Summary: What might Star's Hollow High have been like for a kid like Jess? This series of one-shots explores a friendship between Jess and Lane during seasons 2-3. For the moment, it fits into canon with Lit undertones, but may tie into Picking Up the Pieces in later chapters.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls, or the rights to the song"I Wanna Be Sedated." I am making no money off this story.
Chapter One: I Wanna Be Sedated
"What's everyone so excited about?" Lane asks her friend Carrie as she takes a seat at the lunch table. She missed her morning classes for a dentist appointment, returning to school to find most of her classmates in an absolute tizzy.
"New guy," Carrie answers with disinterest, flicking a page of Wired.
Lane unpacks the lunch her mother made of mung beans, tofu, an apple and a soy cookie with a disgusted face. Without looking up from her magazine, Carrie pushes her lunch bag towards her. "Here, I packed you some leftover pizza."
"Thank you." Abandoning her tofu, Lane digs into the cold pizza immediately. Carrie is certainly no replacement for Rory as a lunchtime buddy but she's one of the few people here who doesn't care excessively about nail polish or monster trucks. She's also a good source of information when it's needed.
"I heard Luke's nephew was starting here," she mentions, wiping her mouth with her napkin. Rory filled her in last night, but she was a little vague on the details. "What's he like?"
Carrie shrugs, flicking another page. "Haven't seen him yet but the cheerleaders are already playing a rousing game of Cool or Freak. Dean Forester apparently already hates him though so they're probably going to go with Freak."
"What do they care?" Lane asks, biting into the crust. "Dean is taken."
"Yeah well Hayley Cole spent most of health class today whining about how unfair it is that Rory nabbed the last new guy in one day." She sighs wearily. "Her voice grates on my nerves."
Finishing her pizza, Lane picks up her apple, mulling this news over as she munches on it. Dean was the last new kid, but he blends in with the typical Star's Hollow High crowd so well that somehow it feels like he's always been here.
She glances over to the rowdy table across the room where Dean and his friends are laughing and throwing pieces of food at each other like they're having the most fun in the world even though they do it every single day. Despite his moronic friends, and the fact their IQ's seem to collectively lower whenever they're in the same room, Dean's alright in her mind. His popularity provides her with some measure of social security from people who would otherwise pick on her and he treats Rory well enough. At the end of the day though, the fact he's dating Rory is more or less the most interesting thing about him.
Drawn by a series of giggles, she looks over at the table next to Dean's, where Janie Feldman reigns over the cheerleading squad. Wide-eyed, she watches as Janie nods to one of her friends, puts down her low fat yogurt and makes her way across the cafeteria, towards a solitary figure sitting in the back of the room, his dark head bent over a book. Even as Janie stops directly in front of him, he continues reading, completely obvious to both the sudden, deafening silence and the cheerleader tapping her foot impatiently.
Lane watches with awe as this goes on for a beat, then two. She's never seen anyone other than Rory read like this before.
"Ahem." Janie breaks the silence, clearing her throat.
The guy finally looks up. Irritated, he says nothing, just glares at her expectantly.
Janie stares back, at a lost for words for second.
"I'm Janie," she eventually manages to sputter, her face flushing.
He stares at her for another second, nods, and turns his attention back to his book.
Janie gapes at him for another moment, opening her mouth and closing it before she turns on her heel and storms back across the room, incensed. She passes her table of cheerleaders, and with a nod of her head, they all get up and follow her through the doors, their ponytails swinging in their wake.
Lane spares a glance back at the new kid, who is scrawling something in the margins of his book, and resists the sudden urge to clap. Still, as the chatter begins to pick up again, she can't help but feel unsettled on his behalf. Janie and her friends dictate the social parameters of this school, for a girl, pissing them off is a recipe for social leprosy and for a guy, it's practically a carte-blanche to get your ass kicked by their basketball playing boyfriends.
"You ever think they should all just change their name to Heather?" She muses under her breath.
"You volunteering to be a Veronica?" Carrie answers with a snort.
Lane makes a face, regarding him with fascination. He's got the Christian Slater slouch down and his hair is coiffed in a manner that would make Marlon Brando proud. Even as the bell rings and the other students begin to loudly shuffle out of the cafeteria, he continues to read.
"I don't think he's my type," she finally tells Carrie, tossing her lunch in the trash. "Plus, as much as I hate this place, I have no desire to kill Janie with Drain-O and try to blow up the school."
"Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs darling," Carrie quotes dryly from Heathers.
The warning bell rings and Lane watches out of the corner of her eye as the new guy gets up, shoving a copy of Howl into his back pocket, and slinks out of the cafeteria.
Something tells her he's trouble for sure, just not for her.
