Mid-spring in Stars Hollow meant tulips around the gazebo, and Claritin being 50% off at Doose's. It meant Mrs. Kim put extra local honey in Lane's tea every evening, just to ensure she wouldn't need the Claritin. It meant everything was vibrantly green and flower petals seemed to get stuck to your shoes everywhere you went. It meant school would soon be out, and that meant that Janie Fertman would finally stop telling Lane that if she got contacts, she wouldn't be so susceptible to puffy red eyes when the pollen flew.

Sookie was less than a month away from her wedding to Jackson, and the entire town was looking forward to a chance to dress up, sing off-key together, drink at an event Taylor couldn't condemn them for, and of course, indulge in an amazing spread of food. Lane had already picked out her dress and received permission from Mama Kim to attend.

All that was left now was to brave the last few weeks of Stars Hollow High and her upcoming English test. Then summer could begin, and long days of reading and gossiping and generally rocking out with Rory could begin along with it. Lane didn't know what the warmer half of her year would have looked like if not for the Gilmores. She wouldn't have had any relief from her mother's strict allergy-combating diet, that was for sure.

One apple for breakfast wasn't enough when the weather got like this and filled anyone under the age of forty with energy. Lane's stomach had been growling since 5 A.M. She'd strayed from the beaten path to school that morning long enough to seek real sustenance at Rory's house. And get back her Ella Swings album from Lorelai.

"Has your mom been watching Sophie's Choice again?" Lane asked on their way to the bus stop.

"No, I think it was Maid of Honor-related. Sookie asked her for some Ellas during one of their pre-wedding pow-wows," Rory explained.

"Right. Because when I think of marital bliss, I think of It's A Blue World."

"It will be if she changes her mind about the entrees for the twelfth time."

They hadn't revisited the Jess-versus-Dean topic since the long weekend without Mrs. Kim. Rory seemed content to forget all about it, and Lane was more than happy to follow her lead. Every time she saw Dean in the school hallways or at the market, she felt prairie dogs digging into her abdomen and avoided eye contact. Rory's not Daisy might as well have been a one-hit wonder for how often Lane had it on repeat inside her head.

After dropping Rory off at the bus stop, skirted up and Chilton-bound, Lane made sure to walk to school as slowly as possible. She had to savor the last of the toaster strudel Lorelai had handed her—and the fresh, not-high-school air she wouldn't be breathing for the next seven hours.

As soon as she crossed the street, she caught sight of a familiar tangle of dark hair above the other pedestrians. Jess was heading in the wrong direction, past the parked cars in front of Stars Hollow High and into the trees beside it.

Lane paused on the sidewalk, took another bite of strudel, and went after him.

He wasn't going far. He'd already settled down on the bridge across the lake by the time she caught up, book in hand and shoulders hunched. One foot dangled near the water.

He had to have heard her coming; the wooden planks didn't exactly muffle footsteps. But he didn't look around when she said, "Shouldn't you be on your way to homeroom right now?"

"Shouldn't you be consuming point two calories right now?"

"You're clearly visible from the school."

"Teachers can't see you if you hold still."

"That's a myth. Now, the smelling-fear thing, that's been verified." She stood over him, reading the title of the book at the top of the right-hand page. One Scandalous Story by Marvin Kalb. "Hey, Andrew doesn't sell politics. Where'd you get the book?"

"Where'd you get the strudel?"

"Rory's house."

And then the conversation twitched and died.

Jess glanced up from the book, once, and then turned back to it, mouth tugging. Lane bent sideways, scratching at what was definitely a mosquito bite on her ankle, letting her backpack slide. It was like at the mention of Rory Gilmore, the lake had sucked up any sort of ease and funneled it down into the mud at the bottom. Birds chirped. People chattered in town to the right. The way Jess was staring at the novel was vague and much too intense. He wasn't really reading it.

"Hey, so—" Lane licked her lips, gesturing with the last of the strudel. Friendly. No big deal. "What was that whole ice routine the other night, anyway?"

"The what?" He didn't turn around. The words thudded out like they were heavy.

She almost didn't keep going. The thudding was that intimidating. But she was every bit as stubborn as her mother. "You know, when—I mean, with…Rory. At Luke's."

"Not following."

