"Lane Kim!"

Lane fell out of bed, whole body aching.

"What?" She was tangled in blankets, one foot in the air, scrambling to find her glasses on the nightstand above her. "What? I'm up, I-I'm—"

"That's the third time I call you!" Mrs. Kim was in the doorway, fully dressed for a day of sales. "I thought you were dressed! I thought you were prepared, what are you doing still in bed? Move! Up! You will be late, you are late!"

By this time, Lane had made it out of the sea of covers and her glasses were finally on her face. She was trying to find her hairbrush. And her balance. One part of her brain was already at the dresser, tugging out a top and jeans. Another part was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. The very backmost part was still on a bench at 11 o'clock the previous night, finishing up Parachutes and dreaming about life in a big city.

But it didn't matter where her brain was. Her actual body was still in the middle of her bedroom, putting on socks.

"It's 7:10, Mama," she croaked, rushing to the dresser. Jeans first. Top after. So hungry.

"Twenty minutes early is ten minutes late!" reiterated her mother, clapping the back of her left hand into her right palm. "Late! Late! Late!"

"Sorry, Mama—"

"Move! Move now!"

Lane had overslept. She never overslept. Ever. Mrs. Kim was too diligent, too terrifying an alarm clock. There was nothing more alarming in Kim's Antiques than not being downstairs on time for a cup of tea, a backpack inspection, and an apple on your way out the door.

Suddenly her mother was two inches away from her, brandishing a thermometer. "Open!"

"Huh?"

"Open your mouth!"

Lane obeyed, and Mrs. Kim took her temperature once, twice, three times. She felt Lane's forehead with a hand weathered by hard work and consistent contact with wood. She felt Lane's arm, in case the forehead wasn't substantial enough. She peered into Lane's eyes, deep and sharp, smelling like washed rice and warm cotton.

"How do you feel? Dizzy? Nauseated? Your head hurts, your throat hurts?"

"Fine, no, no, not at all, and only as much as early-morning exposure usually causes."

A little of the perfect equilibrium went out of her mother's shoulders at the news. "Good." Mrs. Kim began putting textbooks into her backpack for her. "Were lights off?"

"What?" Lane was tugging out jeans.

"Last night, when I said 'lights off, covers on', did you turn lights off?"

"Yes." A striped, purple top became unfolded in one hand. "Lights were off, covers were on."

For an hour. And then I went outside. And then I went to Luke's. And then I went down the street and sat at a bus stop on the edge of town to listen to the evil rock music, because Yellow was that good and I'm addicted to the evil rock music and I don't want to go to Seventh Day Adventist college. And I love carbs. I love them, Mama. Oh, and you should also know that all of this last night was accompanied by that one kid that keeps stealing baseballs from the high school and smells like Marlboros and can we keep him if I promise to feed him and take him on walks—

"Look at me."

Lane's head immediately swiveled to meet her mother's eyes.

"Droopy. Red." Mrs. Kim's eyebrows went pointy. "You're tired. You stay up?"

"No, Mama." A tiny, invisible mole began sniffing around her stomach.

"You try to?"

"No, Mama." The mole started digging.

"No more studying." Mrs. Kim jabbed Lane's science book at her with every word. "I said that too."

"You did, Mama."

"So. Why were you up?"

"I wasn't." The mole was halfway to China.

Mrs. Kim put the textbook into the backpack and zipped it up, clenching it hard in both hands before passing it to her offspring. "Then why are you late?"

"I—" Mr. Mole was building a home. He was choosing paint colors. That was making it hard to focus—that and the cotton feeling in her mouth and behind her eyeballs. "I had some trouble falling asleep."

"Ah." Her mother's hands folded in front of her. "English examination today."

Lane's stomach flopped over and the mole's framed photos were probably toppling and breaking. Sorry, she thought to him, and then, I am really tired right now. "Yes. Finals. Right."

Mrs. Kim's jaw went slack. "You forget?"

"No!" Lane was dressed by now, tying her shoes. "No. I just—I guess I was so tired; I wasn't thinking about it. Now. But I was thinking about it. Last night. When I was studying—I mean, after I was studying. Because lights were off and covers were on."

"I see." Mrs. Kim's mouth went into a bow, and she helped Lane to her feet and into her backpack. "You did all your homework?"

"Yes ma'am."

"And you studied."

"Yes ma'am."

"Very good." Mrs. Kim stepped over to her closet, polished and perfect and completely smothering the secret stashes of punk tees and feather boas and brighter, poppier colors, rifling through the more muted clothing. "Then you are prepared."

"Right."

But in that moment, she couldn't remember anything she'd read for the past two weeks. She couldn't remember anything she was supposed to remember about Dickens, or about essay structure, or—something about the Oxford comma—no, that had been Jess making a crack about class yesterday on the sidewalk. No Oxford commas. For the first time, Lane started to understand why Lorelai chose to be eighty-percent caffeine. If she scraped her perfect knees, they'd probably bleed coffee.

Now the thought of her morning apple was making her a little sick.

