Other Girls of Gilmore Girls: The Lindsay Lister Story

Chapter 4

View Along: n/a

I had to work on this project. Mr. McKellen gave us a list of popular blog hosting websites as inspiration, but he said we didn't need to make an actual blog website if we chose that route. Abby was going to film a news clip on her parents' video camera. I knew if I wanted to talk to Dean again, I could just ask him about his project.

Our computer was in the upstairs hallway on an antique sewing machine table my mom bought from Kim's Antiques. The sewing machine was always flipped upside down so that the table was flat, so when we bought a new computer, my mom figured why not put it there. I liked to sit at the sewing table because there was a smooth gliding pedal you could use if you wanted to sew. When the machine was hidden inside the table, the pedal still moved. I would rock it back and forth with my feet, the mechanism purring but not doing anything. It was so comforting.

Most of my classes required typed homework for the big papers, and we kept our printer on the ground next to the sewing table. The printer and cord were hidden behind a plant. I waited to connect to the internet and pushed the sewing machine foot back and forth. I had installed AIM because everyone did, but I hated using it because I felt like I could never trust that whoever was logged in was actually that person. I had most everyone from school added as contacts, but I would only use it to talk to Abby if we couldn't use our phones. The internet finally connected.

Once connected, I looked at Open Diary, LiveJournal, Blogger, and Xanga from Mr. McKellen's list. On the LiveJournal page a sheep or goat or something greeted me among all the text. "Frank," I scrolled to the bottom of the page and went to Blogger. The screen felt too dark, but I began to click on some of blogs listed on the page. The first was someone who listed what they did each day in a single sentence. "People do this?" I asked out loud. The next one was full of long paragraphs where the person explained in great detail things that made no sense to me, and probably to no other reader. But I found myself trapped in a story about going to a friend's pool for a 15th birthday party and some girl that couldn't stop sneezing. I reached the end of the page and realized I had just read three months of some girl's thoughts interrupted with small images of random animals. Woah.

This is exactly what I would do. I would pretend to be someone from an event and ramble about each and every day. But who to pick?

I closed the internet and went to call Abby. "What event are you doing for McKellen's project?"

"I don't know yet. It's world history. The whole world. You?"

"No clue."

I listened as Abby listed her top choices, but none of them really sunk in. I interrupted her, "I wonder what Dean's doing for his."

"Mm-hm. I see what's happening here. Call him! Ask him! What a good in, Lins, what a good in that is."

I couldn't just up and call Dean. First, I had never called him before. Ever. Second, he never gave me his phone number, so if I called him it would suggest that I took the time to look up his number in addition to everything else. "No way," I told Abby.

"Ok fine. I'll call him on three-way."

"You have his number?" I was a little jealous.

"We were in a study group that forgot to study last term in math. All of us called each other a few times, so it won't be weird."

It was very weird, but I couldn't agree or disagree because Abby was already switched over and calling Dean to connect all three of us. "Ok, I think I did that right. Dean? You here?"

"Yeah?" His voice didn't sound as deep on the phone as it did in person.

"Lindsay?"

"Still here," I replied.

"Ok good. So Dean, Lindsay and I have not yet chosen our events for McKellen's project and so we are calling a few people from class to talk it through. Who else are we connecting?"

I couldn't think fast enough to name someone else to call on three way. "Are you asking me?" I asked to buy time.

"Whoever."

"I wasn't expecting this?" Dean said, sounding more like a question than anything.

"Ok nevermind," Abby took over again. "Did you pick an event?"

After that, Dean stopped sounding like he was asking us questions, and the three of us moved right from major events in world history to the weekend, things that had happened at school, instruments with the weirdest names (dulcimer or contrabass?), vacations we would want to take, and what type of cheese we would be if we had to be a type of cheese. I walked back and forth across the upstairs hallway and into my room to pace around the rug in the center of the floor. Then down the stairs and on the couch and off the couch and back upstairs to lay in bed. I rested my feet on the headboard and disagreed that being a hard cheese would be a good idea. They can crumble so easily, right? Want to break into a million pieces?

I looked at my alarm clock. "Guys, it is so late," I said. They agreed, and as we tried to figure out how to say goodbye, Dean cut across: "Lindsay, do you even have my number?"

"Do I? No, I don't think so."

"Here, let me give it to you and then you give me yours so the next time I have someone to add to the call."

"Sure," I said as I pulled my feet off the wall. I didn't have an event for my project, but I had Dean's phone number and he had mine.