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David feels nervous when he’s called out of homeroom. He’s fairly sure he hasn’t done anything wrong, he certainly hasn’t done anything wrong intentionally but it takes less than two minutes sitting on the hard plastic chairs outside the guidance counselor's office to get him wringing his hands and mentally running through everything he’s done in the three weeks since the start of junior year that might have caused this.

He’s still floundering when the door swings open and his name is called.

There is somebody already sitting in the chairs in front of the desk.

This was getting stranger and more unnerving by the minute.

Social cues are David’s forte but even he knows enough to figure out that he’s supposed to sit down in the empty seat, so he does so, stealing a glance at the other person facing down the guidance counsellor.

He’s a total stranger.

It’s a medium sized school, David couldn’t match the names to the faces of all his classmates but he’s fairly sure of his ability to recognise most of them in passing and he’s equally sure that he’s never seen this guy before. And he doesn’t look anything like a freshman.

The conversation that follows is quick and prefuntory and blessedly nothing to do with him being in any sort of trouble. The other guy in the office is a new senior, Ron, and the guidance counsellor had picked out David to help settle him in.

It doesn’t quite make sense, he can't help but think, though he'd never say anything of course. David isn't the type of person who questions authority. Still he can't help but wonder as they exit the office. Surely it ought to be another senior showing their new classmate around?

He’s grateful for the opportunity of course, it’s always nice to get recognition from teachers, but David still knows how things are done and this isn’t quite right.

Even with the bubble of pride in him for being recognised, after five minutes walking the halls David is tempted to rush the tour, Ron doesn’t seem interested in anything he has to say about the school and David has no clue where to start with casual conversation when Ron looks so much more grown-up than him (and sure David is one of the youngest in his year, cursed with a summer birthday, but even if Ron is one of the oldest of the seniors the gap is still less than two years, Ron just carries himself differently from how David’s classmates do) and has such dark look on his face and literal spikes on his jacket, but then David notices something that has him stumbling over nothing...

There’s a book under Ron’s arm. From this angle it’s impossible to make out the title but it’s thick, a hardback, and the cover looks too dark and old for it to be some trashy celebrity autobiography or cheap thriller.

There’s no reason for him to be carrying a book, but he is anyway, and that means that he and David have something in common after all.

He wants, suddenly, to know more about Ron. What is he reading and why did he chose it? Does he read a lot? Surely he must, to handle a thick book like that. It puts him in a whole new light and David decides his severe expression must just be a sign of deep thought, his indifference to the tour surely because Ron doesn’t need a guide to help him make sense of the layout of a small cluster of buildings.

With one revelation he goes from having no idea of what to say to Ron to having a million, but no idea where to start. And Ron certainly isn’t going to create an opening for him. Ron is wearing leather and scowling and has barely looked once at David since he walked into the counsellor's office and how can David blame him when he suddenly feels so small and bland and boring standing a sweater that he would have called brown before but it probably more like dark beige and completely unable to think of a single interesting thing to say. Even the books in his bag are all school books.

No, he can’t try and talk to Ron now, not like he wants to, he’d only make a fool of himself.

But whatever else he may be, David is not a quitter.

He might not be cool enough to start a conversation with Ron now, but there has to be some way he can learn to make himself cool enough.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It takes three days --stomach tangling up in knots every time he sees Ron in the lunchroom-- for David to hit upon the solution: if he wants to learn then he needs a teacher.Of course, finding one is harder.There are plenty of cool kids at his school, but not all of them are the right sort of cool to impress Ron and even fewer of them would be open to helping David.Inspiration strikes him on the way out of history class.Literally.Joseph Liebgott nearly runs David over in his haste to get out of the room, no great surprise since the next period is lunch, honestly David should have known to get out of the way.It does give an idea through.Liebgott is unquestionably cool, he wears ripped jeans and walks around with headphones leaking the tinny sounds of some loud angry music; goes to parties and skips class just to hang out with his equally cool friends; does whatever he wants without ever seeming to give a damn about the consequences.If he could teach David it would be bound to work. Hell, if he even spent some time teaching David he might make David seem cooler by association.Most importantly, they’d gone to the same middle school and been on at least civil terms before moving up to high school and drifting apart in the far bigger social pool and Liebgott might say no, might even laugh at David, but David knows he wouldn’t do anything truly unpleasant like following it up by telling everybody else about David’s crush.Although, getting him away from his usual pack of equally cool friends could be a problem. David thinks he can trust Liebgott to contain his mockery but there’s no way David is asking for what he wants in front of a whole group of them.It quickly becomes clear that Liebgott is never alone and it takes a little bit of stalking to pick out his schedule and then track Liebgott’s movements to figure out when he would be most likely separated from his friends, culminating in a move that is agonising but hopefully his first step on the road to cool (and made entirely independently at that!) -- David skipping study hall to accost Liebgott in the parking lot..He doesn’t actually mean to creep up but Liebgott startles when David says, “Hi” and his eyes go wide, visibly shocked when he sees who is talking to him and David can't blame him. They might share classes but their social circles are too different for them to ever talk.It's not that there's any enmity between them, they just have nothing in common. David spends all his lunch hours and free periods working on the newspaper and student council and model UN and Liebgott spends his... well David doesn't actually know but he's pretty sure it involves sneaking off site and smoking and other general rule-breaking.“Hey,” Liebgott says warily.“I need your help,” David blurts out, then stops and shakes his head because that’s silly. “Well, no, I don’t need it, but I want it.”“You want my help?” Liebgott takes a long drag of his cigarette. “Well, I never saw that coming. What with?”“I...” he’d planned this speech out in his head a few times, trying to work out what would be most persuasive, but he’d thought writing notecards was a little excessive and now he’d forgotten everything. “Well, you know the new senior, Ron Speirs...”“I think everybody does,” Liebgott says wryly, straightening out of his slouch with a curious look. It’s true that Ron has made quite a splash, rumours and gossip were flying by lunch on the day he arrived and have only escalated with time. “What, is he giving you trouble or something?”Now it's David’s turn to be startled, the idea bafflingly foreign. “No, no, nothing like that, the opposite really.”“The opposite?” Liebgott repeats dubiously. “What’s the opposite of trouble, he’s coming onto you or something?” Liebgott’s tone suggests that the notion is a hilarious joke“Well that’s what I want,” David confesses. He’s been thinking it over since that first encounter in the counsellor's office and he’s never felt like this about anybody he wanted to be just friends with and Ron in undoubtedly good looking even if as a cool senior he is worryingly above David’s league.Liebgott literally chokes on his cigarette smoke in surprise, something David didn’t think actually happened outside of overacted comedies.“You what?”“That’s what I want your help with actually,” David admits. “I want to be cooler so I can impress Ron.”“Why? ”David flushes. He thought that part would be obvious. “Because I... I like him and I want him to like me back.”“You like ...” Liebgott shakes his head. “But he’s not your type at all...”“What would you know about my type?” David asks. How could Liebgott think he knew when David barely has any idea himself, with nowhere near enough data to begin to find pattern in his attraction. His celebrity infatuations had been scattered and fleeting; the closest he’d come to a real relationship the three weeks at summer camp he’d spend sneaking off with Henry Jones to kiss in the auditorium orchestra pit but though they’d had fun they’d both nobody who’d been at Future Leader of America camp would have time to keep up a long distance relationship once school started again; and now, this baffling realisation that Ron Speirs could tie his stomach in knots just by glancing in his direction. The only thread is the combination of dark hair and dark eyes and that could apply to a quarter of the people David knows.“Well, you’re into all that nerdy rich boy stuff,” Lieb says with a shrug. “You wear sweater vests and do the school paper and debate club and academic bowl--”“There’s nothing wrong with debate, you were on the team once,” Webster points out. And he only has the one sweater-vest which was a present from his Grandma.“Yeah, in middle school,” Joe says, with a roll of his eyes. “And I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it, but you’re into that sort of thing and Speirs has a motorbike and I heard the reason he transferred here is that he just got out of juvie. Not your type.”“I’m pretty sure that rumour is nonsense,” David says. He’d heard the whispers himself, but nothing that suggested there was any actual evidence for the accusations. Everything Liebgott has said about him is true, but that’s why David needs his help. “Anyway, who says the kind of person I am and the kind of person I’m attracted to have to be the same?”Liebgott sighs and shakes his head. “This is stupid,” he insists. “And why do you want my help?”“Because you’re cool,” Webster says, exasperated. “If anybody can help me it’s you.”Liebgott raises his eyebrows. “I see... but what would be in it for me?”“I’ll do your English homework,” David said promptly. It wouldn’t be difficult for him, he was taking AP English so he already knew most of the stuff Liebgott’s class would be covering, but if he took the work of Liebgott’s hands then David would be freeing up extra time for him to go to parties and whatever else he liked to do.“You’re gonna write me A grade essays?” Liebgott asks archly."Bs," Webster corrects. It might hurt his bargaining position but it would be suspicious if Liebgott suddenly started handing in A grade essays, but David knows he does well enough in other classes and on the tests that the teacher would believe that he could start getting Bs if he just put some effort in. “You’ll save the time spent on your essays, but making a sudden big change in your grades would be too obvious.”“How do you know my teacher would believe even that?” Liebgott says. “I wrote my last essay during lunch the day it was due. I once handed in a planning assignment written on a napkin.”“I’m in your history class,” David points out and he knows from the gossip that the napkin incident was only because Liebgott’s actual notes got
water spilled on them at lunch
and he’d had to rewrite them in a rush. “So I know you can write essays and interpret sources when you want to. And it’s not like you’re failing English, you do fine on the exams, you just half-ass the assignments, like you said. If I had some of your old papers as style samples it wouldn’t be hard to make it look like the change was because you’d decided this year was the time to start actually trying.”“And then when you realise you’re not into Speirs after all, I just go back to not trying,” Liebgott says dubiously.David decides to ignore the accusation that he didn’t know his own mind and would just given up on his intentions and shrugs. “You could just pretend you got bored of studying, or you could actually keep trying on your own.”“I guess it would be believable...”That isn’t a yes, but he looks like he’s thinking about it and David presses his advantage. “I could even pretend to tutor you to make it look convincing, or we could make an actual study group of it since you don’t really need tutoring,” he suggests.Liebgott’s eyes narrow. “Tutoring?”David winces, wondering it that was a miss-step. “Or a study group. For whatever classes. Or just use that as a cover for the time you spend helping me“Time I spend?” Liebgott’s expression slips back to shock. “I thought you just wanted a checklist or something.”“I could have just googled that,” Webster says. “No, I want you to teach me properly, all--” he doesn’t even know what coolness lessons would really involve, music and fashion and defying authority? “--whatever you think it would be best to teach me.”Liebgott frowns, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Okay. You have last period study hall on Thursdays, right?”David nods, though he’s surprised Liebgott knows that. Lieb is supposed to be in the same study hall but David doesn’t know how he’d know they share it since he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Liebgott in a study hall.“Skip that and we’ll use that time for this coolness study group,” Lieb says. “Even if it is a dumb idea.”“Skip it?” David might be skipping now but it’s not something he’d planned on making a habit of.“It’s only once a week and it’s not even a real class,” Liebgott says dismissively. “If you can’t even handle that then I can’t help you.”David takes a deep breath and considers. He doesn’t like it but Liebgott is right that it’s not a real class and the administration aren’t too strict about checking study hall attendance. He can always make up the hour of reading and homework some other time. “Alright,” he says. “But I should probably get back now so I’m just late and not skipping twice in one week.”Liebgott laughs at that, no surprise from somebody who probably skips more than twice every week, then adds, “And Web, I’ll give you a first tip now to work on between now and then, stop ironing your jeans,” Liebgott declares. “They’d have made you look square in the nineteen-fuckin’-fifties, nevermind now.”David sighs. Even he knew that ironed jeans were overkill, but his mom thought they made him look smart and so they always came back from the laundry that way and he hates to argue with her. He’ll have to think of a way to talk her around though, because Liebgott is right. “See you Thursday, Lieb.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When Thursday comes around, David doesn't feel as uneasy about skipping study hall as he'd expected to. The absence is going to push his attendance score down and that's unfortunate, but it's one period a week, less than 3% knocked off his average, and he's not going to need tutoring in cool forever so he should be able to pull the score back up. And he's pretty sure that being so worried about his attendance that he sat down and did the math about the impacts of skipping one period a week is pretty far from cool but, well, baby steps.

Liebgott had said to meet him in the parking lot, which seems like an odd place to go to study but since he's the authority David isn't going to argue. Summer is quickly turning into fall but it's still hot enough that he falters as he steps from the air conditioned building out into the sunlight.

Leaning against his car, shamelessly parked in one of the visitor bays right in front of the building, Liebgott looks unbothered by the heat. He's got sunglasses perched in his hair but Lieb is also still wearing his heavy looking leather jacket and managing to look cool instead of flushed and sweaty like David is pretty sure he would if their situations were reversed.

"Hey," he says hesitantly. He wants these lessons on coolness, but he can't deny that putting himself in somebody's hands like this and letting them take him out of his comfort zone isn't unnerving.

"You actually came," Liebgott says, sounding like he'd expected otherwise. David doesn't know why. He thought the simple fact he'd risked embarrassment to ask Lieb would give away how sincere he was in wanting the assistance.

"You're still willing to help me," he checks, because maybe Lieb had only said yes because he thought that David wasn't going to go through with it.

"Sure, I guess," Liebgott says, “If you really want to do this. You have money, right?"

David nods. There's twenty bucks in his wallet and the debit card that his mom gave him for emergencies has a thousand bucks on it. Whatever Lieb is planning doesn't seem like an emergency but as long as makes sure the balance is refilled from his savings before the statement arrives David figures it won't be a problem.

"Well, of course you do," Liebgott says. “And you’re okay with spending some to achieve your goal?"

"Some..." David says, hesitantly. He'd figured there'd be some cost to being cool but he's still got limits on his spending.

"Alright," Lieb says, "Hop in, I'm taking you shopping."

"For..."

"Drugs," Liebgott says sarcastically. "Or, y'know, clothes that make you look like a normal teenager, instead of like a de-aged grandpa who got lost on the way to a country club or a golf course or wherever."

David hesitates. It's not that he wants to go back on his plan so soon but, well, the car doesn't exactly inspire confidence. David doesn't know a lot about cars, but Lieb's looks barely looks roadworthy, there's a sizeable dent in the bumper and a long scrape through the paint of the passenger side door

Liebgott clearly follows the line of his gaze. "Oh, ignore those. I've never crashed, she was already banged up when I got her, that's why she was so cheap."

David's never been in a car that's crashed and not been repaired before, but Lieb seems to think that it's safe and David doesn't think he'd be that confident without reason, so he gets in.

The interior of the the car looks better, still faded and fraying but also clean and well cared for -- there's no garbage piling up in the foot-wells which is more than can be said for most of David's friends.

"You called you car a she," David remarks. "Is that something I ought to be doing?"

Lieb shrugs as he starts the engine. "I mean, female pronouns are the proper way to refer to vehicles, but it's not a coolness thing. Honestly, I think actually doing it is mostly just a me thing."

The radio comes to life as the engine sputters but then turns over, tuned to some station that's playing angry screaming music David doesn't recognise, but at least it's not loud.

"Where are we going?" he asks, when it becomes clear that Lieb isn't about the volunteer the information and he recognises they aren't heading towards the mall. "Not too far, right, because if I'm too late home I'll have to explain to my parents."

"Some thrift stores," Liebgott says. "They aren't far, but they'll be better than the mall to get the right look and it means you won't have to spend as much. Pretty different from where you usually shop, I guess."

David shrugs. Most of his clothes are gifts or bought for him by his mom. He wears what's in his wardrobe and he'd never really put much thought into it beyond that. Annie likes to spend her Saturdays at the mall, but David is pretty sure John and their dad are both like him and just wear whatever is picked out for them. Though, now he is thinking of it, perhaps letting himself be dressed like a halfway point between his middle aged father and his middle school brother is one of the reasons he's so far from cool.

It doesn’t take long for them to get where they’re going, though it’s in a neighbourhood David isn’t really familiar with. En route, Lieb points out various locations he feels David ought to know, though David isn’t sure why anybody would want to go to a record store when digital music is a thing and he hasn’t even ridden a bike since he was a pre-teen and wouldn’t know where to start on a skateboard.

It’s a busy sort of street and David can’t see a parking lot anywhere, but to his surprise Liebgott parallel parks without a second of hesitation, sliding in neatly between a truck and a dumpster just outside the store. Lieb doesn’t even seem to realise what he’s done, getting out and calling out to David to hurry up like he hasn’t just pulled off a nearly impossible maneuver.

But David shakes his shock off and follows.

He’s never been in a thrift store before, hadn’t been quite sure what to expect, but the truth is it doesn’t look that different from a regular store except for the fact that every item on display is unique rather than accompanied by a bunch of the same thing but in different sizes. If anything, it reminds him of the fancy boutiques his aunt had occasionally dragged him to, where everything was one of a kind and handmade and carried a four figure price tag, back before his mom had told her sister to stop offering to have the kids over if she couldn’t think of more kid-appropriate activities for them.

Still, he hangs back and lets Liebgott take the lead, since he’s not really sure what they’re looking for, nevermind where to find it, while Liebgott is striding through the racks with a determined air, pulling hangers from racks and then discarding them or handing them to David to carry faster than David can form judgements of his selections.

Once his arms are piled high, Liebgott steers him towards the dressing rooms at the back of the store.

“Alright,” he says, “I think I’ve guessed your sizes pretty well but you should probably put it all on and check. And, y’know, pick out the stuff that works best for you since there’s a hell of a lot more than you should buy.”

“Is there stuff that should go together?” David asks. His mom had sent him back up to change as a kid when he’d come down in badly matched outfits, until he’d finally gotten decent at figuring out how to co-ordinated his clothes, but he’s not sure the rules are the same for the kind of things Liebgott has picked out for him.

“No. Fuck...” David isn’t sure what’s so funny but Liebgott bursts out laughing hard, a sudden change from the dubious air he’s carried with him ever since David asked for his help. “Fuck, dammit, you’re so...” he shakes his head. “No, Web, you can just wear them however is comfy. Now go, try things on!”

It’s weird being shut in the dimly lit booth and undressing in front of a mirror isn’t and experience David enjoys or expects to grow on him, so David turns away but he lifts the first set of clothes from the heap and dresses, then turns back.

He stares at himself in the mirror. It’s so unfair.

Joe had picked out these clothes. They were definitely cool. They’d looked cool to David when he’d carried them into the dressing room, at least in so far as he was any judge of such things.

But on him they just look ridiculous. Apparently a black and red shirt, artfully distressed jeans, and enormous combat boots still weren’t enough to mask the massive aura of dork that emanates from his every pore.

He tries two more combinations but nothing works, the clothes are awkward on him, Lieb might not think they need to match each other but they also don’t match David and it leaves him feeling like an obvious fraud.

“What’s taking so long?” Lieb calls. “How long does it take you to put on one set of clothes?”

“I’m on the third,” David calls back, puzzled as to why Lieb would talk about one set of clothes when he’d sent David into the dressing room with so many.

“What! No, you have to show me,” Liebgott demands. “You don’t know anything about clothes, how are you gonna know if they’re good or not?”

Reluctantly, David turns and pulls back the curtain so Lieb can see the way the clothes look on him.

His grimace suggests he’s as disappointed in the results as David feels.

“It’s your posture,” Lieb decrees. “Try slouching a little... no, not like that, head up or you’re just going to look like a kicked puppy.”

David tries to obey, looking Lieb in the eye while maintaining his slumped shoulders. From the look on Liebgott's face it still isn’t working.

“Okay, next set of clothes,” he says, clapping his hands. “And show me the two you tried on without coming out.”

“They didn’t--”

Liebgott shakes his head. “No, you don’t get to judge these things. I refuse to believe everything I picked out fits you weird or looks bad, so you’re gonna keep trying things on until we get results.”

Six outfits later, David was beginning to think they were going to be there all night. There were a few items that might be passable, it was hard to go wrong with plain block coloured shirts and he supposed unripped skinny jeans weren’t so different from his regular pants, but none of them really felt right and the best reaction he’d gotten from Lieb was a resigned sigh and a ‘they look alright I suppose’.

“Here, I’ve had an idea,” Lieb says, next time David steps out of the booth in another pair of jeans and a shirt that fits bit , shrugging off his jacket, “Try this on.”

“But it’s yours." David is here to buy clothes, not take Lieb’s.

“It’s big on me, it should fit you okay," Liebgott says, shoving it into David's hands.

“No... I mean--" he starts, but Liebgott snaps his fingers and so David rolls his eyes and pulls the jacket it.

It’s comfier than he was expecting, the weight on his shoulders feels like the reassuring weight of his backpack rather than oppressive; it fits well, even if it is too warm to really be wearing it; and the lingering scent of whatever body spray Lieb uses is a relief to his nose after the musty, mothball aromas of the clothes he’s been trying on.

“Well?”

For the first time since David started trying on clothes, Liebgott gives a nod of genuine approval, and hint of a proud smile playing about his lips. “Yeah, that works,” he declares. “It looks more worn in than the other stuff, pulls the look together.”

"Wait, you want me to borrow it? Not just try it on for an idea?" David had figured Lieb was just weighing up if that style of jacket worked since there wasn’t one like it in the store, but the way he said that sounded more like he meant his specific jacket.

Lieb shrugs, looking a little awkward. "All this thrifted stuff is people's summer clothes that they're clearing out now it's turning colder, you'll need a proper jacket too."

"You'll need a proper jacket as well," David points out.

“That's my old one,” Liebgott shrugs. "I'll be fine. My new one needs breaking in anyway."

“Are you...” David frowns. “You don’t have to, I’m sure I could--”

“I’m in charge,” Liebgott cuts in. “That was the deal right, I agree to help you fit this idea of ‘cool’ you have, but you have to trust my authority.”

“I alright... If you say so.”

“Good. But you’ve gotta integrate this stuff with your current clothes,” he adds. “If you just come to school dressed totally different from usual it’s gonna backfire because everybody is gonna see you’re just a poseur. Which you are, but that’s not what you want people to think.”

David nods. Honestly, the instruction is kind of soothing. It will be fairly easy to swap out a polo for a dark t-shirt or wear black instead of blue jeans without feeling conspicuous, whereas he’s pretty sure if he went anywhere outside of this dressing room in a full outfit made up of the clothes Liebgott has suggested he’d been just as uncomfortable and fake as he’d look to everybody else. He wants to make himself into somebody that Ron could like, but changes like that don’t happen overnight.

“Alright, I think we’re done here,” Lieb says. “Pick out the best few of those clothes, and meet me out front.”

David skims of the handful of things that he thought looked okay on him, mostly the plainer stuff that is somewhere between the cool way guys like Lieb and Ron dress and what David actually likes to wear, and then goes up to pay. He has to break out the emergency credit card but his total is still under a hundred bucks which isn’t bad for the amount of stuff he’s getting. He’s starting to see why people might thrift shop despite the inconvenience of them having such a weird mix of stock and being located in an out of the way neighbourhood. Which reminds him:

“Hey, Lieb, do you know if there are any buses around here that will get me back to school?” he asks. He knows the buses to his own neighbourhood from there, or he could walk if he really has to, but he doesn’t know how to get home from this part of town.

"Don't be stupid," Liebgott says, "I'm giving you a ride home."

"Isn't that out of your way?" David asks. He doesn't actually know where Lieb lives, but he's pretty sure it's not on his side of town since if he were David would have seen him around.

"You're still on Riverside Drive, right?" Liebgott says. David nods. “Then hurry up. Stick around much longer and you’ll have to make up a lie to your parents about where you’ve been.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Equipped with new clothes David returns to school. He's paired some of the new jeans with his usual shirt and sweater, just a hint of something more than his usual geeky self, acutely aware of Liebgott's warning that transforming too much too fast will just make him seem false. David doesn't just want to look cool, although that is the first step, he wants to

be

cool and that takes more patience.

Patience, and holding up his end of the bargain that has lead to him wearing dark wash skinny jeans.

He made Liebgott a promise, and he intends to fulfil it.

Their schedules don't overlap much on Mondays but after all the planning he put into broaching his plan to Liebgott it's not too hard for David to find a moment to speak with him alone.

He catches him by his locker toward the end of lunch. Lieb's friends aren't with him because their next class is on the opposite side of campus to Lieb's -- so is David's and he's going to be late, but some sacrifices have to be made.

"Do you have copies of your essays?"

When Liebgott jumps and slams his locker shut with a resounding clang as he whirls around, David realises that his approach might have been a little too quiet. "What?"

"Sample essays, so I can make sure the assignments I write for you are a style match..." David reminds him. "I was thinking English and history, but I can work with any."

"Oh." Liebgott frowns. "Right, those... No. I don't carry that shit around."

David bites his lip. This could be a problem. "I can't really start on your homework without them," he says. "I won't be able to do a convincing job without sources. Do you have any assignments that need doing this week?" If he has to wait for Lieb's essays and find time to fit in his homework before the end of the week things could get tricky. He's already got an article for the paper to research and a chemistry write up and it's only Monday, if Lieb is expecting David to take up Lieb's style of doing assignments the night before they're due then... Well, David is prepared to go far to get what he wants, but that might be too much even for the cause of being cool.

Liebgott shakes his head. "I've got some English from last week that's due tomorrow--" David's heart stops. "--But I already did that and there's no point you rewriting it just because."

Oh thank god. David might be smiling a little too much in his relief, but for a moment there he'd been concerned.

"Okay. Well, it'll be easiest if you can give me your homework questions the day you get them from now on," he adds. It'll probably mean him going out of his way to catch a moment alone with Liebgott every day, since he can't imagine Liebgott is going to be hunting him down for homework, but he'll find a way to make that work.

"Sure, I can do that," Lieb says, then pulls a marker out of his pocket. "Gimme your number, then I can text you when I have shit."

