Title: Bruins and Rebels | Chapter One | New Legacies and
Goodbyes
Author: Nate
Pairing: Paris/Jess, and some couplings with the ancillary characters introduced in later chapters.
Spoilers: The big one would be the Jess/Milo spin-off series, which takes the Jess character to Venice, CA with his father. Otherwise it's unlikely I'm spoiling any of the upcoming plots. The earth-shattering and horrible news from The Big One is included and a major factor in the story, along with a tiny spoiler from an upcoming episode. See if you can guess what it is ;).
Rating: PG-13 so far.
Disclaimer: Still waiting for my Liza clone I asked for a year ago, and it's doubtful the woman herself is about to come to sleepy Sheboygan, WI and ask for my hand in marriage (note to self; campaign mayor to start huge movie studio so he can lure the Knee Goddess out here). Amy Sherman-Palladino, Hofflund-Polone, Warner Bros. Television, and whatever newer companies are involved with the spin-off own the Paris and Jess characters, I don't.
Archiving: Usual suspects; FF.net and LWL. Make sure to ask if you want to archive it yourself.
Summary: After the fallout from the bombshell that is Paris' rejection letter from Harvard, she reexamines her life and decides to move to the Golden State to start anew at UCLA in the fall of 2003, to the shock of everyone she knows in central Connecticut. Meanwhile Jess moves to Venice, CA to reestablish his relationship with his father, and the twain meet one sunny September day in Santa Monica. It all develops from there.
Author's Notes: First of all, this is 100% Paris/Jess, Dipperness served in its purest form. Rory's not suddenly going to appear from the middle of nowhere and ask for Jess back, Jamie and Paris are no longer an item, and I'm not dealing with any other show characters besides these two and maybe Jimmy Mariano (Jess' father), along with Rory, Madeline and Louise through phone and internet conversations. So you've been warned.
You maybe asking yourself, 'But Nate, no way would Paris ever consider UCLA, it's too far away and it's not elite enough for her tastes.' Believe me, I took that into mind, and comparing pre-CSPAN meltdown Paris to her attitude afterwards, it's entirely possible she'll develop a complex against attending any Ivy League school after Harvard has snubbed her. Reading the few spoiler snippets, it wouldn't be prudent in canon, but Paris attending UCLA can work. I've thought about this fic idea since the announcement of the spin-off, and tried to not fall into the Felicity syndrome where Paris would chase Jess to LA just because he did something cute or ridiculous like signing her yearbook. With the way the show writers set up the Harvard spurn though, they've done that dirty work for me, and I can concentrate more on the development of their relationship than the semantics of setting all this up.
Thanks so much to Kitty, Chris and Ash for inspiring me to write this in the first place. Kitty for telling me it's completely possible for Paris to attend UCLA, and Ash for writing Hotel California and helping this idea finally come out of hiding during the 30 minute bus commute to work earlier today. Chris, a certain conversation towards the end of the chapter is all your fault, but thanks for the inspiration. Oh, and betaing for me too.
Paris Gellar looked up towards the front gate of her new home for the next four to six years of her young life, wondering why the long, strange trip of the last seven months had taken her here to the edge of Westwood, California instead of the storied and long-admired streets of Cambridge she expected to spend her late teens and early twenties walking back and forth on between the buildings of Harvard University. But here she was, instead of realizing the dream of being Paris Gellar, Harvard Freshman, about to walk onto the quadrangle of the University of California-Los Angeles.
Of course, being a Harvard student had been Paris' new year's resolution every year since she was eight and coherent enough to know that Harvard didn't have a mascot, but a color instead. As soon as she was born, Harvard crimson flowed through her veins like it was the only thing driving her towards her goal. It was her Gatorade, the stuff that drove her to make sure everyone stayed the hell out of her way on the way to the guaranteed slot in Harvard that came with the Gellar bloodline. It was in the thousands of hours of charity and community service projects she did, and the many essays and hand-aching speeches she wrote to guarantee that spot in Harvard history.
On February 28, 2003, she lost the crimson in her veins. She also lost her composure in front of an audience 300 strong in Grand Hall, along with just under a million people watching on CSPAN the celebration of Chilton's bicentennial. A rant directed at Chilton's administration, the Harvard board of regents, and her family later, she was crumpled up into a ball in Rory Gilmore's arms, lamenting about the loss of her dream, and thoughts about how her loss of virginity ruined it all for her. All the Stars Hollow girl could do was comfort her and tell her that eventually things would sort out, and that Paris' consummation with Jamie wasn't the root cause of the rejection.
And that they did two weeks later, when the two girls threw all their Harvard memorabilia into the Founder's Bonfire at the Stars Hollow Founders Festival. The highlight of both girl's nights had to be seeing Rory's Harvard acceptance letter crumble into a fiery ash right before their eyes. It was not only cathartic, but the end of an era for the both of them. No more fighting for the attention of the old guys and women in Cambridge with projects that seemed to get even more ridiculous every day. Rory would comply with her grandfather's wishes and decide to head the 40-some miles south to New Haven, and become a Yale Bulldog, not Harvard due to the horrible treatment her friend who should've gotten in received in their hands. Paris was still undecided though.
Rory's words about starting her own legacy that night spun in Paris' mind for the longest time. She had applied to many other colleges just in case the unimaginable happened, but all of them were Ivy League schools. All of them did accept her in the end, no way were they going to let a Chilton valedictorian head to a competing school, they fought over her like rabid dogs, wanting a newly-minted bitter Harvard applicant in their fold so they could promote the hell out of her in their admissions materials.
However she had kept another letter hidden deep within a desk drawer since she received it in mid-January. A glowing acceptance from UCLA, and the letter went on and on about how honored they'd have her change coasts and scenery to become a Bruin backer. She shoved it into the drawer immediately, knowing for sure she wouldn't ever need to respond to a college so far away from Hartford. She hadn't toured the campus, but some other Harvard wannabes had slandered the campus five miles from the Pacific as unacceptable and unworthy of such students as themselves. These same people would diss any university with initials instead of a full name though, so Paris deduced that they could say the same thing of notorious party school Florida State and not have to change their opinion.
So the letter stayed deep in the pile as Paris considered other schools like Brown and Columbia, maybe even Princeton to be around her boyfriend Jamie all the time. But that changed when Jamie had a yelling match with Paris over her outburst at the Bicentennial. He claimed he was embarrassed to have bedded such a 'overbearing, neurotic and egotistical bitch', and that he thought when he had sex with her, it would mean something much more than an excuse to pass off the Harvard blame.
The black eye he got after a profanity-laced dumping on the girl's part pretty much ended the wedding bells talk for Paris and Jamie, along with any college considerations south of a line along I-78 in New Jersey, which killed both Princeton and Penn in the process.
She remained unimpressed with any of the rest of the Ivy League schools. Cornell was a very boring school in a very boring town, and "if I wanted to go to a dull school in a dull place, I would've applied to North Dakota Tech," she would say to Rory as they left the dull burg of Ithaca. Both Dartmouth and Brown were way too close to Harvard for her comfort, and the farther away from Massachusetts Paris was, the better, the last thing she needed was murderous tendencies against Harvard's dean to take root in her mind.
Columbia in New York impressed her, pretty much until the point she was mugged in broad daylight in front of two NYPD officers in a crosswalk at 116th and Broadway. They never did catch the thief of Paris' pocketbook, and the hundreds of dollars spent replacing every card and item in her new purse seethed Paris so much that she wrote an angry letter to Mayor Bloomberg asking for more police protection in the Columbia area.
She loves the photo of Mike Bloomberg he mailed back as a 'response'. It's pinned to her dartboard to aim at whenever stress needs to be dealt with.
That left one college, the foregone conclusion of traveling with Rory to Yale and continuing to build up their newly-blossoming friendship once again. She toured the campus, found it to her liking, and was pretty much ready to sign on the dotted line to become a Yalie, the pen held in her hand to say 'Thank you Yale, I accept.'
But something in her mind bugged her to take a second look at the envelope laying deep in the drawer, beckoning for her to read on and perhaps lure her to Los Angeles. She read through the included materials, including the brochure, class selection guide, the offered tour bus of the UCLA campus in early summer, and the special bonus 'tourist in your own town' guide put out by the Santa Monica Visitor's Guild, which wasn't odd considering the jewel at the end of old Route 66 was about five minutes from UCLA's Westwood campus.
She found three things wrong though, not the most imposing issue being the fact she was a girl going to have to make it on her own in LA. There was that whole smog factor, and the fact that everything wasn't as close as it would be if she stayed in New England. Paris imagined her routines dying as she started highballing Starbucks coffee by the day, and having to breath in that 'clean So-Cal air' almost no one talked about. She also dreaded the long commutes that were sure to be made up to UCLA's Pasadena libraries so she could check out more detailed study materials, and the long ride back to West LA. It's probably not the right school for me, Paris thought to herself after a long surfing session at ucla.edu, and she went to bed thinking she was going to get up and announce her intentions to go to Yale at a party for family and friends her mother had planned for the next night.
Rory's advice about starting her own legacy continued to haunt her though, and Paris found sleep lacking as the images of UCLA came to her like a high-speed slide show. She imagined herself arguing about various theories she had with the famed professors of the state college, and taking in sports that actually meant something way in the upper decks of the Rose Bowl and Pauley Pavilion, though to be fair she was doing her schoolwork in her seat as the crowds watched the Bruin football and basketball squads pound cross-town rival USC. She dreamt of never having to put on a heavy winter coat again to trudge back and forth between Chilton and her car into the unforgiving cold of a Connecticut winter, but instead just starting her Jag convertible right up and coasting along the PCH, wind in her hair and trying to find that quiet study nook with a beautiful ocean view near Santa Barbara. The freedom of letting her hair down and letting new people into her life without having to devolve back into her 'Chilton Queen Bitch' persona was something that was making her decision easier to take.
