"Next week, we're going to an assembly during this time, so I'm pushing the due date for the research paper back a day, a.k.ael martes," everyone in Kurt's AP American Lit class groaned the next day. Kurt would have guessed thatmartesmeant Tuesday by process of elimination (his English teacher had a strange, contradictory habit of occasionally throwing in some Spanish into her speeches), but he could hardly think. His left leg bounced up and down, up and down, rapidly drumming against the bottom of his desk. He cracked his long fingers sporadically, something he did when he was nervous.Oh please, can we just move on...

"What is it even about? Is it some kind of drug prevention lecture? I thought we already had that in October," someone called out. His teacher, Ms. Lieding, ducked her head, laughing a bit at the comment. Thankfully, she was a pretty "chill" person, as she liked to describe herself, despite teaching one of the hardest classes Kurt had ever taken.

"No, not really. It's actually related to literature. This isn't a typical assembly, I'll tell you that. Okay, a high school student from a school nearby is doing it. Oops, everyone raise your right hand and place your left on your textbook, and repeat after me," Kurt did as he was instructed, his hands shaking convulsively. "'I swear on my English textbook that I will not tell anyone else the information Ms. Lieding divulged to us because it was supposed to be top secret.'" Kurt whispered the promise, looking down at the floor as he listened to the giggling voices around him. "Okay, okay, I'm done, you can open to page 394...yes, I'm serious right now..."

This is it, Kurt thought, his suspicions confirmed.I'm finally going to see him.

In all honesty, Kurt was confused. He didn't know why BDA didn't tell him that he was "done" with the project-he never really knew what the true purpose of the project really was. All Kurt had known was that "big things were happening"...he wondered how he'd use the twenty-three books they read.

Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise, he considered as he walked to the library. Still, he wanted confirmation; he wanted to know exactly what was going on. He wanted to know how BDA was able to organize an assembly in such a short time. He wanted to know if he'd mention his "partner" in it. Kurt decided, however, that he would not directly ask BDA about it; he wanted to see if his friend would actually tell him anything about it. As he thought about the project more and more, he realized that he couldn't remember when they last talked about the true purpose of the Book.

Kurt fastened his scarf around his neck a little tighter, the frigid air biting at his bare skin. As he returned his numb fingers to the pockets of his new coat, he could feel them drying up as they rubbed against the insides. He could feel his cut stinging in response to the cold and the sudden movement.

His arm hardly bothered him anymore; he took off the bandage the night before, examining his injury-it wasn't as gross as he expected it to be. He just wanted to be able to use it again. Writing with his left hand was so tedious.

Kurt looked up at the trees surrounding him as he speed-walked, noticing that they were missing most of their leaves. Their bare branches reached out towards the sky, black and brown harshly cutting through the cloudy gray. Kurt realized how empty the scenery looked without the trees' foliage covering them, and just how expansive the sky was without being concealed by them.

As Kurt reflected on this, he felt a small, cold wetness begin to sting random places on his bare skin: it had started to snow. He hadn't checked the weather that morning, and hadn't expected winter to come this quickly. His shoes weren't exactly the greatest in this condition-he half-jogged to the library as the snow became a flurry. Since he was already relatively close, he made it to the facility rather quickly.I wish I had a carbecame his mantra as he ran.

Thankfully, Kurt was able to finishA Walk to Remember(he only had a couple of chapters left when he had to go home the day before), but just barely from all of the tears streaming from his eyes. It had to be one of the saddest books he'd ever read. A good one, although it tore his heart to shreds. It was completely different than nearly anything that he'd read before, but it was absolutely amazing.

He wiped his eyes as he shut the book, returning it to the shelf. While he was tempted to pick up all of the other ones by Nicholas Sparks, he resisted, choosing the book that BDA had picked out,Of Mice and Menby John Steinbeck. BDA had not been too happy with Kurt when he saw his choice:

Are you serious right now? Nicholas Sparks?! I thought we agreed on not reading his work! You better bring me chocolate and a box of tissues, because I am going to be a puddle of emotions. I've read it before; that doesn't mean it gets easier to read! I hate you so much.

