“You should have seen her,” Kurt moans, handing Rachel, his best friend in the mutant hellhole they called McKinley High School, her Frappuccino, only slightly judging, as he sits in the chair across from her with his coffee and banana nut muffin. “She was looking at me through those cheap, plastic glasses, mocking me, not at all bothered by the fact that she's completely ruining my life. In fact, I think she was enjoying it!”

They've chosen to sit at a table in the dead center of The Lima Bean, the coffee spot that's destined to play a huge part in Kurt's future, but Kurt finds no need to lower his voice or censor himself. This is their space. If other customers don't want to listen to his drama, they can move their butts outside to the patio.

Rachel, unperturbed by Kurt's griping, gestures for him to scoot her way.

“Okay,” Rachel says, “I've been thinking over your situation, and I may have come up with the perfect solution.” She looks left, then right, then leans forward to share her master plan.

“You think we should get Puck and Finn to pour sugar in her gas tank, too?” Kurt asks, a smile bubbling at the corners of his mouth.

“What? No,” Rachel says, “I'm talking about your scholarship project. I know you don't want to do the whole thing over, but I think I have a plan that will work for you. Something that's, shall we say, mutually beneficial?”

Kurt's eyebrows draw together. “And, how is that?”

“Are you ready?” she asks, shimmying in, excitement brewing in her brown eyes. Kurt nods. He's sure that whatever plan Rachel Berry has concocted he isn't going to like, but it'll take his mind off the burgeoning black hole that is his college prospects. “You and I can get your project done 100% over the upcoming spring break if” - she drums the tabletop with her hands for added suspense - “you make your project all about me.”

For a third time in about two hours, Kurt's jaw drops. “Come again?”

“Think about it,” Rachel says. She holds her hands up, framing the image she has in her head so Kurt can picture it with her. “You can do a photo essay on my struggle as an unappreciated artist growing up in a small town, making her way to the big city to someday fulfill her dream of starring in the long awaited revival of Funny Girl.”

Kurt looks at Rachel, still staring off into space with a wispy smile on her face.

“Are you kidding me?” he asks.

“Come on, Kurt! It'll be epic.”

“Tell me what this has to do with me again?” Kurt asks. “I mean, Ms. Boarish did say that the problem with my pictures was she didn't think there was enough of me in them. So how does doing a photo project about you equate to me?”

“Because of our complicated relationship,” Rachel lays out, pausing to take a sip of her drink. “Our constant fight for stardom supremacy while maintaining a friendship based on mutual admiration and respect. It's the classic enemies-to-friends trope. It's uber-popular these days. People on the Internet eat it up.”

“You read waaaay too much fanfiction,” Kurt mutters, sipping his non-fat mocha.

“And now, you're an up-and-coming photog sensation,” Rachel plows on, further proving Kurt's point, “taking pictures of another a-little-further-along-but-still-up-and-coming vocal sensation. Moi.”

Kurt shakes his head. “And what exactly are you getting out of this?”

“You mean besides supporting my bestest best friend in his hour of need by donating my face to his cause?”

“Yeah, besides that.”

“I'm getting the most rewarding thing a would-be Tony Award winner could hope for…free publicity.”

“There it is,” Kurt says, pushing his coffee aside, suddenly losing his taste for it.

“Kurt,” Rachel says with a hint of a beg, “your project is going to be seen by hundreds of people in the arts. It's going to be all over the Internet. I would be an idiot not to offer.”

“Of course,” he says, nibbling the walnut pieces off the top of his muffin. “Look, Rachel, I appreciate your concern, but I'm not redoing my portfolio. I don't think that Ms. Boarish really knows what she's talking about.”

“Uh, Kurt, you do know that her husband is a member of the Council for the Arts of Greater Lima?”

Kurt stops mid-swallow. He actually didn't know that.

“Irrelevant. That's her husband,” he points out. “Not her.”

Rachel stares down into the remains of her melted Frap, toying with the next thing she wants to say.

“Kurt,” Rachel starts, tossing her hair over her shoulders and fiddling with the star pendant hanging from a thin gold chain around her neck, “you know I've never really liked Ms. Boarish…”

“And that name,” Kurt cuts in, tearing his muffin into banana nut crumbs and leaving them in a pile on his napkin. “That woman needs to change her last name before I can take her seriously.”

“- but she may have a point.”

Kurt hears Rachel's voice over the sound of his own complaining, and he looks at her aghast.

“Rachel Barbra Berry!” he barks. “You're supposed to be on my side!”

“I am on your side!” she says. “I'm on your side so much that I want to make sure that no matter what, you make it to New York, go to the school of your choice, and live happily ever after!” Rachel takes a thoughtful sip from her drink. “But mostly I'm on my side! If you don't get into NYA, then you won't be living the fabulous life with me, and what in the world will I do without my best gay?” Kurt rolls his eyes. Typical Rachel Berry, to turn this crisis of his into a crisis of hers. “But, I haven't seen you photograph anything new lately. In fact, I barely see you take your camera out of its bag. Have you…maybe…lost your muse?”

