Okay, if you've never seen the episode "Joy to the World", you can recap it, or I can just explain that Rachel's biological parents are that one chick and this other kid named Simon, who was played by Lucas Till. I thought it was just a downright shame that Lucas was only in House for one cameo. Bahhh.
This is how Rachel Cuddy's morning plays out.
Six forty-five, wake up after hitting the snooze five times. Shower (sometimes), brush teeth, attempt to brush hair—if not straightened the prior afternoon—scribble homework, run downstairs. Run back upstairs for backpack and clothes. Pass House, who lounges grumpily in the family room, watching reruns of "Prescription: Passion". Pass House again on the way to the kitchen as he shouts, "Did you know I saved this guys life?" as he wildly points to the man on the screen. Grab toast. Bypass frazzled mother at kitchen table. Studiously avoid the left side of the house.
Run out the door before Lisa Cuddy can say otherwise.
Seven oh-five. Walk down driveway to car. Unlock car. Get in car. Drive as fast as humanely possible down the street.
If example A is not able to be completed, example B takes forth.
Backtrack to before seven oh-five.
Lisa Cuddy looks up from her late work sprawled on the kitchen table. Wears an unamused look as she pulls her daughter back into the kitchen. Points to trashcan. Points to left side of the house.
Rachel unceremoniously kicks open the garage door. Goes to the neighbors side of the lawn, which is mostly withered and uncut, as it has been for sale for nearly five months now. Grabs trash can, hauls it back in.
Grabs still sleeping younger sister, hauls her into the car.
This is morning.
Today, morning does not happen.
.
.
.
"It's cold," Yells Lisa Cuddy from the bottom of the stairs. She is wearing a clean cut blazer, and a dark pencil skirt. Cute heels. House appraises her ass from the couch. "Don't you want a scarf or something?"
Rachel is in her room, currently in the process of running back up the stairs after remembering to get dressed. She is turning the corner side of her bedroom into a maelstrom in a futile attempt to find her purple knit Ugg boots. She does not find them, but makes the decision to steal Audrey's.
"No!" Comes her muffled reply from behind the door. Clothes are still flying.
Cuddy sighs, folding her arms. "How about a hot chocolate?" She asks as a last ditch attempt. Rachel is officially eighteen. She figures its sort of normal that attempting to connect to her daughter is like trying to connect to House—physically impossible and mentally exhausting. "Warm bagel?"
Same negative reply.
Cuddy gives up, mostly, and returns to the polished oak kitchen table. It is long, and mostly covered in her papers. They glare at her triumphantly as she sits back down, as if they have won some sort of battle against her.
Rachel clatters down the stairs.
"Did you know that I—"
"Saved the guy because he was a pansy who was allergic to flowers?"
House is miffed, and a bit stunned. He should have expected her flat answers by now, considering that he is the one who taught her them.
Rachel dives for the toast.
She is three steps from the door, but alas, her mother has caught her once more.
Lisa Cuddy coughs from the kitchen table. Rachel stills, then sighs. It is a useless gesture now. She moves to the garage door, grabbing Audrey's boots on the way out.
Fuck.
It is cold.
Her car's windows are frosting, and she's debating whether she could run off without her mother noticing, when the bushes that connect to the neighbor's house start to bark warningly at her.
Rachel jumps back.
"What the hell?"
A fluffy dog comes out.
Rachel is more pleased with the fact that she's not fucking crazy rather then the dog that is now lapping at her heels as she trails down the driveway. It's big, and looks like a mephitic, sentient walking carpet. It's got little black eyes under a pretty gnarly shag, a lopsided tongue and a big wet nose. Actually, you couldn't really see the eyes at all.
"Chewie!"
Rachel guffaws.
Chewbacca. How fitting.
The beast of a dog skips away like a puffed up cloud, scampering to a halt farther off.
"Sorry about that," Says the owner.
New Jersey—and her neighborhood in general—is major dog country. Everyone's got one. Yappy poodles, rockin' Great Danes. Rachel's pretty used to it. She's about to say so, when she looks up.
Well, hello there.
"It's fine." She says, kind of dazedly. "I'm used to… large creatures attacking me. We've got a lot of them on this street."
The guy looks frighteningly familiar.
He's got smooth, straight lemon colored hair, this straight cut jaw and bright blue eyes. He may possibly be the lead of every single crappy romance movie in existence.
He laughs. "Hi. I'm moving in next door."
Or he could just be her neighbor.
Rachel is imagining Audrey walking out at this very moment—and how much it would suck. She'd squeal, first. Then latch herself to Rachel like a strangling sarlaacc, giggling, petting, smiling. Just in case, Rachel checks the front door. No, its too early. Audrey is still dead in an ocean of neon pink pillows.
"Finally." She says before she can stop it. "I mean…" She looks a little depressingly at the house. Compared to Lisa Cuddy's interior/exterior masterpiece, it looks a little wilted. "I dunno. It's been on sale for a while."
