Spirited Away, a degrassi fanfic

Author's Note: I posted this a long time ago, and took it down in a fit of insecurity. I put it back up because people kept asking me where it went.

If you've ever read or reviewed this story in the past, thank you. And if you're one of the people who encouraged me to put this back up & said it was one of your favorites, then double thank you, because it's up here again because of you. I'm still shocked that it was so well-received, and I can promise you that it's not getting deleted again.

I love my readers. You guys are awesome.

And no, I don't own Degrassi.

It happened when he was in afterschool traffic, pulled up in a multicolored conga line of cars, waiting for the left hand turn signal to turn green. He had the radio turned down low and the window open, one arm hanging out and tapping gently against Morty's driver's side door to the beat of the song. It was the first truly warm day of spring that they'd had all year, the kind that makes you forget that you've just suffered through a slog of unbearably cold months that made you wonder if you'd ever see sunshine again, and have you thinking that summer really was just around the corner.

The day was light and breezy, warm and free, and for the moment, so was he.

At least, until he heard the music blasting from the car that happened to pull up beside him.

The girl in the dark green Chevy was playing the kind of song that would usually make him pull right up beside the person and blast "real" music out of the hearse, casually turning up the dials to drown out the tinny, commercialized pop sound of manufactured crap that people are brainwashed into believing they've chosen to like. When the other driver would turn to glare at him, he would simply arch an eyebrow nonchalantly, then lean over and casually turn the knob on the dial, contemptuously daring them to say something as they took in the sight before them- boy in all black, right down to his Sharpied nails, blasting screamo music from an antique hearse. His own passive-aggressive way of flipping the bird to everyone who thought they had the goddam right to judge him.

So Eli peered through the windows, prepared to take the offensive position by reaching for the radio dial, when something he saw stopped his hand in mid-air.

This girl- and he realized with a jolt that he knew who she was; a senior with an unusual name, Anya, Sav's ex-girlfriend- had such an expression on her face that his irritation shriveled and died right away. Her face was elated as she sang- not just singing, but actually inflecting, like she was performing for a sold-out crowd in Central Park instead of just the dashboard in after-school traffic rush. She banged her head against the steering column, and hopped in her seat, shimmying her shoulders to the beat as she bobbed her head, her hair swishing. So much unfettered joy, such unbridled enthusiasm. Joy so real and unself-conscious that it was totally unaware of everything else except herself and how it makes her feel. To her, there was no traffic, no hearse, no red light in that moment; it was just her in that car and wherever her imagination was taking her.

And just like that, she took him someplace else, too.

BEFORE

It is the middle of last summer, and he and Julia are spending the day in the park. His dad's radio station is sponsoring a string of free concerts in the pavilion for a charity event, and he and Julia decide that they might as well check it out- if it's free, they're there

It's a beautiful day, postcard-perfect and stereotypically summer. The sun is shining, a breeze is blowing, and the wild honeysuckle makes the whole air smell intoxicating. It's like he can taste the color yellow, if the color yellow had a taste.

Julia's wearing her old blue jeans, and her hair is loose, curly and uncombed. He's got his favorite belt on, the one that looks like piano keys, and put some sunblock on his face to try and ward off the sunburn that he'll eventually get, the redness dusting his cheeks like a sunset and making his freckles expand. They walk, hand-in-hand, to the edge of the pavilion stage, listening to the music that isn't half-bad, an artist they've never heard of before who looks like Slash and Billy Ray Cyrus had a love child with a penchant for hair gel.

At first, neither Eli nor Julia can figure out why everyone around them seems to be snickering and pointing, but when they follow the general direction of the scorn, they see what everyone is staring at. A few feet away from them, flushed right up against the barricade between the stage and the crowd, is a girl not too much older than they are, dancing to the music. Not just dancing, but really headbanging, jumping around and flailing her body in a way that looks both outrageous yet oddly choreographed at the same time- like watching a dolphin leap out of the water, twisting in mid-air before it slips back under the water, some odd, indistinguishable ballet to a song he doesn't know.

Whether or not the girl is aware of people looking at her, she keeps dancing, spinning on the balls of her feet and waving her arms in the air, her eyes closed and lips parted in an expression of bliss so real that it made him stare.

Where did that kind of feeling come from?

II.

Eventually, the girl was tapped on the shoulder by an older woman; resolutely middle-aged, well-dressed and obnoxious in that air that people have when they're entitled to live their lives in a way that makes everyone else feel inferior to them. She tapped the dancing girl on her shoulder, and the girl had blushed furiously, mumbling something Eli had a feeling was an apology for her behavior. That rebuke had brought her back to earth in a way that the snickers and points from the rest of the cooler-than-thou university hipster crowd hadn't; it was a public dressing down, putting that girl back in her place, like she had no right to be happy and wasn't entitled to such a sweet, public expression of fearless joy.

The world didn't allow a place for such natural exuberance. The whole world went around and acted like they had a public code of conduct for the entire world, and if you tried to break out of it, they simply put you back in your place, making sure that you behaved like they did so that your uncontrollable emotions posed no threat to their smug suburban lifestyle.

