Disclaimer: I don't own.
A/N: Hope you guys enjoy. Thanks once again to Pati, this story's beta and fairy godmother. :) (Yes, my story has a fairy godmother. Don't judge me.)
Chapter Three:
The rest of Sara's week continued in pretty much the same way. Frank, thankfully, only spoke to her during supper, and was generally gruff but not necessarily mean—to her, anyway. Amanda was sweet and Tina was clingy, apparently glad to have a girl her age in the house. Getting to go to school was the highlight of Sara's days.
She and Gil would talk in Chemistry, mostly about the class or their lab write up or what their project might be—even though they didn't have an assignment yet—and about Gil's anatomy book, which the pair of them pored over in the back while Friedman explained the periodic table in what had to be the most simplistic terms possible.
She would then go to English and listen to most of the kids complain that reading Shakespeare was too hard while Ryan and his friends made crude jokes once Shakespeare's crude jokes were explained by the teacher who, in her defense, was using the only tools she had to try to keep the attention of what had to be the least interested group of seniors Sara could imagine. She doodled throughout Trigonometry, filling up several pages by that Friday with the likenesses of everyone from the lab and then moving on to what she imagined they would look like if she met them at this age. Except Gil. Grissom. Whoever. She left him out.
But she had a page filled with a scrawny, geeky Greg bent over a chess table or with his bony feet in the ocean or next to a faceless Papa Olaf who was passing down wisdom of one kind or another. Greg admiring a fancy car or watching the jocks playing sports somewhat longingly… Greg plopped on a couch in a fashion that was endearingly familiar to Sara—how often had he sat exactly so in her own apartment?
She had another page of a well-muscled Nick in a cowboy boots and a hat, riding horses or doing random chores she imagined people did on ranches. Nick giving his oh-so-charming smile to a faceless cheerleader, with just a hint of uncertainty in his eyes—the part of him that hinted that maybe he had more in his head than the outcome of Saturday's game and getting under that pleated skirt.
Warrick was harder. He'd once described himself as a nerd, though Sara knew that he had some deep attachments to a youth center he claimed helped him turn his life around. She went back and forth between giving him large glasses and depicting him in backwards baseball caps with an overlarge stereo at his feet. She gave him buzz cuts and dreadlocks and an afro, but not of them seemed right. …Who had Warrick really been, as a teenager?
Another page was devoted to Catherine, busty and slender and full of glitz and glamour—Sara could not imagine a Vegas heiress, even one who didn't know she was one—looking any other way. Her hair always flowed behind her like she had a fan on her and her smile was tempting and dangerous, but there was insecurity in those eyes too. The doubt of a girl who had grown up without a real father and who would spend much of her life looking for a man to fill that void.
…It was when she finished this page that she realized how much she must really miss Vegas. She had tried not to think about it, accepting the outcome of her wish at face value and pursuing Grissom—Gil—almost single-mindedly. But she did. She missed her cozy apartment and her books—her police scanner and her forensic journals—Catherine and the guys and—strangely—Grissom himself.
She turned the page in agitation and glanced at the clock above the head of her Government teacher. Lunch was coming up. And while she was getting tired of cheese sandwiches—from picking the ham off the ham and cheese Amanda made every day—she had more important things on her mind. Like Gil sitting alone.
She bought her milk with the change from the bottom of her lunch bag and went to her regular table, watching as others slowly filled up the large cafeteria. Though the table she sat at with Tina was only populated by girls, most of the tables she looked around at had… well, not completely mixed populations, exactly, but… enough to where it wouldn't be strange for Gil to come sit with them. Not that she wasn't willing to go sit with just him, alone, but she felt that would draw more attention to him than he would like. She didn't want to change Gil, except perhaps to make him a little happier. He could be a ghost if he really wanted to be.
She was plotting how to broach the subject to the girls, halfway through lunch, when Tina confronted her on it. "Do you have a crush on that kid?"
She spun around. "What?"
They all erupted in giggles and Sara blushed, while Tina repeated herself. "That kid over there, with the curly hair. Name's… Gerald maybe? You keep looking at him."
