"Do boys in Pleasantville ever date other boys," Raine says, before they can tangle themselves more than they're already tangled. 

"...uh, no..." Lee says.

"What would that even mean —" 

Don't think about that don't think about that 

"Yeah, I don't think... that's... a thing? --But why do you have lots of feelings about me, we've never talked, how do you even know who I am--"

He thinks of, and doesn't say, a half dozen different sentences. 

What he finally lands on is "I don't know. But you bounce and it's very good?" 

Oh no. 

This is very cute. 

"...do you want me to show you the things that turned me colors?"

"...I don't know. I'm sorry." 

Lee... does not really know how to think about this at all.

Marlo noticed him! Marlo liked him enough to turn colors about it! Marlo likes that he bounces! But he doesn't know anything about Marlo, not really, just that he's good at sports and goes on dates with the prettiest and most popular girls in school. And Lee has one good thing to show him and Marlo doesn't want to see it at all and-- and what if Marlo thinks he's stupid now that they actually talked-- probably he does probably this is all some kind of horrible mistake-- aaaaaaaaaa okay he has figured out how he is going to think about this and the answer is panic. 

"Um. That's fine."

"— I'm sorry," he says again, "it's not — I think I'd like it? I like you? But I'm trying not to —" and he gestures vaguely at the part of him that's colors. 

"--why?"

"It's not — how things are? Or at least it wasn't before?" 

It is very, very difficult to say that it isn't how things should be, with Lee right in front of him. 

"I think this way is better actually? A lot better. But I don't know that I can show you without you becoming colors. --I guess Anthony didn't become colors?"

"We are not actually super clear on the mechanism of colors because we have two or maybe three data points to work with but you clearly can hear some stories without turning colors, Lee was still greyscale after I told him The Witches." 

"I want to tell you about currency exchanges! They're so cool and I can't tell Raine because she already knows."

He doesn't look like he's really aware of how he's smiling. 

"I'd like to hear about whatever a currency exchange is." 

Bounce bounce bounce. 

"So you know how prices are just like-- what they've always been in the store?"

"....yeah?"

"Well, if you think about it, you could do a totally different thing! If we only, I don't know, got clothes from people who sewed clothes like Raine, instead of getting them from the store, then you could give Raine money for clothes. And then you would pay for it if you wanted the clothes more than you wanted the money. But she can only make so many clothes, because she has to make them, so she would have to set the price at something where she valued the money more than the time it took to sew the clothes. And if lots of people wanted clothes, she would raise the price, so it only goes to the people who want clothes the most. So prices don't have to be just made up! They're a measure of-- how much everyone values something. And money is just a way of saying how much you care about having something. Um. Does that make sense? I haven't tried to explain it before, I just thought of it yesterday."

"I think it makes sense? That's -- weird to think about." 

(He definitely isn't aware of how much he's smiling.) 

"And money's just-- convenient, right? You could tell how valuable anything is in terms of anything. You could say a dress Raine sews is worth a hundred burgers, or car is worth a tenth of a house, or anything you want. And Raine told me a story about a world where there is more than one kind of money and you could put the prices of money in terms of other money. So if you had dollars and, I don't know, pesos, you could say a dollar is worth ten pesos!"

"Huh," which is not really an answer but he's not going to come up with anything better. 

Bounce bounce bounce. "It's really cool! It turned me colors."