TROUVAILLE ... l.danes (REWRITE)

chapter seven; the past

SHOULDN'T SHE HAVE TO BE TOUCHED TO BE COMPLETELY DESTROYED? 

nineteen-eighteen-three

"LUKE FANCIES her!"

Lucas stops at the corner of the hallway, right next to the staircase where Liz hides in the shadows with Sookie, both of them whispering – not very quietly, it seems – about him. Jeff keeps walking, not paying any attention to his surroundings and instead focused on the metal music flowing through his walkman, as if Metallica is more important than their friendship.

(According to Jeff, Metallica is more important than anything)

Sookie lets out a little giggle, but must try to hide it behind her hand because her words come out quite stifled. "It is quite obvious." Obvious? Who the hell does he obviously have a crush on? He never even realised it himself.

"You think she fancies him too?"

Lucas peeks his head around the corner, hoping his sister doesn't catch him before he can hear the end of their conversation. She's leaning against the wall of the staircase, bag slumped at her booted feet, skirt hitched up shorter than it was when they left the house this morning. Her skin looks paler when she wears dark makeup. She's chewing gum and every so often she'll blow a small bubble that pops while she grins, wolfish and very much not the little girl she used to be back when their Mom was still alive.

Sookie leans next to her, a little bit bigger around the middle than she was before the summer, ginger hair held back from her round face by a soft blue crochet bandana that looks like something Auntie Pam wears when she's gardening. Her backpack is falling off one shoulder and she's wearing purple dungarees that are the complete opposite to Liz's razor-ripped tights. They shouldn't be best friends, but they'd always found comfort in each other when they weren't allowed to play with Shelley and him, stuck tagging along and sitting in the darkness with no one but each other to lean on.

"Shelley?" Sookie shakes her head. The name stops his breathing like hands squeezing his neck. Is it obvious? "I don't think so. She hates him now because he's so popular. She thinks he left her behind."

Did he? Sure, he progressed further than her, but that's because he decided to get involved with their High School, to push himself into popularity by training and running and opening himself up to the fears that had possessed them both during the summer that split Middle School and High School apart. They'd spent so many nights talking about their fears, about how scary it was to be moving one step closer to adulthood and the future and everything they'd been forgetting to worry about for years. But, at least he did something about it. The most she has done is make a new friend who she spends all her time with, reading books and turning in her homework on time. She refuses to talk to anyone else.

It's all study, study, study with her.

It makes no sense to him. How can she hate him for being popular when that was never something that she wanted? She never cared about that stuff, actually, the only thing she's ever cared about is Harvard. She's been studying her whole life to get there, getting involved in all these Stars Hollow events just to have something to write about in her personal essay, just to be able to say Hey look at me, I'm special too! But, to get mad at him for actually not hating something about this tiny little town that he'll never get out of, well that's not on him.