Lane's arm dropped and hit her thigh. "Come on. The Eric Carmen treatment? You didn't say a word to me, and while I have picked up on the fact that you're not exactly Nickleby, believe me, I've sort of come to expect at least a hey or something. Especially from people who get familiar enough to regularly fill my floorboard library."

Jess tilted his head back to look up at her. "Hey."

"Hey." Lane waited. Nothing else. "So why?"

"You gonna finish that?"

"You are not getting my strudel. You live in a diner. I live in a Third World country disguised as an antique business." She slung off her backpack and sat down, glancing back at the path to school. She still had fifteen minutes to get to homeroom. The bell wouldn't ring before she set foot in that building; she was a master at timing.

"Points for the Nickleby thing."

"Thank you. Stop changing the subject." He didn't say anything. She glanced sideways at him. "Is it because you think I told her? Because I didn't."

Silence. More fake reading.

"At all. I didn't even hint at it. Ever. Actually, we never talk about you, so."

Jess nodded. Slow.

Lane faced the line of trees across the lake, finishing off the strudel. "I'm pretty sure she thinks you don't even know my name."

"Don't you have a regime to conform to?" Jess jerked his head toward the school.

"I just don't get why you—"

He put down the book. "What, did you want me to sit down and start talking MTV? Maybe catch up on all the latest Stars Hollow bavardage?"

Lane wrinkled her nose. "No."

"We're not the Marx Brothers. I don't do group hangout sessions." He resituated, eyebrows on full alert, hiking up one leg and pointing at her. "I'm not Dean."

"Oh, that I know." Grunting, Lane stretched out the toe of her sneaker so it would just barely touch the lake's surface. "But that still doesn't explain why Rory got Roots and refills, and I got extra ketchup and a very cold shoulder. Are you mad at me or something? Did I scratch your Appetite CD?"

"Not mad at you."

"So it's just because Rory—"

"Lane."

"But I didn't tell her!"

Jess let out a short sigh, jaw working. "Look, think whatever you want, I'm just not into the whole three musketeers thing. And—God knows she acts like I'm a leper when her mother's around; it's not like she needs any other buffers. Town's still full of people who think I'm Krueger reincarnated."

"Maybe if you cut back on the gnome stealing." Lane braved a shoulder nudge. "And the baseball stealing, you know coach is convinced there's a stray dog breaking into the school every night?"

His mouth twitched.

"I get it," Lane said more seriously, smile fading. "I guess. You think you have a thing going with Rory—sort of—and you don't want a third party blowing it. Loud and clear." Now it was her turn to point at him. "And I say think, because—"

"There's no chance."

"No chance." Lane gave a firm nod, a la Mary Poppins, and scrambled to her feet. "But I can relate. One time in fifth grade, I told a guy at the arcade that Rory was nothing more significant than my cat-sitter and that she swelled up when she got near polyester clothing." When he didn't laugh, she pursed her lips, swinging her backpack up onto her shoulder. "It didn't work, by the way, he still gave her his claw machine teddy bear."

Jess leaned back on his hands. "Have you ever been to Rudy's?"

"What?" He was changing subjects again.

"Music store."

But this was a subject swap she could get behind. "No, where is it? Woodbury?"

"Manhattan." Jess's eyebrows rose.

Lane snapped her fingers. "And that would be why. I have always wanted to go to Manhattan. I had a dream last week that I was playing bass with The Cover Girls in a room that looked vaguely like it could have been in Manhattan. Or someone's basement. You know, I've never actually seen any part of Manhattan, so there was very little to go off of subconsciously. But the energy was there, let me tell you."

"Bus stop to get you there's just outside the town line," he informed her, completely sidestepping the dream. He spread a hand. "We could go right now."

Lane's mouth opened and shut. She jabbed a thumb backward. "I have school. In five minutes."

"So?"

"It's three hours away."

"Two and a half if you bribe the driver."

"Okay, think about who you're talking to here. Process. See this face?" Lane encircled her own face with a finger. "This is not a free face. This face has never skipped school before. This face has never even skipped Sunday school before. And if Mrs. Kim ever found out I ditched, this face and the body beneath it would be shipped off to Korea with no return label in twenty-four hours flat. Never to be seen on American soil again."