But the deciding factor was something so small, no one, including Paris herself, might have ever considered it a factor at all, much less something that would decide her fate for the next four years. And that was the only goddamned way UCLA would ever shut down for a day is if The Big One happened to hit and destroy the campus. Paris had read the data, and had assured herself that she had a better chance of having a child in the next three months than of ever having to take a day off from school ever again, it was highly unlikely an 8-Richter earthquake was going to hit LA while she was being schooled there. The evil of Paris' world had been the ever-present snow days of Chilton, of which there were three or four per year. She would end up repeating them at Yale, and those were always her most unproductive days. She hated snow and cold, and to not deal with it in Los Angeles, it was easy to come to a conclusion.
"That's it, I'm going to UCLA, try and stop me world," she mumbled confidently to herself as sleep decided to reappear, and she was out like a light in moments. A very small factor, but a big decision nonetheless.
The next evening, Paris' college commitment party.
"Excuse me young lady, you're going where to college?" Sharon Gellar gasped, as the attendants of the party, including her ex-husband Harold, Paris' tag team of friends Madeline and Louise, and Rory looked at the blonde, stunned at the magnitude of her announcement.
"I've decided it, and I found UCLA to be of my liking, so I shall be starting there with a journalism major in September," she responded back to her mother tersely. Paris knew by now not to try to start a fiery argument with her mother in front of the other 50 party guests gathered in the Gellar Manor greenhouse/natatorium.
"But Paris, you talked us out of even applying there back in junior year, why are you going there?" The question from the raven-haired Madeline was one of the few times her hidden intelligence had shone through. The daughter of the Lynns was planning on going back to her childhood home of Seattle and attend the University of Washington at the urging of her biological father, to rekindle the lost relationship they had when Mrs. Lynn received custody of Madeline and fled with her to Connecticut when she was nine.
Paris hesitated for a moment, then proceeded to answer her friend. "Madeline, I just feel that I can do much more with my life, and I won't be able to do much of it in New Haven. There's nothing but you two and Rory to stay here for, and we're going to be spread out all over the country anyways after we start our universities. Louise is going to Miami, Rory's in New Haven, and you'll be in Seattle. I've just reached a point where I feel I need sort of an academic vacation, and there's no better place to take it than Los Angeles. I'll be fine Madeline, it's just a matter of getting a better commuting car and adjusting my biological clock to Pacific time, it's an easy change."
"The hell it is!" Mrs. Gellar blurted out rather loudly. "Paris Eustacia Gellar, you have an academic tradition to maintain in the Ivy League, and I'm not letting you continue it at a state school, in California of all places!"
Paris turned to face her mother, and anger was sparking in her eyes. "Mother, there is nothing you can do to stop me. I have a trust fund set to be opened this June, and that will more than cover me, no matter how long it takes to complete UCLA. There's no loophole you can use to steal the money out from beneath my nose, and I have a sizable estate to inherit when Father passes on, but even without it, I'll still have about $30 million from the trust fund so that I'll live quite comfortably. It would be in your best interest to not interfere in my college choice Mother, lest I decide not to be generous with my inheritance and not support you through old age!"
She glowered at her mother, and walked around her, letting her know she meant business. "Give it up Sharon, I'm not you, and I'm never going to be you. I've gotten over my snub at the hands of Harvard, and I'm moving on and starting my own legacy. If that means moving to the Golden State and attending a state school, a school many kids would kill to be in like Harvard, so be it. At least I had the fortitude of sneaking all those applications out from under your nose so that just in case Mommy's Harvard dream for little Rissy didn't come true, she still had a fine choice of schools to weed out and attend."
"This is your rebellion, isn't it young lady? You don't get your way and you do this to spite me, well it's not going to happen with me in charge of your life honey, I'm calling Yale and telling them--"
"Thanks, but no thanks." Harold decided to get between Paris and Sharon before they could trade blows, and took his daughter into his arms, smiling and crying at the same time as he hugged the hell out of his offspring. "I'm happy with you Paris, whether you go to Harvard, UCLA, ITT Tech or the auto body college on Farmington Avenue. You're 18 now, and you aren't my little girl anymore. I'm very proud of you for deciding not to continue with an outdated family 'legacy', and it's my high hope that you'll come back here at the end of May 2007 a very mature and proud young woman who has not only given our name the respect it deserves, but will create a branch of the family tree that is unique and all your own."
"I love you Par, no matter what you do, and don't you ever forget that." He brought her close, and it reminded Paris of the tight and loving bear hugs she shared with her father when she was younger. She felt confident now, and not only that, loved.
"I love you too Daddy," she said looking up at the man who had raised her to be a strong and independent woman. Sharon could only resign herself and try to accept the fact that Paris was going to UCLA, and she was powerless to stop it. She could only hope to convince Paris that Yale was better, but Paris wasn't having any of it, so much so that by the end of April, Sharon had finally given her only child the blessing to go on with her newly-laid college plans.
Paris arrived back at Chilton after spring break, serving after-school detentions for about three weeks due to the embarrassment she caused Charleston with her ill-advised choice of bicentennial speech. It was just a matter of her and Rory fighting Francie's numerous usurpation attempts at trying to stir up student government the rest of the way, and graduation seemed to arrive in a blur of activity. All that Paris would remember by the end of her senior year is offering Brad a truce and sharing a dance with him at Prom, and that Rory's boyfriend Jess had dropped out of Stars Hollow High, was attempting to reconcile with his father, and moved cross-country with him, Oregon, Idaho, one of those states in the west.
Rory had become quite emotional at the loss of her second love, but pretty soon the feelings of abandonment were replaced of those of c'est la vie, that Jess wasn't bound to be her one and only, and they would be better not as a couple, but as just friends. The decision was made easier when Luke finally came out and admitted his feelings for Lorelai right in front of Nicole and Alex one night in the diner. The elder Gilmore and Danes had been inseparable ever since, and any thoughts of Rory and Jess being 'kissin' cousins' were quickly buried into the dark recesses of Stars Hollow history.
She didn't even have a valedictorian's speech to commit to memory, as the detentions had dragged her GPA down to a hair above 4. In a surprise that shocked all of Chilton, Madeline, the self-proclaimed ditz of the class of 2003, had the #1 grade for her four high school years. It was so stealthy that she had gotten so many A+ grades that Madeline even checked with Charleston to make sure her grade wasn't a mistake. The Lynn family's lack of reading Chilton progress reports proved that grades were just something to get and forget, and not dwell on.
It set up the strangest valedictorian's speech in all of Chilton's 200 years, where Madeline used pop idols, figures from 'oddly enough' articles and soap opera stars to inspire the graduates instead of the usual colloquies involving Keats and Whitman. However in the end, Madeline managed to sum up the point of her speech quite nicely, which was popularity means nothing in the real world and the only way to get ahead in life is to work hard and plan for the unexpected. Paris, Louise and Rory gave the girl a standing ovation along with the rest of the class, and the raven-haired girl glowed as she got over any jitters she might have had in public speaking. Before that, everyone might have thought Madeline wasn't going to amount to much. After the speech, the tide in thinking was changing that she was going places, and they were prepared to not dwell on the fact that the school's gossipmonger had become the valedictorian so unexpectedly.
Paris and Charleston had made up in the last two months before graduation, and they hugged as she prepared to receive her diploma, wearing her hair down and the graduation gown of Chilton blue fitting her loosely.
"I'm going to miss having you to kick around Miss Gellar, there's never been another student like you, and there never will be again," he whispered into her ear as she received the reward of attending his school for the last twelve years.
"As long as another girl doesn't have a nervous breakdown to announce her loss of virginity at the 250th celebration or play Romeo in a class production, I think my legacy as a Chilton student is solid," she responded back with a smile. The Headmaster held back a laugh, and sent Paris on her way back to her seat onstage as outgoing student body president. She was very proud to see Rory as the class salutorian, and couldn't help but cry at the realization that for the next four years, she wouldn't even have the small-town girl to confide in or partake in verbal sniping in person except during school breaks and summer vacations. Looks like a job for the internet and a cell phone, she thought to herself, there was no way she was about to lose contact with her best friend in the world, even across a continent.
The next two months after Paris threw her mortarboard into the June air of Keney Park's natural bowl were another blur as she made the plans to move her entire life from her girlhood home into a 12'x12' dorm room in Los Angeles. Which meant that a lot of things that might have come with her if she stayed in New England would have to be left home, she planned everything out so that United Van Lines would only have to move one truck filled with her things out to California. Her bed and most everything in her room except for her computer would remain, along with most of her clothes.
Paris knew that there was going to be no way her wool sweaters would stand a chance in the California heat, and she started the acclimation process of wearing non-plaid skirts and t-shirts around in public instead of her previous dark-colored wardrobe. Louise and Madeline relished Paris' change in clothes of course, so Louise, as sort of a farewell outing, immediately authorized a high-ticket spending spree at the department stores of Manhattan and Short Hills, New Jersey for the Chilton Three. And this time, Paris had to be open to whatever fashion decisions the girls made for her when it came to outfits. It was that or having to drink 20 glasses of water a day to replenish the perspiration she'd have if she kept her old wardrobe.
Paris not only came back to Hartford smiling at all the new outfits she had, but at the rekindling of her odd kinship with Louise and Madeline. She had gotten them both into college, and with that goal completed, she could focus on just being girly with them until they all went their separate ways in mid-August. By the time the three and Rory had gathered at the Gilmore house on their last evening before departing for college, Paris was more relaxed and easy going than she ever had. She had lifted nary a finger for any charity or service club over the summer, and spent almost everyday sleeping until 11 in the morning, taking advantage of the fact that there was no admissions board to impress or schmooze with.
Still, Paris couldn't leave Hartford without one last plan that left the three girls with a bemused look in their eyes, as if Paris was nuts.