Or that. That would work. David rummages in his pocket, pulling out his phone. His parents finally put him on a decent contract over the summer, but it came at the cost of a replacement number that he hasn't fully learned yet.

"It starts 805-319," he's memorised that much, it's only a few digits out from his old number, then he taps to the information screen of his phone. "Then... uh... four, six, nine, two."

"805-319-4692," Liebgott repeats back to him as he scrawls the numbers on... on the back of his hand. He spots David's stare and shrugs. "I forgot to turn the ringer off and ended up getting my phone confiscated in math," he explains. "I'll get it back at the end of the day and add your number in then."

"Well, I should probably get going," David says. "I have trigonometry."

Lieb grimaces. "Trig? Fuck, you'd better get moving if you don't wanna be late," he says, "And I know you hate that. And I'll text you about Thursday, okay!"

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On Thursday, Liebgott talks David into his car again. It still looks like a deathtrap but it had run smoothly enough last week so David isn't so hesitant this time.

The relaxed feeling only lasts long enough for Liebgott to pull onto the road that doesn't head anywhere but towards the freeway.

“Where are we going?” David asks nervously.

“For a drive."

Urgh. What a useful clarification. “Yeah, but to where?" David says. There aren't many places the freeway goes that could be reached in the time they had and he wasn't sure what any of them had to do with cool.

“Just around. Don't worry Web, I'll get you back home before dark," Lieb smirks.

"How will driving around make me cooler?" David asks. He's willing to go along with Liebgott's methods because Lieb knows more, but if Lieb is just fucking with him...

"You'll see," Lieb says firmly. "But first, I wanted to talk to you about this plan of yours."

In David's experience Liebgott is glib even when he shouldn't be, but now his tone has changed to worryingly serious.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Lieb waves a hand. "Where do you actually see this going? What's your endgame?"

"I told you, I want to be cool. Or at least cooler," David says. "Enough that I can talk to Ron and he might pay attention to me and then... well, we'll see..." Of course, Ron liking him enough to date would be wonderful, but he knows that's aiming high. Wanting any senior would be, butRon is particular is too good to date just anybody.

"So you force yourself to like stuff that will impress him in the hopes that he'll be interested in you then..." Lieb shakes his head. "But you don't like any of that stuff, so how is that gonna make you happy?"

"It's about being cool, not about being happy," David clarifies.

Lieb's eyebrows shoot up. "What else could be the point?"

"No, I mean, of course happiness is the point of a relationship, but it can't all be like that. Some of it is like, I don't like gym but I still have to pass the class to graduate and get into college, so the end result will make me happy even if the process doesn't."

Lieb scowls. "Your comparison doesn't work. In your example you get to college and then don't have to keep doing gym class, if you pretend to be somebody you aren't to get with Speirs you're gonna have to keep pretending."

Ah. David sees the misunderstanding now. Liebgott doesn't understand what David has asked him for. "I'm not going to be pretending. I want to make myself different, to have you help me become somebody cooler and more interesting."

"What if I say no? What if I decide it's pointless to help you with a plan that doesn't make any sense to me."

David shrugs. "I guess I’ll see if there's somebody else who will help me," he says. "Or I’ll try and figure it out on my own. Are you backing out?"

"No." Lieb sighs. "No I'll go along with your stupid plan, but I still think it's a bad idea."

David nods, relieved. He wouldn't really know where to start in finding somebody else cool to help him, Lieb is really the only person he knows at school who he thinks might be up to Ron's level -- Liebgott's friends are also cool of course, but it's clear who is the ringleader of their little group.

“What music do you like?”

David startled at the non-sequitur. "It doesn't matter," he reminds Liebgott. "I need you to teach me what's cool."

Liebgott runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, but there’s a whole fucking range of music that is cool.” He sounds a little irritable but then he takes a deep breath and continues in a calmer tone, “Maybe even stuff you listen to already. And if I know what kinda stuff you like then it’ll be easier for me to introduce you to other stuff you’ll probably be able to appreciate.”

David wracks his brain. What does he listen to? Whatever his parents put on around the house mostly, which was usually talk radio or classics. He knew a little bit of what was popular but he couldn't claim to love any of it. Music was mostly a distraction, something to tune out so that he could focus on other things, he'd never really understood people who could just sit and listen to it, his playlists were all podcasts. "Uh... The Beatles?"

"Did you just say them because they're one of the most generic popular bands you could possibly say?" Liebgott asks. "What would happen if I asked you to name all their albums?"

"I like them, but I'm not obsessed with them," David protests. "I don't know, I don't really think about music that much."

Liebgott rolls his eyes. "Jeez, I've got my work cut out for me then. Alright, I suppose I could start you with the classics. Green Day--"

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them on the radio,” David says. “But it’s a bit...”

“No, no,” Lieb says. “Fuck that. If you're only hear a radio-edited single no wonder you don't get it. You can’t get the full experience from one song. You have to listen to the albums straight through. Start with American Idiot, I'll lend you my copy to listen to tonight. It all goes together, there’s a concept, a story to it. Even if the sound isn’t really your thing you’ll get something out of that, politics and literary themes and shit. Shit... rock operas in general are probably right up your street, I’ll have to write a list later.”

So, coolness classes were going to come with homework too? Well, David supposed he should have expected that.

"But fuck, there's still a lot of range in rock opera... wait, I have an idea," Lieb reaches into his pocket, then tosses his phone into David's lap. "Plug the aux in, put it on shuffle, and then tell me your honest
opinion of each song. No sucking up or pretending to have whatever your think 'cool' opinions are, that won't help, just give me something to fucking go on so I'm not tossing random recommendations your way and wasting both our time. Got the cord in?" Lieb reached over and spun the stereo dial up to loud. "Okay, go."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two lessons aren't a miracle cure and David has no delusions that he'd suddenly become cool but with several hours of new music downloaded to his phone and Lieb's jacket a steady weight on his shoulders reminding him that he has support in his quest, he feels bold.Bold enough that when he sees Ron sitting alone at a table in the library, David decides to walk over.He doesn't try to talk, he still isn't sure what he'd say, he hasn't learned nearly enough from one lesson to converse intelligently on cool music never mind anything else, but he sits down, picking the seat diagonally from Ron so that he's not intrusive but he can sneak glances at Ron every time he looks up to check the time.To Kill a Mockingbird is open on the table in front of him, the assigned reading for Lieb's English class, but David isn’t paying close attention to it -- he'd read it years ago and he already knows what the essay questions will be when they're assigned, but he figures its strategic to brush up while he has some free time. The consequence of this being that it's hard to keep his mind off of Ron.He's not reading books, and it takes a few surreptitious looks before he realises that the stack of brochures in front of Ron are college prospectuses. And good ones too, he knew he was right in suspect that Ron was smart; by dropping his pen and stooping to pick it back up again David manages to get a good look at the spines and sees M.I.T, Columbia, Princeton, Yale -- all signs of high academic standards and good taste, and maybe an attachment to the north east although David supposes that there's every chance that Ron also has prospectuses for Stanford and Duke that just aren't in his current pile. The sight fills David with a mixture of admiration and distracted anxiety, because seeing the colleges Ron is considering reflects well on him but it's also an unexpected reminder that next year David will be in the same position and making the biggest decision of his life. He probably should really start researching now, particularly if he wants to make campus visits since come next year it'll probably be hard to find the time to fit them all in. Of course, he's hardly overflowing with time now, what with his homework and also doing Lieb's English homework in exchange for the coolness lessons that he suspects are going to continue to spill out of his study periods and take over his Thursday afternoons, and then there are his extracurriculars which are vital if he wants to make a strong college application but every one of them says they want a few hours of his time and then end up taking twice that.And... now he's stressed. Maybe something has to give. Sure, he has a bit of time now, but how soon will that dry up?Across the table, he hears a quiet murmur of, "Fuck."Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ron scribbling on some paper, then shaking his pen and scribbling again. David knows that pattern of behaviour. The pen is out of ink.This is an opportunity.His breath catches.He might not be able to be cool and impressive yet, but he can put himself on Ron's radar by being kind and lending him a pen. Or would that work against him? Pulling out his pencil case from his bag --rollerballs and fountain pens and fine liners with black and blue and even green and red ink, highlighters, mechanical and regular pencils, an eraser and white-out and a compass and a protractor and a bunch of stray paperclips and treasury tags-- might just draw attention to how thoroughly prepared he is for school and how thoroughly not like all the cool kids who turn up to class with one bic and careless attitudes. Heart pounding from indecision, he wonders if he could get away with reaching under the desk and pulling just one pen to offer without getting the whole case out but he can't imagine doing it without a suspicious amount of rummaging and it's barely been minutes since he dropped his pen for real so he can't use that excuse to duck under the table without looking ridiculous.Then Ron stands, tossing his pen towards the trash and actually hitting his mark in a way David could never pull off, and gathers up his prospectuses.It seems David's blown his chance.He watches Ron walk away, half relieved and half kicking himself. It would have been good to talk to Ron but beyond offering him a pen what could David possibly say? Perhaps it's better that he let this shot pass him by so that he can make a better impression when he finally does act.What would he have done if he was someone cool? What would Liebgott have done? Not floundered, that’s for sure. He’d have said something effortlessly cool, somehow managed to start up a conversation at the same time as coming to the rescue, but it’s hardly a fair comparison – Liebgott can be effortlessly cool because he is cool and there’s no reason for him to hold himself back with worries about coming across awkwardly because he’s probably never been awkward in his life.Well, David can’t erase sixteen years of being himself, but perhaps on Thursday he can ask Liebgott what the correct course of action was so that he’ll know for next time.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

David’s social studies teacher keeps him behind after seventh period to talk to him about academic bowl and she offers to write him a note for study hall so David can’t think of any way to get out of it.She takes up ten whole minutes telling him things that could have waited until the next meeting on Monday and David isn’t in the habit of getting annoyed at teachers but he’s grinding his teeth by the time she’s done and acutely aware that he’s going to be late to meet Liebgott.If he’d bailed, David wouldn’t have blamed him. By the time he’s made his way out of class and circled around to make it look like he is heading to study hall and not skipping he’s running a full quarter hour late.When he finally makes it to the parking lot at first it seems like Liebgott has given up on him, his car is waiting out front in the spot he’s been in the last two times, but a second glance shows it’s just tucked away right at the far side of the lot and as he walks over David spots Liebgott in the driver's seat. He has a cigarette in one hand and his chair tipped back, feet up on the dash, and David has always thought of Liebgott as unflappable but he startles when David opens the door and climbs into the passenger seat.“Oh, you’re here after all,” Liebgott says irritably, then he frowns. “Wait? Have you been running?”It had been more of a combination walk/jog, David had been careful to slow down anywhere he might get spotted by a teacher, but he’s still out of breath when he says, “Sorry, Mrs. Andrews wouldn’t stop talking to me about academic bowl,” but he’s fairly sure Liebgott won’t want to see the note she wrote.“Whatever. Since you’re here, I’ve got some more playlists for you,” Lieb says, “Some softer, more indie stuff, based off what you said you liked last time.”"Is that the sort of music Ron would be impressed by?"“Well, I don’t know what Ron likes. I'm guessing based on my likes and the likes of people who he reminds me of, but there's not some secret hivemind. Everything I've said is pretty generically popular so if he's the sort of person who is a snob about mainstream stuff it could backfire," Lieb admits. "The fact is, there’s only so much you can prepare without tailoring it to his tastes. Which you can’t, because you’re going to all this effort for a guy you barely know.”“Hey!” David says. He’d talked to Ron –albeit briefly—while giving him the school tour, which was more than most people could say, and, “I nearly talked to him the other day.”Joe raises a single eyebrow, which was just the sort of ridiculously cool thing that Webster wished he could pull off but knew from practising in the mirror only looked comical when he tried. “Nearly?”
David shrugs. He'd had an opportunity and seriously considered taking it, even if he'd lost his nerve before the attempt it had to count for something. “I wanted your advice on that actually.”“My advice on talking to him?” Lieb says.“Yes,” David says, because being able to talk to Ron is the whole point of this.“But I’ve never even spoken to him myself.”“It doesn't matter, I just want your opinion on the specific situation.” Has been waiting to hear it ever since his near-miss had happened.Lieb sighs, leaning back in his chair, but says, "Hit me."So David recounts the whole sorry tale, how he'd come so close to starting something only to realise he had no way of doing it without inadvertently giving away that he wasn't anything like the sort of person Ron must be interested in and therefore sabotaging his efforts to present himself as somebody Ron might want to know better before they'd even gotten started.“Web,” Lieb says, when the story comes to its end, fixing him with a weirdly intense look. “Nobody cares what you have in your pencil case. How can you even like this guy if you also think he’s the kind of asshole who would judge you for something like that?”“Everybody judges,” Webster says. “Not necessarily for good or bad, but just as part of getting an impression.”“And you’re a person who carries around stationary for every occasion,” Lieb says. “So why would be you be worried about him getting that impression of you? After all, it’s the truth.”“I...” Webster shakes his head. He’s tried to explain this before, about how it’s not about who he is it’s about who he’s trying to become, but Liebgott just doesn’t seem to get it. “Because I don’t want him to think of me as the weird junior with all the pens. I want to be more than that.”“I can get my head around you wanting to try new things, even if I don’t like your motive,” Lieb says with a shrug. “But hiding everything else? You wouldn’t have all those pens and stuff if you didn’t like them, and I don’t get how denying what you like could be a satisfying plan.”“We’re getting off topic,” David deflects, because the truth is that he’s pretty sure he is going to end up missing some of the stuff he’ll have to let go of it he wants to be cool, but if that’s the price he has to pay to become datable then maybe it’s worth it.Liebgott sighs again. “You wanna know what I’d do: if I saw somebody who needed a pen and I had spares, I’d just give them one; and if I’d been in his position and you’d offered me a pen, I’d have just said ‘thanks’ and the worst thing that could have happened if you’d have had to remind me to give it back and not just take it to my next class.”
“Well, yeah, but you’ve known me from around so it wouldn’t just be a random underclassman butting in,” David points out. “And you already know I’m not cool anyway.”“I’m pretty sure not being a dick about somebody trying to do you a favour is just part of not being a douche actually,” Lieb says, then shakes his head. “Look, I know I said I was going to help you with this shit--”“But you also think it’s stupid,” David finishes for him. He doesn’t need the constant reminders of Liebgott’s doubts.“Well, yeah,” Lieb agrees. “But that’s not what I was gonna say. When you didn’t show I figured you weren’t coming so I texted some people, made plans.”“Oh.” So Liebgott is bailing on him after all. David supposes he can’t really complain though, after keeping him waiting for long. “I had a question about your English essay,” he cuts in, because even if Lieb is going, David really needs to make sure he has what he needs to write it over the weekend. “Because it’s all opinion based. But it can wait, or I can just make it up but then you’d have to read it in case your teacher asked for your thoughts.”“Forget the essay,” Liebgott says, and David assumes that he means that since he isn’t holding up his end of the deal this week then David doesn’t need to his part either, but then he says, “You should come along.”“What?”“Come,” Liebgott repeats. “We’re going to the movies, it’ll be fun.”“Which movie?” David asks warily, trying to recollect what’s showing at the moment.“Dunno,” Lieb shrugs. “Whatever’s showing next I guess. That’s not the point. Chuck’s cousin works there so he lets us use his discount and turns a blind eye to sneaking candy in, so we’ve seen practically everything by now anyway.”“I…” David has money in his wallet and since he’d planned on spending the afternoon with Liebgott anyway he can’t claim any pressing commitments. He hasn’t been to the theatre in a while so the chances whatever is showing next will be something he hasn’t seen, but sitting in the dark and quiet of a movie theatre is one of the few places David doesn’t mind rushing headlong into the unexpected – it can be quite fun as long as the surprises are strictly confined to the screen. There has to be some sort of catch to it though. David has already been clear that he doesn’t want everybody to know that Lieb is helping him be cooler, so surely Liebgott’s friends will find it strange that he’s brought Webster as a tag-along to their outing and why would Lieb want him there and making things awkward and--“Ah-ha!” Liebgott says. “Is this what your brain did when you realised Ron needed a pen? The overthinking and not actually doing anything…”David can feel his face flush a little at the accusation. He knows he gets caught up in his own head sometimes but there are just so many possibilities to consider, so many potential outcomes and so many of them negative and it’s easy to get tangled up in all the factors he needs to weigh.“In that case,” Lieb says, starting the engine running. “We’ll call it a coolness lesson after all, so you’re just gonna have to accept my decision that you’re coming along and having a good time.”“You can’t make me enjoy it,” Webster says, though he generally does like going to the movies.Shifting the car into drive, Lieb grins and says, “Wanna bet?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Thursday lingers in David's mind all through Friday and into the weekend. His parents ask if he's okay but he manages to bluff something about homework that is convincing, or at least convincing enough for them to drop the matter for the time being.He does have homework, although nothing of Liebgott's. He’d honestly expected to be taking on more when he’d struck this bargain, but Liebgott's only had one assignment in three weeks. It's a surprise but David hasn’t been in a regular level English class since fourth grade so he supposes it’s just that his idea of the level of work is distorted.It hadn't been anything like he'd expected from an outing with Liebgott's friends: they'd been wilder than the people David hung out with but not half as angry or disruptive as David would have guessed from the way they were at school, a near constant defensive huddle like they were just waiting for a fight, cussing and yelling and intimidating.They’d ended up seeing a comic book movie that David suspects he’d have understood better if he’d been familiar with the source material or had more than a pop-culture-osmosis knowledge of the rest of the series. It hadn’t been bad though. Lieb’s friends had been surprised to see David arrive with him but other than a few curious looks they’d mostly settled into benignly ignoring him - clearly not quite sure what to make of his presence but not bothered it.He’d ended up sat between Lieb and Skinny Sisk, who’d been David’s assigned chemistry lab partner all of last year and so was comfortable enough company, if not quite a friend. The theatre had been almost entirely empty, the film was at the end of it’s run and most of its target audience were still in school, and so the group had been free to get a little rowdy -- tossing bags of candy back and forth and talking all the way through, half quoting the lines along with the actors and half maintaining a running commentary.David’s friends were always quiet when they saw a movie, because that was the rules, and generally he approved of that and of the fact that Carwood in particular was bold enough to shush people if they were being too disorderly, because David liked giving films his full and undistracted attention. But, although he wasn’t going to stop disapproving of people who acted disruptive in a crowded theatre, he finally understood why somebody might want to. It was easy to get swept up in raucous enthusiasm despite the fact he wasn’t really a proper part of the group and David figured that as long as Lieb and his friends confined themselves to quiet times like that when they would disturb other movie-goers, then why shouldn’t they have their fun.Some unexpected part of him wished he could tag along again, but he suspected he wouldn't be welcome. After all, them welcoming him once an unexpected kindness but if he went again he'd feel like an imposition. After all, as much as he'd enjoyed it he couldn't make sense of Liebgott asking him along.Regardless, it was hard to focus on geometry when his head was full of the memory of the way Lieb had leaned over to nudge him every time there was a joke on screen, as if checking to make sure David was following the humour enough to have a good time.Still, it motivated him in his plan. He'd shut down all of Liebgott's doubts but he hadn't been able to entirely silence his own anxiety over if he was willing to commit to the lifestyle changes necessary to be cool enough to impress Ron, but if being cool felt as good as that afternoon had then he wished he'd met Ron and decided on this path sooner.He found himself getting sidetracked looking up the series, the movies that had come before and wondering if Liebgott would consider watching them together as part of the coolness lessons, and the ones that would be released soon on the unlikely hope that he'd get invited along again.This would be so much easier if there was somebody he could talk to about this but David was certain most of his usual social circle wouldn't understand what he saw in Ron, or what he was trying to achieve, or why he'd gone to Liebgott for expert help instead of just trying on research. And even if he did go to one of them he wasn't sure they'd be able to keep it a secret, if he had to pick a friend he'd trust not to judge him it would be Hoob but Hoob was also a well-meaning but uncontrollable gossip, and Liebgott's warnings of seeming like a poseur still rang in David's ears.No, he needs a fait accompli. Liebgott is the only person he can trust with this, the rest of the world will just have to accept being surprised by David's miraculous transformation.Of course, he can't work on that until he's finished his homework. But love conquers all, even trigonometry.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Looking forward to Thursdays is a strange feeling. Normally David only looks forward to birthdays, holidays, and weekends (because as much as he likes school and his weekends usually involve homework it's nice to be able to study on his own terms); but his lessons with Liebgott leave him with a strange feeling of achieving something without feeling stressed about it and so this time he ducks out of social studies fast enough that his teacher can't stop him and is waiting by Liebgott's car even before it's owner arrives.David doesn't quite feel bold enough to take a seat on the hood of the car, but he decides that there's no harm in leaning up against the door. It's warm against him, but not so hot as to be uncomfortable, and, while he's fairly sure he isn't managing anything nearly as cool as the indolent slouch that Liebgott leans with, he feels pretty cool.Of course, when he sees Liebgott walked out of the main door of the building, it's pretty clear that they're still on very different levels."Hey," Liebgott says, with a lazy grin, fishing his keys from his pocket and pressing the button to unlock the doors. "Hop in."David does, his hesitation regarding the safety of letting Liebgott drive him places has been fading with every trip they've taken. He's still a bit sceptical about the car and the way it makes noises that David is pretty sure cars aren't supposed to make, but Liebgott is a good driver so David trusts Lieb not to let anything bad happen."I've done what I can with your clothes, without getting silly, and we're working on the music thing," Lieb muses as he starts the engine. "I suppose there's hobbies and shit, but that's way to varied for me to be able to guess what Ron likes--""He reads," David offers.Liebgott rolls his eyes. "And I'm pretty sure you don't need my advice on that front." He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm thinking more pop culture, but is there anything you especially want to focus on."Well, actually" David says, reaching up to touch the curls brushing against the back of his neck, "What about my hair?""What about your hair?""I think I should get it cut short," he says. He's been thinking about it for a while. Some of the cool guys on the album covers and posters he's been using for reference have hair like his but most wear it either a lot longer or a lot shorter and growing it out would take too long.Liebgott shakes his head."It'd probably help me look older," David reasons, if only because he's always worn his hair the way he does now and the change would draw a line between that and the person he's trying to become."No.""And change to my hair would should I'm committed to looking cooler, not just playing dress up like a poseur," David points out."Look, just leave your hair alone, okay!" Liebgott snaps. "I know hair. It's fine, don't cut it."“But...”Liebgott shakes his head, glaring in a way that leaves David feeling like he doesn't dare argue. “I... I’ll help you style it if you really want to do something with it,” Liebgott offers. "But if you cut it off, then the deal is over."David blinks. "Seriously?""You said you'd trust my judgement," Liebgott says, still sounding far more tense than David's hair reasonably deserves. "If you want to impress a guy, to impress Ron, cutting your hair isn't the way to go.""But you'll help me change it if I don't cut it.""It's fine as it is," Liebgott insists. "But if you really wanna do something a little different, I'll help you do something less drastic."It would be start, David supposes. Not quite the improvement he's been planning on, but he did agree to let Liebgott call the shots on this project and he's not going back on that now. "Alright.""Okay, if we're gonna do this," Liebgott says, "Your place or mine?"David feels a twist in his stomach at the thought of Lieb in his bedroom. He supposes that's because of the mess he'd left it in that morning. "Well, I don't have any stuff for styling hair," he admits. "Annie might, but she's thirteen and she's going through a phase of being ridiculous possessive over her stuff."Liebgott laughs. "Sisters," he agrees. "Okay, my place it is. I'm sure I can scrounge something up."He drives out of the lot, turning right and driving away from the school in the opposite direction from the route David's bus takes. They quickly hit streets he doesn't know, the houses getting smaller and then the yards disappearing in favour of a mixture of row houses and apartment buildings.He's been left in charge of the music again, he'd known that was a part of being cool but it hadn't realised until Liebgott had shown him just how central of a part it played, and he's quite proud of the fact he's starting to recognise key bands by ear even if Liebgott laughs at his excitement when he managed to accurately label as song he's never heard before as Queen just based on the singer's voice and the style of music. They aren't listening long, however, before Lieb pulls into a parking lot beside an an apartment building, a little old and the paint is faded but it's also clean and well maintained and though it isn't dark yet David notices that there are security lights facing out onto the lot."It's not much," Liebgott says with a shrug, as he parks, "But we're lucky. Both my parents are at work and all my siblings should be in school, so we shouldn't be disturbed.""As long as it's not an imposition," David says. When he was a kid his mom had always sent him with some sort of gift for the hosting family, even if it was just a tupperware of cookies, but he's not in elementary school anymore and anyway he suspects that gesture was usually for the benefits of the other mothers and he's not sure Liebgott would be pleased if David had brought something.It's strange though, to follow Liebgott up the stairs and into an empty apartment. David's mother has never worked and he's not sure he can remember ever being left home alone, his parents went out on date-nights and to see friends sometimes and left him and his siblings behind but until he'd reached high school there was always a sitter and even now there'd never been an occasion where he'd had the chance to be home alone without even his siblings.The hallway is cozy, thick carpets and pictures hanging on the walls, but David doesn't get much chance to look around before Lieb leads him through a door that turns out to be a bathroom.He feels vaguely disappointed, he'd been kind of curious to find out what Liebgott's bedroom looked like. Cool, without a doubt."Sit here," Lieb says, pulling a plastic stool out from under the counter, similar to the one David's grandma has for showering since she can't stand up for long without support.Feeling suddenly uncertain about the plan, David takes a seat, taking stock of his reflection in the stark light of the room's bare bulb.Both his parents are widely considered good looking and every grown-up relative he has says that David is going to grow up to have the best of both of their features but at the moment he has a face soft with puppy fat, curls falling across his forehead, and even in a black t-shirt with a slogan he doesn't quite understand all he sees is a dorky little kid.He’d been expecting Liebgott's aid with his hair to be perfunctory, but perhaps the fact Lieb’s hair always looks like he’s just walked out of a magazine is due to more than genetics because he comes back with two different combs and pulls several bottles of product from the cabinet.He starts the taps running, glancing over his shoulder as he says, "Get your hair damp, would you."David looks from the running water to his own reflection and then over at Liebgott's hair, practically perfect even as they're coming towards the end of the day. He suspects that Liebgott is being rather over generous in assuming that David is qualified to have any part in this process. "How damp?" he asks.Liebgott rolls his eyes. "Seriously?" he asks. "Alright, spin around and lean back over the sink and I'll do it."It's not comfortable, leaning back over the cold porcelain of the sink while at the same time balancing on the stool, but he shifts until the water is hitting his hair."It's not too hot?" Liebgott asks, and David shakes head causing droplets to drip down his forehead.Liebgott grips him by the temples, guiding him back until his hair is --in David's opinion-- less damp and more mostly wet before he says, "Alright, sit up."David straightens and Liebgott slings a towel around his shoulders, "Okay," he says, "Now sit up and spin round, and let me get to work."David sits up, then shuts his eyes because it feels odd to look his reflection in the face and honestly he's not wholly sure he'll be able to resist the urge to comment on the process if he sees it as a work in progress and he did say he was giving Liebgott free rein.It's different to how he's used to being hair being handled. When he was a child he'd learned to come his hair quickly because the curls came from his father's side and his mother, with her naturally pin-straight hair, had always pulled too hard to get the knots out. But Liebgott manages to be thorough, fingertips working over David’s scalp in firm circles, and gentle at the same time. Normally when David gets his hair-cut he spends half the time getting hissed at to stay still, but he can't help but fidget because the process involves so much touch that is both invasive and ticklish but Liebgott's hands are steady and strong.Every few minutes he feels Liebgott's hands withdraw and hears the sound of something spraying and then Liebgott's hands return to work the product through his hair, but in between products he spends long slow minutes working his hands through the strands of David's hair, fingertips massaging his scalp. It's a strange and unfamiliar feeling but David mostly manages not to react to it until Liebgott's thumbs dig into the knot of pressure at the top of his neck and instead of a simple sigh David's relief slips out as an audible groan of satisfaction.Liebgott’s hands freeze and a moment later David feels embarrassment wash through him a he realise how weird his response probably seemed."I--" Liebgott pulls his hands away and David knows his cheeks own are turning red but he doesn't dare open his eyes to try and see Liebgott's expression in the mirror. "--I'm nearly done," Liebgott mutters, hands returning to David's hair but this time his movements are abrupt and hurried and David feels disappointed to have ruined such a companionable moment. There's one more spritz of product, this spread through his hair with rough strokes before Lieb announces that they're done.When he opens his eyes, David stares at himself in the mirror. He doesn't look much different, except for the flush in his cheeks, but when he shakes his head a little his hair stays swept back as if he'd just run his hands through it instead of falling into his face like it usually did."The product should keep it from getting squashed by the end of the day," Liebgott says. "I can make a note of the names if you wanna buy them so you can keep using them.""Thanks," David says. He kind of wants to touch his hair, see how it feels and if it's as crunchy as he always assumed product styled hair to be or if using the products Liebgott uses will make his hair as soft as Liebgott's hair has always looked, but he's worried about messing it up.A glance down at his watch shows that even with the drive barely three-quater of an hour have passed since they left school, last period wouldn't even be over yet, so really David should now ask for further coolness instruction, even if it's just heading to Liebgott's room and listening to more music, but he feels like it would be too much. Maybe it's just because he's in Liebgott's home and venturing any further into his private space just for the sake of the lessons would feel invasive, or maybe it's just because he feels flustered by his bizarre reaction to Liebgott's hands in his hair and he wants to escape so that they can put it behind them -- David has never been as good at introspection as he'd like to be.His hair looks good, he decides, and that's enough for today. Liebgott must have so many better things to be doing with his time than helping David to improve himself. The best way he can repay the favour of Liebgott fixing his hair into something that looks stylish rather than just natural is to let Liebgott have the rest of this afternoon to himself instead of giving David lessons."I don't need a ride home," he says, because Liebgott has been oddly insistent on dropping him back right in front of his house after their previous excursions, but if he starts walking towards the school now then he should be there in time to get the second later bus for people without after school extracurricular -- it doesn't go as close to him home as his regular bus but it'll get him to the right neighbourhood.Liebgott frowns. "You're going?" he asks. "I mean, sure, but I... lemme check the worksheet I got in English first, I think there's a homework exercise at the end."David nods, "Sure," he says, because that was their bargain, and whatever fleeting notions might have filled his head at the sight of Liebgott's frown are ridiculous. "But maybe you should email it to me, that way you don't have to rush and find it now.""Uh, alright," Liebgott nods. "I, next Thursday?" he says uncertainly.David can't help but laugh at that. He's hardly cool enough to quit yet, and he's fairly sure that must be even more obvious to Liebgott than it is to him, even with the change to his hair. "Next Thursday," he agrees. "Unless you have more homework for me before then.""Yeah," Liebgott pulls a face, although David finds it a little absurd for him to look put out by assignments he doesn't even have to do. "Well, I'll see you when there's a reason I suppose."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

