"We're here," said Vincent, stopping the truck.

"We're where?" asked Rafferty.

"At your surprise," he said as he opened the door and got out.

Rafferty followed, and eyed the landscape suspiciously. There were the remnants of a few buildings, but not much else.

Sheridan was at her picnic. Blaspheme was spending Defiance Day soaking up attention in Falls Rock, and had managed to drag Cody and Colin with her. Trevor had plans with Hallway Boy, whose named turned out to be Glen. Rafferty really didn't have much to do, so when Vincent had asked if she wanted to see something cool, she had said yes with only a slight hesitation.

"It looks like everywhere else," she said.

"Just wait," he said.

"Where are we?" she asked, as they walked toward the buildings.

"I don't know what it was called. I doubt anyone does anymore. It used to be the main drag of some small town. Most everything got smashed, I suppose. The dust came in and covered up the rest. You'll like this place, though, especially the basement," Vincent said.

Vincent stopped in front of one of the buildings, mostly buried in the dust. The roof only came up to Rafferty's shoulders. The old storefront had a large display window, the glass long missing. Vincent stepped forward, sat and the ground, and slid through the opening, disappearing into the darkness.

Didn't he just say something to me about a creep in a basement?

Vincent called out to her from below. Rafferty decided that he probably hadn't brought her all the way out here just to try something weird, and slithered down into the dark.

Rafferty landed awkwardly on an old wooden floor. When she looked up, a dozen pairs of eyes were staring back at her in the low light, and only one of the pairs belonged to Vincent. Rafferty's bracelets lit up as she scrambled backwards trying to gain her feet, when she realized that Vincent was standing in front of a shelf filled with dolls. One of them was dressed like a rabbit.

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She kept her fist clenched, and the bracelets continued to give off a soft blue glow as she got to her feet.

"I thought you said this place was cool, not full of creepy dolls," she said.

"It used to be a junk shop. Anything really useful has already been scavenged, but they've still got some great stuff. I figure the people from Before had a lot of time on their hands," he said, holding up a tiny figure of a blue man. It was was wearing a white hat, and looking into a small mirror.

"But you'll really like what's down here," continued. He pushed aside the remains of a beaded curtain, revealing a set of stairs.

Rafferty walked down the stairs. It was dark, and cooler than she expected. If it weren't for the Blue, she wouldn't have been able to see anything.

The room was full of tables. The tables were covered with boxes. The boxes were stuffed with records.

Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

Rafferty turned, and looked at Vincent, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

"Can I really just take some?" she asked.

"You're one of the only people in the whole world that can play them. If they belong to anybody, they belong to you," he said.

Rafferty blushed, for some reason, glad for the near total darkness. She stepped up to the first table, and flipped through the albums. The fourth one she touched showed a man on a white horse, dressed in green, thrusting a spear into a purple dragon. Something about the image spoke to her, and she tucked it under her right arm, her first still clenched to provide some light.

I bet I could fight a dragon.

She looked through every box. It might have taken hours. Rafferty couldn't suppress a little shout when she found a record, its cover was almost all black, she'd nearly skipped it, that said Talking Heads on it. She already had one that said the same thing on the cover, and that was one of her favorites. Rafferty snatched it from the box quickly, like someone might beat her to it.

When she picked up an album with a giant robot on the cover, one she couldn't wait to show her friends, it brought her haul to a dozen. She turned toward Vincent, to see if maybe he was impatient to leave. He was poking through the boxes, whistling a tune Rafferty didn't recognize.

"I didn't know you liked music," she said.

Vincent looked up.

"Sure. You'd have to be weird to not like music. I'm not weird," he said.

Don't laugh. I don't think you're supposed to laugh.

"I've never had a fancy record player like yours, though. Maybe you'll play me one of these sometime," he said.

"Oh, yeah, definitely," she said excitedly.

Tone it down, Rafferty.

"My brother used to play the guitar. I could never get the hang of it. He probably wasn't really all that good, but I thought he was. I was just a kid." he said.

Rafferty looked over at him. She'd never thought about Vincent having a brother, or a childhood, or a life, really. It was almost impossible for her to imagine Vincent out in the world doing normal things.

"I could get used to that," he said to her.

What? Wait, what did I do?

"What?" she asked.

"You looking at me like you don't hate me," he said.

I don't hate you.

"Usually, you look at me like you're annoyed. The best I get is you only pretending to look annoyed, when you're actually not. This, though, this is better," he said.

Rafferty had no idea what to say, so she didn't.

"Don't sweat it. I grow on people. Like pickle juice," he said.

"I hate pickle juice," she said.

"You think you hate pickle juice, but I bet you never really tried it. You get over that first hurdle, and bam, one day you're tossing out the pickles and just guzzling the juice," he said.

She rolled her eyes, but she smiled. They went back to flipping through the records for a while, not speaking much.

Eventually, they walked back up the stairs, and climbed out of the store. On the way out, Vincent snagged one of the dolls from the shelf. He said he was going to name it Rafferty Two.

It was dusk now. When the first fireworks burst in the distance, Rafferty pointed them out, and Vincent watched them over her shoulder.

They stood and watched for a bit, Rafferty clutching her stack of records. Vincent was standing very close to her.

She found that she didn't mind.