“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said. Maybe not exactly the most charismatic thing to say but honestly, like, even with the usual problems Jeremy was just so head empty. He’d never really understood what it meant to have your hair stand on end, but he kinda got the gist now: goosebumps forming a little bit on ...

“I just mostly walk,” he said, a little chuckle mixed in with his words He decided, maybe, to try and steer the conversation away from driving. More than too many instances within the past couple years when his mum was like ‘but when are you gonna learn to drive????????’ More than enough arguments. ...

“Uh…” Well. She still wants to talk to you after you went on wayyyyyyyyy too long about the route you take home. Maybe she’ll be cool to hear you embarrass yourself some more. “I… used to. Used to ride a bike, I mean. Haven’t… really done it since I was eleven though.” And he didn’t really think it’...

“Home, uh…” He stopped, for a second. Pointed the opposite direction they were walking down. “Like, that way, into the gardens, through the gardens, down the long street, up to the freeway, over the freeway, into the forest, take a corner into the forest towards the tennis courts, through the tennis...

“Nah,” he said. So, like, looking over the address she’d put into her phone… it’d take him 20-40 minutes to take her to her place… 20-40 minutes to get back, then the usual 40 it’d take to get to his place. Probably home before midnight, if he was lucky. Probably too late to have a shower. Probably ...

The voice jolted him. Made him aware that there was a world beyond him and the piano. He turned his head — just so the parts of him that didn’t already know could catch up — and fuck it was Serena. She was there, right past all the tables and chairs and indistinct posters on the wall. She’d just see...

Was she… not gonna go ‘oh, don’t worry, I was just joking, my name’s BB’? Was he… gonna have to keep up the guise that her name was actually Harriet? Was she… making him keep going with the joke? … Shit. BB, Harriet, whoever she wanted to be: she was dangerous. Jeremy was gonna have to fucking watch...

It began as an arrangement. A part not part of the original song. Something appropriately jazzy, sure — something to let the kids know this wasn’t their grandma’s Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da — but it didn’t really feel indicative of what came after it. Didn’t really feel like Lennon was playing it like he wan...

Jeremy thought about it for a second.

Gave a little bit of a smile.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t realize that was you, Harriet.”

“It’s… I’m Jeremy.” Was he allowed to be a little miffed that she didn’t know who he was? Like, yeah, it wasn’t like he was a social butterfly — more like a social… caterpillar? moth? Dustox? — and it wasn’t like the two of them had ever talked before, but, like, they’d been around each other like… ...

Okay so that was like, wayyyyy away from where Jeremy would’ve been going. He would’ve had to go, like, however long it’d take to get to her place, and then he’d have to walk the forty minutes it usually took plus however long the distance was between here and her house. Would take… an hour, at best...

Well… okay. She was… probably close enough to make the distance, if she was that confident. Still kinda stupid that he wasn’t coming given all the shit she was carrying, but if she was willing to make jokes about it, then… then it probably wasn’t a big deal. At least not on her end. She was probably...

Oh man that told Jeremy everything he needed to know about this dude he was never going to meet. Really. Like, being somebody’s ride there or ride home was fucking serious shit. They were reliant on you. They had no choice but to wait, out in the open, for the hope that maybe the car they were looki...

Was she laughing… with him? At him? At the general situation? Was she… okay with the whole joke and stuff? Did she resent him for it? Like maybe the smile was meant to meant to signal that things were A-OK but also people smiled at Jeremy all the time and he never really knew what it was that they a...

“I, uh-” So it was meant to fuck with her. Like maybe it’d gotten away from him at the end there but the idea was to maybe make her squirm a little there. She’d slammed the door into him, and the first thing she did was make a joke about it, so maybe he’d earned the right to maybe get a little mad a...