Femslash, but very light at that. Set thirteen years after the BSC series. Jenny Prezzioso is 17 and Claire Pike is 18, but they're in the same class for reasons that are explained in the fic. Inspired by the following line from #4: Mary Anne Saves the Day: "And Jenny tries hard, but she just isn't what her mother wants her to be." This, of course, was before Ann M. wrote Jenny as the stereotypical brat.
The real problem with little sister slash is that it's hard to keep the kids in character between age five and age eighteen. (Especially Claire Pike. Try incorporating her silly-billy-goo-goo propensity into an 18-year-old. It cannot be done.)
* * *
When I was little, I had absolutely no use for Jenny Prezzioso. It wasn't just because we were different – actually, we still are – me with my seven big brothers and sisters, and Jenny's just got Andrea at home. Jen's the oldest and I'm the youngest. I have blue eyes and hers are brown. Little things like that. And bigger things, too, like my parents are still married and hers are divorced. That happened five years ago, when Jen was twelve. Mom made a casserole, gave Mrs. P the name of a good counselor, and took Jenny and Andrea to live with us while Mrs. P got herself together. (I think Mom missed having lots of kids around. I was 13 then, and Mal and the triplets were all out of the house.)
I guess it was right before Mr. P left that Jenny started changing. Before, she was so prissy that I couldn't stand her. She always had perfect lacy dresses, brand-new unripped tights, floppy hair bows made of pink ribbons. (I wouldn't have known what to do with a pink ribbon if someone handed me one, and all my tights and half my pants were worn to shreds because they'd been Margo's or Vanessa's before mine.) And she took such care with her frilly skirts and dangly earrings. I think that was what annoyed most of the kids in our class. It was fine to wear pretty clothes, but then don't shriek and throw a tantrum if you get orange juice on them.
(Let me just tell you, when I was little I was soooo mad at Mom and Dad for keeping in an extra year of kindergarten. Silly-billy-goo-goos. If they hadn't, I wouldn't be in Jenny's grade. Back then I sure didn't want to be.)
Anyway, what really changed Jenny was baby-sitting. Don't think Mrs. P ever let her out of the house to baby-sit, but she did pay her about a penny an hour to watch Andrea, and the first thing Jenny bought was a pair of jeans. Mrs. P practically had to go to a sanitarium. I think Mr. P was really proud of Jenny. He pulled her out of school for Take Your Daughter to Work Day (Mr. P's a lawyer like Dad) and introduced her to everyone. (He also bought her a t-shirt, and about a hundred more pairs of pants.)
I guess that is when the trouble started. Jen doesn't like to talk about it, but she thinks the divorce is her fault. Some days I don't know what to tell her. Some days I just play with her hair and run my hand up and down her side until she smiles.
* * *
"Can I borrow this shirt?"
"Which one?"
"Your blue sweater."
"No way. Put it down, Andrea."
"You're so mean to me!"
"So go tell Mom."
"I can't." Andrea shoves her lower lip out and glares menacingly at her sister.
Jenny Prezzioso has never gotten along with her sister, at least not in the past five years – the past four years in which Jenny has forced her mother to let her change and Andrea, unfortunately, has not been able to. That's part of the problem. Right now Andrea is standing half-in, half-out of Jenny's closet in a tea-length, raspberry pink dress with a wide white ruffle around the collar and inch-high heeled black patent leather shoes. And she wants to borrow Jenny's gorgeous cashmere sweater, the one with three-quarter-length sleeves and a deeply cut V-neck that dips just a little too low.
"You'd be swimming in it," Jenny tells her sister, making an attempt to soften her tone a little. "You don't, um, have any, uh, you know …"
"No fair, Jen. Just because you're older." Andrea hangs the sweater neatly back in Jenny's perfectly organized closet. Another shirt tumbles off the hanger into her waiting hands. "What about this one?"
"You're crazy," Jenny replies, not even bothering to look up from the copy of Jane Eyre that she is reading for English. "Mom would never let you wear something with a keyhole neck."
"No fair," Andrea grumbles her again. Her dress rustles as she stamps her foot. "All my friends get to wear – "
"Right, and if all your friends showed up at school in an ugly t-shirt, would you do it too?"
Andrea makes a face, storming over to the bed. "You sound like Mom."
Jenny certainly does not want to sound like her mother. "Sorry." She flips a page, then places her book facedown on the lace-paneled quilt so that the spine cracks. "Andrea, if you're so unhappy about Mom, why don't you tell her? She's got to let go sometime."