David hasn’t forgotten the hair cutting incident by the time next Thursday rolls around, but he's fairly sure Liebgott will have set it aside and moved on to thinking about other more exciting things and that makes it easier for David to set his embarrassment aside.He'd got his mom to buy the products Lieb had recommended when she'd gone to the store at the weekend and, while he hadn't managed to replicate the the seemingly effortless elegance of Liebgott's styling, he had figured out how to use them well enough to keep his hair out of his face and prevent what he'd previously thought was the inevitable phenomena of his hair looking squashed and sort of mussed at the back as soon as he made the mistake of leaning on anything.Now his hair is secured, all he has to do is master the art of looking cool while leaning like Liebgott does. He could for advice about that, but he's pretty sure even Lieb, who has been incredibly patient with him, might find that a stupid question.Liebgott is perched on the hood, a book in his hand that he stuffs into his backpack when he notices David's approach."You've been using the mousse," he observes. "You hair looked less squashed than usual in history on Tuesday."David feels his cheeks start to heat. He'd figured that pretending last week's awkward moment never happened would mean not acknowledging last week at all. Plus, has his hair really been so bad all this time that Liebgott (and everybody else who sat behind him in his various classes) had been making a note of it? That seems like the sort of thing somebody should have told him."Uh, yeah," he says. "It's good." The first time he'd tried it at the weekend he'd used way too much and ended up a sticky mess, but he's glad that Liebgott agrees that he's getting the hang of it.It's starting to feel almost routine now, getting in the car and Liebgott putting music on before anything else, then checks his mirrors once (for teachers who might recognise his car leaving early, David assumes), before he drives them off of school grounds.It had quickly become clear to him that musical taste was one of the core elements of cool, at least in Liebgott’s eyes, because he'd inundated David with play-lists since they'd made their agreement, always accompanied by Liebgott insisting that every track was ‘vital, I mean it, this stuff is what life is all about!’, and so it's quite a shock when the next song comes on when they're halfway down the main street away from the school and “Is this that ‘Call Me Maybe’ girl?” David says incredulously, it certainly sounds like the cheerful pop he sometimes hears echoing out of his sister’s room.“Carly Rae Jepsen,” Joe says casually, “Yeah.”David raises his eyebrows. “Did you accidentally sync your music with somebody else's?” He wonders. Joe does have sisters, but surely he’d have deleted the songs off his phone once he’d realised.“No, I just like it.”David shakes his head. “But you like all that angry punk stuff...”“What, and I can’t like other things too?” Liebgott rolls his eyes. “It's catchy and it's fun.”"So this is cool too?" David asks, dubiously.Immediately, Lieb's smile dims. "I doubt it's Ron's sort of cool, if that's what you mean," he says. "That guy looks like somebody who takes himself way too seriously to enjoy anything upbeat."David shrugs. When he tries to imagine Ron listening to music like this the image doesn't seem very plausible to him, but then, until recently if he'd tried to imagine Liebgott sitting beside him smiling and nodding along to a bouncy pop song David thinks he'd have judged that preposterous too. "Where are we going?" he asks instead, because Liebgott is doing that thing where he just drives off with David without feeling the need to explain his goal."Adventure Island."David hesitates, but then, "The mini-golf place?"Liebgott grins. "Yeah, it's always quiet for a bit in the afternoon when all the old people have left because they don't wanna be around screaming kids, but school hasn't actually finished yet."That can't be cool. He knows he said he'd trust Liebgott's judgement, but David's friends play mini-golf sometimes at weekends, the academic bowl team went mini-golfing to celebrate placing second in the state at the end of the last semester, drinking slushies and rehashing their various competitions, uncaring that they'd stood out among all the families with little kids, and calculating together about force and angles and the physics of beating the last bonus obstacle that could win you a free game. It's fun, but there's nothing about the half broken-down animatronic pirates and the fake plastic palm trees that is in any way compatible with anything David has ever seen deemed cool.Except Liebgott is cool and he looks genuinely excited to be going.David briefly considers that he's been wrong all along about the coolness of mini-golf but when he tries to picture Ron grinning and playing mini-golf it just doesn't work. Still, even talking to Liebgott makes him feel cooler, so even if the activity doesn't lend itself to his goals that doesn't mean he can't benefit from Liebgott as a source of interesting and challenging conversation as they play."Are you any good?" he asks.The stoplight ahead of them turns red and Lieb pulls them to a stop and then takes his hands off the wheel and cracks his knuckles. "I," he says with certainty, "Am awesome."
*
The parking lot at Adventure Island is nearly empty when they arrive and as they walk into the lobby there's no line at all and David wonders how many times Liebgott has come to play during school hours to have been aware of how quiet it would be.They split the entry fee and pick up the equipment, Liebgott insists on having a red ball so David takes blue, and then they start to play.Liebgott's preferred strategy, it quickly becomes clear, is to hit the ball as hard as he possibly can, with a swing more suited to a driving range than precision work, sending the ball slamming madly off all of the obstacles until it arrives in the vicinity of the hole largely due to obnoxiously persistent luck.And yet by the fifth hole he's six under par to David's three over. It's infuriating.David has never been good at sports, but he's always done well when he'd played mini-golf with his friends because it's more about skill than athleticism and while he doesn't win every game he's not usually nearly ten points behind by the time they're barely a quarter of the way through the course.He'd assumed that Liebgott was exaggerating about being awesome, but now he's starting to wondering if Lieb's confidence had in fact stemmed from him really being that good."Un-tense, Web," he calls as David is lining up his next shot --if he wants to stay on par he's going to need to get the ball around a corner and up a ramp all in one hit--, "This is crazy golf not the PGA final."David scowls at him. It might not be a serious competition that doesn't mean he doesn't want to make a respectable showing."I'm not tense," David protests. He's concentrating, but that's not the same as tense."Just smack it," Lieb insists, from where he's perched on the stack of fake boulders next to the hole. David is pretty sure that those aren't supposed to be climbed on, but nobody has come and told Liebgott to get down. "It'll bounce off the barriers a load of times and one of them is bound to bring it close enough to the hole to get it in.""That relies on getting lucky," David says. "Why depend on luck instead of trying to do it right?""Smack it," Liebgott repeats. "If it doesn't go in, I'll buy you a slushie, my treat."David grits his teeth, rolls his shoulders, and then swings harder than he ever has at mini-golf.Thwack!The ball shoots round the corner, lifting of the ground a little and barely even touching the ramp as it sails towards the end-zone.Thwack!It bounces off one wall, spinning away, nowhere near the hole.Thwack!The opposite wall, sending the ball dangerously close to the ramp.Thwack!It clips the corner before rolling in the opposite direction.Thud!It falls into the hole."YEAH!" Liebgott yells, flinging his arms in the air and promptly nearly falling off the fake rock formation.David groans, tossing the club aside and heading over to the food kiosk as Lieb rights himself.He's just sliding a five dollar bill across the counter in return for their largest slushie when Liebgott catches him up. "Hey, you don't have to do that," he says. "The bet wasn't the loser buys the winner a slushie, just that I would.""Who says I'm buying it for you?" David points out. "Maybe you talking about them just made me thirsty." He grabs two straws from the box though, dropping the both in the drink before taking a sip from the blue one. "This is my slushie," he announces, and Liebgott looks so disappointed it's hard to laugh as he twists the red straw around to face in the opposite direction from his and holds the drink out to Lieb. "I'll share though."Liebgott doesn't even grab the cup, just leans over and sucks hard at the straw, cheeks hollowing slightly in the same way that they do when he smokes, before grimacing and pulling away.This time David does laugh, nearly dropping the drink in the process. "Did you just give yourself brain freeze with the first mouthful?"Lieb glowers and David takes another sip, slow and leisurely enough that he's at no risk of brain freeze as he walks back over to the course and picks up his club.They play the rest of the game, passing the slushie back and forth depending on whose turn it is to play, and by the end Lieb's lips are stained blue from the syrup and while David hasn't managed to claim the lead he's almost caught up in what he feels is a pretty respectable showing.Still, he is defeated so when the game is over and they come to the bonus hole David drops his ball on the starting spot, hardly bothering to line up his shot. He's never got the ball in the winning hole even when he takes his time about it and he's pretty sure that if he tries to hard at this Lieb will laugh at him. He swings, and as expected the ball falls a few inches short of the hole and rolls off down the ball return guttering.Behind him, Liebgott boos and David turns around and sticks his tongue out. "You do better," he challenges.Lieb drops his ball on the starting plate and swings without even bothering to look.The ball sails up the ramp.There's a rumble and then the volcano lights up with strings of L.E.D fake lava as a bell rings."No," David says. No. Every time he's come here with friends they've puzzled over making that shot and every time they've failed, coming to the general consensus that while it isn't quite rigged to be unbeatable the chances of actually sinking the ball and winning the voucher for an extra game is basically impossible.But Liebgott looks jubilant and one of the employees is walking over, with a paper that must be the promised gift certificate in hand."No way," he repeats. "I... how?"Liebgott accepts the gift certificate, waves it in the air and says, "There's a trick to it. Maybe next time I'll teach you how."Maybe. David thinks. Or maybe he'll come back for some practise and next time he'll show Lieb how it's done.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On Tuesday, Liebgott isn’t in history.David doesn't worry as such, after all, people take days off from school for all sorts of reasons and it wouldn't be totally unexpected if Lieb were to skip an important class since he already had the habit of skipping study halls and review classes, but his absence stays on David's mind.They don't share any Wednesday classes but David keeps an eye out in the halls and he sees that Liebgott is back at school, although he's never alone long enough for David to talk to him and David can't quite work up the nerve to approach him when he's with his friends without feeling like some boundary is being overstepped, but he looks okay.Still, the first thing he does when they meet on Thursday is ask after Lieb's absence."I'm fine," Lieb says. "Somebody in the building set off the smoke alarm at like 3am on Tuesday morning and it took forever to get it sorted out so I could go back to bed, so my mom decided to let me stay home since there was no point in me going to school feeling like shit."Oh. Well, "That's pretty reasonable," he says. It's unfortunate about the smoke alarm but at least Lieb was able to catch up on his rest."Yeah, except apparently Mr McEvans said something about a new topic project in history that was briefed while I was away." Lieb sighs. "So now I don't have a fuckin' clue what we're supposed to be going and I can't ask him to go over it again for me because he hates me.""He doesn't hate you," David says, although he can't deny that Lieb's smart-ass attitude in class has hardly endeared him to the teacher who gives a general impression of being too close to retirement to be willing to do more than the bare minimum of his job."Whatever," Liebgott says. "I'm just gonna have to try and bullshit it."David frowns at him.Lieb scowls back. "What!" he says, and some of David's surprise at his snappishness must show because he sags in his seat. "Sorry, it's just the worst timing. Missing that class any other day or missing information on a project from any other teacher wouldn't be a big deal, but you know McEvans will be shitty about it.""Because you don't have the project brief..." David confirms."Yeah," Lieb says, and he sounds genuinely frustrated. "And it's not like I care about getting A's but this project is like some huge chuck of our grade this semester so if I flunk this I'll actually have to make sure I get good grades on the rest to balance it out.""I'm in your history class," David points out."I know that," Lieb huffs. “So you know how much of a dick McEvans is.”"So I was there for the briefing," David continues, wondering how his point isn't obvious."Good for you.""So, I could go over it with you," David says, a touch exasperated himself now. "My notes cover most of it and I'm pretty sure I can explain the rest."When Liebgott turns to him, he looks surprised. "You'd do that?" he says."We're--" Are they friends? The word is on the tip of David's tongue but, while they've been spending time together and David has been having fun, maybe the only thing Liebgott has been getting out of the arrangement is the assurance that David will do his meagre English homework. "--in the same class," David finishes after a moment. He think he's like for them to be friends, but it's probably best not to push his luck, if Liebgott is just doing him a favour pushing his boundaries too far could ruin it all. "It makes sense. We could even work together on the planning. I was talking to Lip about it at debate and he said that McEvans ran the same project last year and afterwards he assigned group projects based on what people had done for the first assignment.""So if we planned our initial projects with that in mind we could probably make it so we end up in the same group," Liebgott concludes."Exactly," David says. "I mean, if you want. It makes sense--" and it's the only way they're likely to end up in the same group because David had McEvans in Freshman year and the man has the annoying habit of trying to pair the strongest students with the weakest ones so David had been stuck with a group that left most of the work to him. He suspects it's McEvans' way of making the smart students drag everybody up with them so that nobody fails and he doesn't have to teach summer school. But if their projects make him and Lieb look like the perfect pair, maybe that will take precedence and David won’t have to deal with writing up all the parts of a multi-person project himself."Sure," Liebgott says. "Do you wanna work on it now?"David nods. "We'll have to go back to my place," he says. "My notes and stuff are all in my room."Liebgott looks a little hesitant at that, and David can only think of one reason why. "Don't worry, I won't try and keep you once we've figured the project out," he says. They can do this instead of coolness lessons this week. David might be keen to impress Ron but schoolwork still comes first."Alright," Joe says.It's not a long drive to David's house from the school and it's a quiet street so there's plenty of room for Joe to park, especially since he's comfortable parallel parking between other cars instead of having to circle around looking for a drive-in space.Liebgott grabs his backpack, trailing David up the driveway, where his mom's car rests in one spot and the other space rests empty in wait for David's dad.He opens the front door and is planning to head straight upstairs but before he's got more than three steps across the foyer before the door to his mom's office swings open."Kenyon?" she says, sounding surprised."Hi mom," he greets. "Didn't mean to disturb you.""You didn't. I just wasn't expecting you back just yet. Then she glances past him to where Joe is lingering in the doorway. "And who's this?""Joe," he says, then turns and waves for Lieb to come inside properly. "Lieb, this is my mom.""Oh, this is Joe," his mom says, with a tone that suggests that she finds meeting him far more interesting than she has any reason to. Sure, his parents had been curious the first time David had come home later than usual and mentioned being out with Lieb, after all they'd never been friends before, but it was hardly noteworthy. "You didn't mention he was coming over.""We're working on a history project," David explains, because that's the reason Joe is here right now and the most straightforward part of all the things that have brought them to this point."Pleased to finally meet you Joe," and thank god she doesn't say that she's heard a lot about him, but she does add, "Will you be staying for dinner?"Joe stares back, eyes dear-in-the-headlights wide."He'll have to call and ask his mom," David improvises. "We didn't plan ahead so she'll be expecting him home by then." At least that will give Joe a pre-established excuse to bail if he wants to say his mom wants him home."Alright," she says. "Just let me know soon so I know how much to cook.""We will," he promises, and she turns back into her office and leaves him to guide Liebgott upstairs and into his room.As soon as the door closes Joe turns on him. "You didn't say your mom would be here!"Of course his mom is here, David had never expected she wouldn't be. "Why does it matter?""Well, for a start, now she knows you're skipping!"Oh. David hadn't thought of that. She hadn't seemed mad though, and David liked to think that by now he was pretty good at spotting when she was mad but waiting until later for a serious conversation, but then, he'd been more focused on Liebgott than her when they came in.They're interrupted by David's mom calling from downstairs. "Boys! Kenyon, I just spoke to your dad, he’s leaving work at five so dinner will be at six-thirty if Joe needs to tell his mom a time.""Thanks mom!"“Jeez, you live in a fifties sitcom house,” Lieb mutters. “Is she gonna offer us juice and cookies next?”“No.” David sighs. “We’re not allowed anything with sugar in before dinner. But if you're thirsty I can get you a glass of water.”"I'm not thirsty," Lieb says, but he looks uncomfortable."Sit down," David says, waving between his desk chair and the bed. "Shall I say your mom wants you back for dinner?"Joe shrugs. "Whatever. I'm sure your parents don't actually want me sticking around."David hesitates. He's certain his parents will be fine with having one extra person for dinner and he wants Lieb to stay, but if this is just Lieb trying to say he doesn't want to stay without saying it outright... but no, he can't imagine Liebgott ever being too shy to just speak his mind. "You should stay," he says. "As long as you don't mind that Annie has decided she's a vegetarian and pretty much dragged the whole house with her because it’s easier than making two meals. It's paella tonight and my mom always cooks too much anyway so maybe if you're here we won't be eating leftovers at the weekend."For a moment Lieb looks uncertain but then he sits down on the edge of David's desk chair. "Alright, I'll text my mom and say I’m missing dinner."David smiles. "Cool," he says, grabbing his history notebook off the shelf and flipping to the pages with his notes on the project brief. "You can start reading this and I'll go tell my mom."He's a little nervous as he walks downstairs, now that he knows that his mom knows that he's skipping he's not sure how she'll react, but she seems calm when he steps into her office."I didn't know school was finishing early today," she remarks.David swallows. "I... ah..."Then she laughs. "Oh, honey," she says. "Of course your first attempt at teenage rebellion would be cutting organised study hall to study with a friend instead. You are planning on studying, right?""What else would we be doing?" David says. After all, his mom doesn't know about the coolness project."What else indeed?" She smiles. "I'll let you get on with it. But let's tell your father that you brought him over after school, shall we?""Okay." David nods. "And he is going to stay for dinner.""Wonderful," his mom says. "I'm sure we'll all have a lovely time."
*
If David didn’t know better he’d think that Lieb had never seen a swivel chair before. He spends the whole study session making David dizzy by spinning every few minutes and in between times props his feet up on the desk and leans so far back that David worries he'll tip.He's got very different opinions on what would make for a good project to what David had been thinking when the assignment was set, some very outrageous opinions that make David start to understand why Mr. McEvans dislikes him so much, but that doesn't mean that they're useless. After all, by all accounts Liebgott has made bold choices regarding essay topics before and pulled them off and for this part of the project all they have to do is share a theme. David can still write something sensible now and save his energy for reining Lieb in and picking more group project reasonable if they do manage to get assigned together later.Sticking to their original plan would have ended with Lieb gone in half an hour, catching him up on the essay briefing isn't hard and David could probably have done it in the car if he'd had his notes with him, but since Lieb is staying for dinner they have more time to fill.Having told his mom they're here to study David feels morally obliged to actually do so and surprisingly Lieb agrees, although he does laugh at David's reasoning and insist that they listen to music while they do even if it will reduce their concentration.By the time David’s mom shouts them down to the dining room, they both have outlines for projects, different enough that it won’t be obvious they’ve worked together but with enough links between them that hopefully McEvans won’t have any choice but to pair them up for the group project. In the process Lieb has also followed up on last week's conversation with a crash course in punk-pop, softer and bouncier than most of his previous recommendations, there's a lot more on this list that David recognises from the radio.He'd heard John and Annie come in earlier, both of them hollering greetings to the house and sure enough by the time he had Lieb get downstairs Annie is just finishing up laying the table, which means John and David will be left to fight over who clears and who empties the dishwasher once it's done.David eyes the table. He's not stupid. A spare chair has been pulled up to the long side of the table, next to where he usually sits, but he makes a tactical decision and steals John's usual chair, which will put him opposite Lieb and, more importantly, at a much better angle to kick John or Annie under the table if they get embarrassing.He points Lieb to his seat as Annie comes in, raising an eyebrow at David's new seat but saying nothing, and they're quickly joined by the others, David's dad laying the pan of paella in the middle of the table.She's clearly not kidding about wanting the dinner to be good, because when David's mom follows him in she's carrying a jug of lemonade instead of plain water. If David bringing Joe to dinner has got them lemonade then John isn't going to begrudge David commandeering his seat.Not that David was worried about that. He might not be a tough guy, but he can handle one eleven year old."Huh," John says, coming in last with the salad and seeing David in his seat. "How come you didn't mention you had a friend coming over?""We only decided this afternoon," David explains.John immediately turns to their mom. "Wait, we can have friends over without asking now?""If you want a friend over then you let me know and I'll talk to their parents and make plans," their mom answered instantly. "Kenyon's friends are old enough to be responsible for their own arrangements and they don’t need me to drive them anywhere."David's father raises his eyebrows, looking over at Lieb. "That's your car parked out front?"“Yes, sir,” Lieb says.David stares. Liebgott doesn't even call teachers sir."You've had your license long?"Lieb nods. "I got my learner’s permit last year and started saving so I’d be ready to take my test and buy a car when my birthday came.""You saved for the car?" David's father says. "Balancing school-work and a job? Seems challenging.""Well, it was mostly a summer job," Lieb explains, looking uncomfortable. The expression doesn't suit him and it's almost enough to make David regret pressing him to stay. "I just work some weekends now."At his father's non-committal hum, David decides that line of questioning has gone far enough."Hey, Annie," he says, "How are things going at the stables?"She glares at him and David knows he'll owe her later for bringing up the ongoing argument and dropping her in it like this, but what's the point of younger sisters if not to be used as convenient distraction from unwanted conversations."It's going fine," she blatantly lies."Annie is volunteering at the stables to prove her commitment before she's allowed a horse of her own," David explains to Lieb. "But she's having a little trouble getting used to the muck."Lieb's lips quirk up at that, and David wonders if any of his sisters had horse-phases, but he doesn't get to continue his teasing because his mom says, "Let's not talk about horse muck at the table Kenyon."John ever so reliably snickers at that but before David can push the conversation in another direction, his dad is at it again.“Joseph, how do you know David?”“What sort of question is that?” David cuts in, annoyed that his attempt to turn his dad’s attention off Liebgott has failed. “We go to school together, obviously.”“I wasn’t asking you,” his father reminds him. “And I don’t recall him being a part of the group you usually talk about. Isn’t junior year an odd time to be making new friends?”“Michael,” David’s mom interjects. “There’s never a bad time for new friends.”“I didn’t say ‘bad’,” his father protests. “Just... strange. Is it so wrong for me to be interested when my children are acting unusual?”“Of course you can be interested, but if you want to be interested in something really noteworthy, why not ask Johnny about his spelling test?”His dad does quit the bizarre interrogator act then, distracted by the ninety-five percent score that is proof that John’s teacher was right when she said he could spell just fine as long as he actually paid attention to what he was writing, but Liebgott barely says three sentences for the rest of the meal and so it’s not exactly a surprise that when David’s parents leave the kids to clearing the table the first thing Liebgott says is, “I should probably split.”“I’ll walk you out,” David offers.“It’s your turn on dishes,” John points out.“I’m only going to the end of the driveway,” David huffs back, even though for once John was not the biggest nuisance at the dinner table. “The dishes aren’t going to grow mould in the next five minutes.”“It’s going to take you five minutes to walk to the end of the drive?” Annie asks, with an inexplicable smirk.“Oh, don’t you have homework to do?” David grumbles, grabbing Lieb by the sleeve to tug him out the door.“Thanks for dinner,” Liebgott says, unconvincingly, once they’re out in the privacy of the cool night air.“I’m sorry,” David replies. “I know they can be a bit intense, but I won’t have encouraged you to stay if I’d known my dad was gonna be in such a weird mood. Something must have happened at work.”"Don’t worry about it. Hey, Web," Lieb says as he unlocks the car. "Why does your mom call you Kenyon?"David laughs. "My parents don't like to fight. David was a family name from my father's side of the family and Kenyon was a family name from hers. So they gave me both names and each of them uses the one they prefer."Joe furrowed his brow. "That... seems like it would have been very confusing for you as a child. Why not just save one of the family names for your brother?"David pauses. He knows the story, it was something of a family joke, all the frustration and tens of thousands of dollars of round after round of seemingly hopeless fertility treatments and then once David was born the pressure was off John and Annie had been unexpected surprises, but that was too personal to his parents to just blab. "I guess they're both a little impatient."Lieb laughs as he gets into the car. "Does it run in the family?""I've never really thought about it," David admits. He's never really had any reason to be impatient for anything."I guess I just realised I didn't check if you have a deadline for your little project," Lieb says."Yeah, I did," David says. It was one of the first thing's he'd written in his notes. "We have a month."Liebgott's eyes widen and David wonders how he managed to miss that while reading the briefing. "A month, huh," he says slowly. "Well, I guess I'll keep that in mind." He shuts the door and starts the engine."Drive safe," David calls, and Lieb waves and pulls away.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Buoyed by a feeling of coolness developed in his lessons with Liebgott and the assurance that Lieb has never called him uncool, only suggested things that he ought to know more about and a stern insistence that David's geeky habits aren't inherently uncool as long as he can also say the right things to impress Ron, David decides that he should make his move sooner rather than later.But it's harder than it seems. Opportunities to speak with Ron are few and far between and making one of those moments where their paths cross coincide with one of David's bouts of confidence isn't easy.But love conquers all and Virgil did not go down in history for being wrong and so David finds his opportunity.It's not ideal, the lunch line means an audience and also myriad distractions that David will have to compete with for Ron's attention but finding himself standing right next to his crush in the queue feels too much like fate for David to resist."The vegetarian options are pretty bad," he says, hoping that Ron will realise he's being addressed.Nothing. Ron seems to be focused on looking ahead to where the lunch-ladies are heaping 'meatloaf' onto the plastic trays.Still determined, David tries a second time. "Still, at least they're serving fries today." Honestly, the school 'fries' are kind of awful --soggy, limp, tasteless things-- but they're still a step up from usual blandly 'nutritious' foods that make up school means. On David's right, Ron once against doesn't react, but from the corner of his eyes he sees the person on his left (some underclassmen he doesn't know) nodding. Well, at least he knows somebody is enjoying what he's saying.He doesn't have another attempt in him. Probably this was a bad idea. After all, school lunches aren't cool. Maybe David should have tired talking about music, or movies, or some other thing that would have been impressive from the beginning instead of a soft opening that has clearly utterly failed to get Ron's attention.It's-- being cool is so hard. He doesn't understand how people like Ron and Lieb can obtain it so effortlessly when he agonises over working at it and still fails.David sits with his usual crowd, a mix of classmates and seniors he knows through extracurriculars, but he doesn't follow the conversation. He barely touches his lunch, pushing the meatloaf around his tray as he picks at the fries -- usually the most tolerable part of the meal but now primarily a reminder of his failed attempts to converse with Ron. Fortunately his table-mates
don't see to realise how out of sorts he is, or at least are too tactful to acknowledge it, and so David is free to wallow in his failure for the whole period.He has history class next and he knows he ought to pay attention, especially now he's working with Liebgott with the aim of landing a shared group project, but no amount of telling himself how he should behave breaks through the way his mind keeps playing his failure on repeat.Ron hadn't even acknowledged him.He's certain that there are notes he ought to be taking, but the first bit of attention David pays it to the feeling of something flicking against the back of his head.It's unexpected, his first thought is a bug but the feeling is all wrong for that and when he looks around for an explanation he spots the paper on the ground beside his seat.It wasn’t there when he sat down.He spins his pen and lets the cap fall, then stoops to pick it up, grabbing the paper in the process.When he turns the next page he
shifts his book upward a little providing a little cover behind which he can unfold the paper.The handwriting is familiar, while every submitted essay is typed, some of the notes Lieb had given him in preparation for Web doing all his English homework had been written in the same startling elegant cursive.The doodle, David suspects it's supposed to be McEvans although it's a ridiculous caricature and Lieb would be in so much trouble if somebody found out he'd drawn it, takes up most of the page. Beside it is scribbled, "what's up??" and a frowny-face.He has no excuse for looking over his shoulder, just has to hope that McEvans is too occupied to notice David's inattentiveness as he turns in his seat to make eye-contact with Liebgott, sitting two rows back and not even pretending to have his attention on the board.Lieb raises his eyebrows in query when he meets David's eyes and David wonders how he even noticed that there was something off about him, nobody at lunch had commented and he thought he'd been doing an admirable job of appearing normal. Still, it's not like there's any easy way to explain that he can't even get Ron to notice he exists so David just shrugs, forced a smile and hopes that will be enough to satisfy Lieb's curiosity.It’s not.Liebgott, usually in an incongruous hurry to get out of class, hangs back, stopping by David’s desk as David packs his things away and repeating the question that David had hoped to avoid. “C’mon Web, why the frown?”David doesn't know how to tell Liebgott that he's failed so badly at talking to Ron, that he is a disgrace to the lessons he'd been given, can't even manage small-talk with the object of his affections or hell, getting Ron to notice he exists.“It’s been a long week,” he begins, but Liebgott just frowns.“It’s Tuesday,” he points out. “And I saw you by your locker this morning and you seemed fine then.”He had been fine then, better than fine, David had been feeling good, full of the confidence and hope that had given him the nerve to talk to Ron and then it had all crumbled to dust.“I—” he shakes his head. “Maybe the meatloaf at lunch just didn’t agree with me,” he dodges.“You actually ate the meatloaf?” Joe shook his head. “Well then it’s your own fault if you feel crappy. Why would you think that was a good idea?”Why had David thought that any of what he did at lunch was a good idea? “I guess I was feeling optimistic,” he says, which is true enough.Lieb nods. “Hey, did you get that stuff McEvans was saying about the Cuban missile crisis?” he asks.David nods. His explanation had waffled but it had made sense enough in combination with the textbook.“Great, because I was too busy trying to draw his ears right and I lost track,” Lieb says. “You’ll explain it to me, right?”“When?”“You have a study period now, don’t you?”David nods, but he’s got a bad feeling about this.“Go ask for a library pass and meet me there,” Lieb orders.“I doubt they’ll give me a pass when I’ve been skipping on Thursdays.”Lieb laughs. “They will. Skipping one period a week is nothing; come to the library with me.”“You don’t have a study period now,” David realises. “You can’t mean to skip an actual class!”Liebgott rolls his eyes. “I have AP German, but I speak it better that Frau Wellington does and she knows it. She’s given me an independent study project just to keep me from correcting her in front of all the other students, all I have to do is show up so she can mark me present and then she sends me off to the library anyway.”David pauses. If Lieb really doesn’t have to be in class… “I can ask for a library pass, but they might say no.”“To you?” Lieb laughs. “You’re a straight a student—” Actually, David isn’t, although that’s only due to the unfortunate requirement for all students take at least one practical phy-ed class a year and not just health. “—just give ‘em one of your innocent looks and they’ll imagine you’re incapable of even thinking about doing anything bad.”And it turns out Lieb is right. Mrs Hannerty who supervises the study period doesn’t even ask David why he wants a library pass or use the computer to check his attendance records, she just hands him a slip —pre-signed!— and leaves him to fill his own details in the blanks.He doesn’t see Lieb when he makes it to the library, but on a hunch he makes his way through the stacks and sure enough Lieb is at the table nearest the back, tucked behind a shelf of long forgotten atlases.It’s a small table, a single study desk really, but he’s pulled up a second chair and so David sits down.They’re sat near enough that their knees bump and David accidentally knocks his elbow against Lieb’s when he gets his book out of his bag. Normally the closest they get in Lieb’s car, they haven’t been this near since the awkward afternoon when Lieb had helped David with his hair.Close up, David catches the same scents that had clung to Lieb’s jacket when he’d first given it to David, the ones that he’s found he’s missed as they’ve faded.Detergent and some brand of body spray that actually smells good instead of the overpowering locker-room fug that David usually associated with such products, and beneath that cigarettes. The one time David tried to smoke he'd kept choking on it and by the time he was done he felt a little sick, but secondhand and smoothed over by the addition of whatever deodorant Lieb uses the scent is heady enough that he thinks he might try again. After all, cool people and writers have been smoking for centuries.“So, the Cuban missile crisis,” David says, “It’s pretty straightforward, we covered the basics last year.”“And it was the setting for one of the X-men prequels,” Lieb says. “I get most of it, it was just after he started talking about Turkey that I got distracted.”“The withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles?” David clarifies. “That was only a few minutes of the lecture, and it probably won’t even be on the exam,” he says. “Here, it’s all on page sixty-four of the textbook.”“Oh, Lieb says, “Really? Then I can just read it la—”“Hey, Lieb!” a voice calls. “Frau Wellington still hasn’t let you back into class?”David turns to the sight of Chuck Grant, staring at them from by the shelf."Uh... Chuck," Lieb says, “No, not yet,” and he looks kind of embarrassed and David supposes it must be at being caught talking history with him even though Lieb’s friends must know he studies sometimes - Joe might not be a nerd but he's not flunking anything and that means completing the assignments.David doesn’t really know Chuck, he went to a different elementary and middle school and he isn’t in any of David’s classes,so beyond the fact he hangs around in Lieb’s group he’s a mystery.And interrupting, but David supposes it would be ridiculous to be annoyed that Liebgott's friends want to talk to him when, well, who wouldn't?“Oh, don’t let me interrupt,” he says, but he’s smirking at them as he says it. David doesn’t see why. Surely Liebgott’s friends wouldn’t go so far as to make fun of him just for studying."We were just, it's just for that dumb history project I told you about," Lieb says quickly, "I didn't have the briefing but Web did so..."And David knows he shouldn't be upset, because this is just about the classwork, the same as how most of their other hangouts are just about the fact that he's doing Lieb's English homework for him, no matter how much it sometimes seems like Lieb is have as good of a time as David.“Of course, you're in the same history class," Chuck says, "I think you've mentioned that. Once or twice. Or--"“Did you want something?” Joe interrupts.“Yeah, we’re going to the movies,” he says. “Are you coming?”“Uh…” Lieb glances over at David. “We were gonna go over some history stuff,” he says, but he doesn’t sound happy about it.“He can come,” Chuck offers, and the offer is unexpected but not half as surprising as the alarmed look on Liebgott’s face.“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” David says quickly, because Lieb looks so pained at the thought of him being there. He’d thought things had gone okay last time, but perhaps Lieb had regretted inviting him.“I’m inviting you,” Chuck says. “We’re heading out now, Babe is gonna fake sick to get out of chem.”Oh. They’re going to skip a real class. Perhaps this should be his next step on the road to cool, but after his failures at lunch he’s not sure he can handle trying to keep up with Lieb’s friends.“I have calculus,” David says weakly. “But, um, we can catch up on history some other time,” he adds to Liebgott. There’s no reason he shouldn’t have fun with his friends just because David was thinking they could keep working on their plans for the history project, after all, their agreement had only covered Thursday afternoons. “Everything you need from today is in the textbook.”“I guess,” Lieb says slowly. “But the textbook explanations are…”“Oh!” Chuck pulls a weird face and then says, “Yeah, history out of a textbook is the worst. You should study together now and come to the movies some other time, or just go—”“Bye Chuck,” Lieb says abruptly. “Don’t make Babe wait.”It seems a little rude, but David supposes Lieb and his friends have their own habits because Chuck just grins, ducking back behind the shelves.“C’mon,” Lieb says, flipping to the right page of the book. “Tell me about these missiles.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

