-eating grin he armed himself with in everything he did and proceeded to eat his popcorn, like he was doing how. Slowly he broke into little peals of laughter as he ate. To his left, Nick heard Sara give something like an exasperated sigh.

Okay, so he was kind of an dick for inviting Daniel, but Ken was with his family at some fancy-ass resort-type summer home near some lake or something, and on the last day of school Kim had completely out of the blue hopped in a van with some stoners, or something like that. She hadn't been real clear on where she was going or why. Daniel had been surprisingly absent from Nick's summer since then, probably wallowing in his own boredom at home like Nick was doing, only without the girlfriend to keep him company. And Nick was already feeling like a dick about that.

"Hey, Nick," Daniel whispered, "can you, uh, can you tell your lady friend that I can hear her rollin' her eyes at me? Can you ask her to keep it down?"

Nick glared at him in a way he hoped seemed intimidating. "Hey, would you shut up? Haven't you seen this movie already?"

Daniel settled further into his seat. "Yeah, maybe a coupla times," he replied, looking away from Nick. "I just wanna enjoy it. Since, uh, I went all by myself the other times and all. I feel like less of a dork when I'm here with you and your lady friend, you know, than when I'm here by myself."

"I shouldn't've even invited you, man," Nick muttered. Saying it aloud made him feel a little less guilty about it, weirdly, although it wasn't as weird as the way Daniel was acting. Of course he'd seen it by himself those other time. He didn't need to reaffirm that over and over like he'd been doing since they got there.

Oh. Sara was trying to hold his hand. He'd been so preoccupied with being pissed off at Daniel, or at himself, whatever, that he hadn't even noticed, but now he did. Barely daring himself to think, Nick closed his eyes again and imagined that Lindsay was the one sitting next to him in the theater, in the dark, weaving her fingers between his, the callus on her ring finger from holding pencils the wrong way evident only as it brushed Nick's knuckles, her hands a little unsure but still cool and solid against Nick's skin. He couldn't breathe, suddenly, the lump in his throat somehow keeping him from inhaling, and he opened his eyes and moved his hand away.

Sara was quiet for a long minute, and the banter between the guy from the Star Wars movies and his hot black-haired girlfriend became important, suddenly, as it was the only thing keeping the long minute from sounding silent. Nick didn't look at his own hot black-haired girlfriend until she tapped him on the shoulder, and he felt kind of sick when he turned to look at her.

At least she didn't look mad, just a little disappointed, and a lot worried. "Nicky," she said softly, "I know you'd rather be out dancing right now, but can't you at least try to have fun?"

But she was wrong, she was so wrong. Maybe she even knew she was wrong and didn't want to have to deal with that. She'd heard Nick talk about Lindsay a million times. He wasn't doing a great job keeping this… thing he still had for Lindsay, about Lindsay, whatever it was, a secret. Nick wouldn't rather be out dancing right now at all. Maybe he didn't hate disco as much as he'd thought, okay, fair enough, but he thought maybe he'd rather be at the back of a crowded room full of people, watching Lindsay do math for a competition, cheering her on instead of running away like an asshole. By no logic should that have sounded like fun, but wow, Nick couldn't think of anything he'd rather be doing right now. Maybe he just wasn't very creative.

"Look, Sara…" he whispered back, "Look, I'm sorry I said we should go out today. I'm feelin' a little sick, I don't really know what I'm doin', I'm—"

She put a finger to his lips. "It's okay, baby. We can go. I don't really like movies anyway." Cocked her head, looked at him carefully. Sara was as cute as she'd always been, it just wasn't sitting right with him right now. "You wanna just listen to some music or something?"

He shook his head. "Nah, I think I'd just better—"

"Nick, shut up, man," Daniel hissed from his other side. So much for yeah, sure, I'll go, I mean, it's okay. His friend was seriously more invested in Indiana Jones than he was in Nick's relationship problems—health. Nick's health. Nick was feeling sick. Right.

