Disclaimer: I don't own Lizzie McGuire, people, places, etc…don't sue me.
Thank you, thank you, thank you's to everyone who's been reviewing!
TheRealXenocide, there is a little bit of foreshadowing so far and it will all start to come together soon…ish. And Whaza, thanks for that bit of info. I didn't know George Lucas went to USC. You learn something new everyday…
Lizzie and Miranda spend the entire day at Lizzie's, talking and hanging out and Miranda spent the night.
"This is so much better than having to talk on the phone all the time." Miranda said as she tossed a pillow and blanket on the mattress set up on Lizzie's floor.
"Tell me about it." Lizzie agreed, jumping on her bed. "The best part is, we don't have to worry about the phone bill."
The two girls talked till nearly four in the morning, so Lizzie felt like she had just fallen asleep when she heard her father's voice.
"Hey, Lizzie! There's someone here to see you!" He called up the stairs.
"Augh…" Lizzie groaned, rolling over in bed. She tried to sit up, fell over from exhaustion, and tried again. She crawled out of bed and promptly tripped over Miranda, whom she had forgotten was there.
"Oof. Get off of me." Miranda shoved Lizzie off her blanket and tried to curl up again.
"C'mon Miranda, I bet that's Gordo." Lizzie, now partially awake, tried to tug the blanket away.
"Alright, alright, I'm up." Miranda sat up and stretched and followed Lizzie down the stairs to find Gordo grinning at them.
"Jeez Gordo," Lizzie shook her head at him. "I'm glad you're finally here and all, but did you really have to wake us up so early?" she asked, yawning.
"Oh, sorry, I really should have thought about that before coming over here at the crack of ten!" He said, rolling his eyes and giving Lizzie and Miranda a hug.
"Yeah, what were you thinking?" added Miranda before heading to the kitchen. "C'mon! Food calls."
As Miranda rummaged through the cabinets for something to eat, Gordo and Lizzie sat down at the counter.
"You look…" Lizzie paused, observed her friend. "…the same." Miranda shot her a look.
"Well, thank you Lizzie. You look…" Gordo paused, not sure what to say. "…tired."
Lizzie laughed. "Well, if someone," she looked pointedly at Gordo, "hadn't come over so early, Miranda and I might have gotten a decent amount of sleep!"
"Boy, I've missed you guys." Gordo's slightly sarcastic tone matched his expression. Lizzie was right, a few things about Gordo had changed, but he still had his same honest, straightforward tone and somewhat sarcastic sense of humor. He looked older, obviously, as Lizzie hadn't seen him in the two years since they had graduated high school. He had also grown some during high school and now stood several inches over Lizzie and Miranda. But his dark curls and serious face were still the same.
"Come on Gordo, you know you missed us like crazy." Miranda teased him as she triumphantly pulled a bag of frozen French fries from the freezer. Gordo raised an eyebrow at her in question and Lizzie looked at her in disbelief. "Just like breakfast potatoes…only, not…" Miranda trailed off. "Do you two have a better idea?"
"Well no…" Lizzie started. "Ok, I guess. Actually, that's not a bad idea." She laughed as she thought about it.
"Gordo?" Miranda asked, holding up the bag. "I've never known you to turn down curly fries." She grinned.
"I suppose you're right." Gordo said thoughtfully. "And it would be a shame to start now…ok. Count me in." Miranda nodded and turned on the over.
"And you're right, Miranda. I did miss you guys a lot." He continued seriously. "Now I wanna hear what you both have been up to. It's not the same talking over the phone." He said, echoing Miranda's thoughts last night.
"Gordo, we talk three times a week." Lizzie told him, handing Miranda a cookie sheet for the fries. "You know everything we've been doing."
"Hmmm…maybe." He agreed. "But I didn't get to hear about this last week. Lizzie, you had the hardest finals out of all of us. How'd they go?"
"Augh." Lizzie groaned. "They were tough, but I made it. Anatomy was the worst, I think, all memorizing tendons and ligaments and muscles and organs…ugh. It was not fun. Micro and calc were better and I know I've got an A in those three. It's organic chemistry I was really worried about. Luckily, just about everyone did as awful in that class as I did, so there was a huge curve. I'll probably end up with a B." Lizzie looked up to see both of her best friends grinning at her.
"What?" she asked, confused.
"I never thought I'd see you saying you understood organic chemistry." Miranda told her. Lizzie started to protest but Gordo interrupted her.
