Lane slammed her locker door shut so hard, she heard the pile of carefully-stacked books inside topple over. She didn't bother unlocking it, relishing the tiny electrical shock her arm got from the metal as she stuffed her uneaten bag of mini pretzels into her backpack. Springtime and it was still chilly when the sun started setting. The day had been downhill from the moment she woke up, accidentally squirting toothpaste all over the hem of her top and somehow getting it into her hair. She'd been late to first period, the vending machines wouldn't relinquish the Dr. Pepper she'd paid for, and she'd almost directly caused the twisting of Janie Fertman's ankle during cheer practice.
The grand finale had been the aptitude test. Lane wanted to bunch the paper carrying her results into a ball and fling it into the nearest trash can at Mach-12. She would have, too, if Mrs. Kim wouldn't want to see it the moment she got home. The desire to completely erase all proof she'd even taken the test was strong, but not strong enough to come up with a watertight excuse for a missing—or ripped up—score sheet.
"You look happy," Jess commented, materializing beside her as she stormed toward the gym. She'd forgotten her pom-poms on the bench. Again. Typical of today.
"Sales," Lane groaned.
"Gesundheit." Jess tucked his hands behind his back.
"Sales, sales!" Lane shook the aptitude test in his face, stopping in the hall to face him. She couldn't figure out how to articulate what she meant. There were no words in the English language adequate enough for the travesty. "Sales. Me. Sales."
"Wow. Five whole syllables and zero communication. You and Celentano ever exchange numbers?"
Lane shoved the paper against his chest and let him take it, resuming her warpath. Jess fell in step after her, somewhere near her shoulder as he examined the test. He went with her all the way to the gym, like a third elbow. Easy as chewing.
It had been this way for about two months now. Maybe it had something to do with the CD drops they'd been doing every other week at 9:15 PM on the dot. Lane had, with her own musical library and Jess's combined, introduced the cheer squad to ABBA, Retrofile, Steel Pulse, and two whole Metallica songs.
As far as she knew, Mrs. Kim didn't suspect a thing—and neither did anyone else in her life. There was veritably nothing at all to do in Stars Hollow on a Sunday night, but for Lane this was the serotonin equivalent of sneaking out Lorelai-style and partying till the sun came up. Each time she crawled into bed after the rendezvous, borrowed album tucked safely underneath her floor, she was sure the two sensations were identical.
Or maybe it wasn't the secret CDs. Maybe it was the fact that the air was getting warmer, so moods were higher. Or that Luke had finally caved and bought a new toaster. Or that time really did heal all wounds, including the wound of being dropped unceremoniously into a small town by a lady who apparently overlooked the fact that you owned more than one Hefty garbage bag's worth of valuables. A lady who was supposed to be your mother.
Whatever the reason, things were nicer. Different. Lane and Jess had fallen into a kind of perfect rhythm, almost accidentally. A polyrhythm, even.
Now when she went into Luke's and Jess was there, she would at times look up from her math homework and herbal tea to discover a handful of fries dumped onto a napkin in front of her. More than once, Jess caught her eye while a patron bent his ear and made a face that very clearly said he was genuinely considering homicide, coffee pot in hand. When she saw him in the street, she didn't wave or smile, because he never smiled back and, if she was with her mother, that would be like painting a target onto the chest of his Skid Row tee shirt. But if she was alone, he sometimes appeared at her shoulder, walking beside her for a few paces, saying something about what she was wearing or maybe remarking on the troubadour's song of the day. Then he disappeared as soon as they passed the bookstore.
A package of Goldfish was crinkled into the corner of her desk in English Lit after she opened it, always on the mornings when her stomach growled too loudly in spite of the apple. She'd started having mysterious coughing fits whenever teachers asked Jess a question and he was too absorbed in whatever paperback he was reading under the desk to hear them. From six tables away, he threw wadded-up napkins at the back of her head at lunch every time she stared at the twenty-something substitute History teacher's smile for too long.
When Penelope Grater rumored to the whole cheer squad that Jess Mariano had big-city fleas from when he'd totally done time in juvie, Lane pretended she'd seen lice in between Gater's auburn braids during homeroom the following morning. Penelope was out for the next three days. Everyone immediately forgot about pestilence in regards to the new kid.
Lane opened her locker one Thursday in April and a book with a bent cover entitled Please Kill Me tumbled out and hit her pinky toe. Definitely not making it through the front yard of Kim's Antiques, let alone onto her own secret bookshelf in her closet. She had skimmed it during free period, rolling her eyes at Jess's handwriting beside the printed text. Talk about literary abuse. Retaliation came in the form of pressing a sticky note inside the back cover with a list of punk albums she knew he'd never heard, because every paragraph in that book brought the names to mind.