He lowered his voice. Better to just deal with this now and question what the fuck was up with Daniel later. "I think I'd just better go lie down, or somethin'."

Sara's frown deepened. "You aren't just trying to go get high, are you?" she whispered.

Why do you do this, Nick? Lindsay murmured in his head. You're an amazing guy when you're not stoned. He shook the voice out. "No. No, I haven't smoked pot in like a month and a half. Come on, man, you know that."

She looked convinced. Sara didn't really doubt anything Nick said, just so long as he said it. That was the best thing about hanging out with her. She didn't make him feel like an asshole, didn't make him think maybe he did have more potential. He lived up to all Sara's expectations. Sara made him feel great. Sara was great.

Nick wanted to throw up.

Sara stood and stretched, checked her pockets, then turned to Nick. "Okay. We can go. I can pay you back later if you want."

He followed suit, standing numbly. "Nah, it's fine," he told her. The taste of his own mouth when he spoke was all wrong, everything was all wrong. Maybe he really did need to lie down. He had no idea what else he could do anyway.

Daniel snorted at them. "Fine. You guys go. But leave the popcorn here."

When he got home, didn't kiss Sara goodbye at the door like maybe he should have, his dad was in the living room, reading the newspaper. He didn't say anything as Nick came in, didn't say anything when Nick passed by him on his way across the room, but Nick heard him say, sharply, as he was about head down the stairs to the basement, "Girl called for you earlier."

Nick felt something swell up in his chest. His head was lighter than before, even. He threw a hand out onto the banister to steady himself. "Oh yeah? Uh… who?"

"Kim something," his dad said from behind the paper, his voice even, and Nick couldn't see his face, but that didn't matter as long as his dad couldn't see his face, because he might've asked why he looked so disappointed.

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Kim."

"Said she was a friend of yours. She left a number."

Well, Daniel would be happy to hear that. And hey, talking to Kim wasn't bad as long as she wasn't on her period or whatever. It'd be nice to have something to take his mind off the other girls in his life. He figured she could help him figure out the weird shit with Daniel, anyway, since she knew Daniel better than any of them did.

He headed back across the room, towards the phone this time, picked up the pad of yellow paper. In his dad's immaculate handwriting was a completely unfamiliar number, not even the Chippewa area code. Huh. He wasn't any closer to figuring out where Kim was then he'd been a week ago, not that he'd really been thinking about it.

"Dad—" he started, then cleared his throat, stood a little straighter in case the man could see him around the edge of the newspaper. "Dad, I'm gonna take this on the phone downstairs."

"You do that," his dad replied, but for all the interest in his voice he might as well have ignored Nick's announcement.

Nick tore the top sheet from the pad, strode back across the room and, once he'd reached the stairs again, bolted down them. The less he had to worry about his father right now, the better. He was already feeling terrible. He didn't need any more encouragement for it.

Once he had the phone off the hook, it actually took him a couple tries to get the number right without messing it up. His hands were still shaking a little from those three seconds when Lindsay might have been the one who'd left her name and number. He was stupid to even have thought that. He didn't know why he was still stuck on it.

An unfamiliar voice picked up, framed by the sound of heavy winds, cars zooming by on a freeway. "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeello?"

That was unexpected. Nick eyed the receiver for a second before forming a response. "Uh… is, is Kim Kelly there? This is Nick. Uh, Nick Andopolis," he added quickly.

The voice on the other end laughed. "That's a great name, man! Nick whatsitwhat? Andro—Annoponiz—Anna—"

"Andopolis?" he heard another voice say from further away. "That's my Nick. Gimme that phone, loser." There was some fumbling, static pouring through, and the sound of muffled arguing, and then Kim's distinctive drawl came through the phone, washing Nick with relief. "Nick? Nick, is that you?"

"Uh, yeah, hey," he replied. "Yeah, it's me. Where're you calling from?"

Kim laughed, shrill with more static. "Oh. My. God. Nick, guess where we are right now."

