Disclaimer – Jonathan Larson owns Rent!! I can only dream...
This is kind of A/U because Joanne and Angel are sisters, Benny is nice, and Maureen and Joanne rarely fight. It's supposed to be a little out of character. This is my first fic so please review!
They start as juniors in high school. It's during the fall.
"Hey pookie." Said Maureen as she sat down at the lunch table with the rest of her friends. There was Mimi and her boy friend, Roger, and their friends Benny and Mark. Mark was her ex. And then there were Collins and his boyfriend, Angel, who is a drag queen, and Angel's sister, Maureen's girl friend, Joanne. She gave Joanne a quick kiss and Joanne smiled.
"Hi baby." Replied Joanne as Maureen sat next to her. No one at school thought Maureen and Joanne were weird. They lived in a pretty diverse area. Angel wore drag to school everyday. Where they lived, if you wanted someone "normal" you really wouldn't have anyone. It was a school full of art, music, and diversity and everyone loved it... almost everyone.
Maureen and Joanne and Angel would walk home together because they lived next door to each other. Their parents had been best friends, well, as long as the three of them had been friends and they went way back. The three of them had been friends since pre-K. Angel had wanted to join brownies with Maureen and Joanne, but he knew his parents wouldn't have it. Maureen and Joanne's families weren't exactly the most accepting parents in the world. Whenever Maureen's mom saw two boys walking down the street together she would say "They are going to hell." Sometimes she would even walk outside and tell them off herself, and this mortified Maureen. She would then come back inside and would lecture Maureen about the horrible things about people: art, music, theater, homosexuality and so much more. She hated those kids that would hang out at the Life Cafe and spend hours sitting and talking and laughing. In other words, she described Maureen's best friends, but of course her mom didn't know that. Joanne's parents were the same way. They hated anything out of the ordinary and really, they had no idea who their kids were. Mrs. Johnson didn't know that Maureen had starred in every school play since she started high school. Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson-Shunard didn't have a clue that their daughter was a lesbian or that their son wore skirts and was the best drummer in the school band. No one else had a problem with it, just their families.
"Hi mom! I'm home!" Maureen yelled as she walked into the house and dropped her backpack on the floor. She prepared to become the "other" Maureen. The one her mom liked. The one she didn't. She started to get a glass of water when her mom came running down the stairs.
"Maureen!" She yelled franticly "I dont want you going to school anymore!"
"What?!? Mom, I have to go to school."
"No! I heard... things about your school."
"What things?" Maureen said in a bored voice. She had had this conversation before.
"Did you know that there are people in your school who do drugs?" Of course Maureen knew that. She was just describing Mimi and Roger, but they were trying to quit and all of the rest them were helping. But Maureen replied in her standard shocked tone like she had no idea, like she was just as naive as her mother. She would go back to school. She always did.
"Oh my gosh! Well, you dont need to worry, I would never do that." She said in the voice that she had been perfecting over the years in her school dramas.
"Oh, I know, I just dont want you in that 'environment'!"
"It's okay mom, I'll be careful."
"Oh, alright sweetie." Her mom gave her a kiss and went into the kitchen. Maureen grabbed her backpack and raced up to her room. She would call Joanne so that they could laugh about the crazy conversations they had had with their parents this afternoon.