Greetings everyone!

I am so glad so many of you loved Drawing Parallels so much! So this is going to be a smaller follow up to it! (Found in the link here s/11382181/1/Drawing-Parallels) It was my personal project to give Anne the family she always craved for yet still have her fall for Gilbert and also for Gilbert to have the full on in law experience!

This story features the characters we became accustom to in the last story but with them a little older. It also instead of focusing soley on Anne and Gilbert (although they do feature heavily in it) This focuses round the now 15 year old Jane! (yes Anne's little sister Jane! They grow up so fast!)

Please note, Unless you read Drawing Parallels first, this is not going to make much sense to you as its based in an AU (Alternative Universe) and features heavily in the characters I created (Along with Alternative versions of the characters so wonderfully made by L M Montgomery) for this universe.

please please read DRAWING PARALLELS FIRST!

Yey! We get to see more of the Shirley's and now Blythe's and Shirley's and (The heavily hinted at but never said because they were too young in the last one) PAYTON'S!

So this is going to be a little different but I hope you all enjoy!

This is Jane's coming of age story.


Life in Jane Shirley's mind was always more beautiful then in real life.

For example, if it was up to her, she wouldn't be walking home at all. She would be in a horse drawn carriage with a lady in waiting.

She'd be fed grape's and strawberry bonbons, all day!

And she wouldn't need to go to school at all.

She certainly wouldn't be walking home with her twin brother in tow, his best friend Andy and Bertha.

Not that it looked bad.

Bertha had somehow inherited the genes of mousy brown hair with blue eyes. It made no sense to anyone in the family. Although stand her next to the other Shirley's you could tell she was one. She was now eleven.

Walter (or Walt as he went by now adays) was a duplicate of his father. At an apparently young age, Walt had decided that he should be like his father in every way and not just in the looks department. He was going to be a teacher. Tall and lean but incredibly handy at fixing things up, although that again was a Shirley trait. He was serious about becoming a teacher and was working hard to remain top of the class, or at least that was, equal with Andy.

His best friend Andy, lived not far from them his family were scientists, of some kind, she wasn't exactly sure what they were involved in, but, from what Jane understood quite well off, And Andy was, genius kind of smart! He father however had ignores his wife's pleas to send Andy to private school and said that public school would do him just fine, however if he stuck at his work if he chose to go to university that is when they would support him. Andy was a thin boy, Jane often thought he was so skinny he looked like a rake, he had straight brown hair and he wore glasses which were so thick, Jane suspected that the glass made his eyes looked bigger then they actually were. No one had blue eyes that big! He also had lips which were far too big for his face! It was him who she was addressing as they came to the gate at Rosebud.

"And thats why Mr Fitz William Darcy is every girls dream, Andy!" Jane exclaimed to her walking companion. "Even a cold hearted scientist like yourself should know, a great estate like Pemberley would take any girls heart!" She exclaimed.

"I don't think that was the point Austen was making Jane."

"Oh of course it isn't!" Jane exclaimed then gave a sideways glance to her walking partner "but it certainly helps!" She wiggling her eyebrows at his playfully. He laughed of course.

Everyone did with Jane. She was this wistfully wonderful girl and any boy who she deemed worthy of her time was honoured with her presence. Seven years have passed since we last saw the Shirley's, Jane now fifteen was much like her older sister at that age, at least to look at, her personality however was quite different.

Her long red hair in a long red plait which went down her back her dazzling grey eyes (though Andy was sure when they were little they used to be green?) Her slender body curved naturally with her clothes almost as if she was grown from it. She had inherited the Shirley brains but that is where the comparison ended, at least to all around her.

And she was glad of it.

She loved her siblings she loved her family but they were all such bores when it came to life and adventure, was she the only one who wanted to live in the moment and not for some distant far off dream?

They were at the Shirley's gate her mother (unseen to her) was sitting quietly on the veranda when the revving of an engine of a motorcycle was heard down the street, she turned and followed the sound with her eyes.

"Jane!" Her mother called up the path as Walt and Bertha went past her with a kiss to her, "Won't you come in?" she asked her.

She stood her ground as the sound came closer coming in front of her and Andy.

"Hey Shirley." The boy said who was driving it. This boy was quite the opposite to the boy standing next to her. This boy had straight black hair which was slicked back from his face, his eyes were almost black in colour, though Jane had no idea how they could be so dark!

