So Far Apart

Disclaimer: No, none of these characters belong to me, period.

Setting: Shortly before Tristan's parents get it in their heads to send their little 'problem' off to Military School.

Tristan sat at his large, mahogany, luxury dining-room-table with a porcelain, hand-painted bowl of red and green grapes before him, pretending to read Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to impress his parents. Worked every time. They would come in, take one look at their 'darling, studious Tristan' and leave him alone. It was all he wanted, really, where his parents were concerned. To be left alone. He chuckled deviously to himself when he thought of that day: Duncan, Bowman and him had gone to see a thriller movie – a good one, too – and laughed the whole time when they thought about the other students stuck doing those boring exams. Suckers.

And then, unavoidably and as always, his thoughts strayed to Rory Gilmore. Her soft, dark brown curls falling to her shoulders like a halo to frame her face, her lively, innocent blue eyes making her seem so fragile, her porcelain skin…God, she was making him poetic. Now that was the extreme. Chuckling again, Tristan let his eyes wander away from the Shakespearean classic and over to the expensive, fashionable microwave sitting in a corner of his tiled kitchen. Beeeep, it went, and he reluctantly pushed his chair away from him while standing up, placed the book on the table, and went over to the microwave. He opened the little glass door and pulled out a plate with a chicken leg on it. His dinner. Not like his parents were around to make him anything better.

When Tristan sat down at the table again, he pushed the expensive bowl of grapes away from him, dropped the book on the floor next to his chair, and started to ravenously devour the chicken leg. His lunch that day had been a few handfuls of popcorn. But it had been good, he admitted to himself, no matter how hungry he was now. It had all been worth it. Done with the chicken leg, he stayed still in his chair and flung it into the waiting trash can like a basketball player, though he hardly ever touched a basketball. It flew straight and landed inside the bin among all the other rubbish there. Was his life in there? It sure belonged in the trash can, among the banana peels, the bones and the ground-up coffee beans.

Thinking of the trash made him think of his parents. Not like they ever thought about him. Not like they cared. He didn't care about them either, except when the decided to enter his life briefly to inflict torment and other forms of torture on him by opening their perfect, lipstick-slathered mouths, as in the case of his mother. Tristan suddenly wondered how he would feel if he ever received the news that they'd been killed in a train/car/plane crash. Would he be relieved? Happy? Angry? Sad? Surprised? No, not surprised. Not with the amazing speed his amazingly careless mother drove with. Especially when she was drunk, which was often. But would he be sad? Um…probably not. They were like pestering strangers to him and he only referred to them as his parents because that was what they were called. Angry…why would he be angry? That they'd just left him like that? Maybe. Happy…well yes, that they were out of his life, but no, since then everything would be so much more complicated. Relieved…that they were finally gone? Again, all those complications. But otherwise their death might be welcome.

He was just thinking these somber thoughts when Rose DuGrey crashed angrily through the large mansion doors. "MRS. WHITE!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, calling to their head maid. The maid in question ran up to Rose looking terrified and quaking in her boots. "Take my coat and have it disinfected; it touched a taxi seat," Rose demanded huffily. Mrs. White nodded quickly and then scurried off clutching at the heavy rabbit-fur coat. After smoothing down her dress, Rose called out, "TRISTAN!" even louder than she had when she called for Mrs. White. Somewhat subdued by his mother's rage and feeling a bit like sneaking out a side window, Tristan didn't respond while his mother clacked around the house in her high heels looking for him and screaming out his name.

Finally she came to the kitchen, where she found a stunned, stock-still Tristan. Her features were pale with rage and her lips were especially red, her mouth hanging slightly open, ready to scream again. Tristan was petrified, to say the least, the moment Rose started talking. "I received a call today at my shop. Do you know who it was from?" she asked, adopting the sugary tones she used when answering the phone. It only terrified Tristan more. "It was from a certain 'Mr. Charleston'," she informed him, a fake smile plastered on her equally fake lips. Damn.

