Pacey pedaled up the concrete walkway to the front entrance of the school,
hopping off the bike in one swift movement before he'd even really slowed
to a stop. He practically threw it against the metal grates of the waiting
rack, sighing heavily as he spun the lock, as if securing it here required
much more effort and energy than he could afford to expend.
It was a secondhand bike he was riding now, as his had been stolen last month from this very spot. Some misguided do-gooder had felt the need to run in and report it to the principal, who then decided it was necessary to file a report with the police, who it turn felt obligated to then make an appearance at Capeside High. And, of course, as Pacey's luck would have it, there couldn't have possibly been any other officer on duty that afternoon except Deputy Doug himself. When Pacey finally admitted that he might have perhaps somehow inadvertently left it unlocked, he was then subjected to a twenty-minute diatribe in front of the whole school on his stupidity, the importance of responsibility and his inherent lack thereof. But mostly focusing on his stupidity.
Turning away, he trudged up the cement steps, only increasing his pace to a slow jog as he reached the top few, never bothering to even glance in the direction of any of the students loitering about before the bell for first period. He'd already missed homeroom, so there'd be the inevitable attendance issue to deal with, but he couldn't really muster up enough concern about that right now to even try to think of an excuse.
Besides, he usually found his bullshitting to be much more effective when it was off the cuff. Like any true procrastinator, he always worked best under pressure.
"Hey, Witter."
He glanced up as he entered the front foyer to see Justin Reynolds and Steve Sutcliffe, the respective quarterback and running back of Capeside High's varsity football team, hanging out by the main stairwell. They were two years older than him, which in high school terms was the equivalent of one's commanding officers. But Pacey wasn't about to stand at attention for anyone today.
"Hey." Was all he mumbled in response, managing a hesitant nod of acknowledgement.
"We've got a card game set up for Friday night. Murph's parents are out of town. You up for it?"
Pacey sighed under his breath, arching an eyebrow as he considered this. Truth be told, he thought Justin Reynolds and Steve Sutcliffe were a couple of ignorant assholes, potential date rapists in training who spent the better part of the day harassing hapless victims who made the dire mistake of simply crossing their paths. But there was a hierarchy here Pacey was also fully aware of, and he knew at what level he had to keep himself hovering in order to survive. Hey, they probably didn't like him much either. In fact, Pacey was quite sure that they didn't. But he fulfilled certain functions. He made them laugh and he knew how to play poker well enough to teach them a thing or two, so they could then turn around and make a profit off some other poor unsuspecting sophomore slob. Pacey figured he wasn't really that far off from being their court jester.
"Yeah. Sounds good." He replied as started up the steps past them, wondering briefly if his presence would be missed at Dawson's weekly movie night, and then wondering if they'd even notice his absence. "Count me in."
Reaching the second floor landing at the top of the staircase, he sighed tiredly, muttering to himself under his breath as he crossed the hall and slowed to a stop in front of Classroom 203. Belinda McGovern was standing in the threshold , effectively blocking anyone from entering as she babbled away about her latest shopping expedition to the group of girls gathered around her. Knowing that she could clearly see him standing there waiting to get by, Pacey shifted his weight from one foot, then the other, before making a soft sound of exasperation and irritation.
"Can I help you with something?" She finally turned away from the conversation to snap at him.
"I highly doubt it." He shrugged, and then motioned with his hand past her head. "And far be it from me to interrupt this great meeting of the minds here, but you might want to consider moving your little confab to another location so those of us in this class can actually, you know, get in this class."
Her mouth fell open with a small sound of disbelief, staring him up and down in contempt as she stepped aside for him to enter. "Oh, pardon me. No reason to get all huffy just because none of us would be caught dead talking to you."
"Ooh.good comeback." He muttered humorlessly under his breath, skulking away to an open desk in the back of the room and slumping down into the seat.
He glanced around at the handful of familiar faces in class, nodding his greetings to the people he'd known his whole life. It was a strange thing, to have nothing of substance to say to a guy you probably knew more personal details about than anyone would ever need or want to know about another human being. You might talk local sports teams, where the parties were going to be that weekend, but every time you look at him what you're really thinking is that he wet his pants during dodge ball in the fourth grade.