"Um, I dunno, Canada. Who's we?"

She laughed again, sounding triumphant. "We're in Boulder!" she all but shrieked, and it wasn't unreasonable that Nick had to hold the phone a good five inches away from his ear. That just came with being friends with Kim. At his bewildered silence, she clarified, "Boulder, you dumbass, Boulder, Colorado!"

Colorado… Nick frowned. "Wh—Colorado? What the hell are you doin' in Colorado?"

"You'd never guess, so I'll just tell you," she said gleefully. It crossed Nick's mind that this might have been the most excited he'd ever heard Kim sound, but he was still stunned enough that he didn't linger on it. "We're following the Grateful Dead tour! Lindsay and I've been to like ten of their concerts in the past two weeks!"

"Why didn't you tell anybody? Daniel's been…" It was the first thing that came to mind, so Nick said it, because it took him a minute to process the other, more important thing that Kim had said, and he trailed off when he realized it. Lindsay and I.

"Oh, I tried calling him, but he hasn't been home for like the whole week. But I can't tell his mom where I am because she knows my mom and she'd freak if she knew. Oh yeah, and I know you're all in love with Lindsay's dad or whatever, but you can't tell him either, okay?"

Nick's brain was still struggling to catch up with everything Kim was saying, trying to keep down everything he was feeling, when he heard another voice, standing out among the voices in the background the way it always stood out against everything around it, "Are you talking to Nick?"

"Yeah," Kim said, her voice a little further away than before. "Why, you wanna talk to him?" Nick couldn't make out the response, but a few seconds later, there was a little more fumbling, and then a tentative, "Hey."

And he couldn't help it, his fingers were twitching, with the not-memory of holding Lindsay's hand in a movie theater, and his heart was beating a lot faster than he'd hoped it would be.

"…Lindsay?"

"Yeah," she replied, and oh man, it really was her on the other end of the line, nobody else on the planet could sound that laid-back and that nervous at the same time. "Hi, Nick."

He swallowed the lump in his throat, settled back against the wall and tried to relax. He was just talking to Lindsay like he'd done a million times. It shouldn't have even been a big deal. Besides, he needed to catch up with whatever the hell was going on before he started panicking. "Hey, so, uh," he managed, "what are you doing in Colorado? W-with Kim and all?"

Lindsay was quiet, like maybe he'd said something wrong, or maybe she thought she'd done something wrong. "I'm… you know. I'm following the Grateful Dead tour," she said finally.

"Yeah. Uh, why? Aren't you supposed to—"

"You know what, Nick," she cut in, "forget about what I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't wanna go to Ann Arbor, okay? It just wasn't… I dunno. I wasn't excited about it to begin with, and Laurie and Victor invited me along, and I… there you go."

"Laurie and Victor?" Nick asked her. Maybe it came out sharper than he wanted it to. He just couldn't believe he'd been imagining Lindsay as some top performer at some school thing, and this whole time she'd been off at Grateful Dead concerts. Nick didn't even like the Grateful Dead. "So, so what, so you're a Deadhead now?"

"Geez, I didn't think you'd be… upset."

Nick shook his head, forgetting for a minute that she couldn't see him. This was all wrong. He wasn't mad, not at Lindsay, he just felt confused, like he'd been hanging onto an idea for too long without knowing that it was way, way off. It was the same feeling he'd gotten when he'd found out that Lindsay had been planning on breaking up with him. If he'd just gotten some warning, if somebody had told him that everything wasn't going as planned, then it might not've hurt so much.

"Lindsay…" he tried. "Lindsay, I'm sorry, I'm not… You just surprised me, that's all."

"It's fine, Nick."

There was an awful, bitter silence on the line, even louder than the overwhelming silence whenever Nick and his dad were in the same room. Nick was on the verge of hysteria now, because it was so goddamn frustrating when he screwed everything up and it all just got totally out of his control. He should've just said hi, real fast, and then made her hand the phone back to Kim—no, that would've been even worse, but now he was acting like he was mad at her for blowing off a school thing, which was a hundred percent something he would've done—

Oh, maybe. Maybe that was it.