"Does that face ever stop talking?"

"I can't skip school."

"I'll tell Sunshine." Jess opened his book, thumbing through the pages until he reached his place again.

Lane shook her head. "You can't copy my English notes."

"Zing."

"I'm serious." Lane unzipped her backpack and began rummaging. "The test will be happening tomorrow, and I refuse to lend what poor literary services I possess to a guy who won't show up to class and tries to weasel my strudel. I have standards. Here."

She tossed him his Pogues CD. He caught it in one hand, barely glancing over.

It was spring, Jess's eyes hurt, and everyone inside the diner needed to be euthanized that evening. Table Two was crowded with five middle-aged women and their squalling toddlers on the playdate dinner from Hell. Taylor Doose was at Table Seven, using his break from the market to order a BLT and brussels sprouts for the third day in a row, scowling at Jess's untucked tee shirt every five minutes and yet failing to notice the breadcrumbs dotting his own beard. Kirk was at the counter eating Mud Pie. That would have been enough, but that specific combo of product and consumer made it impossible to keep the counter clean, so Luke kept insisting Jess hadn't done the wiping-down yet.

He'd done it four times.

"Y'know, if you're gonna slack off down here, you might as well be upstairs doin' your homework." Luke paused on his way back to the kitchen, squinting. "You do have homework, don't'cha?"

He would have if he'd been in school that day. Or that week.

"I'll get to it." Jess yanked the dishrag off of his shoulder and let it hit the countertop with a smack. "Man, if you don't use that napkin eight inches away from you, I'm gonna stuff it down your throat."

Kirk blinked like he'd just been switched online. His eyebrows drew together. "That's not service with a smile."

"I'll smile when I'm finished."

"Jess." Luke shouldered him out of the way. "Go refill some coffees. Kirk, eat like a human being or start eating exclusively at home, okay?"

"It's not my fault; Mud Pie by nature is very difficult to corral."

"Kirk."

"Fine."

Jess, retrieving the rag, snatched up the coffee pot and made the rounds, checking his watch. Two more hours until closing time. As insipid as working his uncle's diner might have been, it would always be better than any kind of compulsory education. Or the torture papers they sent you home with afterward. At least with this kind of labor, he made some cash.

The door opened and with a waft of espresso and something floral, Lorelai Gilmore bounded inside. She should have gone straight to the counter, straight to Luke, but she had to pass him first as he refilled Taylor's cup.

"Jess," Lorelai greeted, blue eyes sharp and perky and pushing into him like the sparkling ends of two cigars.

"Ma'am," he greeted back, blinking submissively.

A dislike about the length of Dean's dinky little love bracelet stretched between them, about thirty times thicker. At the sound of his voice, her eyes got even sharper, and her red mouth closed. Almost never happened. Then she turned and headed with a swish of hair toward the counter, sidling in next to Kirk. All signs of unpleasantness gone. Like she'd never been bothered at all.

"Coffee?" That was Luke. Luke with his tongue all but hanging out.

Lorelai faux-gasped. "How do you do that; you should work for Miss Cleo! Kirk, are you eating that or wearing it?"

Kirk made mouth-full-of-Oreo-crust walrus noises. Lorelai nodded as if she were fluent.

"You know, you always struck me as more of a sloppy joe sort of a skin tone? All that chocolate washes you out."

Jess rolled his eyes and turned his back on the show. Just outside, through the window, he saw a familiar flash of glasses passing by on the sidewalk. Glasses, a deep orange blouse, and a posture that was perpetually nervous. He left the coffee pot with Taylor, who was still blissfully unaware of the breadcrumbs, and made his escape before Lorelai could start quoting M*A*S*H.

Lane was standing at the crosswalk, backpack still hanging off one shoulder. She had changed tops; she'd been wearing a Bangles tee shirt that morning by the bridge, but now she was in a plain, pale purple blouse of some kind. A button-up. She must have been headed home to greet the sergeant.

Jess stopped just behind her. "Hey," he said, right near her ear.

Lane jumped exactly as high as he'd expected. "Oh-kay, see, when I said I expect a greeting, I meant within a respectful distance. As in, farther than sneezing distance, but closer than spitting distance. Is that a towel?" She pointed at his shoulder.