Of course, Pacey thought as he raised an eyebrow, that could work both ways, and he didn't really want to have to imagine right now what it was in his past that people remembered about him. Chewing pensively on the inside of his cheek, he decided to avoid all conversation for the rest of the day. He shifted a few times in his chair as his eyes scanned the cracks in the floor, before lifting his gaze to the water stains on the ceiling. Frowning, he studied them more carefully. At least.he hoped those were only water stains.
To say that there was a change in the air, some shift in the earth's axis, as she entered the room would probably be a bit of an overstatement, since none of the spoken voices around him faltered, none of the activity occurring in his periphery paused. No one else seemed to cast even a fleeting glance in her direction. But his whole world momentarily narrowed down to tunnel vision, to the sight of her walking slowly across the front of the classroom.
Maybe it was the way she carried herself that set her apart, a sort of quiet dignity that came with a maturity and intelligence these girls like Belinda McGovern did not, and probably would never, possess. She had a natural grace and elegance to her movements that she almost tried to hide, as if she wasn't comfortable in her own skin. As if she wasn't fully aware of, or ready for, the woman she so obviously was destined to be.
Of course, unlike him, she wasn't the type of person who sought out attention. She shunned it really. That much was also obvious in the way she moved. For some reason this fascinated Pacey, and he was continually amazed that, for the most part, it seemed to work. After all, he realized he was the only one in the room staring, as much as he tried to disguise it.
There was a lot about her that fascinated him. That he'd be surprised to find himself wondering about in one of his rare quiet and contemplative moments. He recognized the wall she built around herself, that protective outer coating, because he had one just like it at home. But it was the underneath that mystified him. Entranced him. A mixture of fire and ice laced with hints of sweetness and softness, a combination that no one else he ever knew possessed. It was almost against his will that he was attracted to it, wanted to be near it.
He often wondered why the whole world couldn't see it, although he spent most of his time trying to pretend he didn't either.
She stopped at the desk at the front of the room, placing her bag carefully on the floor and leaning over it to shuffle through some papers. As she brushed the hair back off her face, tucking it behind her ear, Pacey caught a glimpse of her eyes.
It was the eyes that always did him in. Broke him and sent him scrambling for cover. Put all defense mechanisms on full scale alert.
There was so much going on in there sometimes that it was hard for him to process it all at once. He was often haunted by what he saw in those dark depths, a pain and a hunger that he found so familiar yet so heartbreaking at the same time, as if something in there was calling out to him to save her.
Not that she needed his saving. There was an inner strength to her character that had gotten her through much worse situations that he could ever imagine. While she may have been the victim of small town minds, she'd never let herself stoop to their level. She'd never play the game that Pacey played merely to fit in. And even though her own experiences with fairness and decency were probably few and far between, she never treated anyone she knew with anything less than that. Pacey knew she was aware that there had been lies told about her, yet she retained her integrity and honesty almost to a fault. So, as bad as their individual experiences may have been, for Pacey, sometimes she was the one and only reason he still believed there was some good in this world. Maybe what he was looking for in those eyes was to be saved himself.
Or at the very least to know that she saw him, too.
She was moving again, making her way down the aisle space between student desks, slowly approaching and only glancing up when she'd almost reached him. That's when their eyes actually met, knocking the wind out of his chest, throwing him off balance.
She wrinkled her forehead with a vaguely disinterested look of annoyance.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that? "
He struggled to recover his breath, scrambled to find his footing.
"Well." He chuckled hollowly, covering the crack in his voice with sarcasm as he narrowed his eyes to appraise her. "As anyone could plainly see, I'm obviously struck speechless by your beauty. I mean, really, I have no words."
"We can only hope that remains a permanent condition." She murmured sardonically, sliding into the seat diagonally across from him and plopping her book bag on the desktop.
".and yet, the tragic irony is, when she herself speaks, the spell is somehow broken." He sighed dramatically as he continued over her, shaking his head sadly. "Maybe that's your key to sprucing up that lackluster love life, Potter. You should consider opening your dating pool to more foreigners. I'm talking guys who don't know a single, solitary word of English. That way they can be blissfully unaware of your."
"Are you speaking now from your own personal success with the deaf, dumb and blind, Pacey?" She cut in with a smirk.
And, for the first time that day, Pacey smiled. Almost chuckled.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen.that was a comeback.
Her own crooked smile faded to a faint frown as her gaze fell upon his empty desk.
"Didn't you get your test back? They're right up there." She nodded towards the front of the room.
"Why bother? I already know I failed."