"It's just…" he started slowly, not even sure if Lindsay was listening anymore. "I dunno, Lindsay, I just had this image of you, you know? I mean…" He tried to laugh. "Like, don't get me wrong, I think it's totally cool that you're goin' to concerts instead of summer school or whatever, but it just doesn't sound like you. It's… I just didn't expect it, you know? That kind of seems more like somethin' I would do, and I didn't think you'd… yeah." He was trailing off again. Lindsay was so, so smart, though, there was no way she hadn't gotten it from what he'd said.

"Nick," he heard her say, "why do you and me have to be so different? I… I don't think we are. You know, you…" And was it completely crazy that he loved how unsure she sounded, clung to it like it was going out of style? "You're allowed to change. We're both allowed to change." She coughed. There was cheering in the background, or something, and she had to raise her voice a little to make sure Nick could hear, not that it would've been hard for him to pick her voice out of a lineup. "I mean, I've already changed so much from hanging out with you and Kim, and, and Daniel and Ken. And from…" From going out with you. She didn't say it, though.

"I know that," Nick said, because he didn't really know what else to say.

"And—and you've already changed, too!" Lindsay went on. "I mean, you're into disco now, and you're with Sara, and you've stopped smoking pot, right?"

She sounded happy. She sounded happy that he'd stopped smoking pot, but by association she also sounded happy about him and Sara, and that felt like a punch in the gut. That felt like coming downstairs and finding out your dad had sold your 29-piece drum set.

"Yeah," he croaked.

"Look, Nick… This is stupid. We don't need to talk about this right now. How's your summer going?"

On some level, maybe Nick was a little relieved that he didn't need to think about this for the moment, maybe also a little delighted that Lindsay could read him well enough, even over the phone, to know he couldn't keep up with this conversation without cracking. That didn't make the way he was feeling any worse, though.

"Sure. It's, uh, it's fine," he stammered. "I've been taking drum lessons. You already knew that, though. Haha. Um. Uh, everyone else is doing good. How's—how's Boulder?"

Lindsay laughed. It was just a little laugh, a hesitant half-laugh, but the gentle hoarseness of it flooded Nick with warmth, and he instantly remembered why he'd been so excited to talk to Lindsay in the first place.

"It's a whole lot better than Chippewa."

"Yeah," Nick said, smiling a little. He wondered if Lindsay could tell. "Yeah, I bet."

"I miss you."

His chest ached, his fists felt raw from clenching and unclenching, his eyes stung. "Ha. Yeah, I miss you too."

"Maybe we can play some basketball when I get back. If I'm not grounded for life, I mean."

Nick laughed at that, or maybe just at how casually Lindsay said it. He knew she—or at least the Lindsay he was pretty sure he knew—would be freaking out if her parents did find out she'd lied to them. But he had to keep telling himself, just to get rid of that awful, ridiculous sense of betrayal, that he didn't know Lindsay that well, that there was no reason for him to know Lindsay that well, that he didn't own Lindsay and that she could be whoever she wanted and she'd probably still be amazing at it and there was no reason for Nick to get involved.

"We're packing up the van," she said suddenly, distractedly. "I'll be home in a couple days. I'll tell you everything then, if you want."

"Yeah, I'd… love to hear about it."

"Okay. Cool." Kim's voice shouted indiscernibly in the background. "Oh, Kim says to tell Daniel where she's been. Oh, and to—Kim, he's not an asshole, calm down…"

"Yeah, okay," Nick said. "I guess I'll…"

"I'll talk to you later."

Click.

As soon as he heard the telltale sound of the call disconnecting, Nick collapsed onto the floor and closed his eyes. He hadn't been prepared for talking, really talking, about what was going on in his head, especially not to Lindsay, and not now.

The last thing he wanted, but the first thing he needed, was to be alone with his thoughts for a while.