"I say that before we leave, we coordinate it so that we're all driving in a straight line down to New Haven on 91, saying goodbye to everyone on a conference call we'll make with our cell phones. Rory will take her exit into the Yale area first, and we'll look on as she takes that exit out of childhood." She pointed at Madeline and Louise, who were whispering something to each other about Paris planning out their entire lives up to their cremations. "As for you two, I'll continue following you two up until Louise has to exit south of Scranton, Pennsylvania to head down the Eastern Seaboard towards Florida. I and Madeline then will follow each other and stay a night in downtown Chicago, where we will say our goodbyes, and she'll head north on 90 towards Seattle, while I start traveling whatever various interstates get me through the Midwest and Rockies and into Los Angeles. I considered the whole 'I'm gonna retrace Route 66 and rediscover America' crap but then realized, why would I want to do that, I mean they turned most of Route 66 into expressways, and where it wasn't it's all kitschy and cute and annoying. I'm going to have enough culture shock to deal with in LA, so the less time it takes to get there, the better. So, how does that sound girls?"
Rory's mouth was hanging open, Louise was feeling weird, and Madeline was thanking her lucky stars that she had the foresight to have her father pick up a Bradley to Seattle plane ticket a couple weeks earlier.
"Paris, has the LA weather started getting to you even before you've arrived?" Louise asked, taking a nail file off the coffee table and rubbing it against the heel of her palm to test the roughness.
"No it hasn't Louise, I just wanted to say goodbye at the most opportune time is all."
"That's why we have this one last sleepover Paris, to say goodbye," Rory huffed, annoyed, yet not surprised at Paris' unique way of leaving them for the next four years.
"Besides Paris, you do have the longest drive to deal with, 2 days cross-country, the last thing you need is to be distracted on your cell phone," Louise mused.
"But what about you Madeline--"
"I already have non-refundable airline tickets Par, I can't turn them in anymore."
Rory then asked the question that was just begging for an answer. "Paris, are you already feeling like you're going to miss us all?"
The blonde sat Indian-style across from her three friends, and tried to keep her composure up. Even though each member of her peer group had some kind of trait that drove her up a wall, such as Louise's guy-gushing, Madeline's absent-mindedness at inopportune times, and her rivalry with Rory, she had to admit to herself that she was going to miss seeing the three girls while she was alone by herself in Los Angeles. There was no west coast branch of the Gellar family, and there was no telling if anyone on the UCLA campus was going to endear themselves to the girl like the three girls sitting in front of her somehow did.
"I may not say it guys, but I'm going to miss all three of you girls the moment I cross the Hartford County line, it's going to be so abrupt not having an everyday friend anymore. I've known you Louise since we were four, and though you can sometimes be such a tough friend, we've always depended on each other when it came to things like sex, all those crazy girl things back in puberty and that you still had the outlook of your average teenage girl, while you let me hyper-focus on school and my studies." Both girls got up at the same time, and hugged for the first time for what seemed to be eons. "Louise, I pray that Miami goes well for you, and that you can lure a Heisman quarterback into loving you. You better wear SPF 45+ sunblock when you're studying physics on South Beach in your bikini, or else I'm coming there and kicking your ass girl."
"And I hope that you get yourself a nice tan in LA Par, that was the only reason I did those outdoor home projects with you, it guaranteed me a nice dark complexion," Louise said smiling at her longest friend.
"Now that's the Louise I know, always finding a shallow excuse to get some charity points." She lightly tapped Louise on the wrist, and let go as Madeline approached her. "Ahh, Madeline, who would've guessed all this time me and Rory were fighting a fruitless battle for the valedictorian slot when you had it sealed up for so long? All I have to say is if you stay this stealthy no one's going to notice you're in the White House 'till it's too late."
The raven-haired girl blushed and giggled back. "I guess some of those pesky study techniques rubbed off on me Paris, and it helped that there were a few dates where I spent more time on Einstein's theories than I did thinking about which base I wanted the guy to run to. At least Brad's gotten that gig at that small theatre company in Pioneer Square, Seattle has an excellent drama scene." Her and Brad had started dating a couple months ago after she found herself drawn to the red-haired offspring of a taxidermist. At first, Paris and Louise thought the girl had taken some mind-altering medication that caused her thought processes to whack out. Paris' theory died however when she walked in on the two of them ready to rip their clothes off in the cloakroom after a very hot tango they somehow managed to finagle Charleston into letting them do at Prom.
"Enjoy the time with your father in Washington State, and geez Madeline, give poor Brad a break. I may harp on him sometimes, but even a 'sexual dynamo' as you call him needs a break sometimes," Paris joked. The interesting positions those two had gotten themselves into had been the talk of the Chilton gossip mills, and there was a rumor out there that Brad and Madeline had an impromptu 4am performance on the stage of the Winter Garden a couple weeks after graduation, thanks to Brad's stage credentials on Broadway.
"I'll try Gellar, but that damn Space Needle is just calling out to me and Brad for a very hot PDA. I just hope a arts and design degree from U of W has the same weight later in life as those at a specialty school."
"I wouldn't sweat it Maddie, your work for the fashion houses will speak more in the end than the name of the school on the diploma."
Madeline smiled back, Paris' Harvard reality check had finally taken away the girl's stubbornness of guiding her friends into going to Sarah Lawrence. She then yawned and wrapped a blanket around herself, preparing to curl up in a sleeping bag on the carpet of Rory's floor. "Thanks Par, well I'm off to bed. Have to get up at the crack of dawn for the damn flight out of Hartford, stop in Indy and Denver and transfer planes each time before I get to the Emerald City. And all this on a sickly little diet of cashews and seltzer water." She sighed and rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. "Is that any way to run an airline?"
"25 years ago it wasn't, but today traveling by air feels more like being packed onto the Tokyo subway system than a trip on the QE2. See, if you would've listened to my plan Mads you could make the trip as pleasant as you wanted." Paris smiled smugly at her charcoal-coifed buddy. Take that girl.
"Get outta here before I decide another pillow fight's in my system Gellar," Madeline responded with a snaggle-toothed smile.
"Fine, fine, I'm going, I'll talk to you around the holidays Lynn, don't forget your raincoat by the way." Paris walked out of Rory's room, and headed towards the living room couch for her last night of sleep as a true teenager. She was already starting to wear the light blue and yellow colors of her alma mater, as she sported grey sweatpants with UCLA printed down the pants leg, and a blue t-shirt with an image of the bruin mascot on the front. She lay on the couch and rested her head on the pillow next to her. Rory walked into the room, and Paris brought her legs closer to let Rory sit next to her on the couch.
"God I can't believe this Paris, tonight's our last night before we leave for school," Rory said brightly as Paris took her small pearl earrings out and placed them on the coffee table. "I never thought we'd ever get to this point, at least with me alive."
"It's just so weird Rory, both of us were supposed to be on our way to Cambridge tomorrow, it was part of both our big plans for our lives. I even had the day colored in on my calendar, and it was the first thing I put in my Palm when I bought it two years ago. But now, I don't even want to look at or hear anything about the school, what they did to me was just so incomprehensible. I mean you even agreed that I deserved Harvard more than you, right?"
"Yeah, the way you were that night you walked in to give the speech was just the worst thing that could've ever happened to you, it was such a devastating moment. Do you think that if UCLA didn't work out and Harvard did want you again, you'd reapply?"
Paris glared, giving Rory a look as if to ask what the heck she was thinking when she thought of the question. "I have three words for everyone at Harvard; bite my ass. If they didn't feel I was good enough for them the first time, they should've said so during the application process to save me grief. And to let me know in that cold impersonal way like that pathetic little note, when I just about had my own admissions counselor in Boston since I picked up the brochures when we were sophomores, it got to me. The guy didn't even have the balls to call me and warn me rejection was coming, he actually read my goddamned rejection letter before it was sent in the mail! If Harvard wants me back, I have a nice long nine-page syllabus/essay ready to be sent to admissions which profiles all my sacrifices for the sake of their pathetic little school, along with CSPAN screen captures of me that night of the bicentennial, and a little section on how pathetic they are crawling out of a hole just to want me back. I end it with a nice hearty 'Fuck you Harvard, thanks for nothing! Cordially not yours, Paris Gellar,' thus assuring they'll stray as far away from me as possible."
"You're sure about this then, UCLA is your school?"
"Rory, I'm set on spending the next four or five years being schooled in southern California, it's as simple as that, I'm not changing my mind. UCLA may be a state school, but it's a damned fine one that the academically elite out west want to get into as much as they do Harvard up here in New England. I know it's going to be tough trying to acclimate to such a new environment, but I'm willing to take that challenge. And when you think about it, a high-stressed girl from Connecticut like me is going to seem much more sane than your average Angelino, with their constant pressure to get things done so fast and to have the biggest of this and that. You can be sure that I'm avoiding the implant district in Beverly Hills like the plague, my breasts are nice and big--"
Rory quickly interrupted the blonde before she could take that sentence and rant any further. "Paris, stop with the breast talk, please! I agree with whatever you're going to say about them, honestly I do!"
Paris held back a laugh, she still loved getting the occasional rise out of Rory, and the panic the brunette got into amused her so. "Sorry about that Ror, it's just my body's going to be judged more in LA since I have to wear lighter clothes. I just hope I don't land in a dorm with a bunch of guys with a breast fetish. I'm pretty stacked, but I won't admit to anyone but you and the other two."
"It's OK." Rory smiled back at Paris, and changed the subject. "You know during the holidays you're going to be expected to bring home souvenirs for all three of us, right?"
"Yes Gilmore, I'll try to get you a little snowglobe with the Hollywood sign in it so you can decorate your dorm up a little more, I might even get some weird little thing for Lorelai, I know how she treasures the monkey lamp as if it's like an Ellis Island trunk or a really old sewing machine." She noticed the stare Rory was giving her. "And no, I'm not sneaking some tequila-spiked coffee from Tijuana, don't you give me that look Rory. I'm not even going down there."
"Mom would be begging you to get it if she was here."
"No, she would be begging for Luke to give her his 'special blend'. You'd think being 35 and in love would've meant they had lower sex drives, but no, there they are making out like teenagers over the counter while poor Caesar has to pick up all the slack and act like a babysitter so they don't race upstairs and resolve their 'customer service grievances' with a little 'service with a smile'."