Just kidding. I really love this book. I also love this next book that we should read,Of Mice and Men. I didn't like it too much when I first started reading it, but the end is just heartbreaking.

I hope your arm is doing okay. I hope you're alright, too, after everything that happened. I'm thinking of you.

Finally, of course, the quote:

"...it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." –Marilyn Monroe

-BDA

Kurt picked up the book, which was lying on the table; it was short, a little over 100 pages.This shouldn't be too bad, he thought, and began to read.

The week dragged on; time seemed to pass by so slowly in all of Kurt's classes. By Friday, he, Sam, and Santana had made $258 total, the most out of the three other lunch periods. All of the money they made, however, was more than enough for the bus to Regionals.

"Do you guys want to get varsity jackets?" Mrs. Schuester asked one day in rehearsals.Varsity jackets, for people who sing and dance?Kurt wondered. It seemed kind of stupid. Glee club wasn't even a sport. Everyone else seemed to be on the same page as Kurt.

"Mr. Schue, do you want us to be mocked even more than we are now? Varsity jackets are for jocks, not for the glee club," Mercedes shouted about above the racket the rest of the club was making.

"Guys, we perform at competitions, and it requires physical ability to do what we do. I think we deserve the jackets. Can we have a big gold star on the back, Mr. Schue?" Rachel asked, blatantly keen on the idea. "Finn, do you think you can maybe toss the football one and get a glee jacket? You can probably get a football pin, or..." Finn looked very uncomfortable.

"There's only one varsity jacket I'm wearing, and that's for the Cheerios, a legitimate team," Quinn countered. The other members of the Cheerios nodded.

"Coach Sylvester said that if I ever showed too much support for glee club, she'd tell Santa that I deserve coal for Christmas. She said that he's her great-uncle," Brittany added, receiving some strange looks from the rest of the club.

"Whoah, no need to attack me, guys. You know, back when I was in glee club, we were the coolest kids in school: we were like royalty. We all got top-notch jackets. It was just an idea, okay? I'll look into the pricing. Also, to answer your question, Rachel...no." Mr. Schue cleared his throat; Kurt could tell that he was hurt by the club's rejection (Rachel's opinion didn't count). "So, let's start practicing for the singing grams and figure out who's going to do what, we've got a lot to plan before when we perform them on Thursday and Friday next week..."

Kurt walked into the library; Mrs. Devon was nowhere to be found, and it looked like the library was deserted. He assumed that the librarians were working somewhere within. He headed towards the teen room, excitement building in his chest. He had discussedOf Mice and Menthe day before, which Kurt actually enjoyed, much to his own surprise. He was planning on choosing a completely random book for them to read, one to catch BDA completely off-guard.

As he walked towards his corner, the excitement plummeted all the way down into his stomach, turning into dread. The table was completely bare.

Kurt rushed up to it, examining the area. He slipped his hands into the cushions of the chair: nothing. Something snapped deep within him—Kurt sprinted over to the bookshelves, looking for Steinbeck, John. He found the copy ofOf Mice and Men...but nothing blue was in sight.

Without even thinking, he began feverishly searching through the bookcases, from Aabad to Zuth. He craned his neck to look through the top shelf, and crouched down to search the bottom. The blue Book was nowhere to be found-something must have happened to it. He felt tears begin gather in his eyes as he dragged himself back to his corner, overwhelmed.

He slumped down into the chair, staring out at the room in front of him. It was filled with happiness, with sadness, with triumph and defeat, all scrawled out in ink on hundreds of thousands of pages. All he could feel inside, however, was emptiness.

It is truly amazing how many different emotions can be portrayed, how many feelings one can experience, yet at the same time, one can feel nothing at all, he thought.