"Way to perpetuate the image, Pacey."
"Huh?"
"The whole defeatist thing you've got going on?" She shook her head with a short sigh. "It gets a little old."
"Well, perhaps you've been spending too much time breathing the rarified air inside the golden bubble of Dawson's celluloid world, but for those of us back in Kansas, Dorothy, this is called reality." Pacey replied darkly, shifting in his seat. "There was no way in hell I was going to pass that test, so I really don't have the need nor the desire to go up there and get my official stamp of rejection. To have somebody tell me what I don't know, because I already know what I don't know, you know?" He paused before raising a finger in the air as if an idea had just occurred to him. "Hey, maybe that's it! Maybe I should see if Capeside High is offering any courses on that.so I can just regurgitate that vast amount of knowledge I have stored in my brain under the voluminous subject headings of my ignorance."
She stared at him a moment, dumbfounded, almost, if he didn't know better, concerned, blinking those damn eyes of hers. Finally her face softened and she spoke in a quiet, offhand tone, turning away to pull out her notebook with a careless shrug of her shoulder.
"Or maybe you could just try, for once, not to give up so easily."
Pacey locked his eyes on the back of her head, squinting thoughtfully as he bit down on the inside of his lower lip. "You think that's all it would take, huh?"
"Yes." She looked back at him over her shoulder, arching an eyebrow. "I do."
Pacey nodded his head, holding her gaze. "Good to know."
Of course, that sounded great in theory, he thought to himself, still watching her out of the corner of his eye as the teacher finally entered the room and she turned away again to face forward, but fell a little short when applied to one's day-to-day existence.
Because there are some instances in life where you can take the chance, give it all you've got and may the consequences be damned. And then there are other instances in life where the consequences are so devastating and disastrous and far-reaching that giving up before you ever even really tried isn't merely the safe choice but the only alternative. Giving up before you ever tried also spares you from having to discover that you never really had that chance to begin with, because at least in the not knowing you can still imagine the possibility.
So, Pacey, the class clown, the black sheep, the village idiot, would learn to be content with this. With the way things were. Not trying in any way to upset the balance, to interrupt the status quo, and thereby insure that he held onto the one thing in his life that he could not risk losing. This one piece of evidence he had that there can actually be beauty and order and meaning in the universe.
Her, simply here.
In his orbit.
It was a secondhand bike he was riding now, as his had been stolen last month from this very spot. Some misguided do-gooder had felt the need to run in and report it to the principal, who then decided it was necessary to file a report with the police, who it turn felt obligated to then make an appearance at Capeside High. And, of course, as Pacey's luck would have it, there couldn't have possibly been any other officer on duty that afternoon except Deputy Doug himself. When Pacey finally admitted that he might have perhaps somehow inadvertently left it unlocked, he was then subjected to a twenty-minute diatribe in front of the whole school on his stupidity, the importance of responsibility and his inherent lack thereof. But mostly focusing on his stupidity.
Turning away, he trudged up the cement steps, only increasing his pace to a slow jog as he reached the top few, never bothering to even glance in the direction of any of the students loitering about before the bell for first period. He'd already missed homeroom, so there'd be the inevitable attendance issue to deal with, but he couldn't really muster up enough concern about that right now to even try to think of an excuse.
Besides, he usually found his bullshitting to be much more effective when it was off the cuff. Like any true procrastinator, he always worked best under pressure.
"Hey, Witter."
He glanced up as he entered the front foyer to see Justin Reynolds and Steve Sutcliffe, the respective quarterback and running back of Capeside High's varsity football team, hanging out by the main stairwell. They were two years older than him, which in high school terms was the equivalent of one's commanding officers. But Pacey wasn't about to stand at attention for anyone today.
"Hey." Was all he mumbled in response, managing a hesitant nod of acknowledgement.
"We've got a card game set up for Friday night. Murph's parents are out of town. You up for it?"
Pacey sighed under his breath, arching an eyebrow as he considered this. Truth be told, he thought Justin Reynolds and Steve Sutcliffe were a couple of ignorant assholes, potential date rapists in training who spent the better part of the day harassing hapless victims who made the dire mistake of simply crossing their paths. But there was a hierarchy here Pacey was also fully aware of, and he knew at what level he had to keep himself hovering in order to survive. Hey, they probably didn't like him much either. In fact, Pacey was quite sure that they didn't. But he fulfilled certain functions. He made them laugh and he knew how to play poker well enough to teach them a thing or two, so they could then turn around and make a profit off some other poor unsuspecting sophomore slob. Pacey figured he wasn't really that far off from being their court jester.