"Take this." Mrs. Kim pushed a pale orange hoodie into her hands, hanger and all. "Weather is twenty degrees cooler in the mornings."

When Lane and her mother finally made it to the front yard, the latter stopped her at the gate with the apple. Honeycrisp today. Stars Hollow was bustling and sunny, and a tiny breeze was shaking all the leaves. Kirk was on his bike in the square, sneezing, and Lane could see Lorelai Gilmore herself, rushing to Luke's with some kind of notepad in her hands. She was crossing things off periodically.

"No tea this morning," Mrs. Kim said.

"Yes." Lane nodded, pursing her lips in what she hoped looked like a subdued, understanding smile. Or something like it. "Because I'm late."

"No, because we ran out of tea last night after store hours ended."

"I thought I saw oolong in the pantry." Lane began putting her hair up, practically jittering in place. School started in ten minutes.

"Oolong is not for mornings. Green tea gives more energy, that's why we use it to bolster sales."

"Well, at least you sold the dining set."

Mrs. Kim's lips quirked, a near smile, and the lines beside her eyes went away for a moment. Pride. "You studied. You did your homework. Now you keep mind on work and eyes on paper."

"Yes, Mama."

"You will do well." Mrs. Kim stepped back, smiling properly, looking Lane over from hairline to aglets. Then the smile shrunk away with a firm nod. "Be home at four."

You will do well. Lane wanted the words to warm her shoulders as she speed-walked her way to school, better than the early-morning sunshine. Unfortunately, the mole wouldn't allow it. She had studied. She had done all her homework. She should have been prepared, and her mother's certainty that she was would have made any grade on that final above a D secondary, because you will do well was A+ enough for her.

But today she had lied. Lights had been off last night and covers had been off, too, and she'd snuck out. And she'd lied about that.

The mole kept digging all the way into homeroom.

"Fifteen minutes left."

Someone coughed. Lane had one and a half pages remaining in the English final. Mrs. Hockens was perched on her desk, beige cardigan askew, big white words in chalk catching in the light behind her. Everyone's head was down, and pencil scratching filled the air. At this point, Lane's heartbeat had gone down, and she had been able to focus past Mark Sanchez's constant tongue-clicking by tapping out the percussion in TOTO's Africa with her toe against the leg of her chair. Ten questions to go.

There was a creaking behind her. Then a whisper. "Lane."

He could not seriously be showing up to class now. Creaking and talking. In the middle of a test. To her. And he could not seriously sound that awake after last night. Was nothing in her life ever going to be fair? Lane narrowed her eyes, switching from Africa to Every Breath You Take. Calmer. Focus.

23. What kind of sentence has two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses?

The whisper behind her turned into a sing-song. "La-ane."

"Sh!" She lost the beat completely. Not easy to do with anything by The Police.

Jess's voice came out fast, and not as quietly as it should have. "I need a pencil."

"I don't have one."

"Then I need a pen."

Lane glanced quickly at the clock, sure Mrs. Hockens was going to hear him and stop the entire test. "You only have fifteen minutes left."

"Then I need the answers."

Lane rolled her eyes. "There's a pen in my bag."

"I can't go through your bag!"

Was he enjoying this? "Yes, you can."

"My mother taught me never to go through a lady's bag." He sounded too close, like he was leaning toward her. His tone was light, carefree, as if he'd gotten an actual, full eight hours of sleep, Parachutes or no Parachutes. "Unless you're a couple of blocks away."

Lane had reached the last page of the final. Three more questions. Ten more minutes. Keep your mind on your work and eyes on your paper.

Jess would not stop. "I'm just kidding."

30. In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, which form of—

"She never said that."

—which form of—

"Though it sounds like pretty good advice, doesn't it?"

Her arm shot down into her open backpack and came back up, brandishing a pen point-first at the idiot friend behind her. "Take it and shut up."

The pen was tugged from her grasp in a wink. "Boy, I tell ya, it's true," there was more creaking, more incessant noise like he was shifting, "small towns sure are friendly."

Another creak. Some rustling. And then finally, finally, he was silent.

She finished the test two whole seconds before Mrs. Hockens called, "Pencils down, time's up."

As she was coming around to retrieve the final, the teacher's heels clicked to a stop beside Lane's desk. But she didn't go away after Lane handed her the pile of papers; she stayed with her cardigan and her skirt and her thin, tight mouth, parallel to the chair. When Lane glanced up, biting her lip, she realized Hockens was not looking at her.

"Mister Mariano."

Lane would not turn around. She would not turn around. She would not be like every other kid in this classroom, craning their necks and twisting in their seats and generally reenacting Pink Floyd's Sheep. Being jerks. Being so obvious. Chuck Presby was transforming by the second into a grinning hyena. Shane Kiper's eyes bobbed like a yo-yo, and Sanchez's tongue stopped mid-click.

Mrs. Hockens did not receive an answer.

Don't turn around. Don't turn around.

"Jess."

The sound of a literal page turning. Like—a paperback page.

