I want to show you sunsets, and snow at dawn, and neon signs on wet asphalt, and candy apples and blue morpho butterflies and fire and moss and cherry trees and stained glass windows, Raine thinks, and doesn't say, because it would kind of just be taunting him. 

"....totally unrelatedly to anything, what's the difference between dating and going steady, I haven't been able to figure it out just by eavesdropping and there isn't really anyone else I can ask," she says, because she's pretty sure that if she puts it off any longer there will be a romcom-style miscommunication and she just is not about that life. 

"Oh!" he says. "Dating is what you're doing with me or Anthony-- a boy and a girl spend time together doing something fun and getting to know each other, he pays for her, you maybe hold hands. Going steady means that he gives you his letterman's jacket or his class ring or something, and he calls you every day, and he takes you out twice a week, and neither of you is allowed to date anybody else. Adults don't really like it when you go steady, you're supposed to date around and get to know people,but people do anyway. You're not really supposed to kiss or cuddle someone unless you're going steady with them but some guys are ungentlemanly and some girls are, uh, loose." (He blushes red about the last word.)

"Not getting to kiss or cuddle anyone is terrible and I've had enough of it so I will be ignoring that part. Thank you." 

Lee is strongly considering the possibility of being ungentlemanly. 

Instead of proposing something disrespectful he says, "why do you ask?"

"Anthony asked if I wanted to go steady with him and I wanted to check what that meant before I decided." 

"Oh."

"— I'm going to tell him no." 

"I mean, you don't have to, I don't-- um in your world it seems like sometimes people don't get married but here everyone gets married? I mean it, like, literally everyone? I'm going to-- find someone at a dance or fall in love with my secretary or get introduced to someone else single-- and it's going to work out fine so you don't have to date me because I might not get dates from other people. I'm going to get married no matter what."

"....okay but in the meantime I will get to hang out with you and possibly cuddle you and definitely tell you stories and watch you bounce about things and get you to make that face, the one you had at the conclusion of the riddle game, and tell you about my world and watch you make faces about it, and I am not actually going to give that up because Anthony has abs." 

A significantly happier "oh."

"See? I was right. Watching you make faces is good and important." 

Squirming! Extremely happy blushing!

"Thank you. Um. You too?"

Happy beaming!! 

"— oh, you know what I bet Pleasantville doesn't have, is good poetry," and she pushes Lee Caged Bird by Maya Angelou. 

"...why are the sentences broken up like that?"

"....fuck, do you not have poetry at all — no, that can't be right, you have songs with words — you know how songs are broken up into lines? Poetry does the same thing." 

"...so it's like a song without any music?"

"I'd be more likely to say that a song is poetry set to music, but yeah, pretty much." 

"Huh. Are you supposed to read it out loud, like a song?"

"You can? You don't have to and supposed to isn't really a thing but it usually adds something." 

With great concentration he reads it twice, once without his lips moving and once with, and then he starts crying.

Raine stands up and hugs him. 

"...yeah. Yeah, it does that." 

"The bird is so sad."

She nods and reaches out for Lee's hand and... elects to explain that in a good poem it isn't just literally about the bird at a different time that is not now. 

"...I don't think songs are supposed to make you sad."

"...some of them are. Lots of them are. And poetry is mostly supposed to make you feel things, there's no one feeling that all poems are trying to make you have."