"Eww, Par-is, dirty!" Rory wrinkled her nose in disgust at her spins on innocent foodservice industry terms.
"What, it's the plain truth." She shrugged and stretched her legs out, wanting to get some sleep before she got on the road the next day. Rory got up and stood above Paris.
"And I'm glad that they're going to be realizing that plain truth out of my sight."
"At least one couple I know is finally getting the point, my mother and father give new meaning to the term 'love-hate relationship'. Take a letter Rory that I'll have to lock those two in the wine cellar one of these days ala that episode where Krabappel and Skinner have to resolve the strike in that manner."
"Too bad you can't major in Simpsons references at UCLA or there's a class for it, all those reruns you watched on Fox 61 are your dirty little secret there Paris. Never thought you put off schoolwork for an hour every night to watch that show 'till I walked in your room that day."
"The Simpsons is just about as religious cult, a couple of ministers even wrote a book about the spiritual references made in the series, it was a pretty nice read. If it wasn't already in storage down in LA I'd lend it to you for a between classes time waster."
"You can just mail it to me Paris, I'll be sure to mail it back with a book I recommend. We can start our own little personal Netflix thing, only involving books instead of DVDs."
"Hey, that's a good idea Gilmore, see that's why you kept me sane over these last few months, you're the one with the good ideas."
"Well without you I may not have experienced the wonderful scent of burning crimson fleece and pennant fabric at the bonfire, you're the one who came up with the idea of cleansing us of all things Harvard."
"I had so much fun doing that, although I should've thought twice about throwing the CD-R's we burned of our application essays into the fire, not a good stench if you asked me." Paris wrinkled her nose, and covered herself with the afghan draping the back of the couch.
"No, not one of our best ideas ever Paris. Speaking of noses, don't forget your piercing." Rory smiled and pointed at the small diamond stud on the left side of her friend's nose, which Paris had gotten in a need to have some kind of pre-college rebellion after the Harvard rejection.
"Oh, thanks Ror, that's going to be a pest to make sure to take out every night without someone reminding me." Paris held her nose closed, and took the nose ring out, putting it off to the side with her earrings. She had it pierced at a disreputable parlor in Bristol one day in April just for the heck of it, and it ended up infected. Still, she warmed to keeping the piercing after some good comments about how she looked with it from her friends despite the problems with it in the first two weeks, and went to a Piercing Pagoda and had it hygienically repierced with a sterile nose ring to go with it. The only problem she found with keeping it was that the pole of the stud would tickle her nose when she went to bed, so she would be kept up and have sneezing fits if she didn't take it out before bed.
"So, what time are you leaving the house tomorrow, I'm sure just a little later than Madeline."
"Well, I want to get dressed and showered by around 8, and I'll probably stop in Greenwich for some breakfast before I get on the road and try to make it to Chicago before 9 tomorrow night, I'm not going to drive straight through to LA. I may even have to deal with an extra day beyond the two I have planned out, so if I'm tired after the long boring drive through Iowa and Nebraska I have a bed at the Westin in Denver waiting for me. From there it's just a matter of getting across the Rockies and Sierras into California."
"Long boring drive through, too bad you can't play punch buggy or road sign bingo on the way," Rory joked as Paris went through her itinerary.
"I downloaded a bunch of audiobooks from the web onto an MP3 player, and there's always the XM radio I had installed if I need some music or run out of books to listen to. As much as I'd love to be immersed in local radio, Clear Channel's homogenization of the airwaves pretty much assures that the playlists will be the same whether I'm in Phoenix or Des Moines."
"Well I hope you have a fun trip to LA Paris, and you don't have a sore butt by the time you reach Westwood. I'll be sleeping in 'till noon, so I can say goodbye to Louise, then me and Mom are off to New Haven to spend our last day together, I'm letting her sleep on the floor of my dorm tomorrow night."
Paris shook her head, and smirked at Rory. "She's actually holding you to that promise, who would've thought." She got up, and prepared to say goodbye to her former enemy and combatant, and now best friend. "Well, you know I'm not much for the teary goodbyes complete with Kleenex and the hugging over and over until you finally tell me to get out of here an hour later, but I'm going to miss you so much Rory. UCLA's not going to be the same as Chilton, our whole rivalry kept me on my toes for three years, and even through all that crap we went through with Tristan and Francie, I never did hate you Gilmore, and I don't think I ever will."
"Hey, you forgot to tell me where him and Francie are going."
"Well I know I heard back from Tristan a few weeks ago, he's out of military school, doing great and decided to stay down in North Carolina, he's going to UNC in Chapel Hill. He's had a steady girlfriend for six months and I think his days of dating anything with a pulse are long over. As for Francie, she just barely got into UMass. Seems all those mindgames she played with us interfered with her ability to finish homework and dragged her GPA down, so she lost the acceptances she had at Georgetown and Maryland. It's sweet justice, isn't it Gilmore?"
"Very sweet, I hope she can handle the pressures of a bottom of the barrel state school."
"It gives me a pleasant feeling that her Puffs connections couldn't save her ass from ending up at a place without a sorority connection. I see her in jail in a few months for stealing a keg from the local liquor store in a desperate attempt to get into Delta Kappa Alpha or some other club that involves Greek letters."
"I hope Lemon and Tangerine have enough bail money to get her out," Rory said as the she got in one last crack at the expense of the Puffs. "Paris, I'm going to miss you so much, and without your interference while I was at Chilton I would've never even had a shot at Harvard, much less Yale. You'll write, right?"
Paris brought Rory closer, and hugged her tightly. "Every two weeks Rory, I promise. You keep yourself single for the next few months, you hear me? You promised me you'd go stag and focus on your studies, boys have been nothing but trouble for both of us."
"I can pretty much expect you to be the only single girl in La-La Land, right Gellar?"
"I think the remarks we made towards the TV with Lorelai during a Blind Date marathon pretty much showed I have a heavy disinterest in the dating pool of Los Angeles. If I do find a guy, it's fine with me, just as long as he doesn't interfere with my studies."
"Still, I hope in four years down there you find some guy, Jamie lit up your life for a few months, and a second relationship is always the most exciting, at least in my opinion."
"It's either that or turn to lesbianism," Paris mused aloud, causing Rory to abruptly end the hug, a bemused look on her face. Paris's eyes widened at what she had just said. "Oh, not with you Rory! I'm just saying I do have some latent gayness lurking within me somewhere, I have a strange thing for Angelina Jolie."
"I have a thing for Angelina too Paris, every girl does, it's like a biological requirement to want her, even if you have an XX chromosome." Rory rolled her eyes and prepared to walk out of the room. "Hell, I'll admit to wanting Madonna if she wanted me."
"Hey, I didn't ask for a summary of girls you'd sleep with," Paris said, then laughed at the absurdity of the whole subject of dormant lesbianism. "I'd sleep with Sheryl Crow myself, don't know why except she has hair to die for and she's pretty good-looking for an older woman. Well, that and she has a voice that makes men and women want her so much, I wonder what she's like whispering--"
"OK, stop before the image of you and her kissing permeates my mind forever!"
"Too late for me Rory, now I have a picture of you making out with Madonna in her Like a Prayer period, thin slip dress and all, thanks a lot."
"Oh God, Paris!" she groaned. "This conversation better stay between you and me, I'll kill you if you mention this to Lorelai. She's going to make fun of me if she finds out I want to do Madonna."
"Fine, but if you tell Maddy or Lou about my secret lust for Sheryl, I'm telling her."
"OK then Paris, goodnight and I'll talk to you in a couple weeks." Rory smiled at Paris, and the blonde returned the smile.
"'Night Rory, and don't forget," she started singing. "Just like a prayer, your voice will take me there."
"Arrrrggghh, Paris..." Rory muttered her way into her room, cursing the revelation of her crush on Madonna. Well Paris and I always knew how to say goodbye so uniquely, she thought as she crawled into her bed for the last time as a high school student.
"I'm going to miss pissing her off, Rory's always so funny when she's irritated with things," Paris said to herself as she lay back down on the couch, bringing the afghan close to her body. She smiled as she shut off the light next to her on the end table, then she shut her eyes and quickly drifted off to sleep. The last night the four girls spent together at the Gilmore home winded down, and after tomorrow, fate would be the only thing guiding Paris for the next four years.
The next day...
Paris left Stars Hollow around 7:30, about a half-hour earlier than she planned. The excitement of getting to Los Angeles was starting to sink in, and as she started her iPod and played a MP3 of great American poetry, prepared for the long drive to the Pacific coast. The Jaguar's back seat was packed with things she felt she would need, and the trunk was full of the things from home she couldn't quite fit on the moving truck. Her itinerary was set in stone, and there was no turning back now.
Earlier the day before, she had said her goodbyes to the staff at the Manor and her Portuguese-speaking nanny Francisca, who now with no child to dote on was moving back to Lisbon with the sizable amount of money she had saved over Paris' 18 years of existence. Her mother actually took it harder than she thought, and hoped her daughter would be fine in 'the scary big city'. Despite their off-kilter relationship, Paris was going to miss her mother. But she definitely wasn't going to miss her trying to control her life. She was her own woman now, and damned if anyone was going to change that.
As she drove past the state line between Connecticut and New York on I-95, it was just the strangest coincidence that Robert Frost's most famous poem was the next track on the poetry MP3.
"I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference," was what Paris heard as the 'Welcome to Port Chester, NY' sign whizzed past her.
"God, I hope so," Paris said to herself as she got over the shock of the poem being the one she heard as she left her home state. "UCLA better be a good road." She then brought her focus into concentrating on the morning rush traffic into New York City, and how she could get onto I-80 and into New Jersey without encountering a backup.
To be continued...
Next chapter: Paris arrives at UCLA and prepares to settle in, but has to deal with her first hurdle, a roommate who doesn't seem like an intelligent woman to deal with at first glance. The girl thinks the same thing about Paris, and they have to sort out their first impressions before they can start getting along.