"Jess Mariano, do you have your English final hidden somewhere within that book?" Mrs. Hockens' free hand went to her left hip. "I assume you finished your exam within the last ten minutes; after all, you've only been in this room for the last fifteen."

Lane started coughing as if she'd gotten a cherry Luden stuck halfway down.

Mrs. Hockens' free hand went from her hip to the air, holding up a palm. "Save it or go to the nurse's office, Miss Kim; today is not the day for that song-and-dance." She went on, louder, as Lane felt her ear tips go red. "Jess, if you can't be bothered to show up to class on time during normal school hours, let alone during an examination period, you can pack up and go to the principal's office right now. There will not be a re-take of this test. Not for you."

"Ouch," said Jess shortly, in a voice devoid of emotion. The shadows on the floor said he was standing up and strolling out. "Same time next year?"

Shane Kine gave a half-snort of a giggle and quickly hushed herself. It was like flicking a switch; suddenly the whole class was shifting and muttering. Mrs. Hockens' stare was glacial, following Jess's outline all the way out the door. Presby was looking at Lane and leaning across the aisle to whisper something to Jeremiah Patterson. Probably because her ears were still candy-colored, and oh, there was entirely too little sleep inside of her body for any of this.

When the bell rang, Lane couldn't hit the eject button quickly enough.

Cobain, Beck, and Grohl all grinned and growled and posed at her from their taped, plastic frames against Lane's open locker door. A string of battery-operated purple lights glinted in her face, an old birthday present from Rory from two semesters ago. She changed the batteries on auto-pilot, breathing slow, wishing she were at Luke's or Lorelai's or inside a freaking Starbucks with her face underneath one of those scary-looking espresso machines, chugga chugga. Anything to stop yawning.

English was over. The final was over. Now all she had to do was get through the rest of the day without making eye contact with Chuck, or Mrs. Hockens in the cafeteria, or falling asleep at any one of her desks. She could do this. Worry about the grade later. Worry about killing her smart-mouthed, hair-gelled friend later, and for now—

When she shut the door, Jess was on the other side, back against the locker beside hers.

"What?" she snapped, after so not jumping backward.

He had been reading again. He looked up and fake-winced. "You look tense."

A horrible gurgle came out of her. It was supposed to be a laugh, but a yawn hopped onto the tracks and then her whole throat got confused. "Well! I should! I just barely scraped through that heinous final, and who asks that many questions with the word compound in them, and—thanks to you, I lost out on almost six whole hours of sleep last night!"

"Why?" His eyebrows drew together. "How; you were home by twelve." Then his eyes widened exaggeratedly. "Unless—you took a detour to go swallow something with actual meat on it afterward? Maybe knock down a liquor store also?"

"Do not—"

"I mean, stayin' out past your bedtime, that's when the real spiral begins. Movies with color. High fructose corn syrup. Want me to call SAMSHA?"

"Do not make light." She slung her backpack almost too hard over one shoulder, pointing at him. "It's your fault I'm tense."

A long, low scoff between pursed lips. A looking-up-and-down with a little smirk. He was so wide awake, it was insulting. "Hey, I didn't drag you out by your ear, you left home all by yourself."

"You lured me!"

"You wanted to come."

"You seduced me with Berryman!" huffed Lane, pointing harder. When Jess turned to face her, shoulder against the locker, eyebrows and mouth corners up in harmony, she rolled her entire head. "And that was a poor choice of words, whatever, this isn't Guys and Dolls; you know what I mean! I don't stay out after midnight, I don't break out after midnight, some nights I'm not even awake past nine. Of course I didn't sleep!"

"There a point to this story or can I see what else is on?"

Lane shifted in place. "My point is that you're a bad influence."

"It took you six months to figure that out? Jeez, no wonder you needed all that padding in there; I'm surprised you didn't run off and snag some blinders from the barn."

Lane's glasses felt too small on her face. Her ponytail was too tight. Her hoodie was too hot. She needed bed. "You're supposed to be headed to Principal Merten's office right now."

"Maybe I got lost."

"Is there any specific reason you stopped by?" She reached back and loosened the ponytail. "Something you needed to say, maybe something along the lines of sorry I aided and abetted you in what was perhaps the stupidest pre-finals venture of our high school career?"

"Nothing comes to mind."

"Really."

"I liked your song-and-dance," Jess offered, spreading a palm.

Lane took a deep breath in through her nose. "You know what, I—I am too sleep-deprived and hungry to do this this morning, so." She held up both hands. "Get expelled, you are beyond help, my ankle will not stop itching. I hate mosquitos. I hate English. I hate everything. And I have a History final to sweat out, so—if you'll excuse me."

He was laughing with everything but his mouth as she started walking down the hall. "History's the other way."

She turned on a heel. "Thank you."

Then she stopped. She went back to the lockers. Something about the past hour wouldn't let go of her. She could feel his eyes digging into her as she walked.

"Yes?" Jess's lips twitched.

"Why did you even need a pen? I mean, for a test you weren't planning on taking." Lane held out a hand.