"Oh. No, I… He, ah… He's my lab partner in Chemistry and I was just...wondering why he sits all alone. Maybe we should ask him to come sit with us…"
The giggles came again and Sara frowned. One of the other girls—Sara thought Emily, maybe?—was the first to notice and sobered. "Well, I mean… We don't mind. We don't want your booooyfriend to eat alone!"
Their laughter was uproarious and Sara rolled her eyes and left the table, tossing her mostly uneaten cheese sandwich into the garbage on the way out of the lunch room but keeping her milk. It might stave off her hunger while she waited for Latin to begin.
The classroom was open, but dark, and she wasn't sure if she was strictly allowed to be in here without a teacher. She hesitated but decided that it was stranger to leave the lights off and flicked them on before putting her backpack into her empty desk. She grit her teeth, kicking herself for her impatience—of course teenage girls would tease her about her "crush" and getting upset about it would only make it worse tomorrow. Or tonight, for that matter, with Tina. She crossed her arms and huffed, leaning against her desk.
When the classroom doorway opened behind her she spun quickly, ready to apologize to her teacher for being in the room this early without permission, but it was Gil, looking hesitant and shy. Sara's eyebrows rose and he looked a little like he wanted to turn and run in the other direction, but instead he stepped inside and let the door close behind him. There was a long, long moment in which they just watched each other. It was pretty clear that he'd followed her up here—or at least that he'd seen her leave the cafeteria and guessed where she was headed. He had a brown lunch sack clutched in one fist and hadn't yet moved to his seat in the back, and he was meeting her eyes rather than avoiding them.
Sara swallowed. She didn't know what to say to help him out here, though she recognized his familiar struggle for words. Finally, he exhaled quietly. "I… saw you throw out your lunch and, uh… My mom always packs me too much." He held up the bag awkwardly, looking a little sheepish, and Sara felt her insides melting. He was… so sweet.
"I, um… that's really nice, but I… I'm a vegetarian, so…"
"Egg salad sandwich." He clarified, and moved to sit not in his usual space in back, but in the desk beside hers.
"I… don't want to take your lunch. You'll be hungry."
At this, he grinned. "I told you, my mom packs too much—she doesn't trust school food, for some reason, and she thinks that teenage boys should consume ten times their weight each day." At her continued hesitation, he raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to sit down?"
With a little bewilderment, she moved her backpack and slid into the desk, watching him unpack. He had a half-eaten sandwich that looked like roast beef and another fully wrapped sandwich that was indeed egg salad. He then proceeded to pull out a small plastic bag filled with baby carrots, an apple, a banana, and another bag with two homemade chocolate chip cookies. At Sara's raised eyebrow he shrugged, a little embarrassed. "I told you it was too much for one person. Here." He then proceeded to scoot his desk closer and open the carrots between them and pass her the sandwich.
"…Thank you."
His ears turned red and he shrugged again. "No problem. …How, uh…" He trailed off and Sara, with a mouthful of egg salad, struggled to chew and swallow so she could ask.
She gulped. "How…?"
He chuckled and reached to open his own milk carton as she lifted hers to her lips. "How come you left? Were you… upset?"
Sara looked at him in surprise and noted that he was looking quite fixedly at his sandwich as if it had started speaking Portuguese to him. …Which perhaps explained his question. Gil was better with emotions than Grissom, but not by much. "Oh. I just… overreacted. They were teasing me about something stupid and I was sick of cheese sandwiches and hungry and I… kinda got upset over nothing."
He nodded knowingly, though his brow was creased in confusion. After a moment, he looked up at her again. "…Cheese sandwiches?"
Sara laughed, swallowing another bite of the sandwich—Mrs. Grissom made a mean egg salad. "Amanda makes ham and cheese every day, so I've been picking off the ham and just eating bread and cheese. It gets old." She realized, halfway through her explanation, that Gil didn't know about her past—his middle-aged counterpart did. And she'd given herself away, not saying 'Mom' instead of 'Amanda'.
He smiled despite that, tactful enough not to ask. "Well, I love Ham and Cheese, but I get pretty sick of Egg Salad and Peanut Butter and Jelly… I'll trade you, from now on."
Sara blinked in surprise again. Gil was getting bolder and bolder. Under her scrutiny he shrugged and rolled his eyes. "Don't look at me like that. It's not like I can eat everything she sends me anyway. Do you want the apple or the banana?" And that ended that.
