Indy arrives at the garage-turned-music bar to a maelstrom of noise.

Dewey, the vampire-looking guy who owns the place and also leads Jude's band, lets her in, and immediately the thudding of drums with the occasional dissonant crash of a cymbal bursts into Indy's ears. Dewey gives neither a greeting nor explanation. He just glances at her with mild confusion, then leaves again to go mess with some wires by the stage.

Also at the stage is Jude, clunky black headphones pushing his hair back from his forehead, where a delicate widow's peak points down the center of his nose. His brows are knitted with intense focus as he strikes the drums to the rhythm, a carved line in his forearm tensing with every percussive note. The drums suit him. There is a certain collected chaos to the instrument, Indy thinks, a stunning system to it, but even more so when any such system is abandoned. From what she's seen, Jude works in a similar way—his life, his identity, staked upon a systematic abandoning of anything and everything premeditated.

It's simultaneously freeing and terrifying, and she thinks the same thing as she watches him play.

When he notices her standing there, the concentration evaporates from his face and one of his drumsticks goes flying from his palm. It strikes a comedically flawless ba-dum-tss on its way down to the creaky stage floor. "Indy," Jude says, slipping his headphones off, his hair sticking up wildly. He looks shocked for a moment, before the easy smile she recognizes more slides across his face. "You sure got here fast. You're not skipping class for me, are you?"

Indy stretches forward to take the fallen drumstick, tapping it idly against her wrist as she speaks. "Is that the fantasy you have playing out in your head right now?" she says. "I'm the goody-two-shoes, you're the delinquent who's arrived to corrupt me?"

"I'm the delinquent?" Jude makes an exaggerated thinking face. "I seem to remember you having this odd knack for breaking into abandoned buildings."

"You offered to come with me."

"Yeah," Jude says, hopping off the stage and snatching the drumstick back from Indy's hands. "Because you were totally going to go anyway."

"I—"

He drums up her arm, her shoulder, landing on the top of her head. "Don't say you could have handled yourself. Even if you maybe possibly could have, you have to admit it was way more fun because I was there."

"Jude," Indy says, smacking the drumsticks away. She watches him slide them into the back pocket of his black jeans. "Why am I here?"

"Like, on Earth? Hm. I ask myself that a lot, too. Like—could it be that we really are just born to die? It sounds oversimplified, but—"

"Jude."

He smirks, one of his eyes—a deeper, earthy brown in the low light of Dewey's bar—crinkling in the corners. His voice is quieter, not in the sense of a whisper, but as though he's narrowed it the way you narrow a camera lens: to focus it only on her. "How much time do you have?"

Indy checks her phone. "I have dinner with my parents at six."

Jude pauses. "Just to clarify, this is something you want to go to, right?"

"Yes," Indy says, and laughs before she can stop herself. "If I wanted you to get me out of it, I would just ask you, Jude."

"Good," Jude says, and he moves away, heading for a blue windbreaker hanging on the hook by the door. "I know you were promised orange juice, but on second thought, it's nice outside. I wanna show you something."

Dog the Car is parked out back beside the dumpsters, and Indy thuds a fist against the hood by way of greeting. Jude drives—not very far, but far enough in the right direction for the city around Proudley to loosen and disperse and the sun to hide itself shyly behind a canopy of trees. The flat roads become mountainous, arcing up away from the earth, and the air, ripe with an arriving winter chill, is scented with pine and mulch.

Finally, when Indy's ears are beginning to pop, gravel zings beneath Dog's tires as he pulls over to a large parking lot a small green sign deems a scenic overlook. He backs the car up to the line of the fence, yanks the key from the engine, and just looks at Indy.

She looks back. "What is the point of this, Jude?"

"You'll see."

He pops the trunk and instead of getting out and walking around, opts to climb through the backseat. Indy watches him, shaking her head, but when he turns with a dopey smile on his face and holds out his hand to her, she takes it.

She forgets to speak, forgets, even, that she is there with someone else—looking out over Proudley College and the small, happy town that hugs it close. The Commons is a tiny green rectangle from up here, dotted with multicolored ants, the spired pale red brick and brownstone buildings fencing it in. She notes the Gothic archway of the main campus entrance, squints and tries to locate the top floor of DuBois, grinning when she finds its tarnished green roof.

Jude draws his knees into his chest, folding his arms lazily around them. "I come up here a lot when I..." A pause, a hitch in his breath Indy pretends not to hear. "When I need some quiet time. Shocker, I know, but I'm not always loud and obnoxious."