“Absolutely not,” Kurt says, grabbing his cup and chugging what's left of his cold coffee. Kurt is appalled by Rachel's insinuation…but only because she noticed. So maybe he was hoping to get by on his laurels, win that scholarship based on past achievements, but that's because Ohio isn't his aesthetic. As the end of senior year closes in, he can find no more inspiration among the same old-same old pictures of trees and skies and fields. New York is his obsession, and its plethora of art, culture, theater, architecture...

Besides, Ohio has too much history for him, and he's eager to leave it far behind.

“No, I haven't lost my muse,” Kurt counters, putting down his cup. “I'm just…I'm tired of this place. I belong in New York. I always have. It's where my heart is and I…I can't wait to go home.”

“I know how you feel,” Rachel says, equally glum. “And we will. We'll get there. In a few months, we'll be out of Lima, and our real lives will begin. It's waiting there, Kurt.”

“Yeah,” Kurt says unconvincingly. Rachel can be as optimistic as she wants. She got her letter from NYADA declaring her a finalist. She's a shoe in. Everybody knows it; even the people who hate her know it.

Kurt knows because he used to hate her, and he knew it then, too.

“So,” she says, her head bouncing up, her smile back as if it had never left, “do you want to go for some retail therapy? We can pick up Mercedes, stop by Sephora for a makeover, buy a soft pretzel?”

“Thanks,” Kurt says, collecting up his muffin bits in his napkin, preparing to chuck them in the first trash can he sees, “but I think I'll pass this time.”

“You know what might make you feel better?” Rachel asks, trying again to persuade him. “We can grab dinner at The Red Robin. After the main course, you can pretend to propose to me, and they'll give us a free slice of Freckled Lemonade Cake.” Rachel claps her hands at another brilliant plan. Kurt flashes her an obligatory half-smile for her effort.

“As much as I love Freckled Lemonade Cake, I think I need some alone time,” Kurt says, “to figure this whole mess out. If I'm going to have a new portfolio – no, a new media presentation – by the deadline, I had better start yesterday.”

“Good,” she says, rising to her feet and grabbing her cup. “It's good to see you getting down to business. Now go, photograph, create, get that scholarship, and let's get to New York already!”

Kurt picks up his cup and follows her out, quiet in the wake of Rachel Berry's attitude that sunshine, optimism, and angels cure everything. But Rachel was right about one thing. Kurt had lost his muse. And even though he's sure it's nowhere to be found in Lima, Ohio, he has to at least try if he ever wants to leave. That does require retail therapy, but at a different place than the mall. Besides, he needs to be alone to reflect.

Kurt has to pull a Stella and get his groove back.

Since Kurt was Rachel's ride to The Lima Bean, he drops her off at the mall to meet up with her boyfriend Finn, then heads off without telling her where. He feels it lends him an air of mystery when his well-meaning friends don't always know where he runs off to. His afternoon caffeine fixes at The Lima Bean used to be his private ritual before he and Rachel became friends, and she demanded he take her with him. If he let Rachel in on this secret, she'd want to come, and there'd be no getting rid of her after that.

It's not too far out of their way, but he can't recall ever seeing another McKinley High student there when he's gone.

He smiles when he sees the store come into view. It's almost as comforting to him as going home.

The Et Cetera Thrift Shop.

His mother used to take him there a lifetime ago. Like any second-hand store, it has the requisite out-of-style clothes, broken toys, miscellaneous handmade junk (like picture frames with seashells and glitter glued around the edge, a whole selection of jam jars with crocheted cozies covering the lids), and left over convalescent supplies that most thrift stores carry. But this one thrift store, unlike others he's been to, has something else that calls him back over and over when he needs inspiration.

Books. But not just any books. All thrift stores have books. This one thrift store has the largest selection of used and antique books Kurt has ever found anywhere in Ohio. It seems to get them daily and by the droves – so many that they don't all fit on the shelves, and boxes of them are left open in the back room for whoever wants to look through them.

Kurt adores old books. He loves the smell of them, the look of them, the weight of them in his hands, the feel of the paper between his fingers when he turns the pages. The older the book, the better, and this thrift store is rife with the most unique books on the planet – books about art, books about science, books about philosophy, books on absolutely ludicrous subjects like Animal Husbandry as Defined by Your Astrological Sign or 32 Practical Ways to Kill Your Unwanted Pet Goldfish. Even if he can't find anything particularly inspirational, a lot of them make him think, and some of them are good for a laugh.

