Come September
Part 5
Karen H.

JOEY VOICE OVER: “In the past ten days I’ve seen Jen, Jack, Andie and Pacey, but no Dawson. And who can really blame him for staying away from me?? Over the past five months I’ve been horrible to him. Is hope really dead to him?? Did I kill it? I know that he’s here for me but I don’t want to hurt him, so I’ve tried avoiding him as much as possible. Anything I want him to know has been relayed through Pacey.”

FLASHBACK: - One week ago.

Scene: - Pacey’s apartment. The door is open.

JOEY: “Knock, knock.”

PACEY: “Hey Joey, come on in. I was just going to make some coffee. Would you like some?”

JOEY: “Yeah.” She sits on the sofa and picks up a small box off of the table. “You planning something and not telling me?”

PACEY: “No. It’s not mine. I’m just looking after it for a friend.”

JOEY: “May I?”

PACEY: “Sure.”

He walks into the kitchen. Joey opens the box and immediately feels as though she has been transported back into some other time in her life. Suddenly she isn’t sitting on Pacey’s sofa, suddenly she is in a street in New York. Looking at the ring through a window and she knows that she isn’t alone. She doesn’t see the person but she can feel someone’s had on the hip. And just as quickly she finds herself back in Pacey’s living room. She stands up.

JOEY: “Pacey, I have to go.”

PACEY: “What?”

He walks out of the kitchen but she’s gone. Then he spots the ring box lying on the floor.

JOEY (thinking) : “What was that?? What just happened?? Was that my ring?? Was I supposed to be engaged? Who will give me answers? Dawson?”

Scene: Dawson’s room.

As Joey entered Dawson’s room she immediately sensed how empty the place felt. There was no Dawson and it looked as though the room hadn’t been lived in for a while. It seemed strange now to think that this was the first time that she had been in this room since before the accident. As she looked around the room she saw many things that looked foreign, things that she hadn’t seen in here before. Yet at the same time they seemed familiar to her, as though she had seen them in here before. She was about to walk out the door when she saw his calendar. There was a big red circle around the 12th. That had been a week ago. What was supposed to happen on the 12th? She walked out of the room and as she reached the middle of the stairs she heard voices coming from the living room.

GAIL: “I can’t take this not know where he is Mitch. Not knowing when he’s coming back.”

MITCH: “I know honey, Pacey said that he just needed sometime on his own.”

GAIL: “I know that he needs time but I want my son back. I want him to come how??”

MITCH: “I’m sure he’s okay.”

GAIL: “What if he isn’t? You’ve seen how he’s gotten these past few months. And you know what Sunday should have been.”

JOEY (thinking) : “Sunday had been the twelfth. Why was that so significant”

Scene: - Potter B & B a few days later.

JOEY: “Bessie I have to ask you something and I really need you to answer it for me.”

BESSIE: “I’ll try.”

JOEY: “What was supposed to happen on Sunday? Why was it so important?”

BESSIE: “Joey I can’t answer that.”

JOEY (crying) : “Please Bessie. I need to know what was supposed to happen. I need to know why it was affecting Dawson so much. He’s gone away somewhere and hasn’t told anyone.”

BESSIE: “I want to tell you, I really do. But you know that I can’t tell you.”

JOEY VOICE OVER: “I just wanted them to tell me. I just wanted to remember. Had I suddenly stopped caring about those around me?? Had I suddenly become so self absorbed in my own situation that I had stopped caring about those around me?? If I could be like this with my best friend, how have I been with other people?? With Jen, Jack or Andie. I longed for my best friend. I wanted him there with me. I wanted to just wrap my arms around him and tell him that I was sorry for how I’d treated him. Sorry for all the hurtful things that I had said to him. Most of all I wanted to just be there for him, so that I could help him through whatever it was that he was going through. After all it would have been the least that I could do. Everything would have just been easier if I could have found my Journal. It appeared as though I had stopped keeping one. But that didn’t sound like me.”

Scene: - B & B kitchen. - Present day.

JOEY: “I never asked about this before but I want to know now, when the accident happened...how many months pregnant was I?”

BESSIE: “Joey...”

JOEY: “You don’t have to tell me, I could probably go to the doctors and find out. I just...”

BESSIE: “Four months.”

JOEY: “I was four months gone?”

BESSIE: “Yes.”

JOEY: “When I got back from the hospital you and Dawson where unpacking some of my stuff, where had it come from?? Was it sent from Boston?”

BESSIE: “Joey I can’t...you never stayed in Boston?”

JOEY: “I didn’t? Where was I going to college?”

BESSIE: “I’ve already said too much.”

JOEY: “Please Bessie. Wait...the accident was five months ago. That would mean that the baby would be due now...they baby was due on the twelfth!”

BESSIE: “Joey...”

JOEY: “That’s why Dawson’s upset. He’s upset because of the baby. Because I lost my baby. He can’t handle being around me. Where was I staying before the accident? If it wasn’t Boston...“

BESSIE (forgetting that she shouldn’t tell Joey) : “At Dawson’s.”

JOEY: “What??”

BESSIE: “I shouldn’t have said that...I shouldn’t have...” Joey turns around and runs to the front door. “Where are you going?”

JOEY: “I need to go.”

BESSIE: “Joey come back!” But it’s too late, Joey is already running away from the house. Bessie picks up the phone and calls Pacey. “She was asking all these questions and it just slipped out, I told her she had been staying at Dawson’s.”

PACEY: “I’ll get her and bring her back. She’ll be okay.”

Scene: - Dawson’s room.

Joey is looking through something’s trying to find something.

JOEY (thinking) : “If I kept a journal where would I have put it? And why was I staying here?” for some reason she then moved the mattress slightly and there it was. “How come it’s been lying there for so long?? It’s like his bed hasn’t been touched for months. I have to know where Dawson has gone.” She walked out into the hallway and as she approached the top of the stairs she said out loud: “And why hasn’t he slept in his bed for months??” Suddenly from behind her.

PACEY: “Because you weren’t there beside him! It wasn’t just his bed.”

As she turned to face Pacey who had just exited Dawson’s room, she lost her footing on the top step and suddenly she fell forward. Soon everything became dark.