Chapter One
Before Stars Hollow
In the seventeen years that I lived in New York, I learned a lot of things. One of them was that it was hard to rely on and trust people. When I was a kid, I'd get home from school and find my mom passed out of the couch after drinking all day and night. I taught myself to read, cook my own food, and of course the fine art of theft.
Dominic, one of my very good friends, was an orphan. His parents died when he was little. His grandmother raised him until he was ten until she died. He didn't want to leave New York and all of his friends so when social services showed up, he freaked. Packed a bag, found me, and we took off. We had no money, no food, and no idea where we were going. No one knew we were even gone. Especially, my ever so absent mother, Liz. We were gone for two years. I don't even think Liz called the cops. I'm sure she was happy that her pain in the ass son was out of her hair. But sooner or later, we got caught.
Dominic and I never ever stole just for the hell of it. Things just happened that way. I remember the last time I was with Dominic. We went into this drug store that was somewhere actually pretty close to Liz's apartment. There was this little cup of spare change and dollars that was for fixing something or another in the store. It was something about a leaky roof, I think. Anyway, when there was a guy in front of us I grabbed the cup while Dominic grabbed some food. The guy behind the counter saw us, and all hell broke loose after that. We ran, the guy called the cops; they caught up to us, and found out who we were. They sent Dominic to an orphanage and found Liz.
I'll never forget what happened after she showed up at the police station, but I'll tell you, it was not a Brady Bunch moment. The second we got out side she was screaming her head off at me.
"What the hell were you thinking, Jess?! Do you realize what went through my mind when I got a call from the cops saying my son was there, do you? God, Jess, you can't do this. Don't you get it? You just can't? I had social services on my back all night! They'll take you away from me, Jess. They will."
"How long have I been gone?" I asked her.
"What-why?"
"How long?" we stood there in the middle of the sidewalk staring each other down.
"A month?" she said with a shrug, "Maybe two."
"See, this is why it happens. You wouldn't even notice if social services took me away, and you sure as hell wouldn't care!"
Let's just say, things went even further down hill after that.
When I got back to the apartment with Liz, it was terrible. Her boyfriend was there. I, or course, me being me, mouthed off to him. Let me just say, that it is very hard to fight of a drunken boxer guy who has decided to beat his girlfriends kid. I couldn't fight then, but trust me, I could later. After that, every wrong thing I did wasn't out of necessity. I stole some more money and took classes at a local 'self defense' place. I caught on rather quickly. I took what I learned there and meshed it with the other things that I'd learned on the streets and from my friends.
I did a lot of shit before I went to Stars Hollow. It took a long time for Liz to realize that I was in deep, way over my head. A few months after I had gotten back from taking off with Dom, there was a new boyfriend. Now, to this one, I did nothing. He was just drunk, or on something, or maybe both, but apparently, he was mad. He started to beat the shit out of me so, that's when I hit him. And I kept hitting him, and hitting him, and hitting him. Liz wasn't there, but when she got home a few minutes later, she found me curled up in the corner of my room, blood on the floor, blood on me, and the boyfriend gone. We didn't exactly hear from him after that.
A/N: It's short, I know, but I'm trying. The movers are coming to pack things up at my house tomorrow morning so they will be packing up my computer. It may not be back up for a while. I wanted to write as much as I could. Hope you liked this chapter. It's dark, but I figure that's the way most of Jess' past is. I like writing from his POV. I've never written from a guy's POV. Especially, one as layered as Jess. It's kind of cool. Anyway, I'll stop talking. Review please! Reviews to me are like coffee is to Lorelai, so you get how much I love it.