Jess unearthed her pen and passed it to her. It was warm. "I had some notes."

"On what?"

"Stuff."

"It's my pen; I have a right to know."

He tugged the paperback out of his back pocket and handed it to her with the air of a druggie being frisked. Slaughterhouse-Five. Lane flipped through the first few pages, squinting. Jess's handwriting was scrawled in fresh ink up and down the margins.

"More literary abuse?" Lane glanced up at him, unimpressed.

His mouth twisting, he nodded.

She looked back down at the book. His notes varied in size. One or two words, sometimes, like non-linear, or unreliable narrator. Some places had little arrows, and in others, Jess had crossed out certain words very lightly and replaced them with his own synonyms. Like he was re-writing, or grading the book. Then she saw a full sentence in the third chapter, on the bottom of the page. Black humor, historical inspiration - Roots adjacent. You were right about the pattern.

"Roots?" Lane was exhausted and her GPA wasn't anything to dance over, but she wasn't completely brain-dead. It was obvious Jess was not talking to himself. Her eyes drifted off the page to stab at him. "This is for Rory."

It wasn't a question.

Jess's face changed, just slightly. It became more drawn-in, especially around the corners of his eyes. Subtle, but she was becoming an expert in this particular field. All playful banter dissolved in Lane's chest. She felt like someone was marching in with a vacuum cleaner and sucking away the last of her patience.

She bent further over the book, her voice rising. "You took my pen so you could vandalize for Rory. You interrupted my class, during my English final, and you took my pen—and you didn't even try to take the exam—"

Jess's eyebrows lowered. He looked at her as if she were speaking backwards. "I'm not goin' to college, so I don't need to take some stupid test to prove I have a quasi-solid grasp on my ABC's."

"Then you didn't need this pen, and you didn't need to be in there!" Lane scoffed. "I mean, why come all the way inside the building in the first place, Jess?"

"Somethin' wrong?"

"Yes. You invoked the wrath of Mrs. Hockens and endangered my shoestring concentration so you could schmooze in the margins to Rory!"

His eyebrows were nearing the danger zone. "Good thing I didn't ask you for a Sharpie—"

"Stop it—"

"—overreact much?"

"You are not getting this. You could've been there on time," said Lane. "You could've taken the exam and passed; I mean, hello, you probably read more than you breathe, and this was English class! In a former life you probably lived with the Bronte sisters! Unlike the rest of us, you could've sat for it and totally aced it!"

"I didn't want to." Jess tugged the book out of her hands harder than necessary. "The teachers in this school don't notice when people are procreating in the lunch line; I coulda made enough of an appearance to fool Hockens today the same way I did for the last two finals. It was just bad luck she saw me at all—"

"Attendance doesn't matter if you didn't put pen to paper, mister!"

"Tell that to Newman in Biology; he was asleep before anybody else last week."

"It's not funny." Lane glared at him, poking her pen toward his chest with every other word.

"What do you care?" Jess lifted his chin. "You made it out in one piece, Weir, why hassle me?"

"Because." Lane's eyes darted between his, and she tried to figure out how to verbalize it without caffeine in her system. Not even tea. "Because—I don't know, it just bugs me, that's all—"

"Why?"

"It bugs me that you could have been in there and you could have done it right and you didn't."

"What, more of that ancestral OCD kickin' in? Last I checked, my attendance record isn't labelled Lane Kim."

The remnants of Lane's patience snapped like a twig.

"No, but last I checked, Rory is my best friend, and so I know that you just shot yourself in the academic foot to graffiti a book for a girl with a boyfriend who is much taller than you and who loves her and who is not going anywhere any time soon!" She took a breath, blinking. "Except his grandmother's house, but he gets back this weekend, so." Another breath. "Irrelevant."

Jess came off of the locker completely, mood officially flipped over. "Shot myself in the foot?"

"Yes. Because I'm telling you, there is no chance—"

"—no chance, God, would you give it a rest with the repetition, Janet Jackson?"

"Oho, do not Janet Jackson me, you need to hear it!"

"Please." Jess shook his head, rolled his eyes, got too loose and too stormy all in one breath. And this was probably him showing restraint, if past experience was anything to go off of. "If you're that sure of Lucy and Ricky, why do you keep indulging in the urge to shove it down my ear?"

"I told you before."

"Refresh my memory."

"I'm doing it to protect you."

Jess let out the loudest scoff that hallway had ever hosted.

"I am!" Lane's eyebrows knit, her voice spiraling into an almost-pout. Not today. Not this early in the morning.

"You don't think you're mixing up protection with self-defense here?"

"What?"

Jess jabbed toward the floor with Slaughterhouse-Five folded in one hand. "You're so worried about Dean and Rory—"

"I'm not worried!"

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are, face it. You don't wanna admit that you might be wrong. That maybe they're not as truly-madly as you and her mother and Luke and Dean every other tractable hay-hauler in this place wants to believe."

