Summary: Taylor Townsend is the resident Newpsie of Harbor High School. Her knack for organizing social events, such as prom, makes her the perfect candidate to take over Marissa's beloved position. Summer, however, is not going to let that happen and declares herself a candidate for the upcoming election of the Social Chair. Taylor is not going to back down and makes plans to ruin both Summer Roberts and her lazy sidekick, Marissa Cooper. Once Taylor runs into Seth Cohen, however, something she had not planned on begins to take place and the rivalry grows deeper.
This story is based on spoiler sides from Season Three of The O.C. They can be found at should you wish to read the original foundation for this story.
Disclaimer: I own nothing!
Taylor Townsend was angry. And being angry was something she was not good at. The last thing she needed to worry about was developing pre-mature wrinkles at the age of seventeen. Losing her well-deserved Social Chair position to a has-been like Summer Roberts would be devastating to her reputation and, unlike the Junior Prom debacle, she was not going to let this election slide by so easily. Without this title on her resume, her life ambition of becoming a professional social events coordinator would be jeopardized.
Ever since that Marissa Cooper overdosed in some random alley in Tijuana, Summer and her usual clan became, well, unusual. Luke Ward turned out to be a spaz. No shocker there. Holly Fisher joined the drama department and Brad Lowenstein grew long hair. Eww. Worst of all, however, was the fact that Summer Roberts began dating some "emo geek" monkey who climbed on coffee carts and Marissa Cooper was attached (at the lips) to that scruffy sociopath. To think that she used to scorn public displays of affection. What a hypocrite.
Anyway, there was nothing Taylor Townsend hated more than a perky brunette who wanted to take over the world. The only thing Summer Roberts knew about organizing a social event was…nothing, come to think of it. Taylor would bet her Chanel Clutch that Summer would not be able to choose between cotton candy or funnel cake.
Who knew that being vice-social chair would be so difficult? First Marissa had completely ditched half of the March Madness Dance meetings to be with that lame bar chick. Then Marissa dumped the paper-mache octopus project on her the night before prom. What kind of Social Chair doesn't know how to make a paper-mache octopus? Now Taylor had been challenged by her dimwitted best friend, just to salvage a bit of Marissa's pride. It was a rivalry in the making and Taylor was dead intent on bringing Summer Roberts down, physically or figuratively.
United States History class had been underway for nearly thirty minutes or so. Due to her present circumstances, reciting some ancient poem about Paul Revere was just not at the top of Taylor's to-do list. Eventually she grew tired of drawing hearts and stars in her notebook and began forming a makeshift list of ways to trounce Summer. A brief glance at the notebook of her neighbor immediately caught her by surprise.
"Woah, are you like an artist or something?" Taylor asked.
Seth Cohen instinctively dropped his pencil and shyly covered his drawings. He could not believe Taylor Townsend was actually speaking to him. The only time she ever spoke to him was when she wanted her pencil sharpened. And to his surprise, she seemed impressed with his work.
"Nah," he replied, trying to maintain a little humility. He had to keep his wits about him. "It's just something I do on the side. I like to sail."
He slapped himself (mentally, of course) for saying that. Why was he trying to sell himself to Taylor? Well, he thought, she is class president and yearbook editor. And she is relatively pretty, but still, she could never compare to his Summer.
"You sail?" Taylor asked, letting a slight giggle escape. "With those little chicken arms?" She was intrigued, for some odd reason. Taylor reached out and sized up his left-bicep. Yep, he was definitely a sailor. "I guess they aren't too bad, Sam."
"Seth. My name is Seth," he said, somewhat annoyed that she didn't even remember his name.
"Right. Sorry," she said, somewhat annoyed that he had corrected her. "So, uh, anyway, I was thinking about something. You're like good at drawing and stuff and I'm doing this campaign for this school thing. So I was gonna ask you, well, I was wondering if you would, you know, want to be like my campaign artist. We could maybe go sailing later on and then go out to The Lighthouse and talk about some plans.
"Uh, like a date?" he asked. Taking another girl out on the Summer Breeze would be treasonous against its namesake and Summer would kill him. Well, technically, it's not the Summer Breeze anymore. It's the Gimmie Sex, so he could possibly get off on that technicality. He could always tell Summer it was a business meeting. "No, no, no, no. He thought. He was not going to let Taylor turn into Reed version 2.0," he thought.
"It could be," Taylor said seductively. She could practically see the wheels turning in Sam's head and knew that this was her only way of locking him into her project.
"See, I have one minuscule problem with the aforementioned scenario," he said. "Oh Moses," he thought, "I'm using big vocabulary words." He was nervous and he knew it. But why?
"And what would that be," she asked while brushing away a loose curl from his forehead. It was obvious her moves were working, since parts of his hair were damp from perspiration.
"I have a girlfriend and she would probably get all jealous and go rage-blackout mode on both of us," he said quickly.
"Oh," she said. Damn. She thought she had had him wrapped around her finger. How could he have a girlfriend? Artists are like supposed to be all isolated and eccentric. "Well, don't consider it as a date then. Consider it as a business meeting. In fact, you can invite her along," she told him. His girlfriend was probably some hippy-esque artist as well and maybe she would have a few ideas to bring to the table. "Who is it by the way?"
"Summer Roberts," he replied. Maybe she didn't know her. Well, he hoped at least. Summer was pretty hard to miss though.
Definitely not the hippy-esque girlfriend she was imagining. So this was the emo geek monkey who made a fool of himself at prom? She hadn't even recognized him. "Well, well, well, Seth. You must be a pretty good sailor if you managed to nail Summer Roberts." She raised her eyebrows and leaned forward. "Be at the pier at seven?" she asked just as the bell rang.
Seth quickly nodded. "Seven. Yep. I'll bring my tool. My pencil, that is," he said. He slapped himself again. Who says that kind of crap?
Taylor laughed and rolled her eyes as she walked out of the classroom. Originally she was going to use him for her campaign logo, but now she was going to use him for something completely different.