But the real gems to Kurt are the books people normally don't buy – the used journals, diaries, and sketch books. They usually sit on a shelf by themselves, untouched and dusty, because who would buy something that someone else already wrote in? Usually people's thoughts aren't cherished unless they're bound between glossy covers and sold by publishers like Little, Brown, and Company, or HarperCollins. But some of Kurt's favorite tales of love, loss, angst, and sacrifice he's found in single printings by unknown authors.

It's not only the words Kurt finds fascinating. The whole idea of keeping a journal (something he's never had the time or inclination to start) tickles him. Kurt likes to imagine what the owner was thinking every time they touched it, pulled it out of hiding from under their pillow, their mattress, or their drawer with the false bottom where they kept it safe from little siblings' prying eyes. Or how about when they saw it sitting on the shelf at Target or Macy's or wherever for the very first time? Why did they choose this book, with the brown leather cover? Or this one with the floral print?

Kurt runs his fingertips down the worn spines, lined up in a row and leaning to the right. He touches each one and waits for the perfect diary to speak to him. He has a method to choosing. He closes his eyes and lets the pads of his fingers make the decision for him. His fingertips dance down the line of books once, and then back, detecting smooth, bumpy, creased, and then soft. His fingers stop. Soft is a good sign. It doesn't just indicate that a journal was opened a lot, but carried, the soft skin a symptom of the oil from a person's hands seeping into the hide.

He opens his eyes.

His fingers have landed on a diary with a burgundy-dyed leather cover. Kurt was right. He can see from where the gold embossed words on the spine have worn away that this book was handled regularly. It reminds him of a King James Bible, specifically the one his father carried around for a short time right after his mother passed away. It was this same shade of burgundy, with the same style gold lettering on the spine, but it never got this amount of wear. His father stopped carrying it before the year was up, and Kurt's mother died in September.

Kurt picks up the book. As he grabs it, he feels something inside it shift, and a cascade of pictures fall out of the binding. His heart leaps. Seeing them piled on the floor is almost like Christmas. These memories – someone else's memories, stories he doesn't know yet, a puzzle he can create in his head – will be just the thing to get his creative juices percolating.

Kurt crouches down, lays the book by his foot, and starts gathering up the photographs. He picks them up by the edges, flips them over, and blows dust off the printed image. He shuffles them together, smallest to biggest, then sits down on the floor with his back against the wall to look through them. They seem to be headshots, all of the same person – a dapper young man dressed in a suit and bowtie, with the face of a young Montgomery Clift (before his accident). Kurt bites back a smile. He's really very handsome, with his dark hair styled back away from his face, gleaming from the use of some product (a gel, most likely, something meant to give his hair texture and shine), his eyes shining with the pop of flash bulbs (they leave a distinctive starburst behind – Kurt would recognize it anywhere), and his mouth, well…Kurt might not know much about it, but he has very kissable looking lips. The photos are black and white, but that doesn't matter. Anyone can print a black and white image. But from the type of paper they're printed on (Kodak Professional says a red stamp in the back corner) and the grain of the image, Kurt suspects these pictures are pretty old. Late 50s, maybe? Whoever this young man is, he's not a young man anymore. He might even have gone from this world.

It's heartbreaking to think about.

On the back of one of the pictures, scrawled in blue pen that – thankfully – doesn't cause a relief on the image, Kurt reads, “D. B. Anderson – 17 of 52” with a checkmark beside the first number. That means this picture might have been printed in a magazine or a newspaper. So then did the diary belong to the man in the image, the photographer, or a fan? Any one of those would do, but Kurt's hoping for the man himself. (And though he feels like a traitor to his own kind, his second choice would be the fan – a slightly obsessed fan since there are about fifteen pictures of the man in Kurt's hand, but as he picks up the diary and opens it, he can feel a bunch more still left in the binding. Not that Kurt's complaining.)

Kurt pulls open the front cover, searching for any inscription. At the very top, in neat script, he sees written:

Devon Blaine Anderson

(November 1933 - ?).

New York, NY

So there's a chance he isn't dead, but he's really old.

Kurt turns to the first page. He's long since gotten over his guilt at reading the private thoughts of strangers and dives in.

November 16, 1933

I am born.

…

I'm sorry to say I have no memory of this day.

…

November 17, 1933

I am a day old.

…

I have no recollection of this day either.

…

November 18, 1933

Why don't we just go ahead and skip forward about, oh, I don't know, five years?

…

April 10, 1938

That's better. A lot that happened around this time (around the age of 4 that is) is kind of difficult to remember, too, except for this day. This bum-dinger of a day. It was a Sunday, around eight o'clock in the morning, and my mother was getting us ready for church. She was busy juggling my brother and sister, and trying to peel my lazy old man off the couch, while trying to break in a new pair of pumps. I felt bad for my mom. She had to buy the shoes a half-size too small because they were on sale, and we didn't have the money to buy her new shoes otherwise, not with the three of us kids going through our clothes like moths. She put them on first thing in the morning, hoping to have them comfortable by the start of Mass, but after an hour of wearing them, she was limping something awful.