("How'd you even get into my locker?"
"Magic.")
When Lane would mention Mama Kim and feel her stomach drop in guilt or worry, she saw Jess's mouth tighten. When Jess came downstairs into the diner with massive bags under his eyes, Lane wanted to hit someone. It was new. It was weird. It worked.
They didn't hang out around town. They didn't call each other on the phone. The amount of time they spent together was stretched thin like Laffy Taffy and some days neither of them spoke to the other. They barely even brushed shoulders. It was the total opposite of everything Lane had ever shared with Rory, and its lifespan was much shorter.
But in the corners, in the margins, they couldn't be anything less than friends.
"What is it?" Jess tilted his head sideways, bored, squinting at the paper.
"The aptitude test." Lane reached behind her shoulder and whipped it away, trying not to give in to the primal urge to tear it in half. She was already piercing is as tightly as possible between two fingernails. "Fifth period? You didn't take it?"
"Guess not."
"You have kind of been missing-in-action lately." Lane didn't glance at him, marching her way through the now-empty gym to grab her pom-poms, dangling innocently on one of the benches. As she stuffed them into her backpack, she had to put the test down on the metal seat.
Jess quickly took advantage of this, picking it back up. When she lunged for it, he, of course, held it high out of reach. "A genuine aptitude for sales," he read aloud, his voice pitching jauntily.
"Sh."
"Lotta high percentages here."
"Shut up."
"I hear the Neopets booth at the mall's hiring, better act fast."
"Sales," she repeated, and he let her take the paper on the third stretch. "I am so not a sales person."
"They say numbers don't lie."
"This is not funny. This," Lane stopped and Jess stopped too, mainly so that they didn't collide, "is a warning. It's the beginning of the end. This is the death of Brian Epstein and the birth of Yoko Ono combined. Do you know what this means?"
"Think it means you need to check the caffeine dosage in your tea." Jess squinted at her, raising both eyebrows.
"It means," Lane huffed, "that I am going to end up exactly like my mother."
Jess scoffed. "Come on."
"I'm serious. The scariest saleswoman on this side of the country is Mrs. Kim. She could sell you your own teeth, and believe me, she'd overcharge you. This test is my future. This test says discount prices are in my bloodstream. This test says, Lane, get comfortable, because you are never leaving the East Coast."
"Stop." Jess rolled his eyes so hard they were more whites than anything else.
"I'm doomed. I'm over, I'm history. I don't even have my driver's license yet and already I am management material for Kmart."
"Done yet?" He was slightly ahead of her now in the hall, heading toward his own locker.
"Oh, I'm done! I am so done." Lane trailed after him blindly, fuming. "Done with life. Done with opportunity. This is proof positive. I'm a loser. I can't believe my test scores are in alignment with the Kim family tradition of being nothing exciting, making no marks. Forever!"
Jess began twisting numbers on the padlock at nose-level. "Well, at least you got a plan."
"I don't want this plan," she said, and she knew it was way too close to an actual whine. "I hate this plan."
"So don't do it."
"Oh, right. Like I can pass on destiny."
"Hey, Zakk Wylde started out at a gas station." Jess pointed at her, eyebrows bouncing.
"Don't remind me." Lane leaned one shoulder against the locker, checking and re-checking the numbers on her aptitude test. All too solid. Then her brow furrowed and she glanced up at Jess. "Where have you been, anyway?"
"Lookin' for me?" He tossed a two-second sideways smirk at her, which she was learning was a muted sort of teasing coming from him. Lane remembered the conversation they'd had during the Outlandos rendezvous and pulled a face back.
"No," she replied honestly. It never occurred to her to look for him anywhere—probably because he was a master of staying lost and choosing when to be found. Like a snobby cat. "I just haven't seen you around school lately."
He didn't reply. He was rummaging around inside his locker with one arm, the other hand fiddling with his hair.
"You're not actually skipping, are you?"
"Nothing gets past you."
"And the teachers don't notice?"
Jess snorted. "Them everything gets past. Ask that Britney Spears wannabe always sucking some guy's face off in the back."
"Tara?"
"Blonder."
"Shane," Lane supplied, and then moved back to the point. "You're not even calling in sick?"
Silence. She was Avril Lavigne. She was white static. He'd either stopped listening or stopped caring. His whole head was inside the locker now. From where she leaned, Lane saw six baseballs rolling around, the mound of khaki-colored fabric that was his jacket, one empty CD case, and an old gum wrapper. He didn't play sports. And he didn't chew gum from what little she'd seen. Were they even in front of the right locker?
She didn't feel like asking. Maybe that was another of his magic tricks. He really was the sort of person who could skip school and just fade away.
