Other Girls of Gilmore Girls: The Lindsay Lister Story

Chapter 2

View along: S3 E13 Dear Emily and Richard

That weekend my mom and I went back and forth between Stars Hollow and Woodbridge to clean things out of Grandma's house. Both places had several blocks of tightly packed small restaurants, stores, and places to get ice cream. Both places were surrounded with woods and farms. Both places were woven with hiking trails and streams and ponds. But Woodbridge felt solid, where Stars Hollow felt, well, hollow. Grandma's house was on a half-acre, but it was still biking distance to downtown. It was a long ranch style house, with shingle siding on the front, and a gravel driveway leading up from the road. The crunch under tires or foot meant we were home. Grandma hated the baseboard heat; it was dry and she said it never seemed to stay warm, so she kept the heat low and the fire roaring each night after dinner. Everything glowed.

Mom and I had been packing things up at Grandma's house for months. Months. Some of it for us to keep and the rest to sell. When we entered this time, there was only a single chair left in the living room. My uncle said he would pick it up. The ashes were black and cold in the bottom of the fireplace. There was a layer of dust on the hearth, stuck to the grout.

This house used to always be full of people and food and noise. The fire, the people, and all the food warmed the rooms. Now it was cold. The air empty. I didn't want to put prices on everything that had been my grandma's. I just stood there until my mom took me home, and I called Abby.

"I hate it," I told her.

"I know. Did you do the homework?"

Abby was pretty much my best friend, but I couldn't get her to understand how lonely and unanchored and uncertain the world felt since I lost my grandma. I would sometimes forget it all, and things were as they always had been. But then sometimes I would find myself feeling mad at people who still had their grandparents alive and making Christmas dinner. Setting out crystal bowls of nuts and making the cookies just right. "I didn't," I answered. "I should go."

* * *

At school that week, Dean waved to me in the hallway. "That's new," Abby observed as I shut my locker. "What?" I replied like it wasn't anything different. "I've always been cool with Dean."

"He doesn't say hi to us ever," Abby said and raised an eyebrow. "Where did this come from?"

"We talked at the Winter Carnival a bit."

"You know he broke up with Rory."

"Everyone knows that." I rolled my eyes. "But if that happened to me, I wouldn't want people talking about it all day every day."

"Oh shut it, Lindsay. No one talks about it that much. No one cares about Rory Gilmore anyway."

"Ok I gotta get to history."

"With Dean," Abby noted.

"Yes. He is in that class," I confirmed and smiled.

Mr. McKellen was introducing an assignment that required us to present one of the major events we had learned about in a new media format. At first it sounded sort of cool. We could prepare a TV clip, radio segment, a magazine article, or something he called a blog post. Apparently, people were writing short articles and publishing them online. I debated doing that one because it sounded the easiest. A blog post on what event though? I opened my notebook to flip through it when I saw Dean shift in his seat. I stopped to look at him, and he was looking at me.

I smiled.

"Here are the full directions," McKellen boomed as he passed sheets of paper down all the rows. "Read it. Learn it. Love it." The bell rang to dismiss us, and Dean walked over to my desk.

"Know what you are going to do for the project?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Not yet."

"Me neither. Where you go next?"

"Just down the hall. Mrs. Roberts."

"I'm that way too. I'll go with you," he said. He looked so clean, his shirt ironed, and his hair brushed. Compared to most of the other senior boys, this was a major accomplishment. Dean was watching me pack my backpack, so I nervously crammed everything I owned inside at once. I stood up and realized there were still people in the classroom watching us.

"Ok, I'm ready," I said.

"Anything new since the weekend?"

"No, nothing surprisingly. You?"

"I started working for Tom."

"What? Like a real job?" I laughed. "What are you doing?"

"So I still work at Doose's, but now also construction, but I'm not actually doing any construction yet."

"So you...?"

"Get them lunch," Dean laughed. "I'm ok with that. You have to start somewhere."

"And I'm sure after a few good lunch orders, Tom will definitely trust you with a hammer. Screwdriver maybe. Tape measure. Probably tape measure."

"You are teasing me."

"Maybe," I paused. "I think it's really impressive. Who else here even has a job? Look at you."

"Like what you see?" Dean smiled and I forget what we had been talking about. My face got hot. Luckily, the bell rang, so we had to go.