The dishrag was still there. Jess ignored the question. "Goin' home?"

"After about twenty-five seconds of sitting on that bench over there so my cheeks don't look any level of flushed from the fresh air when I enter the Kim household, yes," she replied, nodding to the iron couch across the street. Then she blinked. "I have your English homework."

His eyebrows knit. "Why?"

She made a tilted face, like she was just now considering the reason. It made her nose scrunch up and her eyes slip to the left. "I don't know. It was on your desk and—it was just sitting there, and Mrs. Hockens kept looking at it, and then everyone else kept looking at it, so it was basically the classroom equivalent of a black hole opening up—" She wound her hands together. "I didn't think, I just pilfered. Maybe it was my ancestral OCD kicking in."

Then she opened her backpack and actually tried to hand him a stapled-up stack of papers with his name on the top.

Jess didn't touch it. He looked from the papers to her.

"I can't carry this home with me," she said. "Even my powers of discretion couldn't explain why I have two copies of English homework in my bag to my mother's satisfaction. Especially not when one of them has Jess Mariano written at the top."

"You'll think of something."

"You have to take this."

"Sorry."

Lane's eyebrows rose. "No, you have to take this. I didn't even mean to have it, it just happened."

"Do you sleepwalk?"

"Take it, or I drop it right here." She held up a finger. "For Luke to find."

Playtime over. Jess scowled and took the papers, folding them like a map until he could fit them, bulging, in his jacket pocket. He looked Lane up and down. She hadn't just changed her shirt; she'd taken the butterfly clip out of her hair. Her shoelaces were white. They'd been purple that morning.

"What?" Lane looked him up and down right back.

"Nothin'." Either half her wardrobe was now in her locker, or her backpack was deeper than it looked.

Suddenly, looking at her, Jess felt the diner's unbearable atmosphere dissolving behind him. She did that more and more, lately, and he found he couldn't control it coming on. She'd done it on the bridge that morning, too. He'd come to accept that having the babbly, sheltered little Korean to riff off of made this backwater hole slightly less stifling. But now it was deeper. A little better than a temporary reprieve. Lane was now something dangerously close to a friend—not that he'd ever divulge that information. Too Disney Channel.

"You ever listen to any Coldplay?"

Lane's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Found a copy of Parachutes."

"What? You're kidding!" Lane's voice, of course, rose an octave. "When?"

"Be surprised what you can accomplish when you're not holed up with Hockens debating the necessity of the Oxford comma."

"You got the full album behind Yellow? My life is so unfair. Where?"

"Woodbridge." Jess slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans, squinting at her. "Now, before you move on down the line, lemme help you out—who, me," he put a hand to his own chest, "how, I took a bus," he pointed in the general direction of the bus stop. "Mostly because Luke doesn't pay me enough to afford a real set of wheels, and why, because I had the time."

"Because you skipped school." Lane folded her arms, grinning. Probably elated just at the thought of a shiny new CD to snag from him.

"Details." He blinked at her out of the top of his eyes. "Heard it?"

"Hello, Stars Hollow has been greatly lacking in any of the more current alternative bands since the mid-70's, so no."

"Ah, so you admit Coldplay's alternative."

Lane rolled her eyes. "They have to be, the percussion alone is too soft for rock and too hard for pop music."

Jess felt his mouth twitch hard, nodding. She was doing it again.

"So I'm borrowing it when you're done, right?" Lane held up a hand. "We all know I'm good for it. I am the patron saint of CD care."

"Nope."

"Nope?" She practically started shaking with pre-onset withdrawals. A little gust of laughter, no joy in it. "What do you mean, nope? There can be no nope, we're talking Coldplay here. You're denying me alternative rock in a town where it is practically extinct."

"Not denying you alternative rock. I'm denying you the preferred medium."

"What do you mean?"

"You should come by tonight." Jess tilted his head toward the windows above Luke's. "Same time as the usual drop-off. Show you then."

She jittered in place. "Okay, in case you missed it the last six, no, eight times I think I mentioned it, we have an English test to study for. And some of us are not as well-versed in the literary world as others of us, so I have to have my nose in the books for an additional forty-five minutes tonight just to get the first inkling of a handle on the materials—"

"So don't come." Jess shrugged. "No Coldplay."

