Title: Unnoticed
Rating: T to be on the safe side.
Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi. I wish I did but I don't.
Ship: Spinner and ?... Figure it out on your own.
Summary: She's more than any girl you ever wanted. She was beautiful. She was smart. And most of all, she knew how it felt to be broken. ONE SHOT
You never took the time to notice her. Not until Darcy dumped you after she came back from camp. You knew who she was. Everyone knew her. But knowing who she was was different from noticing her. You didn't think that he could point her out from a crowd of people now that you thought about it. At least not until you had English 12 together in their senior year.
You walked in the door and you saw her. You thought she was beautiful, in a way you never had appreciated before. She didn't say much. That's something that had changed with her over the years. After last year, after everything that she had gone through, she stopped talking so much. She stopped being so straight laced too. You noticed that after you started noticing her. You noticed that she slept in class instead of listening to another one of Kwan's kicks on Shakespeare. You noticed that she would sit and doodle in her notebook when she should be taking notes on the short story of the week. Once you even caught her reading a novel in her text book. You thought it was ingenious instead of nerdy, like you would've thought last year.
You started hanging out in the library during lunch, instead of in the cafeteria. She did this and you thought maybe one day, you'd be able to strike up a conversation with her. You knew that she was smarter than you and that you would have no chance. She didn't trust guys anymore. Not after last year. But you still wanted to try. You felt an uncontrollable urge to try.
Months passed and you skipped every lunch in the cafeteria. Occasionally, Jimmy would go in there with you and listen to you make comments about her. He didn't understand it. He knew you two couldn't work. In an alternate universe you may work. But in this one, she was too good for you. You knew this. You knew you couldn't fix her. You knew that you could probably not understand her. But you had to try.
You loved it when Kendra would invite her over to the house. It gave you the chance to see her outside of school. You noticed at your house, she'd talk more. You'd hear her and your sister talking for hours, long into the night, through your bedroom door. And when the conversations would stop, you'd feel a sense of disappointment. You couldn't hear her voice anymore. You couldn't imagine that she was talking to you, about you.
Then that fateful night finally came. She came over. You listened to her and Kendra talk for hours and then the voices died down. You escaped the confines of your room to go get a coke from the refridgerator. You walked into the kitchen and saw her sitting at the table, scribbling in a notebook. Writing down her feelings. You cleared your throat, alerting her to your presence. You felt like you were interrupting a sacred ritual. Like you had no business being in your kitchen. She looked up and smiled.
That smile lit up the room more than the 100 watt light bulb could ever dream of doing. You walked to the fridge, pulled out a soda and started to close it. Then out of nowhere, you decided to offer her a drink. She accepted. You started out of the kitchen and was shocked to hear her stop you.
"Spin, wait..."
You turned around. She closed the notebook and looked at you with her deep charcoal eyes. You wanted to speak but felt speech drained from your body. At least intelligent speech. You had tons of comments that held no relevence to life.
"Do you want to sit?" she asked you.
You nod and take a seat at the table beside her. Finally speech comes back. The ability to hold a conversation, something you lost around her, came back. "How are you doing?"
"I'm doing..." she stopped and looked at you. Her smile broke. "I'm not doing so well actually."
You lean in interested. "What's wrong?"
"It's just everything from last year. I can't sleep at night. This is the first time I've ever been caught writing in my journal here."
You blink. Every time she'd been over, she'd been coming downstairs. You'd been holed up in your room, wishing to talk to her and you could've just walked down the stairs. You wondered how you had never heard the stairs creak and just shrugged it off as you being too delved into your fantasies.
"Giving up the baby must've been rough huh?" you ask her. You pray that this topic isn't too sore for her to discuss.
"Giving up the baby, losing JT. Everything. My parents don't trust me. My dad can't even look at me," she confesses. You notice tears welling in her eyes and you feel the urge to save her. You want more than anything to make things right for her. You want to save her and slay her demons, even though you aren't good enough to even be sitting across from her.
"I know how it feels to lose everything," you tell her, as if maybe your sympathy could help. You hope it won't be mistaken as pity.
"But you got it back," she reminds you. "I can't get my son back. I don't want JT back. I just wish... I just wish things could be simple again."
"When were things ever simple?" you joke with her. You realize after the fact that a joke is the wrong move but you know that the words can't be taken back. You can't take back anything you say, you remind yourself. Actions and words can't be taken back.