After their impromptu history study session David isn’t expecting to have any more contact with Lieb until their Thursday coolness lesson but when Lieb happens to get split from his friends and end up next to David in the lunch line again it’s too tempting to redeem yesterday’s accident by taking the opportunity to do something cool.And so David asks, “Where do you get your cigarettes from?” Because nowhere he knows would dream of selling to kids but Lieb has a near constant supply.“People. Why do you want to know?” Lieb says, rather huffily, and David wonders if his reticence is because he thinks David might tell on his suppliers but then Lieb add, “You don’t smoke.”“I’ve smoked before,” David can’t help but say, it seems like all the cool kids smoke and so he ought to get himself included in that number. It’s not even technically a lie; he’d tried one at a whole class party he’’d been invited to in middle school – he’d hated it but he’d still smoked it right down the filter because he hadn’t wanted to look chicken.“Well don’t,” Liebgott snaps, “Don’t you know that shit gives you cancer?”“You smoke,” David says. He never does it while they’re hanging out, but he keeps cigarettes and a lighter in the centre console of his car and occasion David can smell hints of smoke when they’re in there so he knows Lieb isn’t just picking up the scent from hanging out with others who do.“That’s different,” Lieb says, “And I shouldn’t. It’s a fucking nasty habit.”“But…” David shakes his head, blinking in confusion. He knows Lieb is a regular smoker so how can he condemn the habit?“But nothing,” Lieb insists as the canteen worker slaps a slice of pizza onto his tray. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about stopping. Smoking hasn’t been cool since the nineties, it’s just a bad habit I picked up.”Ron smokes. David has seen him a few times in the school parking lot, but Liebgott condemns the vice with such certainty that it’s hard to imagine him being wrong. More likely this is a sign of one uncool thing Ron does and David finds himself lifted by the knowledge because if Ron has his vices then that will surely make him more accepting of all the ways David has yet to manage being cool. Of course, he still has to get Ron’s attention first.“I was just wondering,” he says. “I never liked it,” because if Lieb doesn’t approve then David doesn’t have to pretend on this front.“Good,” Lieb says. “You’re better than that.”
*
There’s nothing noteworthy in any of his afternoon classes, and David understands intellectually that they need to recap for the students who didn’t keep up the first time but that doesn’t make it any less annoying, and it’s Wednesday and that means academic bowl after school.The session itself isn’t bad, they’re practising for the science and math section so David is mostly extraneous except for on a handful of biology questions. When it’s done Lipton asks for his help clearing up and it seems like a reasonable request, David hasn’t had much to do at practise and it’s been a few weeks since he’s been on cleanup duty, but his contentment with the arrangement only lasts for as long as it takes for him to nearly drop a table on his foot when Lip says, “You know you don’t need to change yourself just to keep up with Liebgott.”“I... what?!”“I know you two have got close lately and that’s fine, I’m not judging you or anything, but all of this changing your clothes and cutting classes seems strange and now I’ve heard you’re dropping out of Model UN, and that worries me,” Lip says cautiously. “You mustn’t let him pressure you into anything, changing yourself or uh—”“I’m not doing any of that for Joe!” David cut in frantically, abandoning cleaning up to stare at him. What on earth was Lip thinking.Lip raised his eyebrows. “You aren’t?”“No!” David hasn’t even told Joe about dropping out of Model UN because he’s pretty sure Joe would try to feed him some line about how that wasn’t the right way to try and be cool, though honestly David’s been thinking about dropping an extracurricular to make some breathing room in his schedule even before he’d met Ron, although the feeling has intensified now that he’s found himself trying to fit a non-extracurricular-based social life into his schedule. “I want to do those things and he’s helping me, that’s all.”“You just suddenly decided that you wanted to?” Lip looks doubtful. “Then why are you sneaking around? All this ducking class and passing messages--”“Passing messages?“Gene mentioned after last weeks’ student council meeting that he’d seen you slipping Liebgott papers when nobody is looking,” Lip admits.“Those?” How could that be mistaken as passing notes? Perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine that David would write pages and pages worth of love letters, but the notion that Liebgott would want to read them is ridiculous. “They’re--” but he can’t use the truth for his denial, Lip certainly wouldn’t approve of David doing Liebgott’s homework.Lip, with an air of control that most of their teachers would envy, just waits. No doubt trying to give David just enough rope with which to hang himself. Well, as much as David respects Lip and his methods, he’s going to thwart him this time. “We’re in the same history class, there’s a group project coming up and we’re getting a head start.” Lip can hardly fault him for academic preparedness.For a moment he thinks victory is his, Lip frowns, but then he continues. “Web, you don’t need to make excuses for your boyfriend but—”Boyfriend? That’s what Lip meant when he said they’d grown close? It’s enough to reduce David back to spluttering. “What? No! Why do you think he’s my boyfriend?”“You’re always sneaking off to whisper and pass notes in the halls, I’ve seen him driving you places more than once, and I’m about ninety percent sure that jacket that you’ve started wearing all the time is his,” Lip explains. “What else am I supposed to think?”“That… we’re studying together,” David says. “We go places to study and we pass class notes.”“And his jacket?”David opens his mouth and then pauses. The reason Liebgott gave, that David would be cold without it, won’t hold up here, not without him explaining to Lip that he is trying to look cooler, although for Ron not Liebgott’s sake. Somehow he doesn’t think that explanation will satisfy Lip.When he doesn’t answer, Lip sighs. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”After the previous day’s disaster with Ron, David does too. But at least he has the knowledge that Lieb is in his corner, at least for as long as David is prepared to do what little English homework he gets.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Their next Thursday session turns out to be more of a history lesson than a coolness one, they even stay in the library, but David doesn’t really mind the diversion. Liebgott reads over the rough draft of his essay and asks questions about things that are missing but David can add in when he edits, and he looks over Lieb’s vague outline and laughs at illustrations drawn in the margins. They can’t really move onto planning their group project until they know for sure they’ll be in the same group, but they’re overdue a quiz and so David gets his note-cards out of his bag and they take it in turns to test each other.It turns out Lieb gives the same sort of smart-ass answers in a revision session that he does in class and as usual David finds that while he can follow the gist of what happened he loses track of the details.He’s floundering over a question about one of the mission meetings the cold war involved, trying to remember the names of more than half the participants, and he finds himself thinking that Ron would probably know the answer and says so.Lieb raises his eyebrows. “Why would he know?”“He’s so insightful, he looks at things like he’s seeing something different to just what’s on the surface, and he’s good with details too.”“How do you know?”“What?”“How do you know all that about him when you’ve never even had a proper conversation with him?” Lieb says. “I know you like to watch him at lunch and stuff, but c’mon, you can’t see somebody being good at that stuff.”David bites his lip. Most of time he’s glad he’s got Liebgott’s help with this plan, but does Liebgott have to keep reminding him of his failures?“I will though,” he says. He’s never failed at anything he’s worked at before and he doesn’t want to accept that this might be the first thing that’s different - not when it’s so important. “Just as soon as I get cool enough to talk to him properly.”“But all this effort you’re making just proves that you have nothing in common.”“Is that such a bad thing?” David says. “I want somebody different, challenging. There’s nothing interesting about somebody who is just like me.”Lieb rolls his eyes. “So? You’re a lit nerd, you want different? Date a mathlete. Like you but not.”For a brief moment David considers it, mentally running through who that would mean, but none of them spark the slightest bit of interest. They are different from him but not in a way that appeals.“So what, you’d only like somebody who’s like you?” David asks, genuinely curious. This whole effort is partly because he knows he needs more in common with Ron to have any hope of building something with him, but he finds he can’t imagine the same thing applying to Joe. Joe seems to hang out with a group of guys who share his cool interests, but he’s also unexpectedly open, to a degree that’s at odds with the fact all his help is coupled with repeated insistences that David and Ron would be a disastrous match.“No, of course not,” Liebgott said. “But it’s not that same. People like you...”“People like me?”“Y’know…” Lieb shrugs. “You’re not exactly the adventurous type. I mean, you like having teachers like you, maybe dressing up and listening to punk music might be a little fun but you’re never really going to rebel against authority.”“Rebel against authority?” David says. “This about being cool.”Lieb shakes his head. “There’s nothing cool about never thinking for yourself and trying to force yourself to be someone you’re not for some guy who barely knows you exist and wouldn’t appreciate your efforts anyway.”“Someone I’m not?” David snaps. “How about I can decide what sort of person I am?” Maybe this isn’t instinctive for him but everybody changes as they grow up and why shouldn’t he get to be the one deciding what kind of person he is?“You aren’t deciding though,” Joe says. “This isn’t even about you. You’re not making decisions and wanting things, you’re just trying to be what you think Speirs wants, and you’re just guessing at that.”“Why do you even care?” David says. “You’re getting your half of the bargain, I’m doing your English homework. I can try something new if I want to.”“Are you though?” Joe spits. “Even this thing with Ron is only sticking a toe out of your comfort zone, you’re just kidding yourself if you think you’re actually extending yourself -- he’s still going to college and nobody could afford the maintenance on that stupid motorbike of his unless they had rich parents helping him - his parents probably go to the same fucking country clubs and golf courses yours do. If you think being more like him is actually growing as a person you’re deluding yourself.”“Don’t!” David snaps his book shut. “Don’t say that about--” Ron? His parents? him? Liebgott doesn’t really know anything about any of them if he thinks those accusations are true! “—You know what, I’m going home.”He doesn’t wait for Lieb to offer him a ride, he’s pretty sure that Lieb is in no mood to drive him anyway and even if he did offer David doesn’t want to be in a car with him. He’s missed the bus but he’d rather walk than argue any longer. It’s not until he gets outside that he realises that he’s left his jacket —the one Liebgott gave him— behind on the chair, but he tucks his hands into his pockets and hunches his shoulders, it’s chilly but nowhere near cold enough for him to face going back for it.Lieb can keep it for all David cares right now.How dare he keep picking faults in a plan he agreed to be part of? And how can Liebgott object that Ron is too rebellious and different from David, and then only a few seconds later be condemning their similar backgrounds?That makes no sense.David’s tried not to take the criticism of his ability to achieve his goals too personally. The truth is while Lieb’s dislike for Ron is a mystery, David understands why Liebgott has his doubts about David’s efforts to change. David has has spent his whole life being cautious and prioritising familiarity over extending himself and risking failure, of course Liebgott would be sceptical of him moving past that.But that’s why he’s trying to be more. He needs this plan to work, to prove he can be more than that. Some of the changes might be uncomfortable, but surely that’s better than movie? If he could pull this off, convince someone Ron of his coolness, then for the first time somebody would see him as somebody interesting and not just another lit geek like Liebgott apparently does.At camp David kissed Henry, who’d liked Shakespeare and Wordsworth and quiet afternoons reading, and it hadn’t been bad but it hadn’t been anything else either. Henry had been the exact sort of person David had assumed he’d want to date and, more worryingly, so very like David and those few days of unexciting kisses had made David realise that he doesn’t want ‘safe-but-boring’ and he certainly doesn’t want to be with somebody who just seems him as ‘not-bad’.So he has to change.Still, while David can accept Lieb reasoning his insistence on never letting David forget his doubts is unfair. David had come to Lieb for these coolness lessons because he was committed to becoming more and, yes, it has been an uphill climb, but his efforts are legitimate and he’s achieved a lot even if Lieb can’t see it. Liebgott has no right to dismiss how far he’d come in just a few short weeks.But then, maybe Liebgott’s doubts are because he’s been the one giving David these lessons. He’s not wrong about the way for as he’s trying to change David has still just been following instructions. If he wants to prove this attempt at change isn’t the absurd pretence Liebgott thinks it is, perhaps it’s time for David to prove he can break the rules and do something outside of his comfort zone all on his own.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It takes a little time to put his plan into action, Thursday evening is not an adventurous sort of time and anyway David might be stepping out of his comfort zone but that doesn’t mean he can’t prepare a little for the change.He plots out his bus routes, he needs a bigger city for this plan to stand a chance, can’t spread his wings in a small town where everybody knows him, and it’s not as solid of a plan as he’d like but he supposes that’s what being cool means.When he gets in from school on Friday evening he keeps cool and gets on with his homework, and over dinner mentions that he’s going over to Hoob’s for the night, then he goes up and gets really for his real outing.There’s something strange about using the products Lieb picked out for him when he’s stepping up his plan without telling the person who’s helped him get this far, but he does need the effect and it seems silly to let his pride get in the way.He’s never spent so long on his appearance in his life, styling his hair and for the first time putting a whole outfit together out of the cool clothes instead of just using them to accent his regular ones.He stares at himself in the mirror once he’s done. With his hair combed back and parted more sharply than he’s ever worn it before he looks strikingly different and though the clothes aren’t comfortable they do fit him well. For the first time in his life he looks older, the person staring back at him isn’t an awkward high school kid but somebody cool, somebody David might admire if he saw the guy in school.Of course, it’s no good being cool in the privacy of his bedroom.He’s never snuck out before, he isn’t even really sneaking out now, he’s just leaving under false pretences, but if any of his family see him dressed like this they’re going to have a lot of questions that David is fairly sure he doesn’t want to answer.Fortunately his Dad is working late and Annie is at the stables, so it’s only his mom and John to avoid, but he’s still nervous as he steps out of his room. He prioritises moving quickly over quietly, because they know he’s heading out he just can’t risk either of them wanting one last quick word before he leaves.He doesn’t take a proper breath until he hears that sound of the front door clicking shut behind them, and then he practically jogs to the street to make sure nobody calls him back.It’s only a short walk to the bus stop and David knows he’s lucky because lucky, he might be living in a small town but they’re only a short bus ride away from somewhere bigger.Somewhere bigger, with a college.It’s the perfect place to step up his game.He feels like somebody different as he asks for his ticket. The bus is busy but this version of David, scowling to keep a nervous look off his face, doesn’t hesitate or ask permission before taking the aisle seat on bench that already has it’s window seat occupied by a man in a suit.He counts the stops in his head, it’s not the first time he’s taken the bus into the big city but he doesn’t go that often and when he does he usually gets one of his parents to drive him. The stop for the university if familiar though because it’s the one he usually gets off at when he does go into the city - normally he’s there for the library, but today he turns in the opposite direction as steps off the bus.It’s not that late yet, just past sunset, most of the people walking down the street are dressed casually but by wandering towards the residential parts of campus he quickly finds a building with loud music blasting from the windows, the front doors are wide open, and a few people are milling about on the lawn holding bottles and cups.There’s Greek letters on the sign and while David doesn’t recognise which ones that’s not the detail that’s important - what’s important enough is that he’s seen enough movies that he’s pretty sure he’s found a party.A part of him is expecting to be stopped, but nobody seems to notice him as walks up the path and steps into the building.He recognises the song that’s playing and that one note of familiarity is soothing in the midst all the chaos and strangeness of the party. Self-consciousness is creeping in, but most of the people inside are in groups, too busy talking to each other to pay attention to him.Near the stairs, there’s a table stacked with bottles, beer and liquor, and a few boxes of wine. David loiters for a few minutes, observes it as subtly as he can, and as far as he can see people are helping themselves. He’s never tried beer or liquor before but he’s had wine and champagne at weddings and a few holiday parties and almost everybody else here has a drink in their hand and he wants to look like he belongs. Spirits seem like an excessively dangerous choice and it seems to be only girls drinking the wine, so he grabs a beer. It’s a screw-cap thank goodness and so he opens it up with one hand and takes a sip as he walks away from the table, trying to look like this is something he’s used to doing.It mostly tastes strange and he’s not sure he likes it, but it isn’t bad either. He keeps drinking as he moves through the party and it’s odd, but nobody calls him out as interloper and while he’s not quite having a good time he feels like he’s adjusting. Maybe Liebgott had reason to doubt his abilities to adjust but David feels pride swelling in him at the thought of proving Lieb wrong.People watching probably isn’t the right action at a party but its interesting to see the way people flow through the party and he feels like he’s learning a lot about cool. He drifts for a while before ending up in the kitchen which is quieter than the other rooms, not empty but the crowd is thin enough that he can focus on making his observations instead of losing sight of people in the crush.David finishes his beer leaning against a counter, wondering if he should get closer to some people so he can hear their conversations instead of just watching them when he does hear a voice, unexpectedly close up, saying, “I haven’t seen you around here before…”And David realises with a jolt that he’s being addressed.“I— I—” Oh god, no, this is fine, he can do this. David takes a deep breath. “I, I haven’t been to many parties since I came here. But my friend was coming…” he lies, because he doesn’t want to identify himself as a party crasher.The guy glances around. He’s taller than David, blond with a sharp jaw and dark eyes. “I don’t see anybody with you.”David shrugs, feeling his cheeks heat. “I…”“He meet a girl?” the stranger asks. “Or a guy?”David shrugs again, and the guys hand lands on his shoulder as he says, “Well, some friend, huh, to leave you hanging all alone.”“I don’t mind,” David says, “I’m still having fun.”“That’s sweet of you,” the guy says, hand sliding over David’s shoulder until his fingers have drifted over the neckline of his shirt to meet skin.David can feel his face go even redder and the guy laughs and leans closer. "Oh, aren't you a cutie,” he drawls, and he’s staring at David with a strange look in his eyes that has David’s stomach twisting as the guys says, “Yeah, I could eat you right up."David starts to step back only to hit the counter and realise he’s in a corner. His heart is pounding in his ears and the guy’s fingers are on his neck, he can probably feel the way David’s pulse jumps as the guy closes in and--“Hey! Hey Greeney,” a voice hollers and the guy steps back instead, turning his head to look over his shoulder at the newcomer.“What?”There’s a guy in the doorway looking disdainfully at them who calls, "C'mon man, I thought we agreed you were gonna stop trying to give freshmen sexuality crises.""They come to college to get an education," the blond -Greeney?- shouts back, but then he takes his hand off of David’s shoulder and ruffles his hair instead, smiling at him with none of the unnerving edge from before, leaning close to say, "There's an LGBT drop-in on Thursday afternoons in the Porter Street rec-room if you are having questions though, we don't really bite," before disappearing into the crowd in his friends direction.David squeezes the counter edge, trying to take deep breaths and stop the hammering of his heart.As soon as both guys are gone, David staggers out of the kitchen, finds himself back at the table in the foyer. He snags another drink fumbling until he can get the cap off, then takes a long swig.The taste is still a little bitter for him but he drinks it fast, it’s only a small bottle after all and then grabs another.Beer in hand, David moves through to the sitting room. It’s a lot more crowded in there and the music is louder, bass pounding in a way that makes it hard to focus on finding his way through the throng of people.Part of him wants to get away, but now he knows the kitchen isn’t the peaceful spot he’d initially thought it was he can’t go back. He hasn’t been upstairs yet, but there’s a vague voice in the back of his head telling him that might be more of an adventure than he’s prepared for.He hadn’t expected it to be like this. He’d never been the person to get invited to parties even at school, had know this would be a strange and unfamiliar adventure, but he hadn’t expected to feel this lost and this young. All his lessons in coolness have been about cultivating interests not about navigating situations like this.The loud crash he hears as moves back towards the foyer startles him and suddenly the flow of the crowd turns to a riptide and David is suddenly adrift, being swept from all directions as half the crowd surges the two guys are fighting and the rest attempt to back away. It's nothing to do with him, they're the other side of the room and a few others are already wading in to pull them apart, but the sight of them sends adrenaline spiking through David, wondering what would happen if the fight got out of hand, if somebody got hurt, or if the police got called, or...David is fooling no-one, he realises. He isn’t cool, he's in over his head and suddenly he wants nothing more to get out, pushing through sweaty bodies until he's staggering out of the door and into the cold night air.It’s truly dark now, clouds blocking out any hint of light from the stars or moon, and all the people on the streets are rowdy and almost threatening. The buses back home are only hourly and he doesn’t know if he can hack standing out here until the next one, sitting crowded in with more overwhelming strangers, and then somehow sneaking back in.He hasn’t thought this through, he realises, because his parents are expecting him to be out all night but he didn’t make a plan to match his lie. This whole idea was just ill thought out and reckless, Liebgott was right, David isn’t cut out for
this sort of thing. He needs to abandon this scheme and he notices dimly that his hands are shaking as he reaches into his pocket for his phone.Calling his parents is unthinkable, it wouldn’t be so bad if he thought they’d get mad but they won’t, his Dad will be worried about him and his mom will want to talk to him about her wild youth and partying responsibly, and he can’t reach out to most of his friends because they would just freak out and probably tell their parents who’d call his.In fact, there’s only person David can think of that wouldn’t.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