"Well." Lane shifted backward, blinking some more. Suddenly her throat felt dry. "There. Good. That—that proves my point. You don't know Rory."

"No?"

"No, because if you did know her, you'd know she's not the sort of person to just kick Dean to the curb, no matter how many scribbles you put in her home library." Lane unzipped her backpack and stuffed the pen inside, heedless of the untidiness. She was getting sick of the sight of it. "She's not Daisy."

"Took her two weeks to figure out the bracelet was gone."

Lane's hand froze inside her backpack. "So?" It didn't come out as nonchalantly as she'd hoped.

"Y'know, I even came over once. Big dinner, Kerouacian analysis. She didn't even tell him till after he got there and saw it for himself."

"Came over?" Lane narrowed her eyes, head jerking to glance at him.

Jess's face was perfectly nonchalant. Not even his jawline was emoting. "To her house. Me and Rory. Fry dip, her mom gone overnight. I was there for two hours, she didn't so much as page Bunyan."

"That doesn't mean…"

Lane wanted to finish the sentence. She wanted to say she couldn't even picture what he was describing, but she could. She hated that she could. Rory had been torn up about Dean's bracelet, but the words she'd used, if memory served, were something like "Dean is gonna be so upset that I lost it", not "I'm so upset that I lost it". When they'd been in Luke's diner, Rory had been adamant about keeping her boyfriend from joining in the burger party. She hadn't gone to his baseball games in forever. She didn't smile anymore when Lane mentioned his name.

Rory's not Daisy, she's not Daisy, she's not. There's no way.

But she didn't tell you about fry dip. Or Kerouac. Whatever that means.

No way. School had to be getting to her—Paris or Chilton pressures or something. Or maybe Lorelai was going through a tough time and Rory was feeding off of it like a battery. That happened. But if that was true, if any of that was the source, whatever it was that was changing in Rory had been going on for an unusually-long time.

About six months, in fact.

Lane pulled her hand out of her backpack and stared uselessly. Willing herself to throw out a rebuttal, a really good argument that would prove Rory was not into Jess, Rory was faithful to Dean, and Lane Kim wasn't about to be disappointed in her hopes for the forty-thousandth time in her young life. Surprise! The world is not how you thought it would be! You were wrong, try again, thanks for playing.

Jess was watching her, big brown eyes alive and electric with animosity. That lightning hadn't been directed at her in so long, she almost didn't recognize it.

"Sounds like I'm not the one who doesn't know Rory."

"You—" Lane's mouth fell open, her heart twisting like a wet rag. "You know what, I was trying to help you, but—I'm done with that! Yeah, next time you need a pen so you can not participate in one of the most important tests of the year, don't come careless-whispering to me!"

"I won't."

"I thought you could use a few hazard signs in case you wanted to actually graduate high school someday down the road, or, you know, sidestep major heartbreak, but if you don't want my help, then fine."

"Fine."

"Fine!"

Lane turned around so fast, she wouldn't have been surprised if her backpack had slugged him across the face. He'd deserve it. She couldn't get her chest to stop clenching up, and her eyelids were so heavy. Maybe he was still there. Maybe he was walking to Merten's office after all. Maybe he was ditching school for the day altogether. Whatever he did, she wasn't going to care. He could self-sabotage for Rory all he wanted. Her arms were aching from all the yellow triangles she'd been holding up for him.

The imprint of sitting on a bench in the middle of the night, Coldplay and comfort between them, started melting away. The last ten minutes had poured water all over that chalk painting.

Eighty-sixing the whole Oprah parody with Principal Merten was pure instinct. Jess had been all too happy to bypass the office, heading straight out to the bookstore. For hours, he clogged up his head with George Orwell and Atlas Shrugged and the tinny sounds of Andrew trying to get a date behind the register on his pager. He sat in the usual corner until his stomach growled, demanding either the vending machines in the market or his regular shift at the diner.

The diner won, but only because Doose's activated his gag reflex too quickly on an empty tank.

By the time the dinner crowd was rolling in, Luke had given him three different lectures. The vein in his forehead and neck had both made an appearance, and now they'd come to some sort of flimsy solution, mainly in order to help Jess's neurotic uncle sleep through the night.

Apparently, the Principal had actually called and said Jess was flunking out and needed a tutor. And rather than shell out the cash to get a professional, Luke had gone on his belly to whimper at Lorelai's feet, ever the good boy, and request the aid of someone smarter than the sweater vests south of Stars Hollow. Someone who wouldn't have to be paid for their services.

Rory was going to tutor him. Luke had asked, and Rory had said yes.

She'd said yes. He couldn't have planned it better if he'd had a crystal ball. For an entire evening, Rory Gilmore and her blue eyes and rapier wit would be voluntarily sitting less than five feet from him. She'd be done with homework, she'd be noticeably sans-Lorelai, and her focus would, by terms of whatever contract she'd entered into with Luke, be fully trained on Jess.

If this was what playing with Principal Merten's blood pressure got him, he'd learned a valuable lesson already, and the teaching hadn't even begun.

Not that he was excited or anything.