"Yeah. Sounds good." He replied as started up the steps past them, wondering briefly if his presence would be missed at Dawson's weekly movie night, and then wondering if they'd even notice his absence. "Count me in."
Reaching the second floor landing at the top of the staircase, he sighed tiredly, muttering to himself under his breath as he crossed the hall and slowed to a stop in front of Classroom 203. Belinda McGovern was standing in the threshold , effectively blocking anyone from entering as she babbled away about her latest shopping expedition to the group of girls gathered around her. Knowing that she could clearly see him standing there waiting to get by, Pacey shifted his weight from one foot, then the other, before making a soft sound of exasperation and irritation.
"Can I help you with something?" She finally turned away from the conversation to snap at him.
"I highly doubt it." He shrugged, and then motioned with his hand past her head. "And far be it from me to interrupt this great meeting of the minds here, but you might want to consider moving your little confab to another location so those of us in this class can actually, you know, get in this class."
Her mouth fell open with a small sound of disbelief, staring him up and down in contempt as she stepped aside for him to enter. "Oh, pardon me. No reason to get all huffy just because none of us would be caught dead talking to you."
"Ooh.good comeback." He muttered humorlessly under his breath, skulking away to an open desk in the back of the room and slumping down into the seat.
He glanced around at the handful of familiar faces in class, nodding his greetings to the people he'd known his whole life. It was a strange thing, to have nothing of substance to say to a guy you probably knew more personal details about than anyone would ever need or want to know about another human being. You might talk local sports teams, where the parties were going to be that weekend, but every time you look at him what you're really thinking is that he wet his pants during dodge ball in the fourth grade.
Of course, Pacey thought as he raised an eyebrow, that could work both ways, and he didn't really want to have to imagine right now what it was in his past that people remembered about him. Chewing pensively on the inside of his cheek, he decided to avoid all conversation for the rest of the day. He shifted a few times in his chair as his eyes scanned the cracks in the floor, before lifting his gaze to the water stains on the ceiling. Frowning, he studied them more carefully. At least.he hoped those were only water stains.
To say that there was a change in the air, some shift in the earth's axis, as she entered the room would probably be a bit of an overstatement, since none of the spoken voices around him faltered, none of the activity occurring in his periphery paused. No one else seemed to cast even a fleeting glance in her direction. But his whole world momentarily narrowed down to tunnel vision, to the sight of her walking slowly across the front of the classroom.
Maybe it was the way she carried herself that set her apart, a sort of quiet dignity that came with a maturity and intelligence these girls like Belinda McGovern did not, and probably would never, possess. She had a natural grace and elegance to her movements that she almost tried to hide, as if she wasn't comfortable in her own skin. As if she wasn't fully aware of, or ready for, the woman she so obviously was destined to be.
Of course, unlike him, she wasn't the type of person who sought out attention. She shunned it really. That much was also obvious in the way she moved. For some reason this fascinated Pacey, and he was continually amazed that, for the most part, it seemed to work. After all, he realized he was the only one in the room staring, as much as he tried to disguise it.
There was a lot about her that fascinated him. That he'd be surprised to find himself wondering about in one of his rare quiet and contemplative moments. He recognized the wall she built around herself, that protective outer coating, because he had one just like it at home. But it was the underneath that mystified him. Entranced him. A mixture of fire and ice laced with hints of sweetness and softness, a combination that no one else he ever knew possessed. It was almost against his will that he was attracted to it, wanted to be near it.
He often wondered why the whole world couldn't see it, although he spent most of his time trying to pretend he didn't either.
She stopped at the desk at the front of the room, placing her bag carefully on the floor and leaning over it to shuffle through some papers. As she brushed the hair back off her face, tucking it behind her ear, Pacey caught a glimpse of her eyes.
It was the eyes that always did him in. Broke him and sent him scrambling for cover. Put all defense mechanisms on full scale alert.
There was so much going on in there sometimes that it was hard for him to process it all at once. He was often haunted by what he saw in those dark depths, a pain and a hunger that he found so familiar yet so heartbreaking at the same time, as if something in there was calling out to him to save her.