Witnessing that event soured the evening for Eli (and ostensibly for Julia, as well, who had been pissed that he hadn't been enjoying himself). Something about the way the woman had felt it was her right to address the girl, to personally bring her down from her cloud of wherever she had been, had really fucking pissed him off. What right- what goddam right- did that old biddy have to tell that girl how to enjoy herself? How dare she believe she was so entitled as to show that girl how she specifically was and was not allowed to express herself?

Who the hell did she think she was?

From time to time that night, Eli caught a glimpse of that girl through the crowd. She was still singing along to every song, and was usually doing a little dance in place, but it was such a pale imitation of dancing that he could tell she was not even half-assing it. She was just trying not to draw attention to herself, hoping to avoid another public dressing down. Her movements were weak and thin as wet cabbage, her hips simply shifting from side-to-side and her arms flapping awkwardly at her side. She looked like someone who had just wandered into the show instead of someone who knew why they were there, like she had simply gotten lost on her way to something else and had no idea how she had managed to find herself here.

But what had really killed it for him was the expression on her face. She was still smiling, but it was hollow and forced, like she was scared she'd get into trouble for even this forced enjoyment. And more than once, Eli caught her smiling with tears in her eyes, her expression so sad under that jack-o-lantern grin that it made him hurt. That night had been ruined for her, he knew. No matter how much she was enjoying singing along to the music, nothing was going to make her as happy as she had been a few moments ago, head banging and hips sashaying and arms straight up in the air, lips parted into a wide open smile, holding nothing back.

Even now, he felt that same twist in his gut that he'd felt that night. Even though he'd been with Julia at the time, watching that girl had made him want to take her by the hand and spirit her away to somewhere the two of them could dance. Not just dance, but really feel the music, moving and swaying and throwing their bodies around in a way that was totally unbefitting of Elijah Goldsworthy. Thrust his hips and fling his hair and whirl his arms in the air while the girl boogied insanely beside him, absorbing each other's whirling dervish joy by osmosis. It wasn't a sexual attraction, or even an attraction based on anything physical. It was just the need to feel such passion and zest, that unrestrained happiness.

Fuck you, all you goddam socialites; all you stick-in-the-muds who get your picks by bringing other people down to your level. Fuck you and your propriety.

Let that girl dance.

BEFORE

He's at the Dead Hand concert with Sav and Adam, and as the band plays those telltale opening chords to "Paisley Jacket", the boys exchange a glance and simultaneously lose their minds. They're twisting, flailing, jumping and shaking in a way that normally would make dudes feel awkward. But tonight isn't about them; it's about the music, and right now, it's touching something in all three of them. So they spin around, whirling tornadoes of bone and blood, connecting with something deep inside themselves that brings them back to the people they are meant to be- raw, unspoiled, free of constraint and care.

III.

Such strong emotions- good or bad- oftentimes scared people. Worried people. They felt the need to suppress such high spirits, needed to harness and control it, before it overpowered them. People were afraid to let themselves feel anything, whether it was extreme joy or extreme grief, for fear of it swallowing them whole. Eli couldn't entirely blame them- considering how he'd let his grief for Julia nearly eat him alive- but when people simply walled themselves off from feeling anything real, they became like that woman at the concert, who had felt it was her place to tell people how to behave.

Let that girl dance.

IV.

Anya suddenly caught his eyes and flushed, embarrassed, as if she had been caught in the act of something illicit. One hand came over her braces-bound mouth and she smiled, insecurely but charmingly so, and she stopped dancing, chewing on her lower lip self-consciously.

Cocking one eyebrow at her in his signature smirk, he began bobbing his head soundlessly to the tune of her music, tossing his hair. She giggled, and he laughed.

Then the light turned red, and with a sweet smile and a wave of her hand, they parted at the lights, her car disappearing in his rearview mirror as they turned in opposite directions of one another.

AFTER

They never spoke to one another, nor did they ever mention or repeat their red light tango of that afternoon. Anya graduated without a word to him, and he watched her walk the stage along with Degrassi's other seniors and step out of their tiny world into the much larger one.

But Eli never did forget about it, nor did he forget about how it made him feel. For someone who had been kicked around by life more than he cared to admit, he wasn't exactly the world's most optimistic person. He'd seen enough terrible things to know that the world was unfair, unloving, and unbearably cruel.

Tears and fears; losses and crosses to bear. That was the legacy of the world.

But every now and then, he saw something in people that never failed to surprise him. Adam's strength. Clare's belief in him. Sav's optimism. Holly J's compassion. Drew's understanding. Anya's innocence.

His own heart, and its ability to heal.

There is some good left in the world, a key that unlocks that secret of life. It's not always possible to see it, but when you come in contact with it- a double-twisted rainbow, the bloom of a desert flower, a drifting dandelion wish- it's so pure and unsullied that it often leaves the most outraged cynics speechless with their own folly.

Some things just can't be explained or understood, and the human spirit is one of them.