David is shivering by the time he hears the honk of a car horn and looks up to see a familiar junker idling beneath nearest the street-light.It's not a stopping zone but he isn't going to fault Lieb any action that gets him away from here quickly."I'm sorry," he says, before he's even shut the door behind him. He's going to have to make this up to Liebgott somehow, but he doesn't know what he could offer. More homework? But Joe isn't sure Lieb has any classes other than English that David's assistance could be useful in.“Are you okay?” Lieb says. “Your texts were… what happened? How did you end up here?”David nods. It was his own stupid plan that led to him spooking himself. "I'm fine, I just--" he waves his hand, not sure how to convey how much of an idiot he's been without sounding like he's pointing out the obvious. Then again, maybe Liebgott would be glad of the chance to say 'I told you so'.“You just what?” Joe says, and David shrugs, slumping in his seat. Joe scowls. “You… wait, have you been drinking?!”“Not much,” David says. Three beers, but they’d only been small.“Not much is still some,” Joe says. “Jesus…”David waits for several long minutes but Lieb keeps his eyes on the road, looking furious.What had he been doing when David had called? No doubt he was angry to have whatever cool thing he was doing interrupted by David’s inability to handle a simple party without making a mess of things because he doesn’t know how to function around people so much more… so much more than him.“I just… I thought I could have fun,” he admits.Lieb rolls his eyes. “There's nothing fun about hanging out with strange college kids,” he spits. “Fuck’s sake, you really thought it was a good idea to go off on your own like that?”“I wanted…” he’d wanted to prove he could be cool without Joe propping him up, but clearly he’d been kidding himself. “I’ve never been to party. Not a proper party.” Kids birthday parties with pass the parcel and a take-home slice of cake are really an entirely different species from cool parties.“Well if you wanted to party there are better ways to do it,” Lieb huffs. “With friends for starters.”David gives a useless scoff of laughter. Lieb might really believe what he’s saying, Lieb’s friends probably do go to all sorts of cool parties together and wouldn’t question their welcome but David’s friends are a sedater bunch and his only chance to have this adventure was to strike out alone and hope nobody paid him enough attention to kick him out.“You cold?” Lieb says, and David isn’t sure. The night air was cool, had left his face and fingers numb but his core feels like it’s burning up. “Back seat,” Lieb says, jerks his head in that direction and when David turns he sees that his jacket, Lieb’s jacket, the jacket that Lieb had given to him and suddenly seems so confusing, is folded neatly on the bench seat.He’s not cold enough to want to put it on but he reaches back anyway, the familiar feeling of the soft leather beneath his trembling fingers is an anchor, not quite his but something he’s grown accustomed to, a comfort to wrap himself up in.For a long time they’re both quiet. David doesn’t but the jacket on but he clutches it against himself, occasionally glancing sideways at Liebgott’s troubled visage.But during one of these tentative looks David recognises the road into their town and suddenly blurts out, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I get home. I told my parents I was staying at Hoob’s. And I don’t know how to sneak in.”“Great,” Joe sighs, and then when David looks at him askance he adds, “If I bring you home like this they’ll never want you hanging out with me again.”“But all you’re doing is bringing me home,” David points out. “They wouldn’t blame you for bringing me home, they’d thank you.”“For corrupting their precious baby boy?” Lieb scoffs.“But you haven’t. This was all my idea, you’re the one who keeps trying to talk me out of things,” David protests. Liebgott had objected to the smoking and his plan to cut his hair, and he’s pretty blatant in his disapproval of what David had been trying to do tonight. “Anyway, my mom thinks you’re a good influence.”Joe shoots him a worried look. “How much did you say you had to drink?” he asks.“I told you, not much, just a few beers. I’m not drunk,” Webster insists. Not sober either, but feeling a little spinny doesn’t change the fact he’s perfectly sure of what he’s saying.Joe’s frown deepens. “And you kept a eye on your drinks?”“I’m fine!” David throws his hands up in exasperation. “Is it really so hard for you to believe that my mom would approve of you?”“As if she would,” Joe grumbles. “I’m not one of your country club boys, I drive a shitty car and I once got suspended for fighting and I’m not even thinking about going to college.”“She does. She said you’re--” David hesitates, suddenly considering that Liebgott might take ‘refreshingly down to earth’ the wrong way if he hears it without the context of years of her worrying that David spends too much time with his head in the clouds, what else had she said about him? “--sensible. And very polite. And my dad thinks it’s impressive that you’ve already passed your drivers’ test.”“Really?” Lieb sounds genuinely surprised, even though he’s one of the few people in their grade to own a car already and almost certainly the only one to buy one instead of getting it as a gift.“Yes,” David snaps, and with a sudden surge of deja vu adds, “And my parents aren’t even in a country club!”Unexpectedly, Liebgott starts to laugh.“Do you want to go home?” he says.David shakes his head. His parents wouldn’t judge Lieb for helping him get home but that doesn’t mean that David wants to face them like this. But, where else can he go? Turning up at any of his friends’ homes like this would put him in the same position as calling them would have.Before he can think of anything though, Lieb pulls a hard right and David realises he recognises the neighbourhood they’re pulling into. “Are you taking me back to your place?”Lieb nods. “You can stay over. My parents don’t mind me having friends over on weekends and they’ve already gone to bed so they won’t notice that you’re…” he waves a hand and David suspects he’s trying to indicate drunkenness even though David is certain he’s not as intoxicated as Liebgott seems to think.They pull into the lot outside Lieb’s house shortly afterwards and David tries to keep quiet as he follows Lieb through the building and into the apartment, Lieb might say his parents are fine with him having an unexpected overnight guest but David doesn’t want to wake them and find out.Lieb kicks his shoes off at the door and David imitates him, they hadn’t bothered with this last time but then last time David wasn’t staying.He follows Lieb all the way to the end of the hall, there’s no visual difference between the doors but Lieb’s room is apparently the one at the end of the hall.Inside it’s plainer than David imagined, with green walls and navy coverlet on the bed. It’s small, just barely fits the bed and a chest of drawers - the top of which is piled high with a mess of folders and school books and magazines. There are a few posters on the walls and despite how much of a disaster the night has been David can’t help but feel a flicker of pride at the fact he recognises the contents of more of them than he doesn’t.David doesn’t quite know what do with himself, there’s nowhere to sit except the bed and it feels wrong sit there. He feels like an intruder, and he is, he supposes. After all, Lieb has only invited him because David had all but begged for a rescue.“Here, I’ve got some old gym clothes you can use as PJs,” Joe says, rummaging through a drawer. “You remember where the bathroom is?”David nods, accepting the bundled cloth and slipping back down the hallway.It feels weird being in Lieb’s apartment without him, even knowing that he’s just down the hall, and weirder still to be undressing, stripping away his poor guise of coolness and accepting the comfortable clothes Lieb has given him instead.They're a little too small, the pants stop just above his ankles and even when he tugs the shirt down he can’t quite make the hem reach the waist of the pants to cover his stomach, the clothes must be from when Lieb was younger, but they're soft and dry and instead of beer they only have the sharp clean scent of detergent and a hint of the same smell that seems to cling to the leather jacket Joe had given him - which makes them a massive improvement over his own things.His head feels fuzzy still and the taste of beer, which had been tolerable when he’d been drinking, now just lingers unpleasantly on his tongue. There’s mouthwash by the sink and even though he’s never usually help himself to something in someone else’s house he decides he can make an exception just this once — Lieb would probably agree that it’s preferable to him spending the night with gross breath.He stoops over the sink to splash water in his face as he rinses and as he straightens he catches sight of his reflection in the mirror and remembers several weeks earlier when he and Lieb had looked at each other via the glass as Lieb worked on his hair, only styling it because he’d claimed that a cut was too far and David had been sceptical then, but look where following his own instincts had got him.When he gets back to the bedroom Lieb is also wearing sleep clothes, more sweats and a t-shirt that has traces of writing on but it’s too faded to read.He’s messing with the bed and David quickly realises why. Unlike his own and his friends, Lieb’s room is small and narrow, the bed is a twin and pressed up against the wall on three sides and the position of the drawers alongside it means there’s no room for a camp bed or even for a person to lay down flat.“I can take the floor,” David offers quickly. He’s already asked so much of Joe tonight, he’s not going to let him sleep on the floor as well.Joe shakes his head, grabs one of the pillows, and tosses it to the other end of the bed. "There," he says, "Top-to-toe, like elementary school. Nobody sleeps on the floor."David was fairly sure they'd never shared a bed at a sleepover but now he ponders on it it’s possible they might have been to a few of the same ones when they were very young. Those were the last parties he’d been to, back when coolness hadn't seemed to matter as much because there were only fourteen boys in the class and the school rule was that you had to invite everybody if you were handing the invitations out in class.Once they’re both in the bed it’s cramped, they’re a lot bigger than elementary school kids now, but there’s just enough space that they aren’t knocking into each other although it’s already hot under the blankets from two bodies.It’s comfortable though, the linens have the same pleasant aroma that Lieb’s clothes do, and when David sinks back against the pillow he looks up he sees a handful faded glow-in-the-dark stars scattered across the ceiling, and if he squints he thinks he can make out where they’re interspersed with spots of discolouration and residue where there must have once been many more.He yawns, but he can’t sleep yet. "I'm sorry for dragging you out in the middle of the night—""It was quarter past eleven, it's not like you woke me up or anything."“Oh.” It had felt later. “Well, I’m sorry anyway. I’m sure you had better things to be doing on a Friday night, I—”“Web,” Joe interrupts firmly. “Just go to sleep.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

