I was listening to "Liar" by Paramore when it struck me how perfect that song really is for Jimmy/Cindy. Thus, this was born.

Dedicated to my lovely and incredibly talented friend Katie! ❤️

What was the moment? It's hard to say
I'm sure I don't remember anyway
Before I only knew to hesitate
Pin back in the grenade
And all the ways I'd keep you safe
I keep you safe from me

- Liar, Paramore

She could pinpoint the exact moment she'd fallen in love with him.

It was late summer. A supposedly prodigious six year old boy and his parents had moved into the house across the street. He'd zipped past the moving truck and all the boxes crowding his driveway, to chase his robot dog all the way into the Vortexes' freshly mown lawn.

She'd turned the sprinklers on and called him a fudge-head. He'd turned around, completely drenched from head to toe, his bottom lip quivering and his ocean blue eyes welling up with fat tears, clearly unsure why his new neighbor would be so callous. It wasn't as if he'd done anything to provoke her anger. And he wasn't trespassing. Not really. Not for long anyways.

His reaction, made her feel ashamed of herself, though she wasn't old enough to understand why. Cruelty was the standard at home, she figured it was the standard everywhere. Weren't all people like her parents? Hurting each other every chance they got? Enjoying a good laugh at someone else's expense?

She'd rushed to turn the sprinklers off but by then, he'd already found his pet and had retreated to his own home. The realization had come too late that no, it wasn't normal to be mean for the sake of it.

The dynamic of that first day had never quite faded away; she was nasty to him, and then swallowed her own personal cocktail of guilt and love down like poison when she saw the effect she had. Except, he wasn't that sensitive little boy anymore. If he was, he didn't show it. He decided at some point to stand his ground against her.

And for that, she was grateful. Because it meant she hadn't driven him away. And more importantly, because it meant he had singled her out as someone worthy of rivaling him. When all was said and done, she didn't like the twerp. But she enjoyed having him near. No one else in this stupid town presented the challenge that he did.

Cindy quickly learned that he was, in fact, a bona fide genius. Like everything else about this boy, her feelings about his intellect confused her to no end. She swung wildly between awe and insane jealousy.

The next best thing, she thought, after not having being born at all, would probably have been to be born a genius.

The fates had not smiled down upon her in this regard, and so she was forced to work hard for everything that came naturally to him.

Of course, there were other areas where she excelled. The arts, for one. Athletics, for another. But how did any of that really compare to someone who was toying around with time travel by the age of eight?

By the time they were both eleven, her crush on him had grown to monstrously inconvenient proportions. It was both exhilarating trying to keep up with him, and tiring to reap so little reward for so much effort.

She and Libby were drawn rather organically into Neutron's friend circle. It wasn't the worst thing in the world. In fact, if she was honest with herself (and she so rarely was), it was the first time she felt like she belonged.

Things at home were getting worse. No amount of prestigious piano recitals or karate competition trophies would put things right. Her mother continued to demand excellence, but barely offered praise or encouragement when Cindy did succeed.

Her dad was absent more and more often. When he was around, there was a lot of yelling.

One day, after picking a fight with Neutron for no good reason and calling him a slew of names, she came home to the sound of her parents throwing things, and she had the horrific realization that she was turning into them.

Whenever Libby asked why Cindy didn't just admit that she liked Jimmy, she came up with some excuse about how he was a dork who was going to blow everyone up one day. But the truth was that she needed to protect him from herself.

He might be the one manning rockets and blasting off into space, but she was a ticking bomb. Bound to injure everyone within a fifty mile radius.

One day, she was at the grocery store, and saw the Neutrons in the dairy aisle, picking up ice cream. She hid right out of their line of sight and observed their family dynamic.

Jimmy was laughing with his mother, and his father tagged along behind his wife and son, holding a banana cream pie and some vegetables in a basket. The whole thing made her stomach turn.

She was envious of far more than just his genius, it turned out.

And this was yet another reason it was best she never told him the truth.

If ever a day came when he asked her flat out why she was such a menace, she would lie through her teeth.

Keep the pin in the grenade and save him from herself.

The day came sooner than she thought. She had severely under-estimated her ability to keep her heart in check.

When the two of them got stranded on some deserted island together after a dumb fight about the equator, he asked her why they always fought back home.

She should have kept her guard up. Insisted on the status quo. Because that's just the way it is. Not everyone worships your giant head, Neutron.

But to her surprise, that wasn't what came out. She had blamed peer pressure and admitted that she thought he was actually cool.

Later, while gathering kindling for a fire on the beach, she had chastised herself for her momentary weakness.

You have to keep up the charade. He deserves better.

She felt even more sure of this after he had searched through hundreds of oysters to find her one perfectly smooth pearl.

Why had he done that? Didn't he know she would destroy anything she touched? That even jewels would wither to dust in the hands of a swirling Vortex?

When she finally learned how to drive at fifteen, she was more than glad to have an excuse to leave the house and get away from her mother as often as possible.

Every errand that needed doing, Cindy would volunteer for.

On a windy Saturday in autumn, she was picking up her mother's dry-cleaning, when she ran into none other than Judy Neutron.

She considered getting back in her car and leaving before Judy spotted her, but figured if she didn't pick up her mother's suit before the place closed, she would be on the receiving end of a diatribe later that night about how useless she was.

So she put on a brave face and marched into the store with her pink payment slip. When Judy saw her, she seemed a bit taken aback.

"Cindy." Her tone wasn't quite cold, but there was something in it that told her she wasn't Cindy's biggest fan.

Which, to be fair, was perfectly reasonable given that for all intents and purposes, she probably thought Cindy hated her son.

"Hello Mrs. Neutron."

"How are you?"

