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Shane was gone almost every weekend all spring and summer. He’d drop Dusty off after school on Friday without coming in, and then wouldn’t show back up until Monday morning. He never talked about where he went on the weekends, never mentioned a girlfriend at all, but Laney knew. And the jealousy was eating her alive.

Seeing him kiss that girl had done something to her insides that couldn’t be undone. Like her organs had shifted to reshape themselves around the permanent hole that he’d punched into her gut. Winter had passed, and then spring, and she kept telling herself it would hurt less. That the image of him kissing her would fade. But by early-summer, she’d resigned herself to the fact that it was burned into her retinas like one of those pictures you stare at until it becomes 3D.

It made her want to break things.

The only good thing about weekends was that without Shane around, Cary usually stayed at his apartment. And when Cary stayed at the apartment, Ma took the opportunity to disappear.

Laney loved having the house to herself again. Just her and Dustin. She only wished she could enjoy it a little more. She knew she was miserable company for Dusty these days, but between Ma sucking the life out of her and her stubborn maintenance of a sky-high emotional barricade against Shane, she spent most weekends horizontal on the couch in the basement watching movies or taped episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season two. She still cried every time she watched the finale.

Shane liked to pretend that he didn’t like the show, wrinkling his nose in distaste and making fun of her obsession with Angel. But one Tuesday she’d asked him if he could make her some popcorn, and he’d shush-ed her and said ‘on the commercial’.

Things had gotten a little awkward during the episode ‘Surprise’ when Buffy and Angel finally slept together.

“Hmm…” she’d said, eyeing him.

“What,” he’d said, not looking at her.

“It’s her sixteenth birthday, you know.”

“So?”

“So he’s two hundred and seventy years old and he doesn’t seem to think she’s too young to date.”

“It’ll end badly.”

“No, it won’t! They’re soul mates.”

The following week in ‘Innocence’, Angel lost his soul and started trying to murder Buffy’s friends. Shane’s poignant silence was discomfiting, and she could have sworn Dustin was shaking with silent laughter the entire episode.

Buffy killed Angel in the season finale.