As he wiped down the empty tables in the diner, eyeing the Stars Hollow Movie Festival sign some nobody was taping to the window outside, Jess chewed the inside of his cheek and scanned the seating. Anywhere with a good proximity to the exit would be best for tutoring. Or more accurately, for not tutoring.

The door jangled and the air changed. People sat up straighter. Kids stopped screaming. Caesar tucked his shirt in.

"Hey, Mrs. Kim, what can I getcha?" Behind the counter, Luke glanced over a shoulder and threw a nod into the greeting.

Jess's hand wiped Table Five slower, eyes bouncing up.

Mrs. Kim approached the counter, straight as a white picket fence. "I need tea."

Lane was behind her mother, no longer wearing the ponytail from before. Now her hair was down, perfectly brushed, and she was reading the menu as if she'd never seen it before. Every time he saw her with her mom, even at a distance, Lane looked smaller to Jess.

"What kind?" Luke asked.

"One lukewarm cup of green tea with localized honey, to go. And a tin of the same."

Luke hesitated, already having grabbed one of the to-go cups. "A tin?"

"Yes, the whole container."

"I, uh…" Luke shrugged halfway. "I, I don't really sell the whole, uh…"

"The Movie Festival is coming up. Post-festival antique business booms every year. Need strong, healthy tea to carry us through the sales. I'm out, the market is out, you have the only supply, I have the demand."

"It's just kinda weird to be—"

"I'll pay you forty."

"Okay, uh." Luke's eyes darted toward the door like he wanted to escape. He shrugged again. "Sure, why not."

As Mrs. Kim was talking, Jess watched Lane's posture get looser and looser. She wasn't wearing bracelets anymore, either, and he was pretty sure he'd seen some brightly-colored somethings dangling from her wrists earlier.

He could still hear her petulant little snarls in the back of his mind. He'd been trying to drown them out all day. I'm done with that! If you don't want my help, then fine! You could have been in there and you could have done it right, but you didn't!

Where did she get off, acting like she knew what he needed? Acting like she cared one iota about what happened to him. She was just mad he'd called her out. She was just mad because she was wrong. Rory was ten times too smart to stay in a relationship with someone who didn't know the difference between a simile and a metaphor. Dean was outmatched by her in every possible way, and no one else in this town seemed to see it.

Inside his ribcage, bricks were being molded, fired, and stacked.

So what if he didn't go to college?

There will be no re-retake of this test. Not for you.

And so what if Hockens thought he was a hopeless case? She'd be right. They'd all be right. Lorelai, Merten, Liz. If he wasn't on that conveyer belt now, he never would be. He was a loser from a family of losers, but at least he had the brains to acknowledge it and bypass the rat race.

Lane turned suddenly and caught his eye. Just as quickly, she turned away again. He saw her fingers curl into her palms.

Cracks started forming in the bricks. Jess stared down at the dishrag, abusing a nonexistent stain.

The pen hadn't been the problem. And neither had Rory. She'd been ticked at him, for him. For some bizarre reason.

And for an even more bizarre one, the fact that she was standing there in her mom's shadow pointedly not noticing him anymore was causing the brick formation to crumble altogether.

"You call this lukewarm?" Mrs. Kim boomed. She was holding a paper cup and glowering at Caesar, who had just finished steeping the tea. "This is 160 degrees Fahrenheit! I can feel it through the sleeve. Too hot."

"Not if you wait a couple of minutes," said Caesar, because he was an idiot.

Lane stared resolutely at the menu, like she was trying to translate Latin.

Mrs. Kim's entire frame went rigid. Her voice rose. "You want to burn my daughter?"

Caesar's smile fell. "No."

"You want to prolong her allergies?"

"No."

"I say lukewarm, you steep for two minutes, then hand it to the customer, she gets burnt! That is the breeding ground for a lawsuit! Do you want a lawsuit?"

"No." Caesar had already taken the cup back, making it over again.

Jess noticed that Luke had found the tea tin about thirty seconds ago and was taking way too long to ring up one beverage and a container. He even detected a partial smile struggling not to form underneath the baseball cap. Mrs. Kim was glaring at every move Caesar made, and Jess remained silent, moving to Table Two as imperceptibly as possible. It was closer to the action.

Lane was even stiffer than her mother. Her hands were folded in front of her, her eyes were glued to the chalk behind Luke's head. Both shoes were double-tied, and she might as well have become one with the floor. The louder Mrs. Kim became, the tighter her shoulders seemed to get.

Mrs. Kim stretched over the counter to watch what Caesar was doing. "Use a thermometer."

"Yes ma'am."

"140 exactly."

"I'm on it."

"And don't forget the honey!"

"Right!"

Lane moved. Slightly. She turned her head gingerly and glanced at Luke.

Luke caught the glance, shook himself, and cleared his throat. "Here y'are, Mrs. Kim, all set here."

While Mrs. Kim paid for the tea tin, Lane moved to get out of her way and leaned a shoulder against the counter.

"Caesar, it's fine," she hissed.