"Things were simple before. When JT didn't look at me. Before I decided to have sex. Before I ruined my life." A tear falls down her cheek and you fight the urge to wipe it away. "Things were simple when I was the nerdy kid that no one saw. When my biggest problem was Ashley Kerwin not letting me do the video announcements." Another tear, then another, then a whole parade of them make their way down her cocoa complexion. You reach over and wipe them away and bring your hand down to rest on hers.
"Things will get better Liberty," you assure her.
"How?" she asks.
"God has this way of just watching out for you," you tell her. "He makes things get better. You'll find some awesome guy and then one day in a few years, you'll have a kid that you can keep. You did the right thing when you gave up your baby. You gave your baby a chance at a better life."
She looks at you and then looks down at her notebook. You can feel her fear coming off of her in waves and take your hand from hers. You don't want to scare her. You just want to help her. You want to comfort her. You want to be hers. This last thought isn't a new one to you, but it still gives that exhilerating rush.
"Like any guy will ever look at me again," she mutters, placing her hands in her lap. A look of shame goes over her face. A look you wish you could keep from ever haunting that face again.
"Guys still look at you Liberty," you assure her.
"Like who?" she demanded. "Who would look at the nerdy bookworm who got herself knocked up and wasn't even responsible enough to keep her child? Who could forgive someone who did that?"
I could, the thought races through your brain, unbidden. But instead of saying them you smile. "Trust me, there are guys."
"Name one," she still demands.
You want to fight it. You don't want to tell her that you've been harboring a crush on her for months. But you feel the need to. You know you have to if you want to help her at all. You have to tell her that you like her so you can save her. "Gavin Mason," you reply.
She looks at you shocked and runs upstairs. You silently belittle yourself for ever opening your big mouth.
Monday at school she doesn't look at you. You don't go to the library. Jimmy asks why and you just shrug it off, saying you miss Sheila, the lunch lady. He laughs and you two head to the cafeteria. Tuesday, you go to the cafeteria. Wednesday, you finally get the strength to go back to the library. Liberty had finally looked at you in English and it had given you hope again. Just seeing her smile.
In the library, she's sitting at a table. The table by the window that you usually sit at. You start towards another table, not wanting to invade her space. You start for the table in a dark corner of the library, next to the books on foreign languages where she used to sit. You're almost there when you feel the unmistakable feeling of being watched. You look around and see her giving you a look you can't describe. She looks back at you and beckons you to come over to her.
You walk towards her, like a prisoner of war going to meet the firing squad. You finally reach her table, the feet seemed like miles. The carpet seemed like an ocean, the current pushing you the other way. You had to swim against it to reach her. But finally, you reached the table. You know it took mere seconds but it felt like it took hours. It felt like three lifetimes. It felt like Miss Kwan's class. You look at her and smile. "Hey Liberty."
"About the other night," she starts off. You feel your body stiffen. You're ready for the death by firing squad. You're ready to be eaten alive by sharks. You're ready for a pop quiz on Julius Caesar. "I'm sorry for running off."
You look at her. "I'm sorry if I freaked you out. You just seemed so hurt and lost. You looked like you were unloved and unwanted."
"You took me by surprise," she confessed. "But you didn't freak me out at all. I thought about it all week. I haven't slept much, like less than usual. But the truth is, Spinner, you don't like me."
"Yes I do," you tell her. You sit down, though she hasn't asked you to, and take her hand. "Liberty Marguerite Van Zandt, I do like you. I like you enough to know your middle name. I like you enough to notice that you're beautiful, even when you cry."
You blink. She blinks. Moments pass like hours. All you feel is her hand in yours.
"I like you too," she finally confesses. You breathe out the breath you didn't know you had been holding. "But I'm not ready for a relationship. I'm not ready to be hurt again."
"I'm not going to hurt you," you tell her. "At least not ever on purpose. And we don't have to have a relationship yet."
"And sex?" she asked.
"Sex isn't needed Liberty. You've been through a lot. You can set the speed."
She smiles and leans over and gives you a kiss on the cheek. "I'm not using any pet names with you," she tells you.
You smile. "Good because truthfully, I only use them when the girl does. They make me a little nauseous."
"We'll try this dating thing. But if it does't work, we'll be friends," she finally decides.
You nod and know that this could work. She's more than any girl you ever wanted. She was beautiful. She was smart. And most of all, she knew how it felt to be broken.
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Author's Note: So I am the queen of all random pairings. To prove this, I had my friend Jess (cherokeegirl47) name a Degrassi girl and a Degrassi boy. This is what you get. I used to have a plastic baggy with all the characters name in it but I lost it. So Jess had to do. Jess I love you! This one's for you.
As always, please read and review. I eat reviews for breakfast... please don't take my food away!