"Mr. Charleston?" Tristan croaked, doing some fast thinking. "Oh! You mean that teacher that's got it in for me. Well, he doesn't like me for some reason so he's always trying to get me in trouble, and he probably thought it would be fun to call you and-"

"Tristan William DuGrey, close your mouth. You look like a fish. And lying, for you, is most unbecoming," Rose informed him steely, her lips pursed and white. Tristan nearly quaked. "As I was saying before you started sprouting lies, Mr. Charleston called me at my Saloon. Mr. Charleston, it turns out, is, most curiously, not a teacher at all but the principal of your school. And he does seem to 'have it in for you', but with good reason. It appears you were not present during the exams, Tristan, and therefore he supposes you were playing Hooky. But I, as your mother, know that that is not possible. My Tristan wouldn't do that. My Tristan would never even consider it. So how is it possible? Two respectable young gentlemen both claim the truth?"

Tristan opened his mouth to speak but was stopped when the front door banged open again and the deep voice of his father commanded the presence of Mrs. White once more. The quaking maid ran up to him and took his black leather briefcase, hauling it away into the coat room as she had with Mrs. DuGrey's coat. Rose looked at her son with triumph shining in her eyes; William was here. Tristan was going to have a very hard time.

William DuGrey walked into the room much calmer than his wife though his features were that blotchy red-white that Tristan knew meant he was very angry. As soon as he entered the room a gloomy yet calm atmosphere enveloped them all. William was generally like that, but Tristan could relate more to his mom when it came to anger. "Tristan," Mr. DuGrey said in that infuriatingly calm way of his, sitting down in a chair opposite his son. "I got a call today from Mr.-"

But Tristan had heard enough. He was absolutely sick of it. "…from Mr. Charleston, saying how bad I am. I know. And I don't care! You haven't cared about anything concerning me at all until now, until a phone call disrupts your perfect lives and you have to care. Why do you think I'm misbehaving? Because I feel like it? No! Because that's the way you brought me up; you taught me that no one cared what I did, what I felt, what I wanted, what I didn't want. So why should I obey you if no one cares?" Tristan's tones had mounted until he was yelling nearly as loudly as his mother had when she first came home and he could feel that he was red in the face. Sometime, he didn't remember when, he'd pushed the wooden chair away and stood up, and now it was lying on the floor behind him. In one furious motion he wiped his arm across the table and the porcelain bowl containing the grapes slid across the table and crashed onto the tiled floor to break into a thousand little shards. If Tristan had stayed he would have observed that it symbolized the relationship between his parents and him; broken into a thousand little pieces. But he didn't stay. He had stormed out of the room the second after the bowl fell, stomped up the stairs to his room, and fell on his bed, seething.

-&-

When Tristan had calmed down somewhat, after he'd heard the door slam twice, signaling that his parents had marched out of the house again, he reflected. Why was he doing this, acting like this? Was it to get his parents' attention? No. He'd never cared about whether his parents paid attention to him or not since he was ten years old. Was it to make them angry? No. He didn't like it when they were angry; they paid attention to him when they were angry. Was it to make his teachers angry? No. To skip the exams he so hated? Not really. To have fun watching a movie with Duncan and Bowman? No. Why, then?

'It's because of Rory,' a faint little voice whispered inside him. Was it because of Rory? It was, he confirmed a little bitterly. Why would he misbehave to get Rory's attention, though? She went for the good guys, not the bad boys. That was just her. She was too much of a Mary. Didn't he know that already? That as long as he acted as a jerk or tried to look tough by playing hooky, getting in trouble and hanging out with Duncan and Bowman, she would stay away more than ever? But what else could he do? He liked her so much and she despised him. When he tried to ask her out, tried to be nice to her, she'd always refused. So what else could he do? There had been only the one option left, really.

But maybe he could try the other way. Maybe he could undergo a transformation, shock his parents and Rory by becoming a new-and-improved Tristan who was simply a goody-goody like that stupid Dean Forrester that she liked. Yes, that was what he would do. No more Duncan. No more Bowman. No more playing Hooky. No more skipping school. No more being bad. No more getting into trouble. He would accomplish it all. For Rory.

A/N: I will not post the third chapter of So Far Apart (which I am done with and is just waiting to be posted) until at least two more people review! Otherwise, what's the point if no one reads it? So please please review if you want to see that third chapter.
And thank you very very much to Curley-Q for the much needed FYI and the review!