"Please don't talk to me, I'm tryna focus," Caesar whispered back, standing over the thermometer with eyes the size of ping pong balls.

"But I'm okay, really."

"Sh, I'm steeping."

"I don't need 140!"

"I'm. Steeping."

Jess bit the inside of his cheek hard, gaze bouncing from Lane to Caesar. Finally, quality entertainment. If Luke's vein showed up again before midnight, today might even break the three-star rating.

Moving to Table Two had not increased his chances of being noticed. The longer Lane stood in the diner, swallowed by her mother's everything and her little Fine! ringing in one of his ears and out the other, the more damage his bricks were sustaining. Was she doing it on purpose? He could've ignored it, but he found it was harder when she was in his peripherals.

Mrs. Kim finished paying and turned to her daughter, eyes a whole lot softer. "You have your drink?"

Lane had just taken the tea from the trembling hands of Caesar, who disappeared into the kitchen as quickly as possible. "Got it."

"How is it?" Mrs. Kim reached over and straightened the collar of Lane's jacket, fussing.

Lane scrambled to take the first sip. "Mm. Yes. It's fine, Mama." Then, quickly, "It's great, really, it's perfect."

"Too much honey?"

"No, Mama."

"Inhale through the nose," the antique dealer said. "Steam is good for the sinuses."

It was like someone was turning dials and pressing buttons on Lane's mainframe. When Mrs. Kim straightened one side of the collar, Lane's free hand straightened the other to match. When Mrs. Kim asked about the honey, a three-syllable response was out of Lane's mouth almost before her mother had finished speaking. And when she was told to inhale through the nose, Lane sniffed like a puppy in a flower patch.

But through it all, Mrs. Kim was watching her like she was made of crystal. Like a glittery teenage sculpture was going to shatter any minute, glasses and Bambi eyes and the whole shebang, with every possible outside influence. The lines near her eyes seemed to go away when her kid smiled; did Lane even see it?

The Kims began making their exit, and still he couldn't catch her eye.

Jess's chest started stretching, just barely, like taffy, as he watched them go. The stretch expanded when Mrs. Kim held the door open for Lane, when she gave the stink-eye to the paper boy outside, walking past, when she called to Lane to wait at the crosswalk for her. Wait there, stand up straight, are you warm enough, how's your tea, be careful, don't run, how was school—

Nope. No stretching. Not today. He was flunking out and his uncle was sick of him and Lane wouldn't look at him and at this rate he'd never have his own car—but today, Rory was his tutor.

So at least something, something, for once in his life, was going to turn out right.

It was one o'clock in the morning, and Lane was dead asleep. She was so completely, utterly unconscious, she couldn't remember falling unconscious in the first place. The moment her head hit the pillow, she'd been out. Four cups of tea, extra furniture dusting downstairs, arguments and finals and a jacked-up circadian rhythm, and she was down for the count. Weak.

A hideous tapping woke her up. It was so soft and oddly insistent, she rose in bed gradually, as if an invisible string had her lifting like a puppet.

Her hair was fluffy on one side of her head, and her bedroom was pitch-black. Lane waited a few seconds, picturing a bird pecking the rain gutters, wired on the neighbors' birdseed and tripping out at 1 AM. A stick from the tree outside, maybe clattering onto the roof. The ghost of Thomas Jefferson searching for his second cousin's maid's best friend's favorite rocker.

There it was again. Harder this time. Mr. President wouldn't be that urgent over a chair.

Lane picked up the nearest thing to her—her choir booklet on the nightstand—and tiptoed to her bedroom window. One. Two. Three.

She yanked back the curtain in one hand. Beneath the beige shade, she could just see a pair of dirty sneakers. Fingers tingling, Lane pulled up the shade.

Immediately, she dropped to a crouch and unlocked the window, pushing it open. "Jess?"

It was him. Jess was sitting on the roof outside her room. He was in an army-green coat that looked big enough to eat him, he stank of smoke, and his hand was over his knee, still poised to do some more tapping. And he was honest-to-goodness sitting outside of her room. Outside her bedroom. On the top of her house. Under her tree. His face looked weird. For a moment, Lane couldn't pinpoint what it was—the shadows from the branches? The streetlight's glow?

No. The skin around his eyes was red, and his nose matched. His knuckles were smudged with dirt and he was breathing oddly. It was almost like he'd been crying—or close to it.

Maybe she was a sleepwalker. Maybe this was a lucid dream.

Lane's voice was barely a whisper, barely anything. "Are you cracked? My mother will run you over with every car in Stars Hollow if she finds you up here! Don't even roll, just—jump and hit the ground running, ignore the pain, head for Canada!"

She reached for the window, but Jess shifted, just a hair, and the look on his face stopped her.

And then it seemed like he'd forgotten what he was going to say. A few seconds passed, Jess breathing in, out, slow, slow. Staring at the roofing tiles underneath his shoes. Blinking a lot.

Finally, he said on an exhale, tone calm as ever, "Can you come out?"

