A/N: I love the 80's ficathon entry. My prompt was Fashion. Heehee! Thanks to Princessklutz04 for the beta and ScullysEvilTwin for the read-over and the awesomeness that she is. :) This is for my mom, who knows why...
The Lemon Parade
Sara looked down at herself, at the baggy pink corduroy pants and the purple sweater she was growing out of way too fast. Nervously she tugged on the sleeves, tried to make them longer and blew a strand of unruly brown hair out of her face.
She hated school photos.
She hated that she had to smile, that all the other kids had clothes that fit and when she walked up to that lonely chair at the very front of the MPR everybody snickered because her pants were too short and her sweater too small and there was a gap between her teeth.
Maybe this year the photographer wouldn't force her to smile. Maybe she could just be sulky, which came so much easier than a smile. All she had to do was remember yesterday, when she had ducked out of the living room while a copy of "The two towers" sailed past above her head and hit the hallway cabinet with a meaty clunk.
That almost made her smile though, because her moves had been fast ("Long legs are good for running Sara, remember that!") and she had scrambled up the stairs, with the book, before her father had even gotten his ass off the couch.
Good thing her room had a lock with a key that hadn't been broken off. Good thing she had a million other memories that wouldn't make her smile.
With a sigh, Sara looked up, watched as the line-up of kids in front of her grew smaller and finally, much too soon, it was her turn. She swallowed a moan and walked up to the chair, sitting down awkwardly as the photographer looked up at her.
"Can you turn to the side a bit?" he asked, cool eyes fixed on her deer-in-the-headlights expression and she wondered if he asked himself why her mother had ever let her leave the house like this. With clothes that didn't fit and a sideways ponytail (she had seen that on a billboard) that was messy as hell and definitely didn't look the way it was supposed to look.
What did he know? Her mother's broken fingers made it sort of impossible to help her with a ponytail.
"That's good. Now tilt your head up a tiny bit… that's it. And… smile!" he gave her a thumbs-up from behind his huge camera and she frowned a bit, biting the insides of her cheeks.
Nothing happened, no flash, nothing. The photographer looked up at her questioningly and raised an eyebrow.
"Erm… smile?" he asked gently, making her frown even more. She also pursed her lips, looked somewhat like a frightened baby chick as she stared at him and shook her head slowly.
"You don't wanna smile? C'mon, I'm sure it'll look tubular!" he coaxed gently.
What he didn't know was that Sara Sidle was stubborn. And when she had her mind set on something, she wasn't easily convinced by someone else's opinion.
Especially not that of a photographer.
"Nuh uh." she stated firmly, shook her head and managed to loosen another strand of hair that fell haphazardly across her face.
The photographer, unsure of what to do, shrugged and stuck his head back behind the camera.
"Smile!" he tried a surprise attack.
Sara drew her eyebrows together and bit her bottom lip. This was definitely going to be a picture to remember. Not one to ever go on a wall or into a class reunion slide show.
It went into a box, as a matter of fact, along with words such as "tubular" and "radical" and "gnarly" (thank God!). The only things that remained after the year 1990 made its grand entrance were tie dyed shirts. Because Sara loved tie dyed shirts. And while everyone else slowly moved on, Sara… well… Sara didn't.
The box with a handful of pictures, a very old and very well- loved, very long legged pink bunny and a shirt that stated that she had been a member of the science club in middle school ended up, dusty and with dented edges, on the floor of Grissom's townhouse as the last box to be moved. The last box because it had been at the very back of the hallway closet in Sara's old apartment, forgotten under piles of journals.
Now it sat in the middle of the living room and the dog tried very, very hard to push his nose under the lid because it smelled different and interesting. Sara stood in the kitchen, a mug of tea in her hand and eyed the box warily.
She couldn't really remember what was in there but a nagging feeling of it being something unpleasant wouldn't leave her.
"Bruno, leave it. We'll open it… later." she said, walked over to the couch and flopped there.
Stupid box. Stupid.
Grissom walked into the room in the exact same moment in which she willed the box to burst into flames and turn to ashes like a vampire exposed to light.
"Wow. What has that box done to you?" he asked, tapped against the cardboard lightly with his Birkenstocks.
"Nothing. I don't even really know what's in it. It was one of the two boxes that always moved around with me when I went into different foster homes. A tiny piece of a fucked-up past, so to speak. I'm not sure I want to look at it." she explained and took a comforting sip of tea.
