Lucille in Stars Hollow

A murder in the hollow

 "Grandma, this meal is great!" I exclaim. It somehow comes out sarcastic, even though I actually did like the meal.

"Yeah, mom, this is amazing. New cook?" Lorelai adds on. Now, that was sarcastic.

"Yes—Maricella. She's introduced some incredible dishes from her native country."

"What country?"

"I don't know. One of the ones close to Mexico," Emily shrugged.

How incredibly specific.

"Too bad Grandpa can't be here," Rory said, "he loves weird foreign food."

"I know. You know he's in Akron? Ohio. He's just miserable. It sucks to see him like that."

"Mom, watch your mouth!'' Lorelai joked. I glare at her. Sometimes she's just so unnecessarily rude.

"We should do something for him," Rory suggested. I whip my head to face her. "To cheer him up!"

Emily seemed to like that idea and built on it. "Thats a wonderful idea, Rory. You know what I think he might like?" Oh no, here it comes. "A painting of you two! Oh, he would just love it!"

Rory's smiled faded. "Oh, yeah, that would be cool.''

"C'mon, Mom, don't make them do this!" Lorelai pleaded.

Yeah, please don't make me do this!

"Lorelai, they want to do this. Right, girls?"

I was about to answer with something that probably wouldn't be the nicest thing to say, but Rory was quicker and answered for both of us. "Yeah, we're okay with that."

I groaned and put my head on the table.

"People suck," Lisa observed, sitting down next to me on a picnic table at school.

I assumed someone made some sort of tasteless pregnancy joke. Same old, same old.

"Tell me something I don't know," I respond, putting down my book.

"Well, currently, there are police cars outside of Doose's and a crown surrounding something."

"Huh?" I directed my attention to the store where there was a lot going.

Crowds were huddled around yellow caution tape.

Lisa and I went over to the scene of the crime—literally—and I gasped.

On the ground, there was one of those chalk outlines.

This situation would be terrifying, if it wasn't for Taylor arguing with a cop by the store.

"Calm down? Why should I calm down? Someone got murdered in front of my store!"

"I promise, Taylor, we'll figure out what happened!" Said the cop. "And we don't know if thats true."

"You don't know if that's true? It's right there!" Taylor cried, pointing to the outline.

I swallowed back a laugh.

"Hey," Rory said, coming up behind me with Lane and Dean at her side.

"What is happening?" I giggled.

"It was there when I came for work," Dean smiled. "I told him it was fake—he didn't believe me."

I turned back to the cop. She was leaving and called behind her, "I'm going to go check if anyone in the town is missing."