"You're not serious."

"Hey, gives me a chance to dissect it a couple hundred times before loaning it out."

Lane shut her eyes. It really looked like she had two little Lane Kims, one on each shoulder, duking it out over whether or not to listen to an album, of all things. Jess watched her feet moving subtly and smirked. He had never met anyone so in the habit of talking to themselves, dissecting every possible outcome of any decision.

Surprising no one more than himself, he'd begun to notice minute things about Lane. Like counting the run-ons in a Dickens novel, just to measure how into a scene Charlie had been getting during the writing process.

He could tell when her mom was in her head by the amount of times she took off her glasses to clean them. He knew she was hungry when she started stammering in the middle of answering a teacher's question. He'd seen how she looked over her shoulder when she exited and entered every building. Her go-to color was orange when she wanted to convince people, especially the antique seller, that she'd never heard of Radiohead or dreamt of dating Beck.

Every now and then, he'd get tiny glimpses of what he thought was probably the truest version of her. She seemed most herself in the dark outside of the diner, when he was handing her an album in a plastic case like it was a Ziploc full of crack. Or when she was munching fries in the diner, scribbling lists and reorganizing her floorboard system on a napkin when she should have been studying the Korean hymnal her mother had left with her. Even when she'd been at Luke's the other night, subdued and stuffing her face beside Rory, giving him baffled glances and engaging in whispered girl arguments, she'd seemed alive and more Lane than he'd seen her in class, or on the way to Doose's with Mrs. Kim.

He hadn't given her the time of day at Luke's that weekend, and she'd still been nothing but herself.

Now he was watching her fight herself, taking one too many seconds to figure out what she really wanted. Maybe it wasn't two Lanes on her shoulders. Maybe it was one Lane and one upright antiquing taskmaster, frowning away any hope of Coldplay.

Somebody had to snap her out of it.

Jess clicked his tongue. "Offer rescinding in three…"

"Stop."

"Two….one and a half…"

Her eyes snapped open. "Do not do the one-and-three-quarters thing, you sound like Miss Patty at the daffodil recitals."

"One, time's up."

"Jess—"

"I got tables to towel off." He jabbed a thumb into the end of the dishrag, still hanging near his chin. "You want Yellow, you know where to find me."

Of course Lane had to go to the drop-off. English test or no English test, a full-length Coldplay album she had not yet gotten her hands on was too good to resist. It was a Wednesday night, and her mother had had her Bible class, and now Mrs. Kim was in her bathrobe and slippers and headed off to an early bedtime. That meant Lane had been sent to an early bedtime. She was careful to be sitting up, genuinely studying for her English test, when her mother stuck her head in to check on her before officially turning in.

Mrs. Kim's lips pressed into a tight line and then softened, relaxing. She did a double-take when she saw her daughter bent over her English textbook, and the corners of her mouth actually lifted. Lane felt her heart grow little daisies at the sight.

"It's after eight," Mrs. Kim informed her briskly, nodding. "Time for bed. You can study more tomorrow morning."

"The test is tomorrow morning, Mama."

"No more studying tonight. Lights off. Covers on." Mrs. Kim turned the lights off herself, leaving Lane with just her lamp's glow. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Mama."

Lane waited a full hour before climbing out of bed. The daisies shriveled the second her shoes were on. Mrs. Kim had been happy to see her studying so diligently. That almost-smile was about as rare a sight in this household as a piece of chocolate. Or elbow room. And now she was sneaking out, for the umpteenth time in the last few months, to acquire illegal stimulation from the person considered the worst possible influence in town. Every hair on Mama Kim's head would turn white if she knew, and that smile would become a ghost. A memory that couldn't come back.

But she couldn't help herself. Yellow was a groundbreaking single; who could say how much better the rest of the album would be? She'd studied hard. She'd been given the opportunity to play hooky and she'd declined with every inch of willpower she possessed. She deserved this—didn't she?

And she wouldn't be gone long.

When Lane reached the outside of Luke's, Jess was already there. It was the first time he'd beaten her outside. Her chest uncoiled at the sight; she wouldn't have to linger in the dark, heart pounding, waiting to be caught.