Her face flushed. She knew this boy was the only boy which made her flush. He was dangerous and fun.

"Wanna ride?" he asked her tapping the seat behind him.

"Jane?" her mother called coming up the path.

She paused for a moment, firstly looking behind her to her mother then in front of her to the boy.

If that wasn't a sign to Jane she didn't know what was. The boy, in front of her was her future her mother and family behind. Behind in everything!

"I'm going out mother!" she called as she went to the motorcycle.

"Jane those things are dangerous." Andy told her.

"Who stuck the stick in your butt?" The boy on the motorcycle asked him.

"Don't be mean Trev." She told him, slapping gently on the arm as she made herself comfortable in side saddle "he's a darling and looking out for me."

Trev eyed the boy not much older than Jane, "keeping my girl safe." He said with a nod. He reached taking off Andy's hat and messed his hair. "Good boy." He said as if Andy were a little dog. He turned on his bike and rode away with Jane in tow just in time for her mother reaching the gate.

Bertha looked to Andy sympathetically "I hate that jerk." He muttered putting his hat back on his head.

"I think we all do dear."

"Can't you stop her?"

"If I could? But we both know what Jane is like once she gets an idea inside her head now don't we?" Bertha told Andy.

Andy sighed. "Good evening Mrs Shirley." He said in self defeat.

"Good evening Andy." She said with a shake of the head and a look down the road before she sighed herself and went inside.


"You have interesting friends Shirley." He said to her as he kissed into the crook of her neck as she blew the cigarette smoke out.

"Andy's sweet." She said simply her nose still upturned, relaxing into him as they sat at 'Far Point' on his motorcycle. "and can stay in school which is more than I can say for you."

He glared at her for a moment "I'm eighteen, I don't have to be there." He told her. "Unlike your little friend."

She slapped him playfully. "He's not so little!" She said taking the cigarette out his fingers and drawling some herself "He's my age."

Trev snatched back the cigarette and drawled the rest out greedily. She snatched the bud from him and stomped on it. "Pig." She told him.

"Then dump me." He told her straight pulling her close to him. "I could tell all the boys just how loose you are Jane." He said bringing his hand up to cup her breast. She pulled free and slapped him hard across the face before he did.

"And I should tell them just how small you are." She told him spitefully. "They'd soon work out which one of us was the liar."

He grabbed her arm and pulled her close to him again kissing her as he went. "Liar." He whispered to her.

"So are you." She told him frankly. "I won't have sex with you Trev."

"You know what I think?" he told her. "I should have dated a redhead a long time ago." He said to her kissing again into her neck. "You're far more fiery and dangerous than the other girls."

"Well learn how to treat a girl like a lady you might just keep me." She said breathlessly with his kissing.

"Oh Shirley, don't you know it…" he said in a low tone. "Its exactly that which is keeping us together."


It was so much later than it should have been as Jane arrived home. She noticed the lights from the upstairs. Walt and Bertha were the only other two siblings still at home. Like good little siblings they were in their bedrooms. She tried opened the backdoor quietly to find her mother at the kitchen table.

"Good evening baby girl." She said gently.

Jane tutted "You shouldn't have bothered staying up." Jane informed her.

Bertha smiled. "You always stay up." She sighed. "You'll learn that one day when you have your own children." She told her.

"I don't want no bratty kids." Jane sulked. "Bringing a child into this already overpopulated world to drain its resources…." She started.

"Is that what we did?" Bertha asked her gently.

Jane huffed. Didn't her mother ever anger? "That's not what I meant!" she spat.

"You were out with him again weren't you?" Bertha questioned her daughter to which she got no response but a pair of raised eyebrows. "I see. You missed dinner." Bertha continued.

"I'm not hungry." She lied.

Bertha took a big gulp of air in. "Well then, it seems in overpopulating the world, we haven't drained the resources all we could today then…" she said getting up she walked over to her daughter "all the same Jane, I'm glad you are home." She said and kissed her daughter on the cheek. "I love you. Goodnight Jane." She said gently.

Jane stood in the kitchen for a moment too angry at her mother to even move. That was it! She was sick of this. She reached up to the cupboard to a jar and took the contents.