"Oh, I'm fine. Just picking something up for my mother. She has a big day in court coming up soon."

At the mention of her mother, Judy's face softened visibly. Cindy wasn't sure if she hated that Judy probably knew about her less than stellar family life, or if she was grateful that she saw a flicker of understanding in Judy's eyes.

Judy artfully sidestepped the whole subject of Sasha, steering the conversation to something less...anxiety-inducing. "Jimmy tells me that you want to be a lawyer too."

He talks about me at home? That came as a real shock. She had been so certain he went home and ranted about the blonde girl who made his life hell.

"Yeah, I'm keeping my options open, but I think I could be good at arguing cases."

"I'm sure." She gives Cindy a knowing smile. Of course you'd be good at arguing. It's all you ever do with my son.

High school went by in a blur. She crammed every extra curricular and AP class possible into a schedule that would have driven anyone crazy.

Even though lots of boys seemed to be interested in her, she wasn't keen on the idea of dating any of them.

The only time she accepted a boy's invite for a date was cause for yet another giant quarrel between her and Neutron.

They had been walking from the library to their AP Chemistry class when she had announced that she would be attending some networking dinner at Eustace Strych's fancy private school as his plus one.

Neutron was livid. "Did you learn nothing the first two times that twit fucked you over?"

"It's really none of your business, Freaktron."

"You made it my business by telling me."

"I'm going whether you like it or not. Some of us need to actually put in the work to get into the Ivies."

"Eating canapés and schmoozing with a bunch of arrogant, conservative, rich pricks is not going to get you into Princeton, Vortex."

"Yeah, well neither will wasting my time with you. I can guarantee that."

And with that, she was off. The snubs flew off her tongue with such ease they felt like second nature now.

Rest assured, she was never going to let him get to her. Ever.

To his credit, he never gave up on her. He should have.

By the end of high school, there were plenty of girls who found him attractive or made no secret of this.

He enjoyed the attention from them and never missed the chance to rub it in her face, but never seemed to initiate anything with any of these doe-eyed prospects.

She figured he should have stopped talking to her, should have written her off as a bitch, and definitely should have just settled for some poised, mild-mannered bimbo like Betty Quinlan.

But he never did.

Two years later, at a college party in Boston, they ran into each other again. She was at Harvard and he was at MIT (which was, she reminded him, upon their reunion, not an Ivy, and therefore not nearly as well-regarded as the elite institution she'd fought tooth and nail to get into).

"I didn't expect to see you here in the wild, Neutron. I took it for granted that you'd be holed up in whichever dark underworld of a lab you're working in now." She knocked back some kind of foul-tasting alcoholic concoction from her plastic red cup. A kid had handed it to her when she had walked in, and she'd accepted it. Lord knew she needed it after the week she'd had.

"Cindy." He acknowledged her with a little nod of the head. Some of his hair flopped over his forehead. "Still pleasant as ever, I see."

She hated herself for how attractive she found him. He was taller, and was wearing a gray button up with rolled up sleeves, and his jawline was much more pronounced.

It wasn't that she hadn't noticed all this before, but he looked like he was far more invested in his appearance now than he had been back in the day. He looked particularly handsome under the blue strobe lights in the apartment they were in. Either that or she was losing it.

"Cindy?" He snapped his fingers in front of her face, and she blushed. "The moonshine already getting to you?"

"I'll have you know I could drink you under the table, Neutron."

"Well, I guess that answers my question."

"What question?"

"Do you ever listen to anything I say? I asked how Harvard is treating you."

"Oh, I'm just bleeding crimson over here. How's it going over in beaver town?"

He fixed her with a look. Really?

"It's not too bad." he shrugged. "It's nice to have found my tribe."

"Your tribe?" She had to hold back a laugh. "What, other people who spend their spare time jerking off to Marie Curie and getting excited about sub-atomic particles?"

"Better than whatever dimwit footballers and Philosophy major losers you're probably hanging out with." He shot back.

"Philosophy majors score the highest on the LSAT, you moron."

"Well, it's been about as fun as ever, Vortex. See you around."

She didn't know what had possessed her to reach out and grab him by the arm. It was probably the effect of the booze.

"Wait."

"You better make this worth my while. I have actual friends I want to talk to."

That stung. Still, she persisted.

"I'm sorry." She blurted out. "And I thought we were...friends."

He looked uneasy. Neither of them had ever known what to classify their relationship as.

"No need for an apology Vortex, I'm used to the quips."

She sighed. "Look, I don't want you to hate me. It's hard for me. To know how to act around you."

He paused for a second and she wondered if he was going to walk away, or worse, start laughing. Instead, he reached out and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"Whoever said I hated you, Vortex?"

Her breathing was uneven. The whole world seemed to grind to a screeching halt.

"I would get it if you did." She conceded.

He stepped forward. "What do you want from me, Cindy?" It was the most serious he'd ever sounded.

She was torn. Her heart told her to lean in and kiss him with abandon. Finally give into the desires she'd harbored for years. Her brain, however, seemed to contort into a giant red warning sign.

Do him a goddamn favor and leave him alone. Do NOT wreck his life. Do not drag him into your ugly world. You are not good enough for him and never have been. Fib. Fib. Fib. Do not under any circumstances, let him in. For his own good. Besides, he doesn't like you.

So she kept her mask on and told him what she thought he had always wanted to hear.

"Absolutely nothing."

For a minute, she saw a flash of that sad little boy on her lawn. Used to being bullied for being different. Lonely in a new town. Uncertain about the future. And she despised herself for the lie she'd had to commit to from the very beginning. The unkindness she'd shown him then and in all the years since.

"Okay." He fell back, silently. "Take care."

The minute he left, she rushed into the nearest bathroom to cry.

This was just the way it had to be.