They were pretty sure eating in classrooms wasn't technically allowed, so they packed up the garbage into his paper bag and he tucked it away before their teacher arrived. When she did she smiled absently and commented that they had finished their lunches rather quickly, but otherwise seemed less than concerned by their presence there. They exchanged the secret smile of partners in crime and pulled out their books.
There was a pop quiz in History that Sara was fairly certain no one but she had passed, and despite how short the quiz truly was—ten true or false questions on the front and a short answer question on the back, worth twenty points total—their teacher gave them the entire period for it. Sara went back to her doodles, shading in clothes and Nick's horse and Warrick's hair, thinking about seeing Grissom the next period in gym, even if they were playing basketball separately again.
She changed, still self-conscious about her short shorts and also, about her undergarments. She had noticed, through the course of the week, the nice, new, cute bras and panties the other girls were wearing. And not that she wished to compare herself to them but…. She was in old, white cotton. She was lucky none of it was ripping, yet. She remembered that at Harvard, after she'd received her first Chuck E. Cheese paycheck, she'd gone out and bought all new underwear and several bras that actually supported her chest instead of making her look like an adolescent boy. Sure, she'd also bought a couple pairs of jeans and some new shirts—but the underwear had made all the difference.
Maybe she should get a job…
Gil was already in the gym when she arrived and this time she moved up to sit by him, in the back, without hesitation. He smiled his surprise and pushed his glasses up his nose. "Ready for the weekend?"
She wrinkled up her nose. She'd been trying not to think about two long days with Frank at home. "Nah—I miss school when I'm not here." She missed him when she wasn't here.
He smiled. "Me too. I'm working all weekend—my mom thinks it teaches me 'responsibility'." His tone of derision told Sara exactly what he thought of her opinion on this matter, though there was a softness in his voice that betrayed how close they were. Sara smiled.
"Where do you work?"
"Oh—My mom owns an art gallery. I basically do whatever she needs—inventory, setting up and taking down displays, working the register, telling people about the art, cleaning… It's a drag."
Sara shook her head. "I don't think so. I mean… as far as job opportunities go, it's better than a burger place or… you know."
He shrugged his acquiescence. "That's true, I guess. It could be worse. I s'pose you don't have a job? You told me you'd just moved here, right?"
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes—even if he hadn't been listening to her before, he was now. "Yeah—San Francisco. And no, though I've been thinking that I probably should. It'd be nice to have some spending money."
He grinned at that. "Oh I know. Soon as I get my license, my mom says I can take the car—as long as I can pay for gas. I've been saving up."
It occurred to Sara, perhaps belatedly, that he must have just turned sixteen about a week before she turned up. It seemed so… normal… for Grissom to be a sixteen year old boy excited about a car. Then again, he'd owned a Mercedes at one time, hadn't he?
Still, the appropriate level of enthusiasm needed to be expressed and she was slightly taken aback to realize that more than half of it was genuine. "Oh, cool! When do you take your test?"
He grinned with obvious pride, his chest puffing out, just a little. "Two weeks."
"You're gonna take me for a ride once you get it, right?" She teased, and the look of bewilderment that crossed his face was nothing short of adorable. He looked like he couldn't imagine for the life of him that Sara might want to be in a car with him… but that it was an appealing thought, now that it had been brought to his attention.
"Alright—no laps today, since my men apparently can't keep up with the girls!" Halstead shouted, making both Gil and Sara jump and Sara duck her head—she'd continued running ahead of the asshole, whose name she had learned was Rick, throughout the week, though she hadn't double lapped him like the first day. She hadn't wanted to call attention to herself—just prove a point. The guys in front grumbled while their gym teacher barked out his instructions that they once again split into boys and girls and play on opposite sides of the gym while he sat on the bleachers with his radio next to him.
Sara sighed—he might as well be texting or facebooking for all the teaching he was actually doing.
Sara hoped, maybe foolishly, that Gil would wait for her after school and perhaps walk her to Ryan's car or… at least out to his bike, but she had no such luck. The bike she now recognized as his was gone by the time she stepped out; she would be spending a long weekend without him.