Hi! I'm SeungSeiRan and yes, this is my first venture into BSC fanfiction (which I feel rather bad about, considering I was a huge fan of the series when I was a kid). But anyway, this fic was conceived and written as part of LiveJournal's Small Fandoms Bang. I always thought Shannon was quite neglected, compared to the other BSC members with regards to both canon and fanfiction, so here's my attempt at bringing her character into the light. I hope you guys enjoy reading. Feedback/concrit is appreciated :)
Notes: Post-series fic, focuses on Shannon/Bart with a few other characters playing minor roles. Also comes with fanmix! (see my profile for the link)
Disclaimer: The Baby Sitters Club and its respective characters belong to Ann M. Martin.
Shannon Kilbourne is fourteen and afflicted with wanderlust.
It was that summer day before ninth grade started in a week, when the Connecticut air was thick as stew with moisture and meltdowns. She'd seen the Thomas' car – Nanny's Pink Clinker took on a greasy, gaudy sheen in the shimmering heat – chug along across the street to their driveway. She'd gaped when the passenger door swung open and out sprung Kristy in a black mini-skirt, all tan-lines and toned shins.
Shannon had reserved that picture for the inevitable interrogation that would follow (that is, if she ever got a hold of Kristy again soon. Summer school, college camps, and the occasional sitting job have her grounded, if not ground down). It came in handy sooner than she expected, the following night when she spied the two of them from her bedroom window (she could always put the snooping down to mandatory Journalism class, if she was caught).
Kristy was wearing the mini, accented with a frown. The boy she's with had his arm around her with all the ease of a stranger poised uncomfortably in the role of an escort. Shannon can't see the sparks but she knows there's a fight brewing. Every little smile he tucks into the glances he gives Kristy is smudged with the strain it takes.
Bart Taylor. She guesses Kristy's right when she says he's not quitter.
They walk up to the Thomas' door, silent, hands closed and not touching. Shannon thinks Kristy doesn't say goodbye when she opens the door and leaves him on the porch. He gets the hint anyway.
Bart Taylor is one of those boys that look better from a vantage, she decides. Then again, most of them do.
She sees him in Math class on Tuesday, doodling over the front page of his textbook. He stares blankly at the question thrown at him and she notes the harsh stubby clouds of fuzz lining his chin.
A month later, he asks her to the Autumn Ball and she says no because the Drama Club's production of The Romancers is in full swing so rehearsals are held almost daily. Two weeks in and she notices he's been attending every single one of them. Come opening night, she's told she made a wonderful Sylvette on stage. She finds him loitering near the back of the auditorium, obviously uncomfortable in the vicinity of theater snobs and proud parents.
Shannon's more grateful than she lets on so she organizes a study-group where she can help him with the next Calculus test without it being that obvious. After a particularly frustrating hour, over spread sheets scrawled with unbalanced equations and asymmetrical triangles, he tells her that she really shouldn't have. He almost groans it.
It's a tad too late though. She's reached that point of no return where she just can't give up on him and she's sure he'd see it too if he tried just that little bit harder.
He scores an A on the test.
She spends the summer before tenth grade with her family at a rented townhouse in St. Margarita, Italy. The apartment is too large for five people but the east-side wall is almost entirely made up of ceiling-high windows that look out onto the nearby bay. Her Dad likes looking out at the yachts, tossing them potential names as he and her mother drink fruity cocktails on the balcony: Supersize, Kathy's Katch, Lucky Girl's, Game On! They're all terrible and make her laugh for a while.
Italy's all right for the moment; the novelty of a sun that sears across from the Mediterranean, creamy gelatos she and her sisters sneak from one of the roadside stalls, the tall, dark, delightfully handsome vendor who winks at all his lady customers. Like everything else, it wears off without her trying, though she tries to quench the spurts of restlessness by practicing her colloquial Italian on the streets. The only locals smile at her accent.
Greer writes from Paris and Meg from London. If Shannon ignores the different handwriting on each, she still notes the sameness of their lives away from Stoneybrook. The parties, the shopping, the boys.
Bart writes her from Cincinnati where he's visiting his grandparents. His neighbor's half-Cheyenne so he gets to go to a pow-wow later in the week. A follow-up arrives sooner than she expects, elaborating on the 'epic' drum music he'd watched the tribe members flail and whirl about to, the fried bread he'd gorged on, and the spice of herb-smoked clouds he'd inhaled.
She sends him flashy postcards that cost a dollar for four. 'Wish You Were Here'.
He still writes back in sheaves of letters. She asks about Kristy once but never finds out.
After the second week and fourth stack of paper she receives, she decides to write him properly, out of guilt. And she sets out to do just that, lying back on the chaise-lounge in the sitting-room like she would do with a script or book straight off the summer reading-list. 'Dear Bart' precedes all the confessions, sunny secrets, mischeifs, and minor rebellions that only explode gracefully on ink. She has no idea why she does it but she keeps at it until her mother calls her to go shopping. Babydoll tops and espadrilles are cast down with glazed eyes as Shannon contemplates the consequences of her unraveling.
