May 3rd, 1981
10.41 PM

As soon as Lorelai heard the car take off outside she ran to her room, picked up the phone and dialed a number. This was finally it – she'd been waiting for the perfect time to borrow Richard's telescope a little. There had been an article in Weekly World News about a sighting of an alien ship above Hartford and she'd been looking for it ever since, but it's hard to see UFO's with your bare eyes and Richard wouldn't let her borrow the telescope which was just stupid, she'd only broken it a little, not that much at all, last time she used it. Come on, pick up, pick up, pick up!

"This is the Hayden household." Great, the new maid was answering. If it had been Straub, he would probably just have hung up.
"Hi, this is Lorelai, is Chris there?"
"Yes, I'll put master Hayden on. Please, hold." Master Hayden? How old was that maid, a hundred and eight?
"Hello, this is Christopher?"
"Good evening, master Hayden. What are you doing on this very beautiful night?"
"Who is this?"
"It's Michael Hutchence."
"Oh, hello Michael. Been expecting your call. If you're on the lookout for a new guitarist, I'm available."
"No need for a three chord intro but I do need help, like, immediately. Dad's out of town and I need to borrow his telescope but it's too heavy for me to carry. You see where I'm going?"
"Unfortunately, yes. "
"When can you be here?"
"Um… I have to study, at least for a while. Dad has kinda locked the door to my room… He was really mad at me this afternoon, yelled and called me a disgrace and whatever. I didn't even know what I had done."
"Sometimes your dad makes my parents look like Ghandi." Lorelai paused. "He's really mean to you, isn't he?"
"Yeah. He's an old pile of shit, that's what he is." Christopher swallowed.
"So… Could you be here in an hour? Could be nice to get away from the shit house, I mean."
"Sure, I'll come. I'll just have to establish the concept of fractions in my brain first."

"Look!" Lorelai nudged Christopher with her elbow. "I knew he'd quit locking it up!"
Christopher stood motionless behind her, peeking over her shoulder. They were looking into Richard's study where moonlight was flooding in through a window, lighting up the large telescope. Christopher glanced over his shoulder down the hallway.
"Are you sure about this? It looks really expensive."
"It's not like we're gonna break it, we're just gonna borrow it. How many times have I tricked you into doing something stupid?"
"Do you want the list in alphabetical or chronological order?"
"Well, then, smart ass, file this under T for telescope theft."
She patted Christopher's head and tiptoed into the study. He stood still, hesitating on the doorstep.
"Come on, Chrissy, I don't have four hands, you gotta get the base!" she mouthed, and waved animatedly to him.
His eyes narrowed, and he came tiptoeing at her:
"Don't call me Chrissy! It sounds like my mom's hairdresser."

"You know, we would probably be grounded for a week if they caught us," Christopher said as they maneuvered the telescope through the hallway.
"Agreed. But that's a risk we have to take in the name of science." Lorelai took off down the corridor. Even though her parents were not at home, some maids still were so they better be fast and quiet.

But all of a sudden a floorboard creaked loudly under Christopher's foot and they froze, mid-step.
"Hello?" Somebody called from down the hall. "Lorelai?"
Lorelai grabbed Christopher's t-shirt and pulled him, and the telescope, down behind some large vases. She pushed his head down with her elbow, trying to get a good view peeking out between the leaves.
"Ow!" He rubbed the top of his head, pushed her elbow away.
"Oh no, it's May."
"Who's May?"
"It's the new one. She started last week so she'll wanna please and I bet she would just love to have two little sacrificial lambs to offer my mother. Stay absolutely still!"
Lorelai shot him a very serious look. Christopher's eyes started back and forth, and his breathing was shallow. Oh, he was always so nervous. But what if a little spider came traveling up his ribs? Wouldn't that lighten the mood? She tickled him and he suppressed a sound and squirmed, shifted a little, accidentally made the plant's leaves razzle.
"Hello?" May's voice echoed through the hallway again. "Is someone there?"
Lorelai stifled a giggle.
"Shut up!"Christopher mouthed at her. May lingered for a moment longer, but eventually, she moved on. The coast was clear.

After dragging the telescope inside Lorelai's room, she heaved herself onto the windows ledge, opened the window and climbed outside.
"Come on, this balcony can't be seen from elsewhere in the building."
She extended a hand to him. He reached out to grab it, but stopped mid air.
"Are we allowed to be out there?"
"Technically, no, but we're also not allowed to borrow dad's telescope. So you've kind of already failed as far as consent goes."
Christopher sighed. He handed Lorelai the telescope and climbed out through the window.
"Now, help me position it."
He leaned in to assist in adjusting the telescope and then it just happened: their hands briefly touched and her heart, what was it doing? Fluttering? Yeah, hey, so it seemed. She let her hand linger.
"Um, the lens.. It seems a little stuck."
Wasn't he, uh, what if he... He was dating that brown haired girl in his Spanish class, didn't he? The one with the stupid blue ribbon on her head. She peeked at him. His cheeks looked a little flushed. Huh. Interesting.
"So," she said slowly, "what if we spot an alien ship. You think they'd be nice to us? Where would you fly if you could hitchhike with aliens? "
"Jupiter, I think. "
"What? That's a gas planet, you'd burn to death in a second." He shrugged.
"It's the one I can at least almost find, I memorized the coordinates for some reason. Where would you go?"
"I guess… Anywhere but here." She sighed. It'd definitely take an alien abduction to finally set free from Richard and Emily's long arms.

Lorelai finally managed to fasten the lens and leaned in and peeked through the telescope. Oh, what was that? It was white and fast and moved super fast over the sky!
"Chris, look! Look, it's really fast, and white and it's blinking!"
He leaned over and took a look at it.
"Lore. That's an airplane."
She pushed him away from the telescope.
"No, it can't be! Airplanes don't move that fast!"
"Well, as far as I know, UFO's very seldom have Avianca logos."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Okay, fine." She crossed her arms over her chest and sat down on the railing, tilting her head backwards, leaning backward towards the sky.
"It's a beautiful night, though."
"Yup. Don't ruin it by breaking your neck."
"I would never, would I?" She leaned over a little more, letting her hair sway. "Look, Chrissy, look at my pretty hair, I need help to lay it!"

Woha, she leaned over a little too far; in a split second she had lost her balance and fell and for a horrifying moment before Chris grabbed her t-shirt she thought she was actually gonna fall off the balcony. Three stories to the ground.

"What the fuck, Lore!" He said as he pulled her close to his chest, his heart thumping wildly. Her own heart raised, shit, that was not really part of the plan. "What was that, even."
"I just wanted to see Jupiter," she mumbled.
"Yeah, well, it could very well have been the last thing you ever saw."

He smelled really good. Usually, best case boys smelled nothing, worst they smelled of sweaty socks and weird after shaves borrowed from their fathers, even though they didn't have anything resembling a beard. She did have an horrifying experience with Steven Andersson who happened to smell exactly like Richard's after shave which gave connotations leading up to never seeing Steven again. But Chris smelled different, just warm and a little bit like, um, sugar. She took a deep breath and hugged him a little tighter. "Enjoying being alive, are we?" He hugged her back.
"It has its upsides. One of them is you, smelling good."
He sniffed her hair.
"So do you. Wella Shampoo, right?"
"Look at you, Chrissy, all familiar with girl's shampoo."
She leaned her head against his shoulder, turning to the sky again. The stars sparkled in the black night sky above Hartford.
"Do you see ships? Or anything besides a plane?"
"Nope. Still nothing. Not even Jupiter."
"You know what, Chris?"
"No, what?"
"You're actually pretty amazing. And not just because you can almost find Jupiter."