"What she means is, you've changed a lot since junior high. And even high school. Remember how you used to complain because you weren't great at one specific thing? Or that you got B's all the time? And now you're getting nearly straight A's in college, where you're a science major. It's weird seeing how much you've changed. But it's cool." He added to reassure her.
Lizzie smiled. When she decided to pursue her childhood dream of being a veterinarian, she knew it would be a lot of work. She was lucky enough to get accepted in the pre-vet program at the University of Colorado at Denver and she hoped to get into the vet school at Colorado State University. But once she got to school, she learned just how much work it would take. There were more pre-vet students than she had imagine and in four years, they would all be competing for the few spots at each vet school, along with the thousands of other pre-vet students across the country. Lizzie quickly learned to separate herself from a majority of them. She studied her butt off and typically found herself at the top of her classes. She volunteered at an animal shelter her first semester of college and found a job doing grunt work at a local vet clinic the following semester. Even though her job included a lot of menial tasks, like filing and cleaning examining rooms, she knew it was a great opportunity for her to get some experience and she opted to spend her summer working there instead of coming home. She knew her family and friends missed her while she was away, and she missed them as well, but Lizzie was proud of herself for all that she had accomplished so far. However she also knew that the toughest part was yet to come.
"Lizzie? Lizzie?" Miranda cut her thoughts short by shoving a plate of fries in front of her.
"Where were you?" Gordo asked her in between bites of curly fries.
"I was thinking about school and I guess I just got lost in thought." Lizzie laughed at herself. She didn't even realize she was losing herself in thought until she heard Miranda again.
"So Gordo, how's the film school going?" she asked.
"Yeah, Gordo." Lizzie added. "We haven't heard much about life at one of the top film schools in the country. How'd your final piece for film class go?" she asked.
"It went pretty well." he replied. "The editing took ages, but I think it's one of my better pieces."
"That's excellent." Miranda said supportively. "And speaking of, do we get to see any of your new films? It's been years since we've seen a Gordo original." Lizzie nodded in agreement.
"I brought a couple home so my parents could see them. I'll bring them over sometime so you guys can watch 'em."
"Awesome." Lizzie and Miranda agreed in unison. "So Gordo, what is New York really like? You've only told us a little about it." Lizzie couldn't get enough of New York. She had never been there, but it definitely topped her list of places to visit.
"It's really interesting." Gordo began. "I don't see much that's far from the NYU campus, but even in that small area, there's always something going on. It's never dull. And there are people from just about everywhere. When I lived in the dorms last year, my roommate had spent his entire life in New York. On the same floor, there were two guys from India, a guy from somewhere in Turkey, a girl from Norway and a girl from Samoa. Granted it was a big floor, but most of the school is like that. It's so great 'cause it's so diverse and people, for the most part, aren't all hung up on peoples' looks and backgrounds and everything that everyone was so concerned with in high school."
"I think that's one of the best parts about college." Miranda spoke up. "It's like that a USC too. People care so much less about whether you're wearing the right shoes and that sort of thing. At least, most of them don't care. There are some that still act funny like that."
"I think it takes a while for some people to get the whole high school mentality out of their systems." Lizzie added.
"It'll be interesting to see who from high school still acts like they're in high school." Miranda mused, reminding the three that they would most likely be seeing a lot of their old classmates tomorrow.
After a long silence, Lizzie asked quietly, "What do you think tomorrow will be like?"
"Emotional." Miranda answered the same time Gordo said, "Awkward."
"Awkward?" Miranda asked. "How so?"
"We're gonna see a bunch of our old classmates and their parents tomorrow. Ethan's funeral is going to make all the parents realize how easily they could lose one of their own children and it's going to make all of us question our mortality and how we're living our own lives."
"Huh?" Lizzie and Miranda asked, staring incredulously at Gordo.
"I mean, it's going to make us ask 'What if this happens to me or my friends?' or 'What if someone I know isn't here tomorrow?' Things can happen so fast and we're just beginning to realize the consequences of it.
Lizzie frowned, taking the idea in.
"Lizzie," Gordo turned to her. "If Ethan was still alive, but you knew you weren't going to ever see him again, would you tell him about the crush you had on him?"
Lizzie paused. "I–I'm not sure." She said finally.
"Exactly. Everyone's going to be facing the same dilemma. Do you tell them or do you keep it to yourself? I think I'd call that awkward."
Lizzie rolled her eyes, exasperated. Leave it to Gordo to get her mind thinking like that.
R/R!!!