Anyway, my mom was really busy with everyone else, not to mention the pain in her tootsies, so I was left up to my own devices, which was fine. I was kind of advanced for my age. I could pick out my clothes, tie my shoes, button my shirt…sort of. If you didn't look too closely, you might not notice that the buttons were off by one. I wanted to help my mother out, so I decided to get myself ready alone. But on this particular Sunday, I decided I wanted to look ‘fancy'. No one looked fancier in church on Sunday than my sister and my mother, with their pretty dresses and their hair done up, their make-up just right, and I decided that's what I wanted. I didn't want to be handsome in my tweed suit. I wanted to be pretty. So I put on one of my sister's old, old party dresses. I slipped into my parent's bedroom, sat at my mother's vanity, and I did my makeup, and I have to say, I think I looked damn smart for a four-year-old.

But my mother didn't. She walked into her bedroom and saw me there, posing in front of the mirror in my sister's dress that fit me loose around the shoulders, my green eye shadow and bright red lipstick which went all sorts of outside the lines, but proud. Proud of me, proud of who I was, and how I looked. She stopped short – her feet suddenly glued down even though the rest of her body wanted to continue forward. I always took that as a good sign, that she would have rushed in and hugged me if her damn rotten shoes would have let her. But then she threw her hands over her mouth and she started to cry. Not cry like “my feet really hurt and my sweet little boy was nice enough to get himself ready for church and I'm so happy” cry.

But cry like “someone I loved more than anything has died” cry.

She cried so hard that my do-nothing father actually got up off the couch to come calm her down.

My brother laughed like a brainless jackass when he saw me, but my sister was a real peach. She told me I looked pretty. She asked me, “Did you do your makeup all on your own? What a wonderful job you did!” She kissed my forehead and gave me her serving of sausage off her plate. When my father called for the smelling salts and we knew my mom was not about to calm down while I looked ‘fancy', my sister helped me wash my face. She hung her old party dress in the back of my closet where no one would see. Then she found my pale pink dress shirt that matched her satin sash so we could go to church together and be twins.

At the age of four, I didn't understand much, but I knew a lot.

I knew that I wasn't like my brother, and I probably never would be.

I knew that my sister, Gloria, would always be my best friend.

And I knew that my mother would never love me the same way again.

Kurt moves his fingers to the top corner of the next page and finds his hands are shaking. He knows he should probably close the journal, buy it, and read it at home, but he can't stop. He keeps a photo of Devon – one of him dressed in a checkered suit and tie - poised above the diary as he reads so he can look into the face of this man, this brave man, who grew up an outcast, disowned by his parents until later in his life when he became a famous actor and singer, who lost his favorite sister young, who was constantly tormented by his alcoholic brother. Who spent a lifetime looking for love, looking for acceptance, looking for freedom, and found hate, hate, hate instead. A man who was bullied, and in the end…well, Kurt doesn't know. The story cuts off somewhere around 1967, just as Devon starts talking about running away with the man of his dreams.

It seems more to that story was included, but the pages have been torn out. The last page of the journal has only one line written on it, and it says, “I can tell you that in all my oddest dreams, I never expected that to happen.”

“What?” Kurt blurts out, turning the page over several times, hoping new words would appear. “What happened?”

“Uh…it's…closing time,” a timid voice says. Kurt looks up, eyes red, nose running, to see a boy about his age looking down at him with nervous eyes and a tired expression. The store is quiet and empty and dim. From between the boy's legs, Kurt can see an older woman, smiling kindly, pointing to her wrist, telling Kurt it's time for him to go.

“Oh,” Kurt says, stuffing the pictures back into the book, double checking the floor several times to make sure he has them all, then standing up. He may not have noticed that he was sitting on the floor in that cramped spot for two hours, but his knees sure did, snapping and creaking as he stands to his full height. “Is it too late for me to buy this?” he inquires of the older woman. “I really need to have this book.”

“You can go ahead and take it, dear,” she says, unlocking the door to let them out. “I've already closed out the register. Besides, nobody buys those old journals, anyway.”

“Oh,” Kurt says, pleasantly surprised, “uh…thanks.” He takes a few bucks out of his pocket and slips them into a can on the counter, with a sign wrapped around it, asking for donations to support leukemia research. Then he takes a business card as a receipt. He needs to pay some amount for the book, in some way or another. He needs to claim ownership of it. The story he's been reading, written in crisp, flowing script on these pages only slightly yellowed after so many years – parts of it could be his story.

That's his connection. That's what he needs to photograph.

Kurt has to find this man.