Author: Nate
Pairing: Paris/Jess, and some couplings with the ancillary characters introduced in later chapters.
Spoilers: The big one would be the Jess/Milo spin-off series, which takes the Jess character to Venice, CA with his father. Otherwise it's unlikely I'm spoiling any of the upcoming plots. The earth-shattering and horrible news from The Big One is included and a major factor in the story, along with a tiny spoiler from an upcoming episode. See if you can guess what it is ;).
Rating: PG-13 so far.
Disclaimer: Still waiting for my Liza clone I asked for a year ago, and it's doubtful the woman herself is about to come to sleepy Sheboygan, WI and ask for my hand in marriage (note to self; campaign mayor to start huge movie studio so he can lure the Knee Goddess out here). Amy Sherman-Palladino, Hofflund-Polone, Warner Bros. Television, and whatever newer companies are involved with the spin-off own the Paris and Jess characters, I don't.
Archiving: Usual suspects; FF.net and LWL. Make sure to ask if you want to archive it yourself.
Summary: After the fallout from the bombshell that is Paris' rejection letter from Harvard, she reexamines her life and decides to move to the Golden State to start anew at UCLA in the fall of 2003, to the shock of everyone she knows in central Connecticut. Meanwhile Jess moves to Venice, CA to reestablish his relationship with his father, and the twain meet one sunny September day in Santa Monica. It all develops from there.
Author's Notes: First of all, this is 100% Paris/Jess, Dipperness served in its purest form. Rory's not suddenly going to appear from the middle of nowhere and ask for Jess back, Jamie and Paris are no longer an item, and I'm not dealing with any other show characters besides these two and maybe Jimmy Mariano (Jess' father), along with Rory, Madeline and Louise through phone and internet conversations. So you've been warned.
You maybe asking yourself, 'But Nate, no way would Paris ever consider UCLA, it's too far away and it's not elite enough for her tastes.' Believe me, I took that into mind, and comparing pre-CSPAN meltdown Paris to her attitude afterwards, it's entirely possible she'll develop a complex against attending any Ivy League school after Harvard has snubbed her. Reading the few spoiler snippets, it wouldn't be prudent in canon, but Paris attending UCLA can work. I've thought about this fic idea since the announcement of the spin-off, and tried to not fall into the Felicity syndrome where Paris would chase Jess to LA just because he did something cute or ridiculous like signing her yearbook. With the way the show writers set up the Harvard spurn though, they've done that dirty work for me, and I can concentrate more on the development of their relationship than the semantics of setting all this up.
Thanks so much to Kitty, Chris and Ash for inspiring me to write this in the first place. Kitty for telling me it's completely possible for Paris to attend UCLA, and Ash for writing Hotel California and helping this idea finally come out of hiding during the 30 minute bus commute to work earlier today. Chris, a certain conversation towards the end of the chapter is all your fault, but thanks for the inspiration. Oh, and betaing for me too.
Paris Gellar looked up towards the front gate of her new home for the next four to six years of her young life, wondering why the long, strange trip of the last seven months had taken her here to the edge of Westwood, California instead of the storied and long-admired streets of Cambridge she expected to spend her late teens and early twenties walking back and forth on between the buildings of Harvard University. But here she was, instead of realizing the dream of being Paris Gellar, Harvard Freshman, about to walk onto the quadrangle of the University of California-Los Angeles.
Of course, being a Harvard student had been Paris' new year's resolution every year since she was eight and coherent enough to know that Harvard didn't have a mascot, but a color instead. As soon as she was born, Harvard crimson flowed through her veins like it was the only thing driving her towards her goal. It was her Gatorade, the stuff that drove her to make sure everyone stayed the hell out of her way on the way to the guaranteed slot in Harvard that came with the Gellar bloodline. It was in the thousands of hours of charity and community service projects she did, and the many essays and hand-aching speeches she wrote to guarantee that spot in Harvard history.
On February 28, 2003, she lost the crimson in her veins. She also lost her composure in front of an audience 300 strong in Grand Hall, along with just under a million people watching on CSPAN the celebration of Chilton's bicentennial. A rant directed at Chilton's administration, the Harvard board of regents, and her family later, she was crumpled up into a ball in Rory Gilmore's arms, lamenting about the loss of her dream, and thoughts about how her loss of virginity ruined it all for her. All the Stars Hollow girl could do was comfort her and tell her that eventually things would sort out, and that Paris' consummation with Jamie wasn't the root cause of the rejection.
And that they did two weeks later, when the two girls threw all their Harvard memorabilia into the Founder's Bonfire at the Stars Hollow Founders Festival. The highlight of both girl's nights had to be seeing Rory's Harvard acceptance letter crumble into a fiery ash right before their eyes. It was not only cathartic, but the end of an era for the both of them. No more fighting for the attention of the old guys and women in Cambridge with projects that seemed to get even more ridiculous every day. Rory would comply with her grandfather's wishes and decide to head the 40-some miles south to New Haven, and become a Yale Bulldog, not Harvard due to the horrible treatment her friend who should've gotten in received in their hands. Paris was still undecided though.
Rory's words about starting her own legacy that night spun in Paris' mind for the longest time. She had applied to many other colleges just in case the unimaginable happened, but all of them were Ivy League schools. All of them did accept her in the end, no way were they going to let a Chilton valedictorian head to a competing school, they fought over her like rabid dogs, wanting a newly-minted bitter Harvard applicant in their fold so they could promote the hell out of her in their admissions materials.
However she had kept another letter hidden deep within a desk drawer since she received it in mid-January. A glowing acceptance from UCLA, and the letter went on and on about how honored they'd have her change coasts and scenery to become a Bruin backer. She shoved it into the drawer immediately, knowing for sure she wouldn't ever need to respond to a college so far away from Hartford. She hadn't toured the campus, but some other Harvard wannabes had slandered the campus five miles from the Pacific as unacceptable and unworthy of such students as themselves. These same people would diss any university with initials instead of a full name though, so Paris deduced that they could say the same thing of notorious party school Florida State and not have to change their opinion.
So the letter stayed deep in the pile as Paris considered other schools like Brown and Columbia, maybe even Princeton to be around her boyfriend Jamie all the time. But that changed when Jamie had a yelling match with Paris over her outburst at the Bicentennial. He claimed he was embarrassed to have bedded such a 'overbearing, neurotic and egotistical bitch', and that he thought when he had sex with her, it would mean something much more than an excuse to pass off the Harvard blame.
The black eye he got after a profanity-laced dumping on the girl's part pretty much ended the wedding bells talk for Paris and Jamie, along with any college considerations south of a line along I-78 in New Jersey, which killed both Princeton and Penn in the process.
She remained unimpressed with any of the rest of the Ivy League schools. Cornell was a very boring school in a very boring town, and "if I wanted to go to a dull school in a dull place, I would've applied to North Dakota Tech," she would say to Rory as they left the dull burg of Ithaca. Both Dartmouth and Brown were way too close to Harvard for her comfort, and the farther away from Massachusetts Paris was, the better, the last thing she needed was murderous tendencies against Harvard's dean to take root in her mind.
Columbia in New York impressed her, pretty much until the point she was mugged in broad daylight in front of two NYPD officers in a crosswalk at 116th and Broadway. They never did catch the thief of Paris' pocketbook, and the hundreds of dollars spent replacing every card and item in her new purse seethed Paris so much that she wrote an angry letter to Mayor Bloomberg asking for more police protection in the Columbia area.
She loves the photo of Mike Bloomberg he mailed back as a 'response'. It's pinned to her dartboard to aim at whenever stress needs to be dealt with.
That left one college, the foregone conclusion of traveling with Rory to Yale and continuing to build up their newly-blossoming friendship once again. She toured the campus, found it to her liking, and was pretty much ready to sign on the dotted line to become a Yalie, the pen held in her hand to say 'Thank you Yale, I accept.'
But something in her mind bugged her to take a second look at the envelope laying deep in the drawer, beckoning for her to read on and perhaps lure her to Los Angeles. She read through the included materials, including the brochure, class selection guide, the offered tour bus of the UCLA campus in early summer, and the special bonus 'tourist in your own town' guide put out by the Santa Monica Visitor's Guild, which wasn't odd considering the jewel at the end of old Route 66 was about five minutes from UCLA's Westwood campus.
She found three things wrong though, not the most imposing issue being the fact she was a girl going to have to make it on her own in LA. There was that whole smog factor, and the fact that everything wasn't as close as it would be if she stayed in New England. Paris imagined her routines dying as she started highballing Starbucks coffee by the day, and having to breath in that 'clean So-Cal air' almost no one talked about. She also dreaded the long commutes that were sure to be made up to UCLA's Pasadena libraries so she could check out more detailed study materials, and the long ride back to West LA. It's probably not the right school for me, Paris thought to herself after a long surfing session at ucla.edu, and she went to bed thinking she was going to get up and announce her intentions to go to Yale at a party for family and friends her mother had planned for the next night.
Rory's advice about starting her own legacy continued to haunt her though, and Paris found sleep lacking as the images of UCLA came to her like a high-speed slide show. She imagined herself arguing about various theories she had with the famed professors of the state college, and taking in sports that actually meant something way in the upper decks of the Rose Bowl and Pauley Pavilion, though to be fair she was doing her schoolwork in her seat as the crowds watched the Bruin football and basketball squads pound cross-town rival USC. She dreamt of never having to put on a heavy winter coat again to trudge back and forth between Chilton and her car into the unforgiving cold of a Connecticut winter, but instead just starting her Jag convertible right up and coasting along the PCH, wind in her hair and trying to find that quiet study nook with a beautiful ocean view near Santa Barbara. The freedom of letting her hair down and letting new people into her life without having to devolve back into her 'Chilton Queen Bitch' persona was something that was making her decision easier to take.