Jess was in a dark coat and khakis, smoking on the steps. He had a handful of what looked like playing cards in his hands instead of a book, and he was fiddling with them right up until she came within a foot away. The lights up in Luke's apartment windows were all off, and the diner's Closed sign was crooked inside the door behind him.

The spring air was colder than she'd expected. Lane blew on her hands louder than she needed to in order to get him to look up. "Let's do this one quick."

Jess's eyebrows lifted. "Got somewhere to be?"

"Yes. In bed. Asleep. My mom's been lulled into a false sense of security by the whole English-cramming thing, and not to jinx it, but I'm kind of optimistic. Thinking about creating a winning streak there. Somehow." Lane cleared her throat, swinging her arms. "So, you got it?"

He had a paper Luke's diner bag beside him on the steps. Jess picked it up and stood, stuffing the cards into his back pocket. "Got it."

"Great!"

He kept smoking, and she kept standing there, waiting for helicopter spotlights to suddenly beam down on her and her mother's voice to come blaring out of a megaphone from on high. Lane Kim, you are grounded for eternity. Flight to Korea leaves in ten hours.

She stared at him. He stared back.

"Can I have it?"

"Nope."

"Stop with the nope," Lane groaned. "Do you realize how far out my neck is right now on the chopping block? It's the whole thing! My whole neck! It is a Wednesday. If this is some sick prank—"

"Told you, it's a different medium." Jess twisted the paper bag so that the top closed, speaking around the cigarette. Then he plucked it out and dropped it, stepping right on it with the toe of his shoe. "Come on."

To her bewilderment, he started walking down the street. Lane stood still, mouth open. Looking at Luke's window, looking in at Luke's diner, looking around the town square, looking back at Kim's Antiques.

"Jess," she hissed. "Where are you going? Jess."

"Lane," he hissed back, turning around and walking backwards.

"This is no time for moonlit strolls!"

He had the nerve to snap his fingers, shaking the paper bag enticingly. "Heeeeere, Lane. C'mere, girl!"

Lane's teeth ground together. Being treated like a dog would have been less humiliating if she hadn't been so used to the sensation. She wrapped her arms around her middle and jogged after him, hair smacking the sides of her head, eyes blazing. "I cannot believe I am doing this right now!"

They went right past Kim's Antiques. Not a sound, not a movement, but Lane felt like every window was an eyeball. The whole house seemed to watch her walk away, down the empty roads in town. Not a soul was out. It seemed like an abandoned Stars Hollow, especially the further they went.

Jess was leading her at a leisurely pace toward the northmost town limit. They passed the sign; they passed Plum Street. They passed eight different kinds of trees and Mrs. Flanahan's house. Hers was the last one before you reached the wider world, all faded white and one broken screen door.

Flowers looked weird when you saw them at night. They seemed to Lane like the kind of plant that only existed in the daytime, but tulips and roses and little buttercups were all there under the stars, bluish. Silver. Casting odd shadows. She watched Jess's back as they walked, still hugging herself.

He had seemed lighter lately. He was being downright jovial—for him. Ever since the last two weeks, Jess had been easier to talk to, easier to read. Something was going on with him. It may have been his self-engineered freedom from Stars Hollow High. Or it may have been Luke, easing up on the lectures—or having his own proper bed in the apartment above the diner, even.

It might be Rory.

Rory's not Daisy.

Lane studied the way Jess's shoulders moved, the way he seemed to fit in all the shadows. Probably he was used to less moonlight, being from the big city. It wasn't like she didn't want him to be happy, too. With a mom who forgot to send you all your stuff and dumped you into a town that didn't sell more than four different kinds of soda, he should find something to look forward to.

A break of some kind.

Relief.

Probably best she didn't push too much on the minutia of how he was getting it. The fact that he'd been confiding in her at all these days was a very thin sheet of ice. She didn't like the idea of walking on it.

"How much farther are we going?" Lane asked.

"Stop whispering, you think Taylor's in the bushes?"

Lane let her voice rise an inch or two. "No. But I hear Kirk gets night terrors, so—it's not outside the realm of possibility that we are being watched."

Jess snorted violently. "Kirk is a night terror."

"True." Lane stared at her feet, catching up to him and brushing shoulders with him. "So how come we're walking this far for a CD? Did you stash it at the bus stop?"

