Untitled

by drd

Author’s note *Imagine Season 3 never happened. The last time we saw Dawson and Joey, she was dismissing him on the side of the creek in front of her house, as her father was being dragged away by the police. The entire summer went by and they did not talk once. Dawson takes the bus home from
Philadelphia, doesn’t meet Ms. Strangeness, and goes directly back to school. Imagine this:

He and I had broken up just at the end of our Sophomore year. It was a nasty, dreadful break up. My temper had gone into orbit and it landed on Dawson. “I don’t want to know you”.

Then came summer. A historically hot summer on the North Carolina coast. And for me, there was no relief. Dawson went away to intern at a radio station and I spent my summer in art classes. We did not talk the whole summer, not even an email. He was in my thoughts every day, as he had been since I met him when we were 4. Before that summer I don’t think there had been a single day in 12 years that I had not at least talked to Dawson on the phone. Even when we were away on family vacations. So 10 weeks of not talking to him at all, well, it was as suffocating as the humidity.

Dawson came home on a bus, the Saturday before school was to start. I went to the cafe across the street from the bus station. Pacey had told me that he was coming in and I decided I should be there when he got off the bus. I didn’t want another moment by myself. I had become cold and
hard and singular during the summer and it wasn't pretty.

I saw Dawson get off the bus. I saw his father hug him. I watched them get into the family Cherokee. I just stood there watching, crying, crying for I know not who. Then I walked home, alone.

I took off my headphones, happy to be distracted by class. It was Friday during the first week of school. It was just after lunch and I was upstairs in the Chemistry lab. Jen was in my class, in fact she was my lab partner. We had actually gotten to be friends. Since both of us had broken up with Dawson we now had something in common. She knew how much I missed him and we would talk about it sometimes. I think she was sympathetic, but I could never be sure. Did she want him too?

Jen had just gone to the bathroom when the fire alarm went off. Our teacher got this exasperated look on her face, looking at us as if she was trying to think of a way to put a stop to it all. She said something about being careful, but we were already heading out the doors of the lab, looking forward to getting outside.

The lab was right next to the stairs so we were down in no time. But this was the strangest fire drill I had ever seen. When I got to the first floor hallway, it was impossible to get any further. People were pushing and shoving to get out. I couldn't understand what was going on.

I didn't smell smoke, so I was sure it wasn't a real fire. Not wanting to challenge the flock, I just chilled out on the stairs, waiting for an opening. But soon I got thrust into the mix by a surge of people behind me coming down the stairs. And from there I was in the flow of teenagers, like a river, running strong out the back door of the school. I was literally pushed down the outside stairs and landed square on my ass on the sidewalk in back of the school.

Someone helped me up and I looked up to see it was Jen. Turns out she had been in the group just behind me on the stairs that had pushed and swelled until it burst into the hallway and then the outside.

"What the hell is going on", I asked, "I have never seen such a crazy fire drill".

"Its not a fire drill. It is a bomb threat. There is a bomb in the school."

For just a second my mind went completely numb. But just a second. Then the impact of what Jen had said hit me. And then the REAL impact hit me. Where was Dawson?

"Have you seen Dawson? Do you know what class he has right now?" It was so weird asking Jen that question. Any other year I would have known exactly where Dawson was, where his class was at any given moment. But now, after this summer. . .

"No, I haven't seen him, and I have no idea what class he is in now."
I walked away from the building and started walking through the mass of students out on the lawn. It was completely full of people, all the way to the fence around the parking lot. I kept getting hit and pushed and bumped into. But I let nothing stop me or even slow me down. I just kept moving around, asking everyone I knew if they had seen Dawson. I looked back at the entrance to the school and it was still jammed with kids trying to get out. I wondered how many were still in there, was Dawson, would everyone get out before something awful happened?

I know I was crying and I could feel my head pounding. Each long second ticking by that I could not find Dawson I got more and more terrified. I remember hearing music. Someone had cranked up their stereo and it was blasting from the speakers in the back of their truck. I recognized the
song, it was the instrumental introduction to The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony. They had just burned that instrumental part into a CD and it was playing over and over. As I moved through the crowd, I felt like everyone was even more energized, more agitated by the rhythm of the driving music in our ears.

I saw Andie and she was thinking the same way I was. She was looking for her brother Jack. I asked her if she had seen Dawson but she didn't even hear me, she just kept saying, "where is Jack, where is Jack?" I watched her wander off and thought to myself: "that is what I must look like right now".

I felt like all this parting of the crowd was hopeless. There were hundreds of students and teachers out here and I could see only a couple at a time. A few feet from me there was a bench, and I climbed up on it. I wiped the tears from my eyes and I looked down on hysterical disarray.  For a second I just watched the whole scene, trying to take it all in, trying to give it meaning. But I snapped back to earth and looked more intently, for a single person. And, - thank God, I will be good forever - I saw him.

He was fifty, sixty feet away and he was moving quickly through the crowd. I saw his beautiful blond head bobbing from person to person. I watched him with such relief and then I realized what he was doing. He was hollering at people as he made his way through the crush, asking
them the same question. "Have you seen Joey? Have you seen Joey?”
I started crying again, deliriously happy. I screamed, "Dawson, Dawson Leery, Dawson".

He heard me over the noise of the crowd and the music. He spun his head around, searching for where the person was calling out his name. I kept yelling, as loud as I could. Our eyes locked and stayed locked as we made our way through the throngs towards each other.

Finally, I was in his arms. How many times in my life had I folded myself into the safe, comfortable embrace of Dawson? Never with more relief than right then. We stood there holding each other, protecting each other from the fury and the fuss, from the fright we both had been feeling.

After what seemed like hours, Dawson was the first to speck, "I was so scared".

I whispered in his ear, "can we get out of here?"

"Absolutely".