He sat there, completely still, feeling the numbness slowly being siphoned away and replaced with something else. His eyesight began to blur, his nose burning. He felt his lips quiver as a few warm, salty tears fell on his cheeks, trailing down to his jawline. More and more tears spilled down onto his cheeks until he could hardly breathe.

Kurt pulled his knees up into his chest, rocking himself in the chair. His head hurt, his throat hurt, every part of his body ached. Whether he was crying for an actual purpose or just for the sake of crying, he didn't know. He didn't even want to know. All he knew what that there was something clutching at his heart, wringing and stretching it painfully. It was one of the worst feelings he'd experienced in his entire life.

He stayed in that position for a long time, letting the tears flow into the small pillow he was grasping from the chair. At last, they began to slow down—Kurt breathed in shakily, trying to compose himself. He fetched a tissue from his backpack and wiped his face, knowing that he couldn't do anything about how red and blotchy his cheeks were.

Why am I crying over this? It's just a book, and I'm going to see BDA, the manifestation of the Book, on Wednesday,Kurt thought, his stomach lurching,I shouldn't be that upset. It was silly to cry over something that he'd be hearing about the next week, finally seeing who BDA really was.

He did have every right to be upset, he realized after a few minutes of remaining in the chair, sniffling and rubbing his eyes excessively. The Book had become a part of his life. It was the best part of his day, what he looked forward to right after he woke up every morning. He counted down the hours until he would finally get out of the hell-hole called "school" and rush to the library, just to scribble what he thought about a book, but more importantly to write to BDA. The Book was the only medium of communication he was willing to use with BDA. It made him feel important, like he was a part of something, like he was someone's friend.

Kurt couldn't help but think of Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." It was such an awfully pessimistic statement, but Kurt reflected on how it related to his life. His mother died when he was young, he was completely rejected for his sexual orientation, and now he felt like he had lost his best friend. It had been too good to be true, and now it was all gone.

"What's wrong, Kurt?" Burt asked his son as they ate dinner together. Kurt was toying with his pizza, pushing it around his plate with his fork (he insisted on eating his pizza with a fork and knife).

"Murphy's Law," he replied glumly. "' Anything that can go wrong will go wrong'", Kurt recited for Burt, who hadn't recognized the technical term but knew exactly what Kurt was talking about when he explained it.

"Are you sure that's wrong?"

"No, no," Kurt said, "the problem is that it's exactly right." He explained what had happened at the library earlier that day.

"Oh, Kurt," his father sighed.The poor kid, Burt thought. They sat in silence while Burt tried to think of a way to steer Kurt's way of thought.

"Kurt, I think you need to have a different perspective about this. BDA has to do the assembly on Wednesday, right? He needs the Book. Now, I don't know if he's going to continue this...communication after he finishes with whatever he's doing regarding the project. Let me tell you this, though: I don't think that you're never going to hear from him again after this. When you found that Book, it wasn't just a coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences, kid. There had to be a reason. So, I don't think you should be too concerned about this. Maybe it was meant to be just a short thing. Maybe this will go farther. I think it's the latter, since everything indicates that this isn't the end. All that you have to think is, did this change me? Did this have an effect on my life? Based on what I've seen, I'd say the answer is yes.

"Kurt, despite everything bad that's happened within the past few weeks, I've seen a change in you. You seem happier, just so much happier. I was so...proud of you for joining glee club. Yes, it's not the most masculine thing, and it's definitely not what I imagined for you, but I didn't know that I'd have a gay son. Regardless, I know that it was a big step for you to join the club. You've always been on the introverted side, and now you're beginning to break out of your shell. If I were you, I'd be happy."

Kurt considered Burt's speech. Maybe hewasthinking about it the wrong way. While the words were soothing, he still couldn't drown out that painful ache in his heart.

"Thanks, Dad. That really helped."

"Anytime, kid."