"You've never… looked at it? In all these years?" he asked and sat down beside her. Immediately she scooted closer to lean into him. His big frame was much more comforting than a mug of tea.
"Nope. Never had the urge to… unleash the demons." she said cryptically and smiled wryly.
"And now you're ready?" He was curious. He kind of wanted to know what was in that box.
"I'm not sure. I guess… You know, I kinda wanna make peace with the past before we move on." Her voice was soft now, a hint of vulnerability underneath an armor of steely resolve. She could do this. It was just a box after all.
"If you're ready… I'm here." he whispered and reached out to squeeze her hand. She smiled a tiny, unsure smile and handed him the mug. With the determination of a martyr walking to the stake she got up, grabbed the box and carried it over to the couch. It wasn't very heavy, she had to admit.
Grissom moved back on the couch, pulled her down into his lap when she had put the box down and nuzzled her neck.
"Alright. Here goes…" she said and determinedly pulled the lid off, letting it drop to the ground. Bruno bounded over to sniff it, soaking the strange smell into his nose.
A pair of pink pants covered up whatever else was in the box and with a small laugh; Sara pulled them out and held them up.
"Those… you wore those?" Grissom asked, fingering the thick corduroy.
"Says the man with the straw hat and the Hawaiian shirt."
"Guilty. I'm just trying to picture you…"
She put the pants aside and leaned over the box, pulling out the pictures. With a sigh she turned the first one over, looked at the faded image of her mother wearing a pair of huge dark glasses, holding a two year old Sara and pointing at the camera.
"Mom and I. On the beach. She always wanted us to take pictures so I could have a memory of my childhood. A weird and warped image of the happy childhood I was supposed to have." she chuckled humorlessly and flipped to the next picture, one of a scrawny dog.
"Ha, Herbert!" she exclaimed and ran a thumb over the picture.
"Herbert?" he asked, taking the picture from her to study it.
The dog was a rather ugly thing with dirty matted fur but bright eyes and a pink tongue that hung out of a half opened mouth.
"He was a stray. Lived on the beach for a summer and I secretly fed him under the deck. Finally my parents found out and they said we couldn't have a dirty stray living under the deck of a bed and breakfast. Nor could we have a clean dog in the house. My father called the pound and I cried for three days straight."
Sara leaned down and scratched Bruno's ears for a moment before she looked at the next picture and burst out laughing.
"What… is that you?" Grissom studied the picture more closely.
"That… is my 7th grade school picture."
The picture of a ten-year old Sara, frowning with a pursed mouth and a sideways ponytail that looked like a crow's nest made him smile. Her hand awkwardly held on to the sleeves of her too-short sweater, pulling them down to her wrists. The entire picture was cute and oh so awkward.
"Needless to say that one was hidden away but I guess Social Services thought it would be great for me to have it." she sighed exasperatedly and put the pictures down on the coffee table.
"How thoughtful." Grissom stated sarcastically and fished in the box, pulling out the pink bunny.
Sara giggled, grabbed the bunny out of his hands and studied it for a moment.
"My father won this for me at a fair. It was my favorite toy because after everything he did to me, I thought he must still love me because he got me that and then the beatings weren't so bad, you know?" she dropped the bunny into her lap and leaned back against Grissom, savoring the moment as his arms came up and hugged her from behind.
"I don't know what to say." he said humbly, not capable of imagining what her childhood must have been like.
"You don't have to say anything. The past is the past. I've learned the hard way that I can't change what happened. I'm glad we're here and we're not like them."
She reached into the box again, pulled out the last item, a small tie dyed shirt, yellow with wavy, orange circles and large black lettering announcing "Science Club" on the front.
"Bright."
"Definitely. My science teacher had a thing for tie dye… so had I. Still have, to be honest. I wore that shirt everywhere for the longest time. Finally packed it up when one of the other foster kids at a home threatened to burn it." she giggled, folded the shirt and put it next to the pictures on the coffee table.
With a heartfelt sigh she leaned back, rested her head on Grissom's shoulder and smiled.
"Well, that wasn't so bad." she decided, poking at the empty cardboard box with her toe.
Grissom leaned over and grabbed the school photo, studied it once more and chuckled.
"We should hang this." he mused, oofing slightly when she elbowed him in the ribs.