"Huh." Lane leaned back against the locker, resituating her backpack. "What's that like?"
He came out of the locker with his jacket in hand, rifling through the pockets. "It's not Powerball, but it has its moments."
"You're gonna get caught."
"Not if I run real fast."
"Jess. It's a small town; people here see everything."
"I come enough."
"Then again, if Mrs. Hockens hasn't sniffed you out yet, no one will. Except maybe Principal Merten, but. This close to spring break, maybe he'd look the other way. I saw him take four Advils the other day; I think his wife's in Georgia again. Three kids under the age of five, no woman of the house to hold court. So—you've got kind of a smokescreen going on there."
Jess was definitely no longer listening. He was totally focused on his jacket. She was getting used to this—the less he spoke, the more she did. Like he planned it that way or something.
"What are you doing here now?" Lane watched one or two students, the stragglers, going past them and followed the trail with her eyes out the double doors. Freedom—until rice bowl night at the Kim house began. "If you're not even gonna stay long enough to have your dreams totaled." She waved the aptitude test up and down.
For an answer, Jess held up a $20, resurrecting it from his coat pocket.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Went wheelchair-tipping."
Lane rolled her eyes at him. "Okay, well, when you're still sleeping through this algebra class in this very building the day before our high school reunion sometime in 2010, don't say I didn't warn you."
"Why rush? You're still gonna be here. You'll be suckering some rich old ladies into bagging doorknockers John Adams sneezed on. You can say it then." He flicked the paper and began tugging on the coat.
Lane glanced down at the test and stilled. You're still gonna be here.
High numbers. Big scary black letters. A genuine aptitude for sales. Just sales—just what her mother did, for the rest of her life. Stars Hollow for the rest of her life, with a brief stint in Seventh Day Adventist college, and if marriage was ever on the table, that was already taken care of too. A doctor, a Korean with glazed eyes, someone who barely knew her. A lifetime of nothing—maybe as she got older, eventually, she'd even give up on what she dared to enjoy in secret now. Because it was easier. Maybe that happened to everybody, only she'd never had the chance to dream where everyone could see it. She'd probably be disappointed in secret too, in the background; who would ever know?
Maybe this aptitude test really was telling her to quit while she was ahead, because things weren't going to change. In movies, things changed—in Hollywood and New York and the books Rory loved, things changed. Rory herself had already boarded that train when she was accepted into Chilton, and one day things would change so much and so well for her that she'd be bigger than Stars Hollow.
This was the real world. She wasn't Rory Gilmore. Things changed for other people. Not for Lane Kim.
"Sorry."
Lane glanced up, confused. Jess was looking down as he buttoned his coat, as if he hadn't just spoken.
"Look, it's a piece of paper. Who cares what some stupid test says?" His brown eyes came up and struck her, actually paying attention this time.
"Maybe I should take it again," Lane suggested, blinking. Trying to smile, trying to look like the idea of slaving away in this town well into her 40's hadn't gotten to her so quickly.
"Cruel and unusual torture, but hey, that's your right."
"Or, just, two or three…more times. I mean, just to prove it's not some creepy algorithm. Or a mistake." Lane slung off her backpack and crouched with it on the floor to slide the sheet in between her History book and her purple binder. "Test the test."
Suddenly a CD case was dropped unceremoniously on top of her backpack's innards.
Lane snatched it up and flipped it over. "The Pogues?"
"Never heard of 'em?"
"I dabble." Lane squinted at him, holding the album at nose-height. "Are you trying to cheer me up?"
"What?"
"Or is this you apologizing for that crack about Adams-infected doorknockers?"
"That's it—" He lurched down and tried to take the album back, but Lane shoved it deeper into her bag at lightspeed.
"No no, no takebacks," Lane lifted a finger menacingly. "Once a CD is loaned, the loaner forfeits all recall rights to the loanee until the end of at least a 48-hour listening period."
Jess rolled his eyes.
"Sorry, those are the rules."
"What rules?"
"The rules I am officially instating," Lane zipped her backpack up with one fluid movement, hiking it back onto her shoulders, "right now. You get it back in two days, minimum. That gives me enough time to scrub the profanities out of my bedroom walls before Mrs. Kim comes in and feels the inexplicable urge to leech me."
"Leech you."
"Or make me recite all 150 psalms."
"If you get the urge to drop me a line in 2010, do me a favor and keep walking."
When Jess left, possibly not to be seen inside those halls for another week, Lane headed toward homeroom to re-take the aptitude test. She could practically feel it inside her backpack, poisoning her textbooks and the Pogues CD.
Rubbing the essence of yet another potential future she didn't get a say in all over each item.