But the deciding factor was something so small, no one, including Paris herself, might have ever considered it a factor at all, much less something that would decide her fate for the next four years. And that was the only goddamned way UCLA would ever shut down for a day is if The Big One happened to hit and destroy the campus. Paris had read the data, and had assured herself that she had a better chance of having a child in the next three months than of ever having to take a day off from school ever again, it was highly unlikely an 8-Richter earthquake was going to hit LA while she was being schooled there. The evil of Paris' world had been the ever-present snow days of Chilton, of which there were three or four per year. She would end up repeating them at Yale, and those were always her most unproductive days. She hated snow and cold, and to not deal with it in Los Angeles, it was easy to come to a conclusion.
"That's it, I'm going to UCLA, try and stop me world," she mumbled confidently to herself as sleep decided to reappear, and she was out like a light in moments. A very small factor, but a big decision nonetheless.
The next evening, Paris' college commitment party.
"Excuse me young lady, you're going where to college?" Sharon Gellar gasped, as the attendants of the party, including her ex-husband Harold, Paris' tag team of friends Madeline and Louise, and Rory looked at the blonde, stunned at the magnitude of her announcement.
"I've decided it, and I found UCLA to be of my liking, so I shall be starting there with a journalism major in September," she responded back to her mother tersely. Paris knew by now not to try to start a fiery argument with her mother in front of the other 50 party guests gathered in the Gellar Manor greenhouse/natatorium.
"But Paris, you talked us out of even applying there back in junior year, why are you going there?" The question from the raven-haired Madeline was one of the few times her hidden intelligence had shone through. The daughter of the Lynns was planning on going back to her childhood home of Seattle and attend the University of Washington at the urging of her biological father, to rekindle the lost relationship they had when Mrs. Lynn received custody of Madeline and fled with her to Connecticut when she was nine.
Paris hesitated for a moment, then proceeded to answer her friend. "Madeline, I just feel that I can do much more with my life, and I won't be able to do much of it in New Haven. There's nothing but you two and Rory to stay here for, and we're going to be spread out all over the country anyways after we start our universities. Louise is going to Miami, Rory's in New Haven, and you'll be in Seattle. I've just reached a point where I feel I need sort of an academic vacation, and there's no better place to take it than Los Angeles. I'll be fine Madeline, it's just a matter of getting a better commuting car and adjusting my biological clock to Pacific time, it's an easy change."
"The hell it is!" Mrs. Gellar blurted out rather loudly. "Paris Eustacia Gellar, you have an academic tradition to maintain in the Ivy League, and I'm not letting you continue it at a state school, in California of all places!"
Paris turned to face her mother, and anger was sparking in her eyes. "Mother, there is nothing you can do to stop me. I have a trust fund set to be opened this June, and that will more than cover me, no matter how long it takes to complete UCLA. There's no loophole you can use to steal the money out from beneath my nose, and I have a sizable estate to inherit when Father passes on, but even without it, I'll still have about $30 million from the trust fund so that I'll live quite comfortably. It would be in your best interest to not interfere in my college choice Mother, lest I decide not to be generous with my inheritance and not support you through old age!"
She glowered at her mother, and walked around her, letting her know she meant business. "Give it up Sharon, I'm not you, and I'm never going to be you. I've gotten over my snub at the hands of Harvard, and I'm moving on and starting my own legacy. If that means moving to the Golden State and attending a state school, a school many kids would kill to be in like Harvard, so be it. At least I had the fortitude of sneaking all those applications out from under your nose so that just in case Mommy's Harvard dream for little Rissy didn't come true, she still had a fine choice of schools to weed out and attend."
"This is your rebellion, isn't it young lady? You don't get your way and you do this to spite me, well it's not going to happen with me in charge of your life honey, I'm calling Yale and telling them--"
"Thanks, but no thanks." Harold decided to get between Paris and Sharon before they could trade blows, and took his daughter into his arms, smiling and crying at the same time as he hugged the hell out of his offspring. "I'm happy with you Paris, whether you go to Harvard, UCLA, ITT Tech or the auto body college on Farmington Avenue. You're 18 now, and you aren't my little girl anymore. I'm very proud of you for deciding not to continue with an outdated family 'legacy', and it's my high hope that you'll come back here at the end of May 2007 a very mature and proud young woman who has not only given our name the respect it deserves, but will create a branch of the family tree that is unique and all your own."
"I love you Par, no matter what you do, and don't you ever forget that." He brought her close, and it reminded Paris of the tight and loving bear hugs she shared with her father when she was younger. She felt confident now, and not only that, loved.
"I love you too Daddy," she said looking up at the man who had raised her to be a strong and independent woman. Sharon could only resign herself and try to accept the fact that Paris was going to UCLA, and she was powerless to stop it. She could only hope to convince Paris that Yale was better, but Paris wasn't having any of it, so much so that by the end of April, Sharon had finally given her only child the blessing to go on with her newly-laid college plans.
Paris arrived back at Chilton after spring break, serving after-school detentions for about three weeks due to the embarrassment she caused Charleston with her ill-advised choice of bicentennial speech. It was just a matter of her and Rory fighting Francie's numerous usurpation attempts at trying to stir up student government the rest of the way, and graduation seemed to arrive in a blur of activity. All that Paris would remember by the end of her senior year is offering Brad a truce and sharing a dance with him at Prom, and that Rory's boyfriend Jess had dropped out of Stars Hollow High, was attempting to reconcile with his father, and moved cross-country with him, Oregon, Idaho, one of those states in the west.
Rory had become quite emotional at the loss of her second love, but pretty soon the feelings of abandonment were replaced of those of c'est la vie, that Jess wasn't bound to be her one and only, and they would be better not as a couple, but as just friends. The decision was made easier when Luke finally came out and admitted his feelings for Lorelai right in front of Nicole and Alex one night in the diner. The elder Gilmore and Danes had been inseparable ever since, and any thoughts of Rory and Jess being 'kissin' cousins' were quickly buried into the dark recesses of Stars Hollow history.
She didn't even have a valedictorian's speech to commit to memory, as the detentions had dragged her GPA down to a hair above 4. In a surprise that shocked all of Chilton, Madeline, the self-proclaimed ditz of the class of 2003, had the #1 grade for her four high school years. It was so stealthy that she had gotten so many A+ grades that Madeline even checked with Charleston to make sure her grade wasn't a mistake. The Lynn family's lack of reading Chilton progress reports proved that grades were just something to get and forget, and not dwell on.
It set up the strangest valedictorian's speech in all of Chilton's 200 years, where Madeline used pop idols, figures from 'oddly enough' articles and soap opera stars to inspire the graduates instead of the usual colloquies involving Keats and Whitman. However in the end, Madeline managed to sum up the point of her speech quite nicely, which was popularity means nothing in the real world and the only way to get ahead in life is to work hard and plan for the unexpected. Paris, Louise and Rory gave the girl a standing ovation along with the rest of the class, and the raven-haired girl glowed as she got over any jitters she might have had in public speaking. Before that, everyone might have thought Madeline wasn't going to amount to much. After the speech, the tide in thinking was changing that she was going places, and they were prepared to not dwell on the fact that the school's gossipmonger had become the valedictorian so unexpectedly.
Paris and Charleston had made up in the last two months before graduation, and they hugged as she prepared to receive her diploma, wearing her hair down and the graduation gown of Chilton blue fitting her loosely.
"I'm going to miss having you to kick around Miss Gellar, there's never been another student like you, and there never will be again," he whispered into her ear as she received the reward of attending his school for the last twelve years.
"As long as another girl doesn't have a nervous breakdown to announce her loss of virginity at the 250th celebration or play Romeo in a class production, I think my legacy as a Chilton student is solid," she responded back with a smile. The Headmaster held back a laugh, and sent Paris on her way back to her seat onstage as outgoing student body president. She was very proud to see Rory as the class salutorian, and couldn't help but cry at the realization that for the next four years, she wouldn't even have the small-town girl to confide in or partake in verbal sniping in person except during school breaks and summer vacations. Looks like a job for the internet and a cell phone, she thought to herself, there was no way she was about to lose contact with her best friend in the world, even across a continent.
The next two months after Paris threw her mortarboard into the June air of Keney Park's natural bowl were another blur as she made the plans to move her entire life from her girlhood home into a 12'x12' dorm room in Los Angeles. Which meant that a lot of things that might have come with her if she stayed in New England would have to be left home, she planned everything out so that United Van Lines would only have to move one truck filled with her things out to California. Her bed and most everything in her room except for her computer would remain, along with most of her clothes.
Paris knew that there was going to be no way her wool sweaters would stand a chance in the California heat, and she started the acclimation process of wearing non-plaid skirts and t-shirts around in public instead of her previous dark-colored wardrobe. Louise and Madeline relished Paris' change in clothes of course, so Louise, as sort of a farewell outing, immediately authorized a high-ticket spending spree at the department stores of Manhattan and Short Hills, New Jersey for the Chilton Three. And this time, Paris had to be open to whatever fashion decisions the girls made for her when it came to outfits. It was that or having to drink 20 glasses of water a day to replenish the perspiration she'd have if she kept her old wardrobe.
Paris not only came back to Hartford smiling at all the new outfits she had, but at the rekindling of her odd kinship with Louise and Madeline. She had gotten them both into college, and with that goal completed, she could focus on just being girly with them until they all went their separate ways in mid-August. By the time the three and Rory had gathered at the Gilmore house on their last evening before departing for college, Paris was more relaxed and easy going than she ever had. She had lifted nary a finger for any charity or service club over the summer, and spent almost everyday sleeping until 11 in the morning, taking advantage of the fact that there was no admissions board to impress or schmooze with.
Still, Paris couldn't leave Hartford without one last plan that left the three girls with a bemused look in their eyes, as if Paris was nuts.