Lane barely manages to keep her eyes open through her next period history class where Mrs. Carol's somehow manages to make even Patrick Henry's dramatic, "Give me liberty, or give me death" speech sound like she's reciting from a repair manual.
Grateful to finally be free of her, Lane hurries to her almost, but not quiet as excruciating, English class. Plopping into her seat with a sigh, she commences doodling the lyrics to the Ramone's "I Wanna Be Sedated," on the back of some old homework. The new guy sits catty corner to her, doing something similar in his copy of Howl.
"…from New York!" Hayley Cole exclaims in the seat behind her, leaning over the aisle to spread the gossip to Justin Krasinski. Lane rolls her eyes at Hayley's chronic inability to whisper. "Janie said he's a criminal."
Biting back a snort of derision, she continues to doodle, deeply regretting that she left her headphones in Lorelai's car yesterday. Carrie's right, Hayley's voice is really grating.
"And I heard…" Hayley continues, "that he knows Kurt Cobain."
Okay, that's it. Lane throws her notebook onto her desk with so much force it clatters to the floor, taking the homework she was doodling on with it.
"Are you kidding me?" She cuts in, turning around the glare at Hayley with all the animosity she can muster. Absurd rumors are one thing but this…this is an insult to anyone with any knowledge of music whatsoever.
"It's just what I heard," Hayley offers lamely.
"Kurt Cobain died in 1994," she huffs. "In case you're struggling with the math, that was seven years ago. And he wasn't even from New York. You would know that if you picked up a copy of Spin on occasion."
"Oh," Hayley says with surprise. "Are you sure?"
"Am I sure? Am I—" Lane throws up her hands and turns around, so angry she can't even finish her sentence. As she bends over to pick up her notebook, which is facedown on the floor, she notices the new guy crack the slightest twinge of a smile before he reverts back to his façade of intense concentration.
"Okay everyone," Mr. Taylor bustles into the room, his arm full of papers. "Let's get started for the day. I hope you're all ready to revisit Mark Twain again because your test scores on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court were abysmal." He glances around the room. "Also, we have a new student. Everyone, this is Jess Mariano. Jess, would you like to say a few words about yourself?"
To his credit, Jess actually puts down his book for a half a second. "Nope," he says succinctly, before going back to it.
Mr. Taylor stares at him blankly for half a second, before moving on. "Okay then. We're moving on to Tom Sawyer today. I thought it would be good to take turns reading aloud. Dean, why don't you start?"
Lane inwardly groans. Mr. Taylor is one of the laziest teachers in at Star's Hollow High, he loves to make them take turns reading out loud so he doesn't actually have to come up with a lesson plan. Not to mention, Dean is the worst, slowest reader in their entire class.
"Um…sure," Dean starts. "So um…Chapter One I guess."
Lane fidgets as he starts to read excruciatingly slowly, stumbling over words like 'perplexed' and 'spectacles.' Why Rory thought he could handle Kafka is absolutely beyond her, she thinks, tapping her pen absently against her notebook. To be honest, why Rory is dating him at all is sometimes beyond her. Sure he's nice enough but Lane, who doesn't really consider herself a rocket scientist, can run mental circles around him. For Rory a simple conversation has to be like trying to explain quantum physics to the members of 98 Degrees.
When the bell finally rings, signaling the end of the last period of the day, she perks up, eagerly reaching for her backpack.
"Make sure to have chapter five read for tomorrow," Mr. Taylor reminds them over the muffled sound of students packing their things.
In the shuffle of people filing out the door, a piece of ripped notebook paper slides across her desk. She picks it up, her brow furrowing with surprise as she realizes it's the completed lyrics to "I Wanna Be Sedated" that she started out of boredom during the beginning of class. The last few stanzas are scrawled towards the bottom, spreading across the page in a spidery black print.
Just put me in a wheelchair, get me to the show
Hurry hurry hurry, before I go loco
I can't control my fingers, I can't control my toes
Oh no oh oh oh oh
Twenty twenty twenty four hours to go
I wanna be sedated
Nothing to do, no where to go o,
I wanna be sedated
Just put me in a wheelchair, get me to the show
Hurry hurry hurry, before I go loco
I can't control my fingers, I can't control my toes
Oh no oh oh oh oh
She looks towards the door where the new guy, Jess, is slipping through the crowd, his head ducked, his hands already reaching for the book in his pocket. Folding the paper in half, she smiles. Maybe this school is finally gaining someone with halfway decent musical taste.
A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this. I feel like should probably add a little character disclaimer here that this is purely a friendship story in terms of Lane and Jess, there is NOT a romantic aspect to their relationship. In addition, a warning to Dean fans, I'm sorry but this isn't going to put him in a flattering light.
Please do let me know how you like it or if you have questions. Thanks for reading!