In the end, she doesn't send the letter. She writes him a note instead, saying when she'll be back home.
The day after they arrive, the week before classes commence, there's a piercing whittle of a whistle in the air that summons her to the window. Bart's waiting on the porch, for what she doesn't quite comprehend until she's already strode out and flung her arms around him. Before she can put it down to hormones, he's kissing her and she suddenly thinks of how his skin feels like the burnt crust of bread as her cheek brushes his jaw.
A month into school, she confesses to Kristy about their two or more dates. Kristy turns away with a laugh and Shannon does not understand why.
It's his sixteenth birthday in July. She surprises him with a jacket emblazoned with his favorite Major League team. It's even signed by their star pitcher whom she's seen on a poster in his room. When he only chuckles a little and rolls his eyes when she thinks she's not looking, she wonders if it's the wrong kind of surprise she'd bargained with.
"What's wrong?" she presses on, her voice sounding too loud to herself in the corner of the empty baseball-diamond. "I got the name wrong, didn't I? It was supposed to be 'Farrow' or something, and I got you Farley's…"
"No, no," he's soothing her now, sliding his hand into hers. "Of course not. I love it. You shouldn't have."
She doesn't know which trio of words is the one she's growing the most tired of hearing.
But it's really not so much what he says than what he doesn't. Maybe it's his 2.3 GPA (and her 3.8), his beat-up Nissan (and her pristine Mustang), his demotion to second-string on the varsity team (and her promotion to deputy editor of the school paper), or his ego, really (and her lack of success in soothing the recurring sting of its bruises).
When it's cooler in the evenings, they drive out to the fields near New Haven. Shannon always thinks about bringing a telescope but drops the idea when the thought of him feeling ignored comes to mind. She doesn't 'get' boys in the ways either Greer or Meg do. She's smart, studious, 'interesting' Shannon who normally prefers things labeled and in boxes. She likes being around Bart because he doesn't fit into any she knows and that's a refreshing change of scenery. He's got the loveliest smile, really, even if she hasn't seen a genuine one in a while.
She gets restless. So restless that she can't help snapping after the fourth or fifth wall of silence in a row.
"Is it us? Me?"
"You?" He really looks genuinely shocked at the idea. That's what she thinks. "I could never be mad at you, Shannon."
"But you get tired of me."
"Shan – "
She cuts him off before he can say any of those three words she hates. "You will."
She leaves him at his locker and bursts into tears as soon as she gets home. Her mother's not home but Shannon honestly misses her at this point in her life. She isn't perfect and her mother has finally come to understand that.
Maybe it's time Bart should too.
When Shannon's this upset, all she wants to do is curl up in bed with a box of macadamia nut cookies by her side and The Princess Bride for company. She doesn't.
What Shannon does do is throw herself into her work: a few posters for French Club, some drafts to be proofread before publication in the paper. She keeps going until her boyfriend calls her at eleven and tells her he misses her.
Senior year is tough enough for Bart as it is with acceptable grades to earn and college lists to skim through. She sometimes wonders what would have happened if his parents hadn't decided on a divorce midway through spring.
She thinks she knows enough on how to help. She's babysat for kids whose parents had split up, she's seen what those like Druscilla Peterson have gone through. She could handle it.
On their second date since the news, this time at a fancy restaurant that doesn't allow him in until he borrows a dinner jacket from the maitre d', he opens his mouth to say something and then closes it. She doesn't think she wants to know. He drops her home before her curfew and she kisses him, feeling nothing but his still lips.
Then, college letters are out and she's been accepted to three.
There's never a perfect time to tell him the news, when he's either mellow or cheerful enough. It always seems like Bart's in limbo, wandering along the edge of gloom, never right off into the deep side but it's dark enough that it worries her. He's in one of those places now, as they sit on an empty bleacher overlooking the quiet of SDS' baseball diamond.
"You used to love playing."
"I did. I coached a team of kids." He says it like it's amazing he was even there. Like he didn't believe that he ever was. Or that he could ever return. "Kyle will be starting high-school next year."
"Maria's starting middle school then."
It pops out before she can properly phrase her meaning. "Have you decided where you want to go to college?"
In one way, she needs to know so that she can get his address so they can still write each other, get their schedules coordinated so that they see one another during vacations, even pay each other visits if they can. That's the logical part of her talking. The other part, the one hiding away deeper within her, is beginning to stress over how to hold the fraying threads of a relationship together. The romance had been good while it lasted. It was still there, faded, a washed-out pink compared the golden-red flush of summer love but it was there.
Shannon believed it was. Still.
Bart sighs at the question and she can sense the axe falling before the strike even hits her.
"It doesn't matter. I don't think we're cut out for this."
They walk home slowly, hands by their sides. Crickets chirp somewhere in the trees but she only hears their echoes from the last few years when they'd walked this same way before, hand-in-hand, and ended it cheek-to-cheek after a goodbye kiss.
She doesn't cry when none of that happens. He claps a hand on her shoulder and wishes her good luck.
The next day, she settles on the college furthest away from Stoneybrook.