Not that she needed his saving. There was an inner strength to her character that had gotten her through much worse situations that he could ever imagine. While she may have been the victim of small town minds, she'd never let herself stoop to their level. She'd never play the game that Pacey played merely to fit in. And even though her own experiences with fairness and decency were probably few and far between, she never treated anyone she knew with anything less than that. Pacey knew she was aware that there had been lies told about her, yet she retained her integrity and honesty almost to a fault. So, as bad as their individual experiences may have been, for Pacey, sometimes she was the one and only reason he still believed there was some good in this world. Maybe what he was looking for in those eyes was to be saved himself.
Or at the very least to know that she saw him, too.
She was moving again, making her way down the aisle space between student desks, slowly approaching and only glancing up when she'd almost reached him. That's when their eyes actually met, knocking the wind out of his chest, throwing him off balance.
She wrinkled her forehead with a vaguely disinterested look of annoyance.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that? "
He struggled to recover his breath, scrambled to find his footing.
"Well." He chuckled hollowly, covering the crack in his voice with sarcasm as he narrowed his eyes to appraise her. "As anyone could plainly see, I'm obviously struck speechless by your beauty. I mean, really, I have no words."
"We can only hope that remains a permanent condition." She murmured sardonically, sliding into the seat diagonally across from him and plopping her book bag on the desktop.
".and yet, the tragic irony is, when she herself speaks, the spell is somehow broken." He sighed dramatically as he continued over her, shaking his head sadly. "Maybe that's your key to sprucing up that lackluster love life, Potter. You should consider opening your dating pool to more foreigners. I'm talking guys who don't know a single, solitary word of English. That way they can be blissfully unaware of your."
"Are you speaking now from your own personal success with the deaf, dumb and blind, Pacey?" She cut in with a smirk.
And, for the first time that day, Pacey smiled. Almost chuckled.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen.that was a comeback.
Her own crooked smile faded to a faint frown as her gaze fell upon his empty desk.
"Didn't you get your test back? They're right up there." She nodded towards the front of the room.
"Why bother? I already know I failed."
"Way to perpetuate the image, Pacey."
"Huh?"
"The whole defeatist thing you've got going on?" She shook her head with a short sigh. "It gets a little old."
"Well, perhaps you've been spending too much time breathing the rarified air inside the golden bubble of Dawson's celluloid world, but for those of us back in Kansas, Dorothy, this is called reality." Pacey replied darkly, shifting in his seat. "There was no way in hell I was going to pass that test, so I really don't have the need nor the desire to go up there and get my official stamp of rejection. To have somebody tell me what I don't know, because I already know what I don't know, you know?" He paused before raising a finger in the air as if an idea had just occurred to him. "Hey, maybe that's it! Maybe I should see if Capeside High is offering any courses on that.so I can just regurgitate that vast amount of knowledge I have stored in my brain under the voluminous subject headings of my ignorance."
She stared at him a moment, dumbfounded, almost, if he didn't know better, concerned, blinking those damn eyes of hers. Finally her face softened and she spoke in a quiet, offhand tone, turning away to pull out her notebook with a careless shrug of her shoulder.
"Or maybe you could just try, for once, not to give up so easily."
Pacey locked his eyes on the back of her head, squinting thoughtfully as he bit down on the inside of his lower lip. "You think that's all it would take, huh?"
"Yes." She looked back at him over her shoulder, arching an eyebrow. "I do."
Pacey nodded his head, holding her gaze. "Good to know."
Of course, that sounded great in theory, he thought to himself, still watching her out of the corner of his eye as the teacher finally entered the room and she turned away again to face forward, but fell a little short when applied to one's day-to-day existence.
Because there are some instances in life where you can take the chance, give it all you've got and may the consequences be damned. And then there are other instances in life where the consequences are so devastating and disastrous and far-reaching that giving up before you ever even really tried isn't merely the safe choice but the only alternative. Giving up before you ever tried also spares you from having to discover that you never really had that chance to begin with, because at least in the not knowing you can still imagine the possibility.
So, Pacey, the class clown, the black sheep, the village idiot, would learn to be content with this. With the way things were. Not trying in any way to upset the balance, to interrupt the status quo, and thereby insure that he held onto the one thing in his life that he could not risk losing. This one piece of evidence he had that there can actually be beauty and order and meaning in the universe.
Her, simply here.
In his orbit.