If the guy is making the same comparison, he makes no outward expression. In fact, he seems completely oblivious. "I don't see why! It's a beautiful house!"
Actually, its got ivy crawling up the second story window, and possibly into the gutter. But Rachel only knows that because her window is directly next to it, and Zack has asked only a thousand times if it was possible to climb ivy to get into her room. Rachel supposes that, if the window gardens were cleaned, and the slightly fading white exterior was washed of dirt and grime, it could quite possibly be an attractive little thing.
Mostly though, it looks like a dump.
"Sure." She decides upon, because exerting her opinion always takes too much effort.
"I'm Simon, by the way." He says, as if every thirty year old man introduces themselves to young adolescent girls like its not supposed to be creepy (even though he really doesn't look that old, and Rachel is stereotyping greatly)
"Rachel." She says. And then looks down. The dog is smiling up at her stupidly. "And this is…?"
"Chewbacca." Simon smiles.
Rachel nods. "An apt comparison."
Simon smiles. Rachel shifts her weight from foot to foot.
Alas, the moment is ruined—or, perhaps saved, depending on how one looked at it—as Cuddy opens the door.
"Do you have any idea what time it—
She looks at Simon. Blinks once, twice, and then a startled look etches onto her face. It disappears into distinct wariness as she leans out the front screen door.
"I'm not writing you a late pass." Is what she ends up saying, closing the door.
Rachel mentally dances—Cuddy has once again forgotten all about Audrey. It's easy to, seeing as though the girl can't even seriously be considered alive until about twelve in the afternoon.
The door opens with an audible bang.
Cuddy looks flatly out into the lawn.
"Don't forget your sister."
Ah.
So close.
Rachel Cuddy and Audrey House are late.
They're so late the attendance woman gives them this twitching eye look as she scribbles down their pass over her half moon spectacles. Rachel wears a perfect face of impassivity, but Audrey is grinning loonish, looking more sheepish then she should. She is standing beside Rachel with glitter over her eyelids and her hair sprayed into a formidable whipping blonde ponytail. Her cheer outfit is snug against her completely smooth midriff.
Rachel Cuddy, for all her non existent genetic inheritance from House, is the definition of House's daughter. His actual biological daughter resembles Cuddy more then anything else in the world. At the strange gene pool medical phenomenon, House usually only shakes his head in amusement.
Rachel doesn't mind being mistaken for House's daughter all the time.
In fact, she enjoys it.
House is an absurdly amusing, part-asshole part medical genius, and the most amusing thing is their absolutely nonexistent genetic relation. Audrey, his biological daughter, is more often mistaken for the adopted sibling then she is. These sort of comments slide off of Audrey's back, however, as mostly she enjoys the attention, as well as her big blue eyes and blonde hair that could be House's but mostly look like Brad Pitt's or Britney Spear's.
Rachel likes reading.
Audrey likes sleeping.
Rachel plays lacrosse—House comes to every game, mostly to snub the other team's parents with sarcastic appraisals, but sometimes to cheer.
Audrey cheers—Lisa is the cheerleading mom who screams wildly from the stands.
It's impossible for the two to be any more different.
Audrey waves her goodbye as the sophmore dashes into her first period class, late. Audrey has no problem waltzing into awkward situations. Rachel might even say she enjoys it. Walking in late is one of those events. Sleepy students, silent and bored all turn in rapt attention as the door opens at the late straggler slowly trudges, as if pulled by a choking invisible collar, into the room. Audrey prances in like some sort of glitter and hairspray fairy, bouncing on her feet.
Rachel bangs the door open, gives a sweeping, almost crazed stare to all the meek, cowed inhabitants of the room, throws her pass onto the desk and plops into the teacher's chair.
Freshmen art students stare at her in perturbed wonder, as she boots up Simco's computer and props her feet up.
She smirks.
Hah. Audrey didn't even notice the boots were missing.
First period is Rachel's SSL class, where she aids for her favorite teacher—which really means she browses the web and occasionally takes attendance—and scares Freshmen kids who can't draw to save their life. Fundamentals of Art has to be the worst class in existence, but its only forty-five minutes and Rachel can stand them for that long.
The rest of her classes are the typical Senior curriculum, and after school, she headed over to the hospital.
This was not without incident, however.
.
.
.
"Hey—Hey! Rachel! Hold on!"
Audrey scampered behind her as she was closing her locker.
Rachel surveyed her coolly. "Don't you have practice?"
"I forgot my shoes!" She said with a frazzled look.
Typical.
"What do you want me to do about it?" Rachel asked bitingly. Audrey had already caused her enough trouble in the morning, taking forever to get out of her bed, and then another eternity getting dressed. Rachel most likely could have made the first bell had she not had Audrey tagging along.
Audrey looked up at her with big eyes. "Could you go home real quick and get them?"
"You're shoes?" Rachel asked with disbelief. Did Audrey really think she had nothing better to do—?
"Please!" She begged, rather, pouted.