"Well, we are goin' to the bus stop, but I don't have to stash anything." He gave her a sideways glance. "This isn't the mafia."

"You're not bringing me out here to murder me, dump my body in the nearest ditch, and walk back into town like you're this generation's Bundy, are you?"

"Maybe later." Jess's mouth curled up. "If you keep whispering."

"I err on the side of caution, you know this."

"Elinor Dashwood errs on the side of caution. You err on the side of paranoia." Jess switched the bag to the other hand, turning a corner in the road and heading right for the bench beside the bus stop's sign.

He waited for her to join him, standing over the bench, before opening the paper bag and lifting something big and round out. It was a CD player, silver. Sony.

Lane's mouth twisted. "Thanks, but I have one already."

"Huh." Jess's eyebrows shot up back. "But you don't have this."

He unearthed Parachutes in all its black-and-yellow glory. When Lane lunged for it on autopilot, he held it out of reach.

"This is getting cruel," Lane complained. "You drag me all the way out to the edge of town not to kill me, but to show me all the means of indulging in Guy Berryman and then withholding them from me? That's practically the same thing. You, my friend, are sick."

Jess's eyes were twinkling. He nodded, pursing his lips in a teeny, tiny smile, and looked down into the bag again. A second later, he was holding up a pair of clear in-ears with black accents. They dangled in front of her face, and this time, Lane was allowed to reach out and take them.

Making a nuh-uh sound in his throat, Jess stretched out a hand and plucked one of the in-ears from her with a brush of fingers, eyebrows up to his hairline now. "Share."

"What?" Lane blinked, wondering if she was still in bed after all. He couldn't be suggesting what he seemed to be suggesting. This couldn't have been his plan. The Bundy thing was more likely.

Jess shifted his weight to his other foot, already fixing one of the headphones into his right ear. "Oho, you think I'm just gonna sit here twiddlin' my thumbs while you rock out to my CD? Forget it. Share."

Lane felt her mouth gaping, even though she was grinning and feeling like laughing. Because she had to be asleep. "But—I haven't listened to it yet! So I get dibs."

"Join the club." Jess sat down, and Lane had to step nearer to the bench to avoid losing her half of the headphones. He set the CD player on the bench to his right, flicking it open with the press of a button.

"You waited?"

He didn't respond, busy putting the actual CD in.

"You waited to listen to it? Until right now?" Lane stared at him. This must be how Alice felt, running through Wonderland. Rory had made her read it when they were ten; she'd had nightmares for weeks. "You've had this all day, you didn't go to school, and you're just this minute at—" she checked her watch, "—ten o'clock at night putting it on? Why?"

"If you want in on this, you better sit down." Jess spun the CD with a careful finger, closed the player's lid, and glanced up at her. His eyes were still twinkling. "Once the play button's pushed, there will be no pausing."

Quickly, Lane sat down beside him, the CD player between them. "Start from the beginning. No skipping."

"Yes ma'am."

She reached over him and picked up the album case, flipping it over. "This is forty-two minutes' worth of listening!"

"Not if we skip some." There was a smirk in his voice.

"I will break your fingers." Lane looked at the stars, then down the street. "Which bus stop is this, anyway?"

"Manhattan."

She gave him a look. "I am not running away to Manhattan the night before the English test."

"So after?"

"Jess."

"Y'know, Sunshine and the girls're gonna be really disappointed."

"I'll send them a fruit basket or something. I cannot risk the wrath of Mrs. Kim on a school night, now play."

"Thought your whole neck was at stake?"

"Play!" Lane reached down and hit the play button. He seemed too preoccupied with slouching down in his seat, playing cards out again, eye-laughing at her from half a head below her.

After a few heartbeats of deliciously-anticipatory silence, ten fabulous seconds of guitar came through the tiny speakers in their ears, up, down, up, down. Lane's foot began tapping almost immediately, and then Chris Martin's voice came lilting out.

Bones, sinking like stones

"Bones, sinking like stones,
All that we fought for,

Homes, places we've grown,

All of us are done for…"

The first track was slow and then not, and it seemed to match the moon, somehow. Lane leaned back against the bench, staring across the street at the line of trees, picturing bass strings and a stage in London. The drum was easily the best part, and when it picked up, she turned and grinned at her listening companion. Jess didn't sit up, but he turned the card over and over in his hands, caught her eye, and gave one of those crooked little smiles back.