"I say that before we leave, we coordinate it so that we're all driving in a straight line down to New Haven on 91, saying goodbye to everyone on a conference call we'll make with our cell phones. Rory will take her exit into the Yale area first, and we'll look on as she takes that exit out of childhood." She pointed at Madeline and Louise, who were whispering something to each other about Paris planning out their entire lives up to their cremations. "As for you two, I'll continue following you two up until Louise has to exit south of Scranton, Pennsylvania to head down the Eastern Seaboard towards Florida. I and Madeline then will follow each other and stay a night in downtown Chicago, where we will say our goodbyes, and she'll head north on 90 towards Seattle, while I start traveling whatever various interstates get me through the Midwest and Rockies and into Los Angeles. I considered the whole 'I'm gonna retrace Route 66 and rediscover America' crap but then realized, why would I want to do that, I mean they turned most of Route 66 into expressways, and where it wasn't it's all kitschy and cute and annoying. I'm going to have enough culture shock to deal with in LA, so the less time it takes to get there, the better. So, how does that sound girls?"
Rory's mouth was hanging open, Louise was feeling weird, and Madeline was thanking her lucky stars that she had the foresight to have her father pick up a Bradley to Seattle plane ticket a couple weeks earlier.
"Paris, has the LA weather started getting to you even before you've arrived?" Louise asked, taking a nail file off the coffee table and rubbing it against the heel of her palm to test the roughness.
"No it hasn't Louise, I just wanted to say goodbye at the most opportune time is all."
"That's why we have this one last sleepover Paris, to say goodbye," Rory huffed, annoyed, yet not surprised at Paris' unique way of leaving them for the next four years.
"Besides Paris, you do have the longest drive to deal with, 2 days cross-country, the last thing you need is to be distracted on your cell phone," Louise mused.
"But what about you Madeline--"
"I already have non-refundable airline tickets Par, I can't turn them in anymore."
Rory then asked the question that was just begging for an answer. "Paris, are you already feeling like you're going to miss us all?"
The blonde sat Indian-style across from her three friends, and tried to keep her composure up. Even though each member of her peer group had some kind of trait that drove her up a wall, such as Louise's guy-gushing, Madeline's absent-mindedness at inopportune times, and her rivalry with Rory, she had to admit to herself that she was going to miss seeing the three girls while she was alone by herself in Los Angeles. There was no west coast branch of the Gellar family, and there was no telling if anyone on the UCLA campus was going to endear themselves to the girl like the three girls sitting in front of her somehow did.
"I may not say it guys, but I'm going to miss all three of you girls the moment I cross the Hartford County line, it's going to be so abrupt not having an everyday friend anymore. I've known you Louise since we were four, and though you can sometimes be such a tough friend, we've always depended on each other when it came to things like sex, all those crazy girl things back in puberty and that you still had the outlook of your average teenage girl, while you let me hyper-focus on school and my studies." Both girls got up at the same time, and hugged for the first time for what seemed to be eons. "Louise, I pray that Miami goes well for you, and that you can lure a Heisman quarterback into loving you. You better wear SPF 45+ sunblock when you're studying physics on South Beach in your bikini, or else I'm coming there and kicking your ass girl."
"And I hope that you get yourself a nice tan in LA Par, that was the only reason I did those outdoor home projects with you, it guaranteed me a nice dark complexion," Louise said smiling at her longest friend.
"Now that's the Louise I know, always finding a shallow excuse to get some charity points." She lightly tapped Louise on the wrist, and let go as Madeline approached her. "Ahh, Madeline, who would've guessed all this time me and Rory were fighting a fruitless battle for the valedictorian slot when you had it sealed up for so long? All I have to say is if you stay this stealthy no one's going to notice you're in the White House 'till it's too late."
The raven-haired girl blushed and giggled back. "I guess some of those pesky study techniques rubbed off on me Paris, and it helped that there were a few dates where I spent more time on Einstein's theories than I did thinking about which base I wanted the guy to run to. At least Brad's gotten that gig at that small theatre company in Pioneer Square, Seattle has an excellent drama scene." Her and Brad had started dating a couple months ago after she found herself drawn to the red-haired offspring of a taxidermist. At first, Paris and Louise thought the girl had taken some mind-altering medication that caused her thought processes to whack out. Paris' theory died however when she walked in on the two of them ready to rip their clothes off in the cloakroom after a very hot tango they somehow managed to finagle Charleston into letting them do at Prom.
"Enjoy the time with your father in Washington State, and geez Madeline, give poor Brad a break. I may harp on him sometimes, but even a 'sexual dynamo' as you call him needs a break sometimes," Paris joked. The interesting positions those two had gotten themselves into had been the talk of the Chilton gossip mills, and there was a rumor out there that Brad and Madeline had an impromptu 4am performance on the stage of the Winter Garden a couple weeks after graduation, thanks to Brad's stage credentials on Broadway.
"I'll try Gellar, but that damn Space Needle is just calling out to me and Brad for a very hot PDA. I just hope a arts and design degree from U of W has the same weight later in life as those at a specialty school."
"I wouldn't sweat it Maddie, your work for the fashion houses will speak more in the end than the name of the school on the diploma."
Madeline smiled back, Paris' Harvard reality check had finally taken away the girl's stubbornness of guiding her friends into going to Sarah Lawrence. She then yawned and wrapped a blanket around herself, preparing to curl up in a sleeping bag on the carpet of Rory's floor. "Thanks Par, well I'm off to bed. Have to get up at the crack of dawn for the damn flight out of Hartford, stop in Indy and Denver and transfer planes each time before I get to the Emerald City. And all this on a sickly little diet of cashews and seltzer water." She sighed and rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. "Is that any way to run an airline?"
"25 years ago it wasn't, but today traveling by air feels more like being packed onto the Tokyo subway system than a trip on the QE2. See, if you would've listened to my plan Mads you could make the trip as pleasant as you wanted." Paris smiled smugly at her charcoal-coifed buddy. Take that girl.
"Get outta here before I decide another pillow fight's in my system Gellar," Madeline responded with a snaggle-toothed smile.
"Fine, fine, I'm going, I'll talk to you around the holidays Lynn, don't forget your raincoat by the way." Paris walked out of Rory's room, and headed towards the living room couch for her last night of sleep as a true teenager. She was already starting to wear the light blue and yellow colors of her alma mater, as she sported grey sweatpants with UCLA printed down the pants leg, and a blue t-shirt with an image of the bruin mascot on the front. She lay on the couch and rested her head on the pillow next to her. Rory walked into the room, and Paris brought her legs closer to let Rory sit next to her on the couch.
"God I can't believe this Paris, tonight's our last night before we leave for school," Rory said brightly as Paris took her small pearl earrings out and placed them on the coffee table. "I never thought we'd ever get to this point, at least with me alive."
"It's just so weird Rory, both of us were supposed to be on our way to Cambridge tomorrow, it was part of both our big plans for our lives. I even had the day colored in on my calendar, and it was the first thing I put in my Palm when I bought it two years ago. But now, I don't even want to look at or hear anything about the school, what they did to me was just so incomprehensible. I mean you even agreed that I deserved Harvard more than you, right?"
"Yeah, the way you were that night you walked in to give the speech was just the worst thing that could've ever happened to you, it was such a devastating moment. Do you think that if UCLA didn't work out and Harvard did want you again, you'd reapply?"
Paris glared, giving Rory a look as if to ask what the heck she was thinking when she thought of the question. "I have three words for everyone at Harvard; bite my ass. If they didn't feel I was good enough for them the first time, they should've said so during the application process to save me grief. And to let me know in that cold impersonal way like that pathetic little note, when I just about had my own admissions counselor in Boston since I picked up the brochures when we were sophomores, it got to me. The guy didn't even have the balls to call me and warn me rejection was coming, he actually read my goddamned rejection letter before it was sent in the mail! If Harvard wants me back, I have a nice long nine-page syllabus/essay ready to be sent to admissions which profiles all my sacrifices for the sake of their pathetic little school, along with CSPAN screen captures of me that night of the bicentennial, and a little section on how pathetic they are crawling out of a hole just to want me back. I end it with a nice hearty 'Fuck you Harvard, thanks for nothing! Cordially not yours, Paris Gellar,' thus assuring they'll stray as far away from me as possible."
"You're sure about this then, UCLA is your school?"
"Rory, I'm set on spending the next four or five years being schooled in southern California, it's as simple as that, I'm not changing my mind. UCLA may be a state school, but it's a damned fine one that the academically elite out west want to get into as much as they do Harvard up here in New England. I know it's going to be tough trying to acclimate to such a new environment, but I'm willing to take that challenge. And when you think about it, a high-stressed girl from Connecticut like me is going to seem much more sane than your average Angelino, with their constant pressure to get things done so fast and to have the biggest of this and that. You can be sure that I'm avoiding the implant district in Beverly Hills like the plague, my breasts are nice and big--"
Rory quickly interrupted the blonde before she could take that sentence and rant any further. "Paris, stop with the breast talk, please! I agree with whatever you're going to say about them, honestly I do!"
Paris held back a laugh, she still loved getting the occasional rise out of Rory, and the panic the brunette got into amused her so. "Sorry about that Ror, it's just my body's going to be judged more in LA since I have to wear lighter clothes. I just hope I don't land in a dorm with a bunch of guys with a breast fetish. I'm pretty stacked, but I won't admit to anyone but you and the other two."
"It's OK." Rory smiled back at Paris, and changed the subject. "You know during the holidays you're going to be expected to bring home souvenirs for all three of us, right?"
"Yes Gilmore, I'll try to get you a little snowglobe with the Hollywood sign in it so you can decorate your dorm up a little more, I might even get some weird little thing for Lorelai, I know how she treasures the monkey lamp as if it's like an Ellis Island trunk or a really old sewing machine." She noticed the stare Rory was giving her. "And no, I'm not sneaking some tequila-spiked coffee from Tijuana, don't you give me that look Rory. I'm not even going down there."
"Mom would be begging you to get it if she was here."
"No, she would be begging for Luke to give her his 'special blend'. You'd think being 35 and in love would've meant they had lower sex drives, but no, there they are making out like teenagers over the counter while poor Caesar has to pick up all the slack and act like a babysitter so they don't race upstairs and resolve their 'customer service grievances' with a little 'service with a smile'."
