Title: When She Cries
Book: II
Chapter: Eight
Chapter Title: This Old World
Rating: R.
Coupling: Ultimately: Dallie/Lola, Aggie/Fin, Devon/Ashley,
Thalia/Ethan, Paris/Jess, Meggie/Zander, Aurora/Tolly. Now aren’t you glad
you’ve spoiled yourself in that way?
Disclaimer: Aye, captain. I hold no deeds to
Gilmore Girls. And I don’t own matchbox twenty’s Damn.
Author’s Note: To Jamie. Just cause.
Important Author Notice: Ever wonder how it all began? With Jess and Paris having three kids all while not getting along? Or think what was it like when Tristan and Rory were married? What were the DuGrey and Mariano children like when they were wee tots? Those answers and more in Ashley’s, aka the brilliant Bent137, prequel to When She Cries, The Way To Atlantis. Coming soon to a computer screen near you.
*
This
old heart’s had a whole lot a breakin’ down/
She’s
got all these reasons in her head.
One could never tell when the
absolute worst meeting was going to take place, if it was going to be the first
one, the last one or somewhere in the middle. However it was becoming
increasingly obvious to Dallas Mariano that this meeting, the first of the new
school year, was going to be the worse. In fact he hoped it was the worse,
because he didn’t want to deal with it if it was going to go downhill from this
already low point.
New staff was always difficult to
deal with, because the newbies never knew what to do, and the upperclassman
believed that they could trick them into doing things that they found amusing,
and that the newbies found embarrassing. Then no one’s schedule was concrete
yet, since it was the first day of school and they hadn’t decided on the
activities they were going to participate in this year. Finally, since Bit and
Aurora now lived in the same place and Bit was rather without a car (her father
didn’t believe in a woman’s ability to drive), she had to sit in the meeting
and wait for Aurora to get out. Something Dallie had no problem with, but
rather Aurora and her friends did. Not that they were really going out of their
way to show it, but he knew Lola, Aurora, and Spring all too well.
“Can we at least decide on when
we’ll go see Inamorato, so we can see the
edition that holds the article from last year?” Dallie questioned. It was a
yearly tradition for the staff to vote on the best article, and then Inamorato
would publish it. It wasn’t exactly Dallie’s first choice for publication, but
it was a guaranteed one since Ethan’s mother owned it.
“My mother said whenever is fine,”
Ethan supplied, attempting to help Dallie get the meeting on track.
“How about Saturday?” Thalia
suggested.
Dallie inwardly winced and waited it for it to
come…
Spring leaned forward, “I need weekends free from…that
school stuff.”
And there it was.
Aurora raised her hand, “So do I.”
And there it was again. Things always came in
threes, so….
“I need at least this weekend, man,” Breklin
spoke up. “Right Lo?”
Lola didn’t look up from the nail she was filing,
“Right on, Brek.”
Of course. “What about Wednesday, then?” Dallie
asked.
This time Lola stopped filing her
nails long enough to raise her hand.
Dallie sighed, “Lola?”
“I’ve got a therapist visit on
Wednesday.”
“Can’t you reschedule?” Dallie asked
her.
“It’s only twice a year.”
“Fine, not Wednesday then,” he
conceded.
“You only see Dr. Lucas twice a
year?” Spring spoke up as Lola moved onto filing the nails on her other hand.
“Yeah,” Lola replied. “Guess that means
I’m more well adjusted than you.”
“Can we please exchange therapist
visits later, when we aren’t at a Franklin meeting?” Dallie asked. “Now
how about Thursday?”
Lola and Lennon DeLuca raised their
hands at the same time. Dallie clenched his jaw, “Lorelai?”
“I have tennis practice on
Thursday,” Lola told him, she paused as she looked at his exasperated
expression. “I suppose I can reschedule that. But if I gain five pounds,
you’ll be blamed.”
“You are not going to gain five
pounds by missing one practice, Lo,” Dallie tried to relax his jaw, it wasn’t
working. He already had a headache. “Len?”
“Eh, I’m Lola’s partner in practice.
If she can reschedule, so can I,” Lennon replied. “So never mind.”
“Thank you.” Now it was time to wrap
the meeting up before he committed staff-cide. “So Thursday it is, unless there
are any other objections.”
The staff shook their heads, so
there were no more objections. Dallie let out a sigh of relief; the meeting had
finally come to a close.
*
It had to be a bad omen when, on the
first day of school, you already had accumulated a pounding headache, and a
homicidal urge. On the bright side, however, Ethan Langford was not Dallas
Mariano. Had he been, every single one of the Franklin Staff, with the
possible exception of Thalia, would be dead now. It was a certainty.
“Ethan,” a voice came from beside
him. He recognized it, though why she would be talking to him was beyond Ethan.
And he wasn’t quite sure that he wanted to find out. “Can I beg a favor?”
May as well, if there was one thing
every single person in the student body knew about Lola DuGrey was that she
never gave up when she wanted something. “You can try.”
“In AP U.S. History, you have the
rise of the confederacy, right?” Lola asked him. “The whole thing that talks
about state’s rights, the north hogging all the goods, and then the
surprisingly minuscule amount that slavery had to do with the beginning of the
war, right?”
Schoolwork, okay he could deal with
that. “Yes, why?”
“Switch days with me?” She asked,
and really it had to be the most frank he’d ever heard her be in his entire
life.
“Why?”
“Does it matter?” Lola questioned,
and then sighed. “This book that I need for my presentation won’t be in until
the day after my presentation, so it’d be really helpful if you would
switch days with me.”
“Why me?” He shouldn’t be so
curious, but it wasn’t every day he was asked for a favor by Lola DuGrey.
“Because you’re the closest person
to ask.”
“When do you have to go?” He had
lectured Dallie on it many times but he could still feel himself caving in.
Huh, so this was the feeling everybody talked about.
“Friday,” Lola grinned up at him.
“Thanks, Langford.”
Ethan couldn’t remember saying yes,
but before he could even think to open his mouth she was gone, and talking to
Pat Taggert.
“I know that look,” Dallie commented
as he joined his friend in the hallway. “That’s the ‘I just talked to Lola
DuGrey and I don’t have a clue as to what happened’ look.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure my
history presentation just got moved up, like, a week,” Ethan told him. “So I at
least have a semblance of a clue as to what just happened.”
“You’re luckier than most.”