Indy still doesn't reply, her eyes locked on this place that has been her daily existence for the last two years of her life, that will be for two more, until she moves on from it entirely. The sense of permanence hammered home by the click of her key in the dorm room door or the excited zipping of backpacks as the clock on the wall nears time is falsified: an illusion, a delusion, of the mind.

"Indy," Jude says slowly. "You okay in there?"

She blinks, not realizing Jude was looking at her. His headphones are still draped casually around the back of his neck, his shoulders shrugged towards his ears. There is something in the look in his eyes that scares her, not because it's threatening, but because it's anything but. "Sorry," she murmurs, looking away again. Birds call in the trees above them; a tree limb waves as one bird takes flight from it and arcs across their vision. "I was just thinking."

"Of course," Jude says. "That's what this place is for."

"I used to be really into photography," Indy says, before she really knows why at all she is saying it—maybe just to fill the space. "My dad gave me one of his old cameras when I was eight or something, and let me tell you, I was the most obnoxious eight-year-old. I took pictures of everything. Birds and houses and bugs and mulch and whatever was out there. I liked that a photo could take something transient and make it permanent. I became the de facto photographer for every family trip after that. I even worked for the school paper in high school."

Jude has drawn one leg up beside him, hooking his elbow over his knee. His eyes stay trained on the horizon. "And now?"

Indy shrugs. "I got to college and I didn't have time for it anymore. There's always something to study, some assignment to finish, and then when I do have free time I'm too exhausted to do anything but sleep."

The image before her now begs to be captured in a frame, the mountains lining the edge, Proudley nestled in its safe valley between them, the sky stretching bottomless blue above their heads. And Jude, next to her: the scene's careful observer, a protector, a confidant.

She tells him, "I think you made the right choice, Jude. The sort of choice I was too scared to even acknowledge was there."

"No," Jude says. It would sound flippant if it weren't for the casual, easy tone of his voice, like they've already been friends for years. "It wasn't the right choice. It was just the one that made sense. That's it. We both chose the one that makes sense."

Indy would like to believe that is true. A world where everything is either one thing or the other, it makes sense or it doesn't, sounds like paradise to her. But lately, she knows more and more that this isn't the case.

Dog squeaks as Jude hops off onto the ground then, walking up to the fence and turning his back to the scenery. He plasters a smile on his face, and holds up a peace sign.

Indy frowns. "You look like a six-year-old at Disney Land. What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm posing for a picture," Jude says. "Take a picture of me, Indy."

"I don't even have a camera!"

"Yes you do. Don't you know they put those on all the phones nowadays? Sometimes three or four of them."

"You're ridiculous," Indy says, but she's taking her phone from her pocket anyway.

Jude winks. "So I've been told."

She raises the phone, turning it on its side, lining Jude up so the guiding lines train the eyes naturally in his direction. The afternoon is foggy but somehow he transcends this grayness, the energy pouring from him like the sunlight splitting the clouds.

Indy snaps the photo, and Jude comes running back up to her, leaning over her shoulder to see. He nods, pleased. "You're right; I do look like a six-year-old."

"It's cute, though."

"I am?"

Indy sputters, looking up, which is an even worse mistake. She forgot until now how close they were sitting, her shoulder squarely against Jude's chest. She looks up and her eyes find not his eyes but his lips first, heart-shaped, upturned with mischief.

She scoots away, more an instinct than anything else. "I'll be away this weekend," she says. "Turns out Percy's family and the Dobbs family might know each other, and they're having some art auction at the Mitchells' place, so it might be a chance to learn more about them."

"Really?" The normally upbeat tone of Jude's voice has shifted, just slightly, and Indy winces internally, knowing she must have made it awkward.

"Yeah. I would offer to bring you, but I don't know. It doesn't really seem like your scene."

"It probably isn't," Jude agrees. "Just listen, Indy. There's—can you do me a big favor?"

Indy frowns, looking at him squarely. "Depends what it is."

"Promise me you'll be careful," Jude says. She watches his hand flutter in the space between them for a moment, but in the end he returns it to his pocket. "These people may not be who you think they are, as is the case with anyone, I guess. But still. Just—I don't know. Pay attention, Indy."

"Jude," Indy says, laughing uncomfortably, hoping it'll lighten the suddenly dour mood of things. "You're scaring me. I've been to the Mitchells' place a billion times. I know what I'm doing."

"I know, I know. Just be careful. For your friends' sakes, too," Jude says. He raises an eyebrow at her, his eyes as intense as a flame. "Promise?"

She gets the feeling he won't let up until she agrees.

"Yeah," Indy tells him. "I promise."