"Eww, Par-is, dirty!" Rory wrinkled her nose in disgust at her spins on innocent foodservice industry terms.
"What, it's the plain truth." She shrugged and stretched her legs out, wanting to get some sleep before she got on the road the next day. Rory got up and stood above Paris.
"And I'm glad that they're going to be realizing that plain truth out of my sight."
"At least one couple I know is finally getting the point, my mother and father give new meaning to the term 'love-hate relationship'. Take a letter Rory that I'll have to lock those two in the wine cellar one of these days ala that episode where Krabappel and Skinner have to resolve the strike in that manner."
"Too bad you can't major in Simpsons references at UCLA or there's a class for it, all those reruns you watched on Fox 61 are your dirty little secret there Paris. Never thought you put off schoolwork for an hour every night to watch that show 'till I walked in your room that day."
"The Simpsons is just about as religious cult, a couple of ministers even wrote a book about the spiritual references made in the series, it was a pretty nice read. If it wasn't already in storage down in LA I'd lend it to you for a between classes time waster."
"You can just mail it to me Paris, I'll be sure to mail it back with a book I recommend. We can start our own little personal Netflix thing, only involving books instead of DVDs."
"Hey, that's a good idea Gilmore, see that's why you kept me sane over these last few months, you're the one with the good ideas."
"Well without you I may not have experienced the wonderful scent of burning crimson fleece and pennant fabric at the bonfire, you're the one who came up with the idea of cleansing us of all things Harvard."
"I had so much fun doing that, although I should've thought twice about throwing the CD-R's we burned of our application essays into the fire, not a good stench if you asked me." Paris wrinkled her nose, and covered herself with the afghan draping the back of the couch.
"No, not one of our best ideas ever Paris. Speaking of noses, don't forget your piercing." Rory smiled and pointed at the small diamond stud on the left side of her friend's nose, which Paris had gotten in a need to have some kind of pre-college rebellion after the Harvard rejection.
"Oh, thanks Ror, that's going to be a pest to make sure to take out every night without someone reminding me." Paris held her nose closed, and took the nose ring out, putting it off to the side with her earrings. She had it pierced at a disreputable parlor in Bristol one day in April just for the heck of it, and it ended up infected. Still, she warmed to keeping the piercing after some good comments about how she looked with it from her friends despite the problems with it in the first two weeks, and went to a Piercing Pagoda and had it hygienically repierced with a sterile nose ring to go with it. The only problem she found with keeping it was that the pole of the stud would tickle her nose when she went to bed, so she would be kept up and have sneezing fits if she didn't take it out before bed.
"So, what time are you leaving the house tomorrow, I'm sure just a little later than Madeline."
"Well, I want to get dressed and showered by around 8, and I'll probably stop in Greenwich for some breakfast before I get on the road and try to make it to Chicago before 9 tomorrow night, I'm not going to drive straight through to LA. I may even have to deal with an extra day beyond the two I have planned out, so if I'm tired after the long boring drive through Iowa and Nebraska I have a bed at the Westin in Denver waiting for me. From there it's just a matter of getting across the Rockies and Sierras into California."
"Long boring drive through, too bad you can't play punch buggy or road sign bingo on the way," Rory joked as Paris went through her itinerary.
"I downloaded a bunch of audiobooks from the web onto an MP3 player, and there's always the XM radio I had installed if I need some music or run out of books to listen to. As much as I'd love to be immersed in local radio, Clear Channel's homogenization of the airwaves pretty much assures that the playlists will be the same whether I'm in Phoenix or Des Moines."
"Well I hope you have a fun trip to LA Paris, and you don't have a sore butt by the time you reach Westwood. I'll be sleeping in 'till noon, so I can say goodbye to Louise, then me and Mom are off to New Haven to spend our last day together, I'm letting her sleep on the floor of my dorm tomorrow night."
Paris shook her head, and smirked at Rory. "She's actually holding you to that promise, who would've thought." She got up, and prepared to say goodbye to her former enemy and combatant, and now best friend. "Well, you know I'm not much for the teary goodbyes complete with Kleenex and the hugging over and over until you finally tell me to get out of here an hour later, but I'm going to miss you so much Rory. UCLA's not going to be the same as Chilton, our whole rivalry kept me on my toes for three years, and even through all that crap we went through with Tristan and Francie, I never did hate you Gilmore, and I don't think I ever will."
"Hey, you forgot to tell me where him and Francie are going."
"Well I know I heard back from Tristan a few weeks ago, he's out of military school, doing great and decided to stay down in North Carolina, he's going to UNC in Chapel Hill. He's had a steady girlfriend for six months and I think his days of dating anything with a pulse are long over. As for Francie, she just barely got into UMass. Seems all those mindgames she played with us interfered with her ability to finish homework and dragged her GPA down, so she lost the acceptances she had at Georgetown and Maryland. It's sweet justice, isn't it Gilmore?"
"Very sweet, I hope she can handle the pressures of a bottom of the barrel state school."
"It gives me a pleasant feeling that her Puffs connections couldn't save her ass from ending up at a place without a sorority connection. I see her in jail in a few months for stealing a keg from the local liquor store in a desperate attempt to get into Delta Kappa Alpha or some other club that involves Greek letters."
"I hope Lemon and Tangerine have enough bail money to get her out," Rory said as the she got in one last crack at the expense of the Puffs. "Paris, I'm going to miss you so much, and without your interference while I was at Chilton I would've never even had a shot at Harvard, much less Yale. You'll write, right?"
Paris brought Rory closer, and hugged her tightly. "Every two weeks Rory, I promise. You keep yourself single for the next few months, you hear me? You promised me you'd go stag and focus on your studies, boys have been nothing but trouble for both of us."
"I can pretty much expect you to be the only single girl in La-La Land, right Gellar?"
"I think the remarks we made towards the TV with Lorelai during a Blind Date marathon pretty much showed I have a heavy disinterest in the dating pool of Los Angeles. If I do find a guy, it's fine with me, just as long as he doesn't interfere with my studies."
"Still, I hope in four years down there you find some guy, Jamie lit up your life for a few months, and a second relationship is always the most exciting, at least in my opinion."
"It's either that or turn to lesbianism," Paris mused aloud, causing Rory to abruptly end the hug, a bemused look on her face. Paris's eyes widened at what she had just said. "Oh, not with you Rory! I'm just saying I do have some latent gayness lurking within me somewhere, I have a strange thing for Angelina Jolie."
"I have a thing for Angelina too Paris, every girl does, it's like a biological requirement to want her, even if you have an XX chromosome." Rory rolled her eyes and prepared to walk out of the room. "Hell, I'll admit to wanting Madonna if she wanted me."
"Hey, I didn't ask for a summary of girls you'd sleep with," Paris said, then laughed at the absurdity of the whole subject of dormant lesbianism. "I'd sleep with Sheryl Crow myself, don't know why except she has hair to die for and she's pretty good-looking for an older woman. Well, that and she has a voice that makes men and women want her so much, I wonder what she's like whispering--"
"OK, stop before the image of you and her kissing permeates my mind forever!"
"Too late for me Rory, now I have a picture of you making out with Madonna in her Like a Prayer period, thin slip dress and all, thanks a lot."
"Oh God, Paris!" she groaned. "This conversation better stay between you and me, I'll kill you if you mention this to Lorelai. She's going to make fun of me if she finds out I want to do Madonna."
"Fine, but if you tell Maddy or Lou about my secret lust for Sheryl, I'm telling her."
"OK then Paris, goodnight and I'll talk to you in a couple weeks." Rory smiled at Paris, and the blonde returned the smile.
"'Night Rory, and don't forget," she started singing. "Just like a prayer, your voice will take me there."
"Arrrrggghh, Paris..." Rory muttered her way into her room, cursing the revelation of her crush on Madonna. Well Paris and I always knew how to say goodbye so uniquely, she thought as she crawled into her bed for the last time as a high school student.
"I'm going to miss pissing her off, Rory's always so funny when she's irritated with things," Paris said to herself as she lay back down on the couch, bringing the afghan close to her body. She smiled as she shut off the light next to her on the end table, then she shut her eyes and quickly drifted off to sleep. The last night the four girls spent together at the Gilmore home winded down, and after tomorrow, fate would be the only thing guiding Paris for the next four years.
The next day...
Paris left Stars Hollow around 7:30, about a half-hour earlier than she planned. The excitement of getting to Los Angeles was starting to sink in, and as she started her iPod and played a MP3 of great American poetry, prepared for the long drive to the Pacific coast. The Jaguar's back seat was packed with things she felt she would need, and the trunk was full of the things from home she couldn't quite fit on the moving truck. Her itinerary was set in stone, and there was no turning back now.
Earlier the day before, she had said her goodbyes to the staff at the Manor and her Portuguese-speaking nanny Francisca, who now with no child to dote on was moving back to Lisbon with the sizable amount of money she had saved over Paris' 18 years of existence. Her mother actually took it harder than she thought, and hoped her daughter would be fine in 'the scary big city'. Despite their off-kilter relationship, Paris was going to miss her mother. But she definitely wasn't going to miss her trying to control her life. She was her own woman now, and damned if anyone was going to change that.
As she drove past the state line between Connecticut and New York on I-95, it was just the strangest coincidence that Robert Frost's most famous poem was the next track on the poetry MP3.
"I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference," was what Paris heard as the 'Welcome to Port Chester, NY' sign whizzed past her.
"God, I hope so," Paris said to herself as she got over the shock of the poem being the one she heard as she left her home state. "UCLA better be a good road." She then brought her focus into concentrating on the morning rush traffic into New York City, and how she could get onto I-80 and into New Jersey without encountering a backup.
To be continued...
Next chapter: Paris arrives at UCLA and prepares to settle in, but has to deal with her first hurdle, a roommate who doesn't seem like an intelligent woman to deal with at first glance. The girl thinks the same thing about Paris, and they have to sort out their first impressions before they can start getting along.