Sometimes Rachel cursed their genetics. Where the hell did she get those large puppy eyes? House?
An eye role. "Fine."
Going home was a major pain in the ass. Going home, waiting for a dump truck to pull out of her street where it had successfully wedged itself diagonal between two driveways, almost running over the neighbors dog, returning the wayward beast only to find said owner wasn't home, and waiting for the owner to return only further proved her point; Audrey ruined her life on purpose.
Obviously Audrey would be waiting some time for her shoes to miraculously reappear, as it was five minutes into practice and Rachel was sitting on her porch, two fistfuls of knotted fur keeping the monstrous creature from causing further damage to the perinnial plants that lined the neighborhood, which now looked a bit more like chewed linen fabric.
By the time that Rachel's new neighbor finally pulled around, Rachel was so fed up with waiting she contemplated just releasing the dog to reek righteous havoc over Westwood Street in her stead. In actuality, she watched, flatly, as a sputtering red pick up truck turned—read; limped—back into the sloped driveway of the house next to hers.
Simon opened the car door, and the dog, who had been thumping his tail like a minor earthquake beside Rachel's shoes, bolted out of Rachel's wrenching grip to scamper to the man. The dog leapt, the man braced himself on the side of his car, and somehow managed to stay upright.
Rachel would have liked to see him slam on the floor, just for wasting her time.
She stood eventually, supposing that maybe she should explain the situation.
"I found you're dog attacking that old hag Susan's hydrangeas—" She began testily, even though inwardly, she thought that old bat sort of deserved it. And then, with a bit of bite, "He seems to enjoy the local fauna."
"I think he enjoys all fauna, really." Said Simon affectionately with a note of humor, either completely oblivious to Rachel's derisive snide or inadequately exposed to mocking, pessimistic people.
The large beastie seemed pleased with this, as he yelped and snuggled his large, cloud-like head further into Simon's palm.
His owner shook out his own shaggy blonde hair, smiling ruggedly. "Thanks for looking after him kiddo."
Rachel pursed her lips at the derogatory nickname, wondering what kind of moronic fool could still reside in this depth of stupidity at whatever age he may be. Instead of calling him out on it, as she most likely would have had she encountered this in front of her at the checkout line, or perhaps on the RideOn, she only huffed in exasperation. It wouldn't do to turn into House at such a youthful age. The man would be much too gleeful about it, anyway.
"I have a feeling this won't be the last time the beastie gets into the residential gardens." Although her words were without heat.
"He is a bit of a beast, isn't he?"
Rachel gave him an appraising, pallid look. The overgrown fringe of the sheepdog flopped straight over its eyes. "There certainly wont' be any beauty coming around for this one."
Simon threw his head back and laughed. Chewie wagged his tail with glee. "Bit of a cynical one, aren't you?"
Rachel's deadpan glare should have been enough to stop his chuckling. Actually, it should have melted him graciously into the ground, where he wouldn't aggravate young teenage girls with his uncanny ability to float over all sardonic, slightly masked insults. To be fair, she had yet to insult his intelligence yet, only his dog in general, and maybe slightly his ability as a pet owner, but his outrageously wide and trusting smile seemed to vex her more then whatever offense she could cause to his overall self esteem as a man could do to him. But there he was, smiling, blinking with wide blue eyes, still looking as if he'd enjoy a day where the sun boiled everything into molted reeking lumps.
"I guess."
The worst of the entire encounter was when he leaned over to rub her head—a bit like the way he did with his dog—before swaggering (but perhaps that was unintentional) to his front door, Chewbacca lapping at his heels like a moving shaggy burlap sack full of potatoes.
She turned her car on, and headed to the school.
Turns out, Audrey just borrowed a friend's extra pair. She apologized profusely with a giggle, but not without commenting on the state of Rachel's messed up hair. There could have been an incident here, in which Audrey was smacked to the floor with a glorious left hook, or perhaps reduced to tears at the ire of her sister's vicious words, but instead, Rachel turned around in silent fury and made for the hospital.
Apparently, back when she was two or so, she was a charming, darling little girl who thought everything was either pink, loving, or staring at her through her bedroom window.
Wilson likes to tell her crazy stories of all the times House and he would babysit her. Mostly, she was the adorable girl who gave them wide eyes and smiled all the time, as she got into trouble with an innocent face and Wilson and House had to somehow manage to get her out of it before Cuddy arrived.
Of course, no one was going to outright tell her that she wasn't that charming, darling little girl anymore. It was kind of self explanatory. Things happen in life aside from Moose prowling her window, and cats and mice chasing around on TV. Cuddy bemoans the loss of her naïve little girl, who grew up to wield the wicked flaming weapon of mordant, acerbic words. House cheers from the background.
But everyone sort of watched, incredulously, as that little girl suddenly turned into this bitter teenager—adult now, really—who could hardly stand stupidity, much less humanity in general.
Cuddy blamed House. House blamed society.
Rachel liked to think she didn't blame anyone.
There is more to come! Review?