"......huh," Lee says. "I know you've lived next door since we were little kids-- the stork brought us at the same time-- and I know I've had a crush on you since I was five... and I know you like art and what classes you're taking and that you're very popular and go on lots of dates... but I don't have any memories about you. I don't know what we talk about in the carpool or what you said in class. I can't remember any conversations you've been in, or what games we played together as kids, or whether you've ever had a solo in choir. And when I think about it too hard my brain just. Slips away."

"So probably there's no Pleasantville version of me in my world being very confused about everything, that's good." 

"...yeah it would be bad if the girl I had a crush on disappeared and then was replaced with someone else from another world no matter how nice you are. I guess someone wanted to make you feel welcome?"

"I guess! And it's better for me than the alternative I guess but it's a hell of a way to go about it." 

He really really wants to ask for another story but instead he says, "Should I walk you home so you can get started writing down the stories before you forget?"

"I don't think I'll forget anything in the next few hours that I would have remembered otherwise, but we can start walking home if you want?" 

Then Lee will keep asking for stories and occasionally explanations all afternoon!

(Things Pleasantville does not apparently have, according to his questions: politics, violence between people over the age of ten, factories, farms, conflict of any kind.)

That's bizarre and kind of creepy but Raine is so happy to tell him about the Hobbit. 

From his questions about the Hobbit, Raine learns that Pleasantville also does not have mountains, caves, addiction, or meaningful income inequality, and Lee seems to assume as a matter of course that the treasure will be shared between all dwarves who live there equally. 

He is, however, familiar with the concept of archery and riddles. He makes a very gratifying face about the conclusion of the riddle game, and seems to find Hobbiton rather homey. 

Well, they don't know that that isn't true of Dwarves, and in fact the Company did canonically sign a contract guaranteeing each of them an equal share of the treasure, so that's not far off. 

Also, Lee is very cute and keeps doing cute things with his face. At the end of the story, when Bilbo is back home and proven alive and his sword is on the mantelpiece, she leans over and kisses his cheek. 

Lee does not know at all how to make sense of this occurrence so instead he just gazes at Raine with an expression full of wonder.

"You're very cute and very good," she informs him, and does it again. 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa this is kind of terrifying but also the most amazing thing that has ever happened to him???

He's very good. 

Raine holds his hand as he walks her home, and when she gets home she sets to writing down a list of titles of stories and poems she can and should write down, and then she looks at the length of the list and decides to figure out in the next week whether she has access to a typewriter, and then flops on her bed again and stares at the ceiling and has another existential crisis about the concept of a world so small you can cross it in six hours by car, and then gets up and — isn't sure what her chores actually are so she puts her shoes in the corner to be the shoes pile and the clothes she's worn since arriving in another corner to be the not-dirty-yet pile and 80/20s making her bed by smoothing out the top blanket and then, once the manufactured task is over, goes right back to the existential crisis. 

Dinner is meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, and peas; Raine discovers that apparently she has plans to go to a movie with her friends Saturday evening. The movie is two hours of extremely pretty dancing with elaborate costumes and no plot, sort of like a cross between Cirque du Soleil and ballet.

On Sunday morning, she discovers religion exists in Pleasantville by means of having to go to a church service. They sing beautiful hymns and pray. Sunday afternoon she is supposed to vacuum the house and dust and do her homework; Sunday evening is apparently family board game night. (They play Clue-- which is about finding who gave Mr. Body his secret birthday present and what and where it is-- and the Game of Life.)

School continues much as it was. Fashion and Design, Painting, and Choir are fun, if you set aside the weird experience of painting in black and white. History class only involves genealogy, which she will apparently be expected to memorize for the test. Literature class teaches short stories with almost aggressively bland and conflict-free plots: in one a family has a nice day at a beach; in another a teenage boy has to choose which of two girls to go steady with, talks about it with his parents and friends, and picks the one he is most compatible with. P.E. continues to be softball and enlivened by the existence of hot shirtless boys. 