David slips out of Liebgott’s apartment early on Saturday morning, without any uncomfortable encounters with his parents. He does say thanks again to Lieb, but he doesn’t offer any repayment. He certainly owes Lieb for saving him but he already played his best card when he offered to do Liebgott’s English homework in exchange for help with this mess of a plan.He kills a few hours at the park a few blocks from his house, he can’t go home too early because if he was where he’d told his parents he’d be he wouldn’t be rushing back. At least he doesn’t have to worry about sneaking in, sleep has taken all the style out of his hair and the jacket Lieb returned to him would hopefully make it less obvious that he’d been dressed up when he left the house. He sits on the swings for a while, kicking idly back and forth while thinking about his failures, but then some families with kids of the age the playground is meant for arrive and so he finally gives in and walks the few streets home.Nobody catches him slipping back in and he heads up to his room and goes straight to bed. He feels like hell but it isn’t the beer — he’s not hungover but he’s humiliated. For some reason Lieb hadn’t claimed his rightful, “I told you so,” regarding David’s inability to really be cool but the doesn’t stop David from feeling it.Ron is going to college next year, he’ll want to go to parties like that often and David can’t imagine keeping up. Hell, it’s not so long until David starts college himself, and how will he make any friends if he can’t even make himself have fun at one little house party without getting overwhelmed by the crowds and the rowdiness of it all.Saturday is a washout, and he’s still brooding in bed on Sunday when his mom knocks on the door of his room and let’s herself in.“I just wanted to check that you’re okay,” she says, leaning over to press the back of her hand to his forehead.David puts his book down. “Why wouldn’t I be?”“You’ve barely come out of your room since you got back and I ran into Angela at the store,” she begins and David’s stomach drops. Hoob’s mom? Oh no. “She mentioned that Donnie has a stomach bug.” Hoob had been fine at school on Friday, David wouldn’t have used him as an excuse if he was ill.“Oh?” David says. “It must be one of those sudden 24-hr bug things.” He’d claim food poisoning but it wouldn’t be believable, Hoob’s mom is too good in the kitchen.“Really, I could swear she mentioned that it’s been getting worse all weekend…” his mom trails off and David knows that his guilt is written all over his face.“David,” she sits down on the end of his bed, settling in a manner that strongly suggests that this isn’t going to be a brief conversation. “Is there something you’d like to talk to me about?”“I don’t think so,” David says, but it’s weak.“You know your father and I want you to have your freedom,” his mom replies. “You’re growing up and soon enough you’ll be at college and making your own rules, I want to be able to trust you, but I can only do that if you’re honest with me.”She knows. She knows because David would have said something if he’d been over at Hoob’s and known his friend was sick, and now she’s watching him and waiting patiently for him to give himself up. “I wouldn’t know about Hoob’s illness. I haven’t seen him since school,” he admits. There’s no point dragging it out.She nods. “If you weren’t at the Hooblers’ on Friday night, where were you?”David weighs up his options. He’s going to have to admit to something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he needs to tell the entire horrible story. He’s certainly not going to be able forget the whole fiasco if his mom knows.“I—” he can’t mention the party but he’s fairly sure she’s more concerned with where he slept than how he spent his evening. “I was at Lieb’s.”For a very brief moment his mom looks surprised, before her face quickly settles back into calm. “If you were staying over at a friend’s house then why did you lie?” she says. “After all, we’ve never objected to you sleeping over places on weekends as long as it doesn’t clash with an established plan.”Damn. David can feel his face heating. He’s been caught again. Deceit just doesn’t come naturally to him. He’s about to admit to everything when she sighs.“Oh honey… I suspected when I caught the two of you playing hooky, but I didn’t think I needed to hurry quite this much to talk to you.”Wait… suspected what?“You’ve seemed out of spirits since you came home,” she asks softly. “Did something happen?”“I…” David is a horrible liar, but he’s feeling convincingly honest, if somewhat confused by the turn of the conversation, when he says, “No, it’s just been a tough week. I was at Lieb’s because he was trying help.” It’s mostly the truth. The last thing he wants is his mom thinking Lieb is the one to blame for David’s brooding.His mom smiles softly at that. “Good. But next time, please just tell us if that’s where you’re going to be.”David nods, stomach twisting in genuine remorse. He doesn’t like lying to him mom, especially when he knows she only ever wants to help. If anything, the reason he didn’t tell her he was going to a party is because she’d probably have been so excited to support him in expanding his horizons. “I’m sorry. I should have lied, I just… well, I…”“You know your father and I have no objection to you having a boyfriend, and if you want to stay over at his then that’s something we can talk about as a family and work out,” she remarks. “Of course, there’ll have to be house rules if you have him over again, but if you want to have sex you’ll find a way whatever rules there are, and I’d much rather you’re safe about it.”What?! “It’s not, it wasn’t like that!” He means to just say it but it comes out as more of a yelp and his mom raises her eyebrows. “Mom, really, we didn’t— I wouldn’t—”“Settle down, I believe you,” his mom says soothingly. “And you wouldn’t be in trouble even if you had. That’s precisely why I wanted to have a proper talk with you now. Things between you two might be new, but there’ll come a time when it won’t be ‘not like that’ and—”“It’s not, it won’t,” David insists. “Really, nothing happened.” Really, he’d barely even know how to start. The furthest he’s ever got had been with Henry at camp and they’d only hit first base the week before camp ended. “I’m sixteen, I’m not gonna…” God, he can’t say ‘have sex’ in front of his mom, it’s too awful. Getting caught in his lie might have been reasonable karmic punishment for sneaking out, but there was no way he deserves this.“You’re smart enough to know that it’s not all or nothing,” she continues, as if his interruption hadn’t happened. “I’m not so old I don’t remember what teenagers are like, it’s always ‘just a bit more’ until suddenly it’s all the way. I want to make sure you know how to be responsible for yourself.”“We’ve had health class,” Webster protests. “I got an A.” This is so unnecessary, but his mom just laughs.“I’m afraid I don’t trust a class run by a gym teacher who has to account for the conservative sensibilities of some your classmates’ parents to have covered all the necessary ground,” she says. “I want you to be properly informed.”“There’s no reason,” David insists, once last futile time, but it’s clear his mother will not be convinced.“I’ll spare you going over the technical details,” she says, and David has never been so grateful for anything in his life, but then she hands him a book. “Though I do want you to read this and to come to me or your father if you have any questions.”David reads the words on the cover, ‘Sex: a book for teens’ and were those cows in the illustration? He will not be talking to anybody about whatever he reads in this book. Ever. “Why do you even have this?”“This conversation was inevitable, honey,” his mom said. “You’re growing up, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, as long as you’re informed. But right now this is really more of a feelings talk.”God. David isn’t sure if that’s worse or better than a conversation about sex. It’s clear she’s convinced there’s something between him and Liebgott, even though he can’t quite believe that’s her first assumption upon discovering he stayed over with a different friend than the one he’d said he was with. “There are no feelings.”“Yes, there are,” she says. “For a start, I’m not happy that you didn’t feel you can be honest with us about this.”“There’s nothing to tell,” he says and she laughs.“I suspect that’s a matter of perspective,” she says. “I don’t just mean I want a report as to if you two are getting up to things certain people might not approve of, I want to know that you’re happy. Your first proper boyfriend should be something we talk about. It’s an important milestone.”“He’s not my boyfriend,” and David is pretty sure the words come out whiny but why can’t she see?Instead of helping that just makes her stop looking amused and start looking concerned again. “No? This isn’t… you’re both being respectful of each other’s feelings, right?” she asks. “I don’t have to worry about either of you being ungentlemanly towards each other. I know I’ve always said there’s nothing wrong with casual arrangements between adults, but Kenyon, you’re very young and…”Casual arrangements? As if they were…? “No, there’s nothing like that, it’s just… it’s not, we’re friends, don’t make it weird,” he says, uncomfortably aware that his face is hot and almost certainly approximately the colour of a tomato. How could she imagine he’d be doing that with Joe? Where on earth has she gotten the impression Joe would want to be boyfriends with him? Hell, David’s crush on Ron is a long shot, but while he is impossibly cool, but he’s also a loner which means there’s room for David, or at least an absence of competition. Joe, on the other hand, is cool and popular, with a whole crowd of friends he could potentially date, all of whom are so much cooler than David. Not that he’s letting her bamboozle him into thinking about it, it’s just an infuriating mystery, how she’d get the same strange idea about them as Lip had.“Oh?” and then she winks at him. His mom. Winks at him. David wishes he could pull the covers up over his head and be excused from this conversation. “Early days, huh? Well if you kids need time to figure yourselves out, that’s fine. I just want you to know you can come to me.“Okay, great, thanks,” David says, now please leave.She must hear his unspoken plea, because she smiles once more, leans over to kiss his brow and then says, “I expect you down for dinner tonight. No more sulking in your room, brooding isn’t as romantic as novels make it out to be.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Going back to school after botching his attempt at being somebody cooler is hard. Lieb had let David take the leather jacket back home with him after the night he spent over, and David wears it but it feels awkward, like suddenly it doesn’t fit right and everyone can see how fake and doomed to failure his efforts are.He makes himself late for math on Tuesday when he sees Ron in the halls and ends up having to double back and go all the way around the outside of the building so he can get to class without having to face up to the guy he’d wanted to impress in light of his failings.He’d seen Liebgott around to, but they hadn’t spoken or acknowledged their argument during their last study session or the strange night David had spent in Liebgott’s bed.When Thursday comes around, they still don’t talk about it. David can’t face the thought of attempting coolness so soon after his embarrassment, he knows all about the ‘get back on the horse’ theory but he’d pretty sure there’s an exception in it for if you’re still hurting and if there’s not then there should be. Instead they head to the library and Joe doesn’t complain about David pulling out their history textbook and keeping the conversation focused on their project.It’s strange, but to David’s surprise the awkwardness fades quickly. He starts out unsure how to talk to Liebgott but Lieb is his usual snarky self and it’s easy to relax into their old habits, the fact that homework is a safe topic probably helps but mostly it’s Lieb’s easy manner, the way he mocks the text book, laughing loud enough at his own jokes that David worries the librarian is going to come over and shush them; and how he punches David in the arm to illustrate a point, forceful enough that it kind of stings but it’s hard to be mad about that when Liebgott is treating him just like a friend.Like maybe they could be friends, even when their bargain ends, and David feels oddly hopeful at the thought. He’d never have imagined it when he first approached Liebgott, but despite their differences they have a surprising amount of common ground.Still, he can’t believe his mom thought that she had to worry about them having sex. Sex with Liebgott would be like… well, David didn’t have a clue what it would be like. He supposes there are educated guesses to be made though. It seemed likely that Joe would be a good kisser, David didn’t know a lot about Joe’s love life but how could someone as cool as Joe not be experienced? No doubt he’d kissed a bunch of people, probably even done more. He’d be confident, too kind to be demanding, just guiding his partner along, and Lipton’s words from the previous week, worried that David might be pressured into doing something he’d regret, spring to mind and David almost laughs out loud because Lip can’t have meant it like this but, even so, he’s misjudged Joe badly if he thinks that Joe would or that he would need to. After all, being around Joe always makes Web feel at ease and the memory of Joe’s hands in his hair that evening Joe had shown him how to style it resurfaces and makes David wonder if Joe would touch somebody like that while kissing them, hands in his hair or maybe stroking down the back of his neck to trace his spine—“—Web?”David startles, and is glad he isn’t leaning his chair back on two legs like Joe is because he’d almost certainly have fallen. “I… yeah?”“Yeah?” Joe looks amused. “Yeah, you do think our history class is a joke and we’d learn more from fuckin’ YouTube than McEvans? Or yeah, you were totally spacing out and not listening to me?”“I…” David flushes, caught out. He’s supposed to be helping Lieb study not daydreaming about… about… well, he shouldn’t be daydreaming at all!“Are you alright?” Joe asks, looking concerned rather than annoyed by David’s inattentiveness. “It’s not like you to zone out on school work. Do you wanna quit this and go see the nurse?”“I’m not ill,” David protests, although he does feel dizzy and unbalanced all of a sudden.“Are you sure?” Joe squints at him. “You’re looking kinda feverish actually, maybe I should walk you over just in case.”“No, it’s just—” lie, lie, lie, oh god if David could just carry off a lie for once in his life. “The weekend, my mom, she—”“Shit, did she find out you’d been to the party?”“No, she knows I wasn’t at Hoob’s, but I told her I was at yours to cover the rest.”“And now you’re in trouble?” Joe guesses. “I told you she doesn’t approve of me.”“It’s not that, she likes you,” David insists. “It was just a close call with being caught and it made me realise even more how stupid I was to think I could go to a party.”Joe frowns. “Wanting to go to a party isn’t stupid, you just picked the wrong one to try.”“No,” David has been thinking about this and even if he was more prepared he’s not sure he’d want to go to a party like that again. Maybe it was cool to be surrounded by random people and noise and things going out of control, but that wasn’t something he’d ever find fun. “I don’t think I’m suited to that kind of thing.”“Yes. You tried too much too fast without preparation or backup,” Joe says. “That doesn’t mean you’re bad at going to parties, it means you went to a shitty party. Fuck, would anybody have a good time going to a party without friends?”In that case, the point remains the same. But Joe continues, "Don't your friends, all those people at newspaper and student council and stuff, have parties you could go to?”David shrugs. Some of them do but not the ones he really gets on with. There are a few cool people on the paper who probably do go to parties but he can’t imagine them inviting him along, the newspaper team are colleagues not friends. And his friends aren’t really party-ers; Hoob and Christenson were in a table-top gaming party but their group usually met at the same time as debate club so David rarely went along, and anyway that wasn’t the right sort of party.“Okay,” Joe says, “Whatever. You don’t need them anyway, I’ll take you.”“What?” David replays the conversation in his mind, trying to follow Joe’s logic but Joe’s train of thought seems to have jumped from A to G without any explanatory steps in between.“If you wanna do this, we’re doing it right,” Joe says. “Gimme a little time to think of something, and I’ll take you out.”“But I don’t want to,” David tries to explain. “It was a stupid idea and it all went wrong and I’m over it.”“No!” Joe slams his hand down on the table hard enough that David jumps. “You’re not giving up. Don’t let one bad experience ruin the whole thing for you. Just… give me a little time, I’ll find somewhere cool and this time I’ll come with you and show you a good time.”His intensity is startling, and confusing. “Why are you even being so encouraging with this?” David asks. This goes way beyond the boundaries of their deal. “I thought you didn’t approve of the idea of me and Ron anyway, never mind me thinking going to a party would help me impress him.”“I don’t, but you should be over him because he’s no good for you, not because you think there’s something wrong with you for not liking shitty frat parties.”David opens his mouth and then shuts it again when no words come. There’s too much to process in that sentence, that Joe is so firm about the idea that it isn’t David who is the problem despite all evidence to the contrary. Instead he ducks his head, dragging his finger down the page of the text book and trying to find where he’d got up to before he’d zoned out.There!“The Moscow–Washington hotline,” he blurts out, “Build up, immediate impact, and long-term ramifications. That’s bound to be on the exam.”Joe looks at him long and hard and for a moment David quails, worried his obvious deflection attempt is going to be swept aside, before Joe softens and flips through his own notes. “Right, I’ve got ‘precursor to the bat-phone’ and ‘not actually red or a phone’, what else do I need to know?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The next week drags on, the vague possibility of Liebgott’s plans looming over David and tying his stomach up in knots that aren’t quite fear but aren’t quite excitement either. His last experience of a party was an awful one, and he knows it won’t be like that with Lieb but he’s still not sure he’s cut out for that sort of thing and Lieb seemed so determined to find something that David would have a good time at that David feels preemptively guilty about the prospect that he’ll be too awkward and nervous to enjoy himself and therefore ruin Liebgott’s plans no matter how good they are.He only breaks from thinking it over in math class, and then it’s because the jumble of numbers on the board requires all of his focus if he’s going to even begin to have a chance at parsing it. Even so, he takes one look at the homework questions and knows he hasn’t understood enough.Still, at least he’s not alone in his struggle.“Me and Pat are going to work through the trig homework during study hall, are you coming?” Hoob asks at lunch, both David’s friends take the same class just two hours later in the day. “Or are you going to ditch us to hang out with Liebgott again?”“I haven’t ditched you,” David says. Sure, he’s spent less time with his friends lately, but he’d never bail if they had actual plans. “And we aren’t hanging out, he’s my project partner for history.”“I though the group projects hadn’t been assigned yet, and you’ve been spending time with him for weeks. And skipping study periods.”Shit. Hoob isn’t David’s mother, he actually knows what’s going on at school and has see enough of the pieces to put together an accurate guess. “I…” David swallows. This would be easier to confess to a stranger than a friend, after all a strange wouldn’t care if he wanted to be cool or not, but if he tells Hoob about his goal his friend might feel hurt that David doesn’t think he’s cool or think that David is planning on ditching him, none of which is true, it’s just that David’s current friends, much like his current self, won’t impress Ron. “Well, he’s just so cool and—”Hoob snorts.David had thought his explanation would get further than that before the difficulties started. “What?”“Seriously?”“I… why wouldn’t I be serious?”“Liebgott isn’t cool.” Hoob says it like he’s dealing in facts, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.“What?”Hoob shoots David a look like he’s the one not making senses. “Liebgott? Cool? He was wearing a Squirrel Girl t-shirt the other day.”David isn’t actually sure who squirrel girl is, but he can make an educated guess. “So? Superheros are cool. Didn’t that new Avengers just become the highest opening movie ever or something?“You don’t get it, big blockbuster superhero movies are cool now,” Hoob explains. “Not Squirrel Girl. Or all the other comics he likes. Or the fact he’s running a lending library of comics out of his locker of comics that’s mostly a whole bunch of obscure eighties stuff and a handful of almost mint condition first editions that he won’t let anybody touch without supervision is definitely still super nerdy.”“He… I didn’t know he did that.” A library? Sure, David doesn’t read comics but the concept is brilliant, especially when the school’s official library is so poorly stocked because of budget cuts and the school board’s heavy-handed banning of anything even slightly controversial.Hoob nods. “You see my point now?”David pauses, mulling it over. “Not really,” he admits. How can liking some superheroes be cool but others be nerdy - surely they should all be one or the other. And he doesn’t know why Hoob talks about Lieb being careful with first editions like it’s odd, that’s just a basic rule for books and while David has never thought about extending it to comic books because he’s never had any it makes perfect sense. “And even if the comic thing was nerdy that hardly outweighs all the other things that make him probably the coolest guy in our year. I mean, think about who he hangs out with.”Hoob raises his eyebrows. “You think Liebgott hangs around with cool guys?”“I don’t think it,” David says. “I can see who he hangs out with and they’re cool.”“Heffron and Tipper both go to the same role-playing meet-ups that I do,” Hoob informs him. “And Babe keeps trying to talk people into going LARP-ing with him. Even I’m not that nerdy.”Babe Heffron was only a sophomore but hung out with upperclassmen and David had always figured that was a sure-fire indicator of cool. But, LARP-ing? He’d never tried it but if it’s too nerdy for Hoob then it’s hard to deny that it must be pretty damn nerdy.Still, if Lieb and his friends don’t make the cut, that does raise a significant question. “Well, who is cool by your standards?” David asks, exasperated.Hoob shrugs. “I don’t know. What is cool anyway and why is it important?”David stares at him for a moment, and then sighs. Once upon a time he might have said the exact same thing, cool stuff and cool people hadn’t interested him then, but things have changed and he wants and that wanting demands he measure up - Hoob, who has been dating the same girl since back when David had thought the whole concept of kissing gross, could probably never understand David’s position.“Cool is…” it’s all the easy confidence Liebgott seems have enough of that it spills over to David when they’re together, it’s his bold opinions and the fact his taste in music is so eclectic yet he is so decidedly sure of what he likes, he never hesitates the way David does, not to talk, not to touch, not to share what he thinks and yet despite his openness he always seems to leave David wanting more. He hates not being able to define a world clearly, but there’s nothing he can say here that would mean babbling endlessly at Hoob trying to pin down all of the little things make Liebgott so distinct from their peers. “Lieb is cool. I don’t know how else to say it. Defining them separately is like trying to separate water from wet, stand alone definitions are all well and good but sometimes they’re nonsensical.”“Right,” Hoob says. “That’s what doesn’t make sense. So, math or Liebgott?”“Math,” David assures him. Lieb has gym this period anyway.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Their Thursday meeting is all history, but Joe asks David if his Friday evening is clear to do something and as a little as David is into Lieb’s determination to replicate David’s failings at the party, he can’t lie.

He doesn’t even lie to his mother when he tells her about the plans, he’d never get away with it when somebody would surely spot that it’s Lieb’s car picking him up from the house, but he keeps it brief and promises he’ll be home before midnight and manages to get through the conversation without her doing anything to horrifying like mentioning sex, although David spends the whole conversation feeling like he’s trying not to think about pink elephants.

There’s a few hours between coming home from school on Friday and the time Lieb is coming to pick him up, and he spends most of it getting ready. Partly, that’s styling his hair and changing his clothes, although he doesn’t try so hard to dress cool as he had when he’d gone seeking a college party because he’s already proved he can’t live up to the look he created. Mostly though, he’s mentally preparing himself. This isn’t going to be easy and he’s probably going to feel out of his depth because he will be out of his depth, wherever Lieb picks will be too cool for him, but he’ll get through this because Lieb is determined that he ought to even though David is pretty sure Lieb’s ambition to make him have a good time is a fruitless one.

He keeps an eye out of his window and heads downstairs as soon as he sees Joe’s car coming up the street so that that David intercepts him when he pulls up instead of Joe needing to come to the door and ask for him. It’s not that he wants Joe to feel unwelcome and it’s certain not that his parents wouldn’t welcome Joe, whatever Joe might imagine their opinion of him to be, but David’s mom will looking knowing and then Joe might wonder why his mom is acting like there’s something between them when David had done such a brilliant job of sidetracking the conversation the other day when Joe had called him out for daydreaming while studying.

If Joe thinks it’s weird that David came out to meet him, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he drives like he has a destination in mind, taking them towards the city again.
“Where are we going?” David asks.“There’s a gig tonight at the roundhouse, eight bands, mostly punk but some other stuff mixed in,” Joe announces. “I managed to get us tickets.”
His self satisfied look is almost enough to distract David from the dread pooling in his stomach. Almost.
“A punk show?” he says, incredulous. “After I couldn’t even handle a house party?”“It’ll be different this time,” Joe insists. “I’ll be right with you the whole time, and I know the place, it’s a much better scene than some shitty frat party. Plus the bands are local,” he continues, “A bit of a mix quality wise, but it means that the crowd won’t be too big.”“I…” having kept hold of the jacket after Lieb gave it to him again in the car David could probably blend in superficially, but now he’s starting to think that no matter how well he blends the cool clothes in with what he has already to look convincing David will still only be faking it. But Lieb looks so sure and David has already tried to talk him out of this plan, so maybe he’s just going to have to learn the hard way.“Here,” Joe says, turning up the stereo, which he ten explains is the EP of one of the bands at the show they’re going to, but it’s just white noise to David, even though he suspects that he ought to be familiarising himself on the material so he’s better equipped for whatever he faces in there, all he can think about are the knots in his stomach and how embarrassing it’s going to be when he fails again, and this time with Lieb around to see all of it and not just the humiliating enough aftermath.
By the time Joe parks, David is just about ready to turn tail and run, but they’re a little bit off from any of the bus routes he usually takes and he wouldn’t know how to get home from here. The people around them all look they belong here, running a gauntlet from cool to frankly a little scary, in a way that makes David want to hide behind Lieb even though he’s the shorter of the two. Lieb belongs here, he’d know how to deal with these people who David is utterly unequipped for.

He follows Lieb in and the first thing that hits him is the volume, this is nothing like the few shows he’s been to with his family where you went it and found your seats and waited to things to start, it’s already in full swing with a band on the stage and a crowd packed in. It takes a few moments for his eyes to fully adjust to the darkness, to begin to pick out details, but once he can he’s relieve to see that though the area in front of the stage (is it still a dance floor at this type of concert? David wonders, especially when half the people out there seem to be just jumping around and shoving at each other) is packed, the venue isn’t full and there’s a lot of free space around the edge that he drifts towards eagerly.
“What are you doing?” Joe asks, tugging him back. “You’re not about to try some wallflower shit, are you? The whole point of coming is to dance.”
David shook his head. “I can’t dance,” he admits, and certainly not like the people here, “I just don’t have the knack, I thought concerts were for listening.”

Joe rolls his eyes. “It’s not difficult, there’s no mystery trick,” he says, “You just move, c’mon.”
“But I...” David starts, staring down at Joe’s outstretched hand in surprise.“It’s about time I taught you something useful,” Joe doesn’t wait for an answer, grabbing David’s other sleeve so he has a grip on both arms and tugging him back towards the centre of the room.“What?”“You know for such a smart guy, you’re very slow on the uptake. Dance with me.”
The moment they hit the crowd David feels overwhelmed, a sick lurch in his stomach at the feeling of being surrounded on all sides. Somebody crashes into him and he stumbles, shirt slipping from Lieb’s grip, and he tries to backtrack out of the press but there’s too many people and he can’t make it through the throng of people. He feels arms wrap around him, tries to push them off, but then Lieb’s voice is in his ear, raised over the noise of the music, saying, “Don’t fight it. You have to move with the crowd.”
“But—”“Relax,” Lieb insists. “I’ve got you, just stick to me and you’ll find the rhythm.”
Find the rhythm? God, what has he gotten himself into? Doesn’t Lieb know that David couldn’t find rhythm even if he was given a map, a compass, and a GPS?

Sticking to Joe he can probably manage, even though they keep bumping up against each other as the people around them crash into them and whenever Joe moves one way and David moves the other because he doesn’t know how to dance and he certainly doesn’t know how to do whatever variation on dancing this is.

But it’s is nothing like the frat party. He’s not lost in this crowd and every time the crush of bodies feels like it’s starting to sweep him away he can feel Lieb’s grip on his shirt anchoring him and keeping him close. So he closes his eyes, trusts Lieb to keep him steady, and lets go.

He doesn’t know any of the bands, let alone specific songs, but he follows Lieb’s guiding tugs and slowly starts to realise that he can recognise the pattern between their movements and the rumbling of the base. “Oh,” he says, “I can hear it.” He loses it a moment later, but when the bands change Lieb uses the break to drag David nearer the speakers and when the next group comes on he can feel the beat shaking through his bones strong enough that he can follow it despite his bad sense of rhythm and the volume is high enough to drown out all his self-conscious second thoughts, and he throws himself into it and when he opens his eyes again he sees that Lieb is beaming at him and David can’t tell if Joe is laughing at him or feeling triumphant but he decides he doesn’t care as long as Joe keeps looking at him like that.

David wonders how ridiculous he looks, he’s sweatier than he’s ever been in gym class and he put product in his hair earlier (even though he’s pretty sure now that his attempts at looking cool have been just as much a farce as him trying to be cool) but now it’s damp and sticking uncomfortably to his forehead, he’s already too flushed from exertion and excitement to blush though.

Opposite him, Lieb has spots of colour high in his cheeks, laughs breathlessly as he runs his hands through sweat-slick hair and leaves it standing half upright, but instead of looking gross he just looks irresistibly full of life and energy, brimming with that impossible to replicate confidence and energy that is the foundation for his coolness. He says something but David can’t hear it over the sound of the music, so he leans closer, eyes on Lieb’s lips as he tries to match the shapes they make to gaps between what he can hear of Lieb’s words.
“…ing……od ti……eb!”
It’s incomprehensible, Lieb is going to have to wait for a break between songs if he wants to make any sort of viable conversation, but David doesn’t look away. Every time he remembers being this close to Lieb it’s because there’s been something wrong, some problem or distraction keeping him from paying the other boy his full attention, but now there’s not and he can smell the same sharp scent that he’s grown so comfortable with (and god, it would be weird to ask Lieb was laundry detergent his mom uses, wouldn’t it? But the smell is so nice) and the crowd is driving them together so really David is just going with the flow like Lieb advised as he lets himself be pushed so close they’re bumping up against each other, l
ike ships each shielding each other from the waves between them so that those outside forces pushed them together,
his eyes still on Joe’s lips.

The last time David had been this close to somebody, had been paying this much attention to their mouth, had been with Henry, but that had never felt like this, never made his heart pound so hard he could feel it against his ribs, eyes drifting shut on instinct as the gap closes between them and he can feel their breath mingling until—

No!

David jerks back. What is he doing?

Ron.

He wants Ron, the whole reason Liebgott invited him here was so that David could learn how to be somebody that Ron would want. He can feel how close Lieb still is to him, but David can’t look at him, not when he knows that as soon as he does the thoughts he’s trying to push away with reclaim him.

Somebody pushes through the newly restored space between them and David had pulled away so hard that now Lieb no longer has an anchoring hand on him but David finds he can’t be concerned about being once again adrift in the crowd when he’s so overwhelmed with burning embarrassment.

God, it’s a good thing he’d gotten a hold of himself in time. What an idiot Liebgott would think he is if he knew how close David had come to getting swept up in the moment and forgetting that all that is between them is an exchange of favours. But Lieb seems not to have realised what David was about to do. Or at least he hopes so. After all, what sort of person would Lieb think David was if he did know?

It takes the length of a whole song to fight his way back over to Lieb’s side. Now David has been jarred out of the moment he can’t figure out the tides of the crowd well enough to just flow through, so he has to push and struggle and he catches an elbow to the ribs and has his feet stepped on countless times in the process. For a moment, when he reaches Joe, he feels panic again, because Joe has been holding onto him, keeping him from getting lost in the shove, but while David still doesn’t want to get overwhelmed by the mass of people he’s not sure how he’ll handle Lieb holding him after what just happened.

But Joe doesn't even try to attempt a hold of him again.

David tries to keep it together, but the knots in his stomach that he’d almost forgotten about are back in full force and now they’ve come to live, twisting and writhing, and suddenly feeling undefended in the crowd is part of it but what’s really making his insides feel like a snake pit is the knowledge of what he’d just nearly done: ruined his budding friendship with Joe.

The rest of the show blurs together and later David won’t remember anything clearly after the mistake, it’s a like something exploded in his mind with enough force that he’s temporarily blind and deaf to the world in the aftermath.

When they finally get out he follows Liebgott to the car and waits waits for him to say something. It seems like he ought to, Joe has so many opinions on music how could he not want to talk about what they’d just experienced, but instead he doesn’t say a word.

At first David thinks, hopes, it’s just that he’s waiting until they’re out of the crowd, when he won’t have to compete against a hundred other voices, but even once they’re seated and it’s quiet enough that David can hear the faint ringing in his ears, Joe says nothing. Then he waits for them to get out of the parking lot, after all driving while there are so many pedestrians milling around with no concern for what space is for cars and what space is for walking must be stressful, but still Joe is listen.
“It was good,” David offers and tries to force a smile because it was good, it really was right up to the point where he ruined it by getting caught up in the moment and even if he can’t shake it, he’s hoping the worst of the awkwardness will have slipped right by Lieb. “I told you,” Joe says, but it’s sharp, like he’s bitter that David had doubted it even though David’s lack of trust had never been about Joe.
David tries to keep talking, but the truth is that he doesn’t know what to say and while Lieb isn’t quite giving him the silent treatment his answers are curt and unhelpful. He doesn’t know what’s happened to Lieb’s mood, unless Joe somehow knew what David was thinking in that moment he’d been seized by the urge to kiss Lieb and is judging him for his presumption and disloyalty, but no, how could Joe possibly tell what he was thinking?