Lane glanced over her shoulder. She could hear the clock in the hall ticking. "Better not. One teenager on the roof is pushing it already."

He nodded.

Something was bad. Something was wrong. She couldn't see any blood, and she didn't smell any beer. At least, she didn't smell anything she thought beer was supposed to smell like. He just seemed—agitated. And cold.

Lane tugged her comforter off of her bed and wrapped it around her own shoulders, trying to get comfy in her half-bent position on the floor. He wouldn't take a blanket even if she offered, she was sure. "What are you doing here?"

Jess licked his lips and glanced down at the yard. Out at the street. His hand jiggled in place, restless.

"Um." She leaned further out. "Are you okay?"

He nodded again.

Lane squinted, wrapping her arms around herself. "You sure?"

Then his brown eyes flicked up at her and Lane had to sit back as if she'd gotten too close to the town bonfire. Jess's head kept bobbing up and down, and he pursed his lips, a not-quite resignation. But his face was so open and his jaw was working so hard, Lane couldn't quite believe him.

"You just felt like climbing a tree at 0100 hours," Lane surmised. "You're not on the lam, are you?"

He scoffed.

"Not so loud!" Lane's head jerked back toward her door. No sign of Mama Kim. "Okay, so not on the lam. It's kind of late for a guessing game, Jess. Or early. Do I look flushed, my heart is seriously pounding. My mother would turn me into a fine red mist for this, make no mistake."

When he didn't respond, glancing in past her shoulder and back down at the grass again, Lane decided to move on. He wasn't going to explain himself. Not tonight.

"So. I'm guessing tutoring with Rory ran long?" Before he could ask, she supplied, "She called on her way back from Chilton. You're in good hands, I'll give you that."

Jess seemed pale, suddenly.

Lane winced. "Sorry. No more Rory talk, I swear."

The argument from earlier that day seemed weeks away now. It was fading off like cheap foundation. Seeing him out there, like this, so random, so young and by himself and surrounded by nighttime—somehow, the fight didn't matter much in that moment. All she could focus on was filling the silence.

"So. How was it?"

Jess sniffed. "I gotta go, uh." He jabbed a thumb somewhere in the vicinity of the town square below. "Luke's…waitin'."

"I don't understand." It was the simplest way she could figure for communicating how utterly insane this was getting. What was he doing? Why was he there? She yawned, and tried to cover it. "Are you trying to make up? At one o'clock at night? On my mother's rooftop?"

He scratched at one of his knees. "Got somethin' for you."

"Oh, you've got something for me." Lane grinned the way people always did when they were losing their grip on sanity. "You've got something for me on my mother's rooftop. At one o'clock at night, you've got something for me, of course—"

Jess reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a shining, plastic square with two fingers. He held it out to her.

In the moonlight, when she turned it in both hands, Lane could see yellow and blue, a facsimile of a map. If she shifted the CD case just right, she could make out the words in white on the bottom left-hand corner.

Is This It. The Strokes.

Lane's mouth went slack. "This is my Strokes album."

She looked out at Jess. He looked back at her, unblinking. White-faced. Hair messy.

"This is Is This It, this is my Strokes album." Lane shook the album in the air, speaking so softly and so intently she was giving herself the shivers. "The one I lost."

"I know."

"You did take it!" That was normal volume. Lane clapped a hand over her mouth.

For the next two heartbeats, they both stared hard at her bedroom door. Nothing.

She turned back to him, back to a whisper. "What happened to 'I can't go through your bag'?"

"What happened to 'yes, you can'?"

"Today. I said you could today, not six months ago. And you still made me give you my pen!" Her mouth formed an outraged O. "You made me give you my pen, from my backpack, and all along you've had my private property in your possession! You and that backpack are already acquainted! Why don't you just stick a needle in me and borrow some blood while you're at it? I'm O-negative, act fast, get it while it's hot!"

"Not sorry."

Lane made an ugly sound in the back of her throat, a sound she didn't know she was capable of. "Of course you're not."

Jess gave her one of his patented you're-stupid looks, all eyebrows. At least that made him look more like himself. "I'm not sorry I took it and neither are you."

"Really? Why is that?"

"Because if I hadn't taken it, we wouldn't be here."

Lane stilled, glancing from him to the CD and back. He was doing the nodding again. She tried to hold in the smile, but it wasn't listening to her. Fine. "You know, you can make it up to me by lending me Parachutes."

Jess tilted his head. "Think I'll hold on to that one for now."

Lane turned the album between her thumb and forefinger, letting the smile get broader. "We're good."

His eyes dipped; he gave her a tiny, crooked little smile back. It was the weakest one she'd ever seen on anybody, and that included her mom. It was practically made of wet paper, gone faster than it appeared. "See ya."

"See ya."

He lifted a hand halfway, fingers curled, and turned to climb down the tree again. Lane watched him until he was past the gate, hands in his pockets, head pointed at the ground. Every building seemed to dwarf him, seemed to make him into more and more of a dot, until he was completely out of sight. All alone.