In Home Living class they talk about their futures. (Everyone expects to get married; most want kids, but some don't, and the teacher does not seem to object to this.) They set long-term and short-term goals, write an essay about their interests and aptitudes, and learn about different careers they could choose. (The primary options seem to be nurse, teacher, and secretary.)

Most afternoons, there's something planned after school that Raine's invited to: a football game, a trip to the skating rink, hanging out at the pizza parlor. If she goes, boys flirt with her and girls make an effort to include her in the conversation, but no one seems to mind if she's quiet. 

Lee talks to her during the carpool and says hi to her in the hallways, but doesn't make an effort to talk to her; they chat a bit during the football game, but they're surrounded by other people and can't talk about anything secret. He falls down a lot at the skating rink. Notably, no one is making much of an effort to include him in conversation.

If she asks for a typewriter, her mother gives her some money, tells her to go to the store to buy one, and comments that it's so nice to see Raine taking an interest in a potential career and not just boys.

Hanging out with her parents is..... weird. Profoundly, incredibly weird. She is against church services but doesn't put up a fight about it; in general she follows her instinct to tell her parents as little about herself or her life as humanly possible. 

She flirts back with some but not all boys, talks to her classmates as much as she feels capable of and listens the rest of the time. Movies are fun; skating rinks are fun; pizza parlors are surprisingly fun; she only goes to the football game to talk to Lee. 

She does not memorize genealogy, because frankly she has better uses for her ability to keep things memorized; she does take notes, because she'll need them in order to cheat. Instead of paying attention to the mind numbing stories in literature class she tries her hand at writing her own stories; she doesn't share them with anyone, even Lee, because the people around her might not be able to tell how clumsy they are but she can. Painting in black and white is weird but she gets used to it; choir is lovely; fashion and design is fun, and she's getting better at doing makeup in black and white. She continues to beat the other girls at softball and watch the boys do their thing. In Home Living she writes about her aptitude for storytelling and sewing and making things, suggests that maybe she could be a writer or she could sew things for other people as well as herself, and otherwise keeps very quiet. 

She buys a typewriter and writes down everything she can remember every night until her wrists scream. 

It goes.... well, it goes. Lying to adults is second nature at this point, and being well-liked is a lovely change. 

And on Thursday afternoon, as classes are ending, Anthony catches Raine by her locker and says, "Want to go out to dinner with me Friday night?"

...hmm.

Anthony knows she just went on a date with Lee to the soda fountain, because he was there and saw them. Anthony joked about her having multiple dates every day, and it didn't seem then or in retrospect like anyone in particular was the butt of the joke. And, furthermore, nobody in Pleasantville has meaningful conflict, so probably Anthony did not just do something that would be hurtful to Lee by local standards. 

"I'd love to." 

"It's a date," he says, and blows her a kiss before backflipping down the hallway.

How... do you... okay whatever Anthony is just unrealistic and that's fine. 

On Friday afternoon she contemplates dressing as weirdly as she possibly can purely because it feels weird to dress like all her classmates, does not do that even though Anthony would probably think it was funny, and meets Anthony outside. 

Anthony shows up at her door like a gentleman, but unlike Lee he has a car.

"You look lovely."

"Thank you. — you look great." 

"Coming from our local fashion expert? I'm flattered."

(He's wearing a leather jacket, tight blue jeans, and a shirt that clings, and generally looks like the bad boy character from a TV show aimed at ten-year-olds.)

"Just you wait, next week I'll start drawing extra eyes all over my face and nobody will be able to tell whether I'm being ironic about it or not." 

It is sort of odd, Raine notes, how strongly his pants can give the impression of being blue jeans without actually being able to be blue. 

"You'll start a new trend. They'll have to teach eye drawing skills in Home Living. Maybe switch classes with the art teacher for a while."

He drives confidently to a location without actually asking her what she wants to eat.