After all, he can’t tell what Joe is thinking as he drives, unusually silent and intently focused on the road, or when he pulls up outside of David’s house without a word.
“See you Monday,” David says.“We don’t share any classes on Monday,” Lieb says, brusquely.“I…” he’s right, of course, but the school isn’t that big and David figures their paths will cross during breaks or at lunch. But maybe Joe will be busy. “I… well… see you around,” he corrects, because Joe can’t argue with that. In fact, he doesn’t say anything to that, just waits for David to get out and then drives off without even his usual few minutes of waiting and watching David get in the door. So he doesn’t. Because if he goes in he’ll have to face his parents but he has a key and if he sits out on the step long enough maybe they’ll go to bed and he can sneak in and not have to face everything that’s happened.
He’d known things would be bad, but he needs a little longer to process the fact that the whole night has been a bigger disaster than he could have imagined in his worst nightmares.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It’s another hard weekend and David can’t stand the looks his mother is giving him. He barricades himself in with schoolbooks, hopes that will convince her that he’s just busy and overworked, but he’s not sure he’s succeeding because she still seems concerned. At least his barrier is keeping her from talking to him about it, but he knows there’s only so long he’ll be able to use the, “Not now, I’m studying,” excuse before she just takes the book away from him and insists.Which could be particularly problematic because not only does he not want to talk about it, at some point he is actually going to have to do all the studying he’s pretending to do now but can’t focus on because his mind is still stuck on Friday night, wondering how things got this bad without him even noticing.Wanting to kiss Lieb.He wants to ask himself what the fuck, but every time he thinks about it he knows exactly what the fuck because even after the awkwardness of his near miss the prospect of it makes his heart beat faster and an unfamiliar heat of what he realises now must be genuine attraction thrum through his veins.David tries to feel ashamed of himself. He ought to be, he might not have anything with Ron but he’d wanted to and it’s probably a sign of bad character that his affections have shifted so easily, no, not affections. It can’t be those. He likes Lieb, of course he does, how could he not, but surely that feeling had just been a heat of the moment thing.A heat of the moment thing that is still warming him.It might not have been cheating, but what if he had been more successful with Ron? Would he still have found himself feeling this way for Joe? Is he inherently a cheater? The thought is disturbing. Of course, if Ron had shown any signs of returning his interest then David would never have found himself in a position to grow close to Lieb in the first place. The thought makes his stomach clench, but for all the wrong reasons. The idea of having a chance with Ron ought to feel good, but instead all he can think of is how easily he could have missed out on this connection with Lieb and what a loss it would be.What a loss it still might be, because the more he thinks on that silent drive home the harder it is for David to hold on to the belief that his slip and Lieb’s sudden change in mood were unconnected.There’s no way to smooth things over without bringing them up first, and honestly David has never had the social grace to just talk his way out of things. He’s not even sure what he’d say: how can he make excuses to Lieb when he can’t explain to himself what he was thinking. He could assure Lieb it’ll never happen again, but the truth is David fears if he were to find himself in that position again he might be struck by the same instinct. Even the memory of Lieb, wild and grinning and so close, makes his heart-rate spike despite the fact that he’s alone in his bedroom and has likely doomed the possibility of that ever happening again. And he shouldn’t want it to happen again anyway. Lieb is a classmate, somebody he works on projects with and --maybe, almost, hopefully-- a friend but not somebody he should be thinking about kissing because… because David’s feelings are supposed to be for Ron and because Lieb wouldn’t want him like that and because he has a plan and this isn’t it.If David had his way, he’d take comfort in avoidance. Surely this strange new feeling for Lieb would fade fast enough with distance between them? After all, if Lieb could have so easily distracted him from Ron then David must be more fickle than he’d judged himself. But how can he avoid Lieb when he’d already promised to do his English homework, what little of it there was, and to work on their history projects together. Perhaps if it were simply his own studies at risk David would just chance doing badly, desperate times call for drastic measures, but sabotaging Lieb’s work simply because he’s unwittingly caused these feelings in David would be far too selfish - bad enough that Lieb must think badly of him for the mistakes his already made, David won’t make things worse by being a coward. Even if he’d like to.He’ll face Lieb at school on Monday. David doesn’t need to have made sense of his mistake in order to say sorry for it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On Monday, Joe is even harder to catch alone than usual. David briefly considers sucking it up and just making his apology publicly, but he thinks the attempt would mean embarrassing Lieb in front of people and that would just make things worse.On Tuesday, Joe arrives for history late enough for McEvans to threaten him with detention and then elbows his way through the room so he’s one of the first out the door as soon as the period ends.They don’t share any classes on Wednesday, they don’t even have classes close together, so David doesn’t make much of not seeing Joe around. At least not until Thursday when Joe texts him (despite the myriad opportunities to just find him around school and talk to him) and calls off their study session, without even bothering to make an excuse.David is being avoided.It’s not something he has much experience with. He’s never been popular, but he’d been unpopular in a fades-into-the-backdrop sort of way that meant he’s never really been disliked either. Yet he’s certain that’s what is happening. Nearly kissing Lieb was such a mistake that Lieb doesn’t even want to be around David anymore.Fuck.How could this have happened? David had been trying to make his life better, but so far all he’s managed is to make things far worse than if he’d just never tried to begin with. If he’d never been friendly with Joe that would have been okay, but now he knows what it feels like to be close to him the knowledge that he’s driven Joe away is agonising. He’d thought he could fix this, that it was just a little mistake, but if Joe won’t even be near him then apologising is impossible.Decency says he should just accept the rejection, but it’s going to be torture, especially when they’ve already set themselves up to be history project partners so there’s going to be no easy way to let the avoidance fade into the background - David is going to have to be reminded every week of the fact that Joe doesn’t want anything to do with him, the blow landing again and again each time they… how will they make the project work anyway? Perhaps it would be better for David to just offer to do the whole thing himself. His few pieces of writing English homework for Lieb had passed under the radar without being caught, so it shouldn’t be too hard to make the history project seem like both their work. That way Joe can keep up his avoidance and David at least won’t have to face him and the reminder of how he’s messed this up.This is worse than any of the problems his feelings for Ron ever gave him. And with those, he’d been able to go to Lieb for help. Sure that had worked out worse in the long run, but at least for a while he’d had hope. Who could he go to with this? Hoob has already proved he doesn’t understand David’s situation; talking to his mom would be too much, she knows him too well, she’d probably understand his confused feelings better than he does but David doesn’t want somebody to know all the answers, just to help him through the confusion; none of his other friends know anything about the situation and he doesn’t much feel like explaining it when things are this bad and if Hoob and Lip are anything to go by there’s no guarantee they’d take him seriously.Although…Lip doesn’t know what’s going on, but he does know that something is and while his theory was off the mark the first time they talked about David’s plans it’s close enough to the situation things have unfolded into that his input might be useful anyway.Lip should be getting out of geometry right now, and that means it isn’t be too hard for David to track him down with the intent of intercepting him, but when he rounds the corner of the maths corridor he stops short.Somebody already has Lip’s attention.Ron already has Lip’s attention.He’s leaning up against the wall, looking intent as the talk in voices too low for David to hear, but that doesn’t stop David from pressing himself up against a display of athlete trophies in order to watch them talk.“Oh,” he breaths to himself, because he truly hadn’t expected that, and then he pauses, bracing himself to manage his jealousy.It doesn’t come.Ron, who’s barely even acknowledged David’s existence despite his many efforts, talks with Lip, not just talks but seems to seek out his company, and, just when David didn’t think he could get more surprised, smiles at him.And David… doesn’t care. He’s feeling a dozen things, but none of them are anger or envy.Maybe it’s just that he’s got bigger problems right now.He feels antsy, and finds himself wishing that Ron would leave, because, as much as David does admire him, right now Lip is the only person who can help with his Liebgott problem. Or at least, he’s the only person David is willing to try and explain the situation to, which amounts to the same thing.A few days ago he would never have imagined that he’d be willing Ron to hurry up and leave, but when Ron finally tucks his books into his bag and walks away —without Lip— David’s sigh of relief is so loud that Lip looks over, and then raises his eyebrows at David’s obvious lurking.“I need you help!” he blurts out. And then adds, “Not like that,” because Lip looks so terribly concerned that David can only assume Lip thinks he’s about to be asked to ring for an ambulance or perform CPR on somebody.Lip still looks perturbed as he walks over. “Like what then?”“I… advice. You’re the only person I can talk to.”The next expression is familiar — it’s the one that explains why half the academic bowl team call Lip ‘mom’ behind is back, and a few of the cheekier ones do it to his face.“It’s about Joe…” and when did David start thinking of him like that instead of on the more distant terms that he always had done? “I… you were sort of right, but not really, about me hanging out with him, but now I’ve made him mad and he’s avoiding me and I don’t know how to fix it.”“I’m… not really sure how I could help you with that,” Lip admits. “Have you tried apologising?”“He’s avoiding me,” David repeats. “What am I supposed to do, text him?”“It would be a start,” Lip suggests.David shakes his head. Texting is a terrible way to apologise, making Joe think he’s half-assing it definitely isn’t going to make things less awkward.“Well that’s the best advice,” Lip says. “But if you won’t do that, what did you fight over?”David swallows, trying to pick out what parts of the whole mess of a story that are most important. Lieb’s coldness stems from the almost-kiss, he’s sure of that, but he can’t begin there without sounding insane. “It started because of the party… Ron is going to college next year but I only turned sixteen this summer, I’ve just started thinking about college, and after the party I realised I’m not ready for it to be part of my life.”Lip glances over in the direction Ron left in a few minutes before. “What party? And what does Ron have to do with this?”David pauses. He’d originally planned on confessing everything to Lip, trying to convince Lip of the truth of his original intentions before everything had turned into such a mess, but having seen him talking to Ron has suddenly given him second thoughts. Is Ron’s role in this really that relevant? Sure, he was what started this, but Lieb is a much bigger concern right now. “He’s smart and planning for college but he’s also cool and interesting and I thought he might be a good role model.”Lip raises his eyebrows. “And that links to the interest you’ve taken in Liebgott?” he asks.David fights the urge to roll his eyes. Why does everybody get that situation backwards? Sure, now he’s found that he’s drawn to Lieb by something far more intense than the admiration he feels for Ron, but still… “It’s about growing up!” he says and is startled by his own snappishness. Everything has just got so complicated lately, when all he’d wanted was to explore something new. “I don’t want to be limited to being exactly like how everybody thinks I should be just because that’s how I’ve always been. I don’t want to go to college and be stuck in high school habits just because I don’t know any different. So I’ve been watching new movies and listening to music and talking to new people and I thought it was going so well but then when I tried to put things into action in a proper way everything just collapsed in on me.”The concerned look on Lip’s face is comforting. David’s not sure Lip can fix his problems, but it would be nice to have somebody understand how lost he feels right now. “I’m… kind of concerned about you, but also I don’t see how this relates back to Liebgott.”“He wanted to take me out,” David explains. “He found this punk show to take me to, and I wasn’t sure at first but we went and it was okay until it wasn’t and now I don’t know what to do.”“So you fought because he was mad you didn’t like concert?” Lip says. “Because if he’s angry that you didn’t like a thing you said you didn’t think you’d like then you aren’t the one who needs to be making it up to him.”“No.” It had been good until David had made things weird, but, “I liked the concert, it was different from the party and I didn’t have to worry because Lieb were looking out for me,” David says. “Even though he was wrong about it proving that I’d be fine doing that normally, it only worked because he was helping me. On a real date who would want me practically clinging them for support the whole time?”“Well, I don’t know about clinging on dates, but why would Lieb take you out and look out for you except because he wanted to?”David opens his mouth, then hesitates. Lip is supportive, but if he knows David has been writing Lieb’s homework for him then Lip might get side-tracked by the lack of academic integrity and lose sight of what’s really important here. David had reconciled his plan with his conscious by focusing on the fact it was just homework, not like cheating on an exam, but it took him time to get to that reasoning and stopping to persuade Lip of the same is a delay he can’t handle.“I…” David shakes his head. Explaining things to Lip is just making this more complicated in his head, not less. “He just did. Not because of me, because he wanted to prove a point.”“You still haven’t explained why you think he’s mad at you,” Lip points out, instead of pressing that line of questioning.“I—” David glances around the corridor, checking nobody has arrived since they’ve been talking. “I wanted to kiss him,” wanted more than that really, more that David feels comfortable even thinking about in public, let alone saying to Lip, “I didn’t! But I leaned in and I think he realised what I nearly did and now it’s weird.”“Ah,” Lip says, and it’s right then that David realises that even somebody as smart and socially-skilled as Lip is going to be able to solve this one for him.“I’ve ruined things for good, haven’t I?” David says, the fact settling heavy on his shoulders.Lip sighs. “David,” he says, in a firm tone not dissimilar from the one he used when David was a freshman and still prone to going into sulks when he got frustrated with difficult questions at academic bowl. “You need to talk to him. You can’t solve this without knowing his side of things.”Which suggests that Lip thinks that there’s still hope for him. But talking to Joe is impossible when Lieb is so determined to avoid David.Unless there’s another way to find out more…

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It’s surprisingly easy to spy on Joe.David had already learned his schedule pretty well when trying to figure out how to get Joe alone to ask for his help, now he just has to flip that around. When Joe is alone David has to stay away, but it’s easy to watch from a distance, the fact that nobody every pays David much attention helping him to blend into crowds and maintain his observation.Mostly, it seems like Joe is doing okay. He might be avoiding David, but he’s not letting his displeasure at what happened between them spill over into other areas of his life.It’s almost enough to convince David that Joe wasn’t mad at him, not that things were okay between them, but that perhaps he didn’t matter enough for Joe to be angry. Maybe Joe had decided he had better things to do than dealing with the hopeless cause that was David’s attempts to be cool.Right now David is keeping an eye on them from across the lunchroom and they’re talking about homework, so he mostly tunes them out — that wasn’t going to help him convince Lieb to be… to at least acknowledge him again, because David knew there wasn’t much chance of more than that now he’d somehow found his way to Lieb’s bad side. Their friendship might be ruined, but if they could go back to the status quo, Lieb indifferent to David rather than unhappy with him, that would suffice. Knowing Lieb is mad at him makes David’s stomach hurt in a way he just can’t deal with.He’s flipping through his planner when Lieb’s voice jumps out at him, David doesn’t hear the start but he’s become so attuned to Lieb that his focus shifts right after Joe starts speaking.“—and that dumb fucking English essay, you’re so lucky you have Henderson this year because Morel is a sadist.”Which… shit, Lieb gave David the details of that assignment a few days before the party and everything starting to go off the rails. David has it saved to his flash drive, finished but not yet edited. It was the first substantial piece of work Lieb had given him, and here David is, letting him down again.He has to talk to Joe. It’s one thing to stay away and allow Joe to avoid him while David figures out how to solve things when there’s nothing else in play but withholding Joe’s essay -even an unedited version- can only make things worse. Perhaps Joe already thinks that’s what he’s doing, that David has responded to the avoidance with sabotage, and that thought can’t be allowed to stand. Not if David is to have any hope of making things okay between them again.Not in front of Joe’s friends though. Not when as far as he can tell they know nothing. If Joe wants everything that’s passed between them to be a secret then David won’t ruin that.So, he waits.It takes him three periods to get Joe alone, finally snatching an opportunity right at the end of the day, intercepting Lieb before he can meet his friends and head home.For a moment, when Lieb sees him and his eyes widen and then narrow abruptly, David wonders if Joe will just walk away be blatant in avoiding him, but then he folds his arms and allows David to approach.“What do you want?” So Joe isn’t even going to pretend not to be furious with him. His anger makes David’s stomach churn but he’s still glad that Joe is being forthright instead of trying to act like he hasn’t been avoiding David and putting him off balance that way.“About your essay,” he says, cutting to the chase because he might want to apologise but until he’s sure what he’s apologising for and how he can make sure not to anger Lieb the same way again anything he says would be pointless. “I… I know it’s due soon but there are a few parts I’m not sure about because I’m not in your class so you might want to add some finishing touches, but I can email you the draft, or I can print it out and bring it to you later. Or I can just wrap it up as best I can based on what I already know,” he offers. He’ll do anything to ensure Lieb is at least please with him about this.“Oh, fuck off,” Joe says, and David feels his sharpness like a slap in the face. “My essay, really? That’s what you want to talk to me about.”David frowns, feeling lost. He’s never felt this unsure around Joe before. “I… that was our deal,” he says. Was Joe hoping for an apology for the concert? Because David is hoping for that too, but he can’t give it until he’s sure he’s not going to make things worse by having misunderstood the problem. “This is the first big essay of your class, it must be worth a lot of your grade, so I want to do it right.”“You… damnit Web, really?” Joe looks tired, annoyed, and David doesn’t know why. He’d thought with this, at least, he could do something right.
“I thought you’d want—” he says helplessly, words trialling off as Joe rolls his eyes.“You thought? Well, I’m not a cheater,” he hisses, and that stings, because David had never wanted to be a cheater, but somehow he’s become the guy cheating on schoolwork and not-quite-cheating on his crush, even if he’s not so sure of how he feels about that anymore, and Liebgott is at the centre of all of it. “I only agreed to giving you my homework at all because you were so damn insistent about it. I haven’t even been handing the stuff you did in.”“What?”“God Web, you really think the teachers wouldn’t suspect something was up?” Lieb asks. “And shit, you really think non-AP English classes do as little work as I’ve been giving you. I just gave you a few things to shut you up about it. Everything I’ve actually handed in has been my own work, I don’t need you to cheat for me.”“I… I didn’t think,” David stammers. Had he been offending Lieb all the time? He’d thought the homework bargain was a good one and Lieb had seemed keen enough on it when David had suggested it. Unless he’d understood that all wrong. “I didn’t realise.”“No, of course you didn’t!” Joe snaps. “You’re too busy throwing yourself at a guy who doesn’t give two shits about you instead of—”“Instead of what?” David prompts. What was it that Joe thought he ought to be doing? Apologising for his error at the show? No, if Joe wanted that surely avoidance wouldn’t have been how he’d go about it. But what? David’s observations hadn’t revealed a thing.Joe isn’t telling though. “Whatever,” he says dully, “Do what you want. Do my fucking English assignments if that’s what you really fucking want, but that’s not what I care about. I can do my own homework just fine without you.”Of course he can, David had never doubted that, Joe doesn’t need him for anything, but he’d thought that Lieb might still want this from him.Instead, he watches Joe stalk down the corridor and realises that he’s been all wrong about this from the start.Joe doesn’t need him. Joe doesn’t want him. Joe can’t even stand to be around him.It’s time for David to give up.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The worst part is, giving up is hard.He’d thought that admitting defeat, going back to his old ways, would be easy. It was familiar after all, he’d just be doing things he’d done for years. He’d miss Joe and his failures would ache but those were feeling problems, getting through his daily routine wouldn’t be hard.But it is.He finds himself constantly looking to Joe, opening his mouth to say ‘hi’ or talk about school work or give an opinion on music that he’s heard because the things Joe’s recommended are so mixed in with his own meagre collection that to delete the all as part of his efforts to pretend this whole mess never happened would leave him without enough to get him through his daily bus-rides and somehow despite being fine without it for years listening to music has now become a habit he can’t give up.The part of him that wants to go back to how things were before when he was tucked safe in the depths of his comfort zone finds itself at war with the same urges that drove him out of it and into his dumb plans in the first place - all the fear and stress and heartache doesn’t change the fact that when he’d been living his safe sensible little life he’d been bored.His crush on Ron had been an easy way to chase that adventure; Ron was good looking, smart, cool, but he was a distant idol and David had nothing to lose. But with Joe it was so much more, he was magnetic, fascinating, charming and for a while David had felt like they were friends, like there was a real connection there and an excitement in his life that was more than just an aspiration fantasy, but then feelings had snuck up on him so slowly that he’d only noticed when they’d slipped out and ruined things between them, leaving David realising how far he’d go to avoid the risk of losing Joe only after it was too late.He’s heading across campus to math, having spent his whole break in the library where he figures he’ll be at minimal risk of cross paths with Joe, when he finds his own path blocked by Skinny standing across the doorway.“Webster…”David tenses immediately. The last time his name had been said in such an ominous fashion had been in ninth grade when his doctor had told him he needed surgery to have his appendix out.“Hi?” he says hopefully, because maybe if he tries for a more positive tone Skinny will meet him halfway.Skinny rolls his eyes. “You’re a prize idiot, you know.”“What?” David has always got along with Skinny, they’re more friendly that actually friends but he’s not expecting this attack.But Skinny just shakes his head. “All this and you don’t even know what you want.”“I do,” David protests. He wants Skinny to get out of the doorway and let him go to class.“Do you?” Skinny’s scrutiny was intense. “Because from what Joe’s been saying it sounds like you’re either an idiot or a total fucking asshole.”“This is about Lieb?” David asks. And an asshole? What had Joe been saying about him?“Seriously Web?” Skinny says it like David has just asked the stupidest question he’s ever heard. “Are you really going to act like you don’t know anything?”“I don’t know anything because nobody will tell me anything!” he snaps and is surprised by his own anger. David is well aware that he’d usually a bit of a pushover, but this whole situation sucks and it seems like it’s his fault but he doesn’t know why. Why did Lieb offer to help him if he was so opposed to the homework bargain that David had assumed was his main motivation? Why had Lieb gone so cold after that near-miss kiss when David had stopped himself in time? And why does Skinny think any of this is his business?“Do you need telling that the sky is blue?” Skinny says, incredulously.“What’s that supposed to mean?” First Joe had acted like David was unreasonable for taking the things Joe had told him about his English class at face value, now Skinny was being enigmatic and acting like David was an idiot for not making sense of his opaque hints. What next, Hoob deciding to state his opinion on the whole affair but exclusively in riddles?“I’m saying it’s not like it’s difficult to see what the problem is here,” Skinny complains. “So you need to sort yourself out and make a decision and stick to it.”David stares. How can Skinny say it’s not difficult? Nobody has ever made David feel as confused as he does about Joe now, as he tries to reconcile the fact that he wants Joe with the fact that Joe wants nothing to do with him, and Skinny butting into to make inexplicable criticisms of David’s attempts to handle things is only making things less clear.“Joe has already made the decision by avoiding me,” he points out. Avoiding him and yelling at him when David had made an attempt to reach out - it’s hard to get any message from that other than that Joe wants nothing to do with him. Surely respecting that decision over the past few days is the only right thing for David to do in this situation, unless Skinny is mad about David talking to Joe a few days ago, but then why not confront him sooner?Skinny sighs. “Fuck,” he mutters. “You’re both useless.” And before David can ask what he means, Skinny finally abandons the doorway, striding off down the hallway, too far ahead by the time David has gathered his thoughts for David to chase him to ask for clarification.David sighs, hiking his bag up his shoulder as he registers that there’s no point in hurrying because he’s already going to be late for his next class and Skinny’s actions suggest that even classmates he thought he’d got along with are mad at him now. It seems that his foolish lapse of almost kissing Joe really has ruined everything.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