He didn't look tired at all. He didn't look excited, either, the way Lane was. She felt the whole night around them had to be made of glass, and one wrong move would shatter it all. She was outside in the spring at 10 P.M. She was listening to an album she'd never heard before. Someone she could breathe around was listening with her. Someone who didn't question her clothes or her Cobain obsession, someone who didn't issue a curfew or look at her like she should have better posture, someone who didn't make it impossible to talk about cheerleading, or reference movies with her glamourous young mother that Lane wasn't allowed to watch.

He was crazy. He was completely off-the-wall crazy. Absolutely nothing like the kind of friends she'd always had. He ditched classes, he smelled like smoke (and not in a good way), he made Luke's temper look like a five-year-old's grocery store meltdown. He could quote every Clash song ever written, but he'd only do it by genre. Everyone in town gave him black looks whenever he passed them in the streets, and he walked around like he knew there were colors darker than black. Like they were amateurs. Jess didn't care what anybody thought; he lived his whole life far beneath any potential expectations.

And he was in love with Rory. And he said his mom's name like it was a curse word. And he kept fixing Luke's toaster. And he was sharing his Coldplay CD.

When Don't Panic ended and the next song began, a much jauntier guitar opening, Lane hit pause with a firm index finger.

Jess's eyebrows drew together. "You do know there's eight more songs on here, right?"

"Why are you being so nice to me?"

His hands stilled. "'Scuse me?"

"I have never seen anyone go to so much trouble just to listen to an album with me. Is Coldplay your favorite band?"

"Please." Jess scoffed and hit play, Shivers coming in at a higher volume.

"So I look in your direction,

But you pay me no attention, do you?"

Lane hit pause.

"Are you trying to make it up to me? Is that what this is about? Because I'm not mad, I swear."

Jess tipped his head like a Labrador. "What are you talking about?"

Once Lane had started, she was resolved not to stop. She may not have had a spine when it came to talking to her mother, but she could do this. She could get to the bottom of this. Something in her had to figure out what this was. If something was wrong with him.

"I'm talking about that you don't do stuff like this. You're Sal Mineo, remember? You're Justin Hayward. You're too cool for school—literally."

Glaring, Jess leaned over and played the song again, but Lane spoke over the verses.

"So this has to be some weird, backlit sorry, right? For the ice?" She raised both eyebrows and used both fingers, pointing at the CD player, the bench, this whole thing in general. Certain she was on the right track. She finally had him pegged. "And—for everything with Rory? Because it's really okay, I mean, not that I don't appreciate the John Mayer vibes."

He didn't say anything, settling in. Glowering across the street into nowhere as the music ran on.

"I know it's weird, because I'm her best friend and you're—and we're friends, but." Here he glanced at her, and Lane took a breath, losing the thought and grabbing at it again, grabbing at some sort of coherence. "I truly do get it. I know I said that before." He wasn't moving. She took another, deeper breath, because she needed one. "But it's true."

Jess was looking up at her, unblinking. Emotionless.

"So we're cool," she finished, with a lame attempt at a smile. It was never going to be normal, trying to communicate to a set of eyebrows like that.

Four or five more seconds passed. Martin kept crooning, and Lane was too far behind in the song to focus on the words.

Finally, Jess sighed, barely audible, and rolled his gaze away, mumbling out of the side of his mouth. Blinking a lot.

"This isn't an apology." Jess's eyes darted at her. Once. "It's a thank-you."

Lane felt her heartbeat turn in a circle. Dandelions, this time. A baffled little smile bobbed up. "For what?"

Jess blinked again and declined to answer. Instead, he turned up the volume; the clear, gentle shutting of a door. Lane gave up at last, sitting back with her spine pressed against the hard metal bench, exhaling slowly. It's a thank-you. She could have thought of at least six different things he might be referring to, but it was late. And she was tired. And for now, she'd rather feel the dandelions thriving, getting lost in the music.

"…'Til the moment I sleep,
I'll be there by your side,
Just you try and stop me,
I'll be waiting in line,
Just to see if you care…"