David hadn’t realised how much he’d been looking forward to Thursdays until he’d lost them. Last week he hadn’t yet fully understood what was going on, he’d known something was up but he hadn’t expected Joe to cut him out completely without even an explanation. Now he gets up feeling like his chest is full of lead.He takes too long in the shower, staring into space instead of getting ready, makes up the time by not putting any of the products Joe recommended into his hair. He can’t throw them out after making his mom buy them, but he thinks he’s going to bother with them less now, since styled curls didn’t make a difference from his usual fluffy mess in any way that mattered.Then he rummages to the back of his wardrobe, bypassing the jeans and the cool shirts, shoving everything that reminds him of Lieb or his stupid naive quest to impress Ron or his dreams of being cool or Lieb, until he finds the things that are wholly his old self. If he retreats back to that maybe it will be easier to push away the memories of what he’s lost.Khakis and a polo-shirt, a grey-blue sweater that’s probably the furthest thing from cool but his mom bought it for him and it’s made of cashmere and wearing it feels like wearing a hug, but damn, because that makes him think of Lieb’s jacket and how comforting that had felt and so he pulls the sweater back off and lets it fall in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the wardrobe, another thing ruined by David getting in over his head.His mom has tried to talk to him several times over the last few days about what’s bothering him but David hasn’t breathed a word of it. Explaining it all to her would only highlight his stupidity and her sympathy won’t help him get over it, so every time she’s tried to speak to him he’s stubbornly deflected the conversation back to school work and he does the same at breakfast, coming down later than he usually would so that he only has to dodge a few questions about his plans as he shoves a slice of toast into his mouth before he can leave for his bus.The day is a drag without anything to look forward to, all his classes seeming to take twice as long as they ought to. David ducks his friends at lunch, he’s in no fit state for company and if they see him in this mood they’ll ask why and David can’t imagine anything worse than going over it aloud when he’s already turning it over and over in his mind. The afternoon is worse, he spends the whole time watching the clock acutely aware that over the past few weeks he’s been doing it while filled with excitement and anticipation of his time with Lieb and now all of that is gone.Turning left instead of right coming out of social studies, walking to study hall instead of outside to meet Joe, are some of the hardest steps he’d ever taken.At the doors, he hesitates. Just because Joe no longer wants anything to do with him doesn’t mean he has to be here, facing down the pointed reminded that for all his hope and effort he’s right back where he’s started. But that’s what he’s resolved himself to embrace, isn’t it? Skipping alone won’t make any of his problems go away, it’ll just give him room to dwell on his loss and mean that the homework he ought to do in study hall will build up. He told himself he was going to go back to normal and normal means study hall.His nose wrinkles as the musty smell of the room, that’s new he’s certain and he wonders what happened while he hasn’t been attending. Leaning over the attendance list, he’s glad they run it as a sign in sheet rather than a tick-list that it’s been in previous years so that he doesn’t have to face another reminder all the tumult of the past two and a half months.He slinks to the back of the room, a row he’s never sat in before but is fortunately empty, half the room is in fact, and how had David never noticed before just how many people skipped this period?Rummaging through his bag, he tries to find something to work on. History is right out, he might be slipping behind but every time he opens up the textbook his thoughts just turn to studying with Lieb. English is nearly as bad.Bio is a safe pick, they’re slogging through advanced plant structure right now and David really doesn’t care about it but he knows that he needs good grades now if he wants to keep taking AP bio as a senior and get to do the really interesting stuff.He’s just putting the final touches on a diagram of a chloroplast when there’s a commotion at the front of the room, loud enough to make him jump and send his pen skidding in an inky line across the page, to make his head snap up in frustration to see who the noisy latecomer is.His pen drops entirely when he registers Joe stalking between the rows of desks, expression stormy and intent on David.All of theses A grades in English and David has no idea of the words to describe how he feels at the sight, his head seems to be burning up while the rest of him turns ice cold, heart soaring at the same time his stomach drops and leaves him feeling fairground ride sick.There’s no point trying to kid himself that there is any element of chance in this, Lieb kicks out a chair at the desk next to David, turning into to face David and then flops down into it, dropping his bag on the ground and making no pretence at studying.“Well?” he demands, elbows on his knees and leaning even deeper into the gap between them.David stares at him, utterly lost and unsure if this is better or worse than being ignored. “What?”“Well what?” Lieb mimics. “Well, what are you doing here?” his disdain is obvious, so why is he here? “I was waiting for you,” he adds, which makes no sense because Joe doesn’t want to be around David anymore and their deal is off.“Why?” Joe hadn’t officially cancelled this week but David had figured the way he’d given David the brush off last time and their argument at the start of the week added up to a clear enough message. Could he have been wrong? It seems unlikely but part of him is tempted to just go with it, to pretend that those cold empty days of isolation and that Lieb’s cutting words in the hallway had never happened and just embrace the reprieve, but if he does so then he risks being able to slip back into that suffering at any time with the same uncertainty as to the cause. “I thought you weren’t talking to me.” God, David feels queasy at the confrontation, but now he’s said it surely the worst is over.Lieb shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “That was days ago,” he dismisses awkwardly. “I’m over it.”“That’s it?” David doesn’t believe it. His friendship with Lieb might be new but they’ve been to the same schools since childhood and Lieb isn’t the type who’s anger just simmers out after a little time to cool off.“I talked to Skinny,” Lieb admits, “Or, well, Skinny talked to me.”What? Nothing David had said to Skinny had been meant for Joe’s ears. He hadn’t said any of that in an attempt to get Skinny to speak for him or to be manipulative. “And he told you something that made you want to talk to me again?” It’s hard to keep the words whispers, but he’s acutely aware of the fact that while there’s nobody sitting too close if either of them raises their voices all ears will be on them in a heartbeat.“He said you didn’t even know what I was pissed at you for. At first I didn’t believe it but… ugh, I was judging you for believing all that shit,” Joe says. “But you were believing me. I said I wanted the deal and I told you that was all the homework I had; you’re a dumbass for being so gullible, but…” Lieb shrugs. “I guess it’s not all on you.”Relief floods him but, “I…” oh god, the last thing David wants is to bring up the almost-kiss, the kiss he shouldn’t have attempted but now that Lieb is close and at ease he finds himself wanting all over again, but he’s sure that had been the beginning of the awfulness, Lieb had been avoiding him for days before their fight about the homework, and as much as he wants to go back to being friends again David’s not sure he can relax with that hanging over their connection, a sword ready to drop at any moment if the truth came out. “You were already mad though. At the show, I upset you then…”Joe shakes his head. “It was nothing, forget about it. I just… misunderstood some stuff.”Had Lieb thought that David was going to kiss him and freaked out at that, and now was willing to restore their friendship because he’d convinced himself it wasn’t what it seemed like? If that’s the case, David’s not sure how to proceed. He wants Lieb’s friendship, has felt unmoored without him around but he’s not sure it would be right to fix things like this, not when the strand of hair that’s hanging across Joe’s brow makes him ache to touch, filled with feelings he doesn’t quite know what to do with, not when he’s afraid that in the wrong circumstances he might slip and try to kiss Joe again.“Anyway, I promised I’d help you,” Joe continues, a little huffily. “If you don’t want to skip anymore then we can hang out some other time—”David’s not sure Lieb did actually promise and at any rate, “I don’t want your help anymore.”Lieb flinches, voice dropping harshly flat as he says, “Oh.”For a moment David feels lost again, backtracks through their words and realises, “No!” No, he isn’t trying to reject Joe’s peace offering, only the form it’s come in. “I mean, I’ve given up on trying to become the sort of person Ron thinks is cool, so you don’t have to waste your time anymore. Especially when you’re getting nothing out of it.”Lieb frowns. “I know things have been going badly, but you’ll—”“No,” David cuts in. “Maybe I would get it eventually, but I don’t want to. Ron doesn’t like me and that’s okay. I’m glad I learned more about being cool and I liked some of it but I’m over trying to impress him.”“Really?” Lieb sounds incredulous, which is hardly unfair given how determined David was about the plan.David nods. “Ron was easy to like from a distance but whenever I actually think about being with him it doesn’t work in my head,” he’s never really thought about spending time with Ron at all except in the most abstract sense and his few attempts to talk with him had been awkward unpleasant experiences that David doesn’t want more of; not like how he’d caught himself imaging spending time with Lieb, kissing Lieb, even a few thoughts of more than he hadn’t yet been brave enough to do anything other than try to instantly distract himself from. He shouldn’t be thinking about that now though, thinking about kissing Lieb is was ruined things last time and David isn’t going to blow his second chance. Anyway, there are other reasons he can give for realising that his interest in Ron never had the potential he’d initially thought it had, for one thing experience has proved that David can’t fake cool continuously and he doesn’t really want to. “You were right, he caught my eye but he’s not really right for me.”“Oh. Good.” Joe’s smile, small and sweet and thoughtless, makes David’s stomach clench with longing to see it more often. God, has Lieb never smiled like around him before, or had David just never seen it? Either way, he’s determined to be the cause of more.“That you’re right?” David says, unable to help the note of teasing that creeps into his voice despite the fact that’s probably risky when Lieb has only just started acknowledging him and David’s not sure how long it will last.“That you’re getting over Speirs.”“Because you don’t like him,” David concludes.“I don’t care about him,” Lieb says with a shake of his head. “I’m glad because I— because you’re cool enough without trying to make yourself like him.”“What?”“The clothes I picked look good on you and your taste in music did need work, but that’s just details,” Joe says. “You being cool has nothing to do with any of these things you’ve been trying to do for Ron.”David rolls his eyes, then immediately regrets it because it feels like too much when Joe is talking to him again and the last thing he wants to do is ruin that.“I mean it,” Joe says, seeming unbothered. That’s because he’s cool Webster supposes, it means he doesn’t care a whit for what David thinks of him. Except that he does, at least a little, he’d cared that David might think him a cheat even though David isn’t sure why when he himself was the one playing the bigger part in the rule breaking that he’d been the one to propose. “You trying to be his sort of cool didn’t suit you at all.”“Because I couldn’t be cool even if I tried, no matter what my motives were,” David surmised.“No, because,” Joe sighs, “You must remember, towards the end of freshman year when Cobb was giving you shit about reading at lunch, you had that big-ass book with the green and brown cover; like; it was fuckin’ huge I don’t know how you were even hauling that around--”“--The Canterbury Tales with accompanying essays,” Webster recalls. It had been a gift and he’d been so caught up in it he’d have read it in class if he’d thought he could get away with it.“Right. So, Cobb was giving you shit and you were just ignoring him but then he made a grab for your book and-- BANG!” Lieb slams his palm against the table and a few people turn and look their way but they turn back just as fast when the realise Lieb has only slapped the table. “And he fucking screamed like a little girl and started yelling about how you’d broken his hand.”“I remember,” David says. Slamming Cobb’s hand with the book had led to the most trouble he’d even gotten into at school, despite the fact Cobb’s fingers were barely bruised in the end, and David hadn’t even regretted it — sure he’d got a week of detention but he’d known he was right and his dad had said he was proud of David standing up for himself and his mom had picked him up from every detention and taken him out for ice-cream.“--and he was freaking out and practically crying and everybody was staring. And you just kept reading.” Lieb grins.“Are you… going somewhere with this?”Joe shoots him the strangest look, still grinning but with something in his eyes David can’t even begin to fathom. “Only that that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”“What.” David swallows. “What are you talking about?”“You just didn’t give a fuck about him, you knew he wasn’t worth your time,” Joe says. “And you stuck with your own shit.”“But… it was Chaucer.” David had loved that book but even he knew that Chaucer wasn’t cool.Joe shakes his head, “It’s not about the book, it’s not even about Cobb, you’re cool when you’re just being yourself and not worrying about what other people think. That’s what being cool is, not the music or the clothes or the parties or any of that other shit.”David frowns. Was it? He’d spent so long trying to figure out what cool was and how to imitate the way it came so effortlessly to Joe, the notion that Joe could think something that David had done in a moment of effortless, unselfconscious impulsive was cool was hard to wrap his head around.Though, Joe’s second point, not worrying about what other people thought, was pretty much conclusive proof that being cool was beyond what David was capable of and he said so.Joe laughs, shakes his head. “Actually, by that standard I don’t know anybody cool,” he remarks. “I mean, who wants to annoy their family or upset their friends? Lemme change that, it’s about not caring what unimportant people think."“Are you just saying that to be nice so it’ll balance out you being mad the other day,” David can’t help but check.“I have never said anything just to be nice in my life,” Joe sounds sincerely affronted. “Look, I meant it. Just, forget about last week.”But David knows he can’t. He can’t forget how much he’d wanted to kiss Joe nor how much the thought of attempting it and losing him had hurt. “You were mad at me though,” he says.“You— it was my issue,” Joe dismisses.“It didn’t come out of nowhere…” David starts to protest, Joe had been fine and then he hadn’t and nothing in David’s memories seemed like a probably trigger for the change except for his own actions.“Web,” Joe’s voice is thick with frustration. “Just let it go.”“But—”“Please.”The crack in Joe’s voice brings David to a halt. He’s still sure that he’d been a part of the problem if not the cause, but if Joe doesn’t want to share then perhaps pressing him on it is just as bad as ignoring the reasons for his upset.“If you say so,” he concedes. The last thing he wants is so upset Joe again, especially since he seemed to be wavering more towards hurt than angry in a way David wasn’t at all confident in his ability to handle.Now that’s resolved, he really should go back to his studying, David has a lot to catch up on and his attention levels haven’t been great lately. Still, having admitted to Lieb that he’s lost interest in Ron means no more coolness lessons. This might be the last chance he has to hang out with Lieb and he’s not willing to squander it.Mrs Aspen, the study hall monitor, is barely paying the room attention but she’s always liked David and he hopes that hasn’t been ruined by the fact he’s been skipping. He grabs his books, shoving them in his bag, and stands up.Joe stares at him. “What are you doing?”David does roll his eyes this time. He can’t help it. “I’ve never seen you in study hall in my life,” he says. “C’mon.”“But you—”“Come on,” David repeats. If Lieb things about this for too long he’ll realise that now things are fixed between them and David doesn’t need lessons Lieb doesn’t need to hang around with him anymore, but he wants once last afternoon together before Joe leaves him behind. Joe still looks puzzled but he grabs his bag and follows David back to the front of the room.“Mrs Aspen, I don’t feel so good,” David says, and when her gaze cuts to Joe he adds, “Lieb is taking me to the nurse’s office.” He’s not a good liar but Mrs Aspen doesn’t seem all that bothered, waving them out with a weary sigh.Out in the hallway Joe laughs. “I can’t believe she bought that,” he says. “You didn’t even try to fake a symptom.”Should he have? No, David decides after a moment, it wouldn’t have been convincing.“So, what are we doing?” Joe asks after a moment and the truth is that David doesn’t have a plan, not beyond taking the opportunity to bask in Liebgott’s presence.“Let’s go for a drive,” David suggests. He wants Joe by his side, the windows down despite the cold and the radio up loud, to share all the thoughts he’s been saving for Joe because nobody else would understand.There’s a pause and then Lieb shifts his backpack up his shoulder. “I’m parked out back,” he says. “Best hurry, we’ve already wasted half a period in study hall and we didn’t even get any studying done.”No, David thinks, but they’d done something far more important. He’s not sure he can hold onto their connection without a reason or anything to offer Joe, but at least things aren’t bad between them anymore.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When David wakes up he feels well-rested despite that fact it’s still ten minutes before his alarm is due to sound, the sun is shining through the crack in his curtains, and he’s fairly sure he can smell pancakes cooling downstairs.Life is good.He showers, for once getting to savour the hot water because being up early means he hasn’t got John or Annie hammering on the door to make him hurry up, and then dries his hair roughly with the towel before adding a medium squirt of mousse and running his fingers through it a few times so that it settles swept back and won’t start falling in his face until at least fifth period.The knowledge that Joe thought he was cool even last year when he still wore ironed jeans and never left more than one button undone on his shirts leaves him feeling giddy when he dresses, jeans again and the hug soft sweater that he’d discarded in their fights and then Joe’s jacket over the top because sure it’s sunny but at this time of year that doesn’t guarantee warmth and honestly now that David can wear it again he never wants to take it off.It’s easier, going back to school wrapped up warm knowing that despite the fact the fall is truly upon them the chill in the air between Joe and him will no longer be a worry.David is a realist though, he’s looking forward to being on better terms with Joe but now their bargain is over there’s no reason for Joe to spend time on him. They’ll pass each other in the halls and Joe might smile instead of scowling and turning away and when they have history class together he can talk to Joe about their project afterwards, but they were never friends and David’s feelings won’t change that, there’s no reason for them to be even half as close as he’d like them to be.So it’s a surprise when Joe intercepts him almost the moment he steps off the bus.“Why do you still take the bus?” Joe asks, falling into step beside David. “The bus is awful. Surely one of your friends could come pick you up, or, better yet, you could get your parents to buy you a car?”David frowns. “What good would a car do me when I can’t drive?”Joe rolls his eyes. “I know your birthday was too late in term to take the drivers ed class, but your parents wouldn’t spring for a summer course? Or teach you themselves.”“You’re a really good driver,” David says, certain that Lieb’s flippancy comes from projecting his own ease. “I don’t think a few classes would be enough to help me.”“I’m nothing special for driving,” Joe protests. “It’s not like it’s hard once you try it.”Perhaps it wasn’t hard for Joe, after all driving is cool and every other element of being cool comes so naturally to him. But it’s just one on the long list of things that have never been easy for David. “I accidentally ran over a squirrel during my first lesson and haven’t been behind the wheel since,” he confesses.“Huh.” Joe frowns. “Okay, yeah, I see how that could be off-putting.”They’re just nearing the point where they’ll have to part ways to go to class when one of the final reminder posters about buying tickets for the dance falls off the wall and nearly hits Joe.“Ugh,” Lieb grumbles, “Why do they even need to put those up? It’s tomorrow night - everyone who wants to go bought a ticket weeks ago.”“Uh...” David had been planning on going to the dance, all his friends were going and although things hadn't gone to plan with Ron he hadn't been so invested in that that he’d skip out on going and spending time with his friends just because he didn't have a date, but he’d been putting off buying a ticket until the final matches of the first round of the academic bowl were done and the second round events announces so he could be sure he’d definitely be free that weekend. But then his falling out with Lieb had happened and now the dance was days away and he didn't have a ticket. “I still need to get mine actually,” he admits. He’ll have to go down to student services at lunch, though if he did that as well as attending the day’s newspaper briefing on the opposite side of the site then there is no way he’s going to find time to get to the cafeteria as well.Joe opens his mouth, pauses, then shuts it again.David waits, but after a few moments it becomes clear that whatever thought prompted Joe to open his mouth isn’t one Joe is willing to share. “Are you going?” he asks instead, and then immediately regrets it because his imagination kicks into full gear imagining Lieb at the dance. He’s never seen Joe in formalwear but there’s no chance in his mind that Joe wouldn’t make it look good, not stiff and awkward like most people their age are in suits, all that casual confidence means he can pull of anything he tries. He imagines briefly, fleetingly, dancing with Joe again, perhaps a little slower because the music would certainly be tamer at a school dance but with all of the same temptations that dancing with him at the show had, but no, that’s a dangerous line of thought and anyway Joe will almost certainly spend the night surrounded by friends — were this an old fashioned ball his dance card would be filled within moments of walking in the door because who wouldn’t want that chance.“Of course,” Joe says. “But why don’t you have a ticket, do you not want to go?”David has never paid attention to Joe at dances before, regrets it sharply now because he's certain imagination enough won't be enough to prepare him for the encounter and how can he face Joe under-prepared under such circumstances and hope to maintain his composure. If he's not careful his impulses will take over again and if Joe realises that David did --does-- want to kiss him the consequences could be devastating.Of course, David could just avoid the whole situation. He hasn't bought his ticket yet, he could avoid the whole mess and there's no need for Joe to know he's the reason, he could just think David hadn't arranged a ticket because he wasn't interested.Others would know though.David's friends would be disappointed that he bailed on them, David's mother would be worried about his retreating further.Is Joe worth that?Maybe.But would that really help him retain Joe's friendship?Joe had been so scornful of every occasion David put himself out for Ron’s sake, and perhaps that was just about his dislike of Ron but Joe had always seemed to position it as a point of principle, if that was true then surely he'd respect David less for avoiding the dance he'd wanted to attend just because it might end with re-straining their friendship.There's no easy choice here, but if David has to pick between agonising while seeing Joe in formal-wear and agonising while at home all alone he’s taking the choice that will at least help him imagine what he wants.“No,” David says. “I’m actually headed over to the office to buy one right now.” It’ll make him late for first period by the time he’s walked the whole way back, but he thinks it’s going to be worth it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

David always forgets until he’s there, but the idea of school dances is so much better than the reality.It’s too hot in the gym and the only beverages available are cans of off-brand soda being sold at brand-name prices because they’re a captive audience and apparently the school feels the need to leech money from the students on top of the price of the tickets. He could afford to buy a can, but he knows if he does his mouth will taste faintly gross and chemically for the rest of the night and as uncool as he is he knows that leaving the dance early because he wants to go home and brush his teeth is just sad.The harsh truth is, he’s bored. These things used to be better, he’s sure, when he’d come with a group of friends and they’d all hang out together, but he hadn’t realised how many of his friends have dates this time and given the choice between being a third wheel and alone he thinks alone is the better of the two options.Alone also leave him free to observe the date of one friend in particular, and perhaps David has been a little too wrapped up in his own problems lately because despite the interaction he’d spied on not so long ago he was surprised when he saw Ron walk in with Lip and is surprised further still when they stay close, close enough that he’s almost certain they’re here together-together.He watches them, faintly puzzled that he never noticed the beginnings of this despite all of his own interest in Ron. Then again, how much attention had he really paid to Ron outside of those few haphazard attempts at conversation? He’d been motivated by Ron but his focus had been on changing himself to fit the idea in his head, and on Lieb’s aid with those efforts.“Are you okay?”David startles. How hadn’t he spotted Joe sneaking up to his side? David had seen him arrive earlier, taken one look at Joe in a shirt and tie and decided not to greet him because he’d been certain that if he got up close he’d only end up tongue tied and gawking, but the frown on Joe’s face is enough to take David’s focus away from how good he looks. “I’m fine.”Joe looks doubtful. “Really? Because you’re watching Ron and Lip with a face that seems way too serious to be good.”“No,” David says, unsurprised by just how sincerely he means it. If anything seeing them together feels good - perhaps they’ll suit each other and it means David doesn’t have to feel as guilty about how fickle his feelings towards Ron were. “I was just thinking.”“You don’t have to pretend to be okay. Honestly it’s pretty shitty your friend agreed to go out with the guy you like,” Joe says. “Or liked. You only just got over him, it’s a bit fast to snatch him up.”David shakes his head. “Lip didn’t even know,” he admits, “He thinks I like…” but admitting what Lip did suspect felt like too much, like it would be embarrassing and almost certainly scare Joe off, “...somebody else.”“Even if you’re not mad at him, it must still piss you off, after all the effort you’ve made to try and get Ron, that he attracted Ron without even trying.”“Not really,” David admits, “Ron was never interested in anything I tried and being around him just made me feel stupid and awkward. I thought that was just part of liking somebody but now I’m not so sure.”“Well, what did you expect?” Joe says. “I thought you’d taken that into account with your whole plan was to change yourself to be more like what you think he wants.”“Now I think it was a stupid plan,” Webster admits. “I mean, you’re into all that cool stuff too and you’ve never made me feel bad about not being cool, even back at the beginning when I was totally clueless.” And he didn’t mean to admit that, that half the reason he’s over Ron is because he realised how shallow and unsatisfying the way Ron made him feel was when compared to how much he enjoys being around Joe, but Joe doesn’t seem to notice David’s slip.“Yeah, well,” he shrugs. “I guess he and I see things differently. But you’re not even a little bit bothered?”“No,” David says, and means it.Joe raises an eyebrow. “Then why are you hanging out all alone by the wall?”That’s… Joe is making it sound a lot worse than it is. David has hardly been alone all night, it’s just that right now all of his friends and getting drinks or dancing with their dates and so instead of being a group hanging out on the edges he’s waiting for their return. “I’m not alone,” he points out. “You’re here.”“You were alone when I got here,” Joe says. “And that still doesn’t explain why you’re on the side lines.David shrugs. He likes to come to these things for the social element, he doesn’t want to be the one person among his friends to not be talking about it on Monday, but they aren’t really his thing and there’s not much that he can do except be a wallflower. He waves a hand at the dance-floor, classmates moving like it’s natural. “That’s not really me.”“Bullshit!” The force in Joe’s voice startles David. “I know you can dance, I taught you.”David hadn’t expected Joe to be willing to bring up that night, and even so, “I’m not sure that applies here.” There’d been a wildness then that could hardly apply here when there are teachers waiting on the side lines to break up any couples who dance too close or extract anybody who’s wild movements might suggest underage drinking.It’s too late though because Joe is grabbing him by the hands and like always David is powerless to stop him, because he doesn’t want Joe to stop touching him and he can’t imagine refusing Joe anything when Joe is looking at him with such bright joy anyway.The music isn’t like the stuff Joe likes, less aggressive and more like the stuff David hears getting pumped out for ambiance at the grocery store, and the blandness makes it harder for him to find a beat, especially when the volume of the music in the gym has been kept low enough for people to have conversations on the dance-floor instead of the overpowering sound he’d lost himself in at the show.Still, he tries, because it’s Joe and because almost everybody here except Joe already thinks he’s a loser anyway, even his friends would say he’s uncool although they’d happily place themselves in the same category, so a bit of a bad dancing isn’t going to make much difference.Since the music is quiet though, he distracts himself from his awkwardness by sharing a question that’s been weighing on his mind. “Why were you helping me with Ron when you thought the whole idea was stupid and you liked me yourself?” he asks. “I mean, now I know you weren’t even in it for getting your homework done.”Joe shrugs. “You asked,” he says, as if that’s any sort of explanation.“Still, you hanging out with me—” it doesn’t make any sense without some other sort of motive for Joe, “—it’s odd. Your friends are staring at us right now,” David pointed out, wondering if they know that Joe has forgiven him and it’s just the strangeness holding their attention or if Skinny is about to storm over and attempt to defend his friend again.“Doesn’t matter what they think,” Lieb says, dragging David into a turn that is entirely off rhythm but does break the line of sight between him and Joe’s friends.For a moment David thinks he’d annoyed but, no, he’s seen Joe annoyed and this expression isn’t it. He’s never seen Lieb blush, but could this tense-jawed shifting-eyed look, so easily mistaken for anger, be Lieb’s own version of embarrassment?In that case, what is he embarrassed by? Being with David in front of his friends, but he’d known they were here when he’d asked David to dance and anyway from his conversations last week David had gathered that Skinny at least knew something of friendship that had sprung up between them and if he was aware the others surely had some inkling.So he wasn’t embarrassed just by the association. After all, he’d signed on for that freely, nobody had made him agree to help David all those weeks ago and he certainly hadn’t had to ask David to dance.And why had he done that? After how badly things had gone last time they were this close it makes no sense for Joe to have asked him —especially not when as much as David is in awe of everything Joe does it’s impossible to ignore that he doesn’t fit here much more easily than David does, stumbling to try and stick to an unfamiliar beat— even if he doesn’t realise that David’s thoughts are once against straying to kissing him.It’s too easy when Joe is this close, dancing just as awkwardly as David is but with a sheepish grin instead of shame, and David knows he shouldn’t but that common sense can’t stop his mind providing him with a sudden rush of reasons to kiss him anyway.Joe’s smile and his bright eyes, the way his suit is ever so slightly dishevelled in a way that makes the look his own rather than the stuffed into unfamiliar clothing air that most of their classmates have, the faintest hint of the scent that drives David wilder than laundry powder has any right too.The knowledge that despite agreeing to the plan, Joe had never approved of David’s pursuit of Ron, but his scepticism had always been more about David’s happiness than his odds of success and when David had needed rescuing, Joe had been there without question, and he never seemed to begrudge being David’s support even when it meant David quite literally clinging to him. Maybe Joe hadn’t set out to be perfect for David —how would he? why would he?— but he has been and David can’t believe that means nothing. Joe has welcomed David into his world in so many ways, maybe this one isn’t so out of the question either.But, perhaps most crucially, is the plain simple fact of badly David wants to. Now he’s this near to Lieb it’s impossible to deny that he wants it so desperately that it’s only going to be matter of time. Even if he holds back now there is going to come an occasion when they’re close and David doesn’t resist and if he’s going to make this gamble then why not make it now?If he’s wrong, he’ll ruin everything all over again and this time he won’t even be able to blame it on not knowing the mistake he’s about to make.But if he’s right…David knows the proper thing to do is to shut his eyes, but he doesn’t want to lose sight of Joe’s face and the expression that’s drawing him in. The music, the onlookers, they’re all irrelevant. He keeps watching Joe’s eyes, the way they go wide and startled as he leans in, then narrow as he gets closer still and for a moment David thinks he’s seeing anger, that he’s about to get pushed away, but then their lips meet and Joe’s eyes shut the rest of the way and David can’t think about watching anymore.Joe is still and for a moment David feels frozen in time, unable to pull back but absolutely certain that Joe is about to push him away. When Joe’s hands land on his shoulders, he slumps. He was wrong. Now all he can hope for is that he hasn’t ruined things utterly, the potential for interest he thought he’d seen in Joe must only have been his overactive imagination at work.The droop of David’s spine pulls them apart slightly, but as quick as the millimetre gap is formed it’s destroyed as Joe’s hands don’t shove they squeeze and suddenly Joe’s lips are pressed against his, too firm to be anything but intentional.They’re kissing.They’re kissing and it’s clumsy and David still feels light-headed from the residual terror of making a move, but Joe’s hands are twisting creases into his shirt and the knowledge that Joe is holding tight to him almost overpowers the kiss, holding him steady and keeping him close. Joe wants him.David breaks the kiss again, once again his body moving without his permission but this time it’s to grin, his mouth curling up irrepressibly as he watches Joe’s eyes snap open, drift up to meet David’s, all dark sincerity and then, so slowly that every moment burns into David’s mind in a frame by frame revelation of everything he’d hardly known he was waiting for, Joe mirrors his smile.There’s a distinct sound of cheering from the direction of the huddle of Lieb’s friends, including one voice that sounds a lot like Babe yelling, “Finally!”David flushes. “Did they know that you… that I… that we…” he stammers, because he’d known his own friends had speculated about the two of them but David had kind of figured Lieb’s friends were all too cool to pay him any mind.The sound Lieb makes can only be described as a hysterical giggle. “Seriously, Web?” he says, sounding strained.“I… it just seems like they weren’t surprised,” David says. “But how could they not be? I mean…?” He’d barely known his own feelings until nearly kissing Joe and then thinking he’d lost him, and he hadn’t been sure of Joe’s feelings until moments ago, so unless Joe’s friends were psychic… or maybe he’d been right to speculate that Joe had recognised David’s slip at the show, if he’d been gossiping to his friends about how David had nearly kissed him then David assumed that was something they’d condemn him for, but Joe had kissed him and his friends are laughing but there’s nothing mean about it.“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” Lieb grumbles unhelpfully. “Just… don’t worry about it, okay.”“But…”Joe kisses him again.David’s breath catches. He sees what Joe is trying to do, and he isn’t going to just forget his concerns, but maybe they can wait.