"Oh, puh-leeze." Andrea pouts. Usually, with her elegant dresses and shiny shoes and gracefully long hair, she looks older than she is, but when she pouts she looks exactly like a cranky, irritated thirteen-year-old. "Like the way you told her. Oh, no. You just came home wearing jeans one day." She sounds like she's trying to be mad, but there is a wistful note mixed with irritation and love in her voice.
Jenny scrunches her bottom lip between her fingers while she thinks about that. She supposes that her little sister is right. That year felt sort of like an ultimatum. And it was, only it was her father who ended up delivering the real ultimatum.
She misses Dad. He lives in Chatham now, which isn't that far away, but he works a lot and she and Andrea don't see him much. She feels worse for her sister than she does for herself. Andrea was just a kid when Dad left.
"Mom was about to kill you," Andrea adds with gleeful satisfaction, and Jenny blinks. So much for that momentary burst of compassion. She settles for giving her sister a baleful look in return.
She flicks through the pages of Jane Eyre while Andrea pokes her finger through a hole in the white eyelet lace. Jenny knows that there's more to Andrea than this, this jealousy that Jenny gets to wear cooler clothes and Adidas sneakers. Her sister would love to look like Jenny, to dress like Jenny, to be able to walk out the door in khaki pants and platform shoes and let that be enough of a snide remark to Mom. But because Jenny's always been the rebellious one, the one who throws tantrums and yells out loud and refuses to wear the pink dresses and white slippers in her closet, that makes Andrea the good daughter, and who would want to give that up?
She loves her sister, but they don't get along.
"Jenny?"
"Hm?" Jenny is still running her thumb along the stack of worn pages so that they fan out, quickly, blowing air across her fingers.
"Does Mom know about, um, about you and, er, you know …"
"Claire?" Jenny supplies helpfully, which is pretty ridiculous since Andrea obviously knows Claire. They've all known the Pikes for years, and Andrea grew up being baby-sitted by Mallory or Vanessa or whichever Pike was still living in Stoneybrook.
"Yeah, her. And well – you know." Andrea at least has the grace to blush.
Of course Jenny knows. She's a little miffed that Andrea can't find a good way to say it, but her sister is only thirteen and anyway Jenny knows what she means, so she answers her. "No, Mom doesn't know about you know, as you put it. And she's not going to know. Got it?"
"Got it."
"I mean it, Andrea. This is important." Her voice quivers a little. It's one thing to wear a t-shirt that says "Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?" in front of her mother. It's a rebellion, but it's not a secret. It's another thing to be doing … well, whatever she's doing with her friend and classmate and neighbor. That's a secret and it's got to stay that way.
"I can't believe you're going to college next year, Jen."
"What?"
"I mean I can't believe you're graduating this year. And then going to college. Can you believe it?"
"Sure I can. I'm really excited." Jenny is quiet for a moment. In truth, she's not sure she can believe it. And she's not sure she's ready to leave Claire, and Stoneybrook, and even her sister. But she's ready to get out of her house, to be on her own. "What's up, Andrea?"
"Well, since you're, you know, leaving and all, why don't you just tell Mom? She's got to let go sometime."
Jenny looks up quickly, ready to pound her sister to thirteen-year-old pulp all over the white lacy quilt, and realizes that Andrea's laughing at her. For a moment she wavers between anger and hysteria, and finally she starts laughing too, and realizes that maybe, maybe she's not the only one in this house who doesn't know how to talk to her mother.
* * *
I know that I'm lucky to have my mom. My dad, too, of course, but Mom's always been around more, so I'm closer to her. Actually, when I was eleven and Mal was a senior in high school she went back to work as a professor at Stoneybrook Community College, but she was a stay-at-home mom for all my life. She was there when I had chicken pox and bronchitis, and she once spent an entire day with me trying to assemble this put-it-together-yourself exercise wheel for Frodo, our hamster, and she didn't have a nervous breakdown when Margo and I decided to count the number of pieces of dog food in a 20-pound bag.
She also didn't freak out when I told her about, um, me and Jen. Half of me thought she wouldn't and half of me thought she would. She and Dad have always been pretty laid-back, and the rules in our house are mostly to ensure that we don't get killed riding a unicycle down the middle of Burnt Hill Road, not to keep our rooms clean and a chore chart on the fridge. I remember a month when I wouldn't eat anything but corn dogs and peaches. They were fine with that too.
So I should have figured that she wouldn't mind – much. But I'm still the youngest, and they tend to be a little protective. I guess that's why I was scared.
My mother was fantastic. She told me that she and Dad would always love me, no matter what, and that they were glad that I'd been a friend and maybe more to Jenny. I think Mom has some idea of how strange Mrs. P has been with Andrea and Jenny – she and Dad have known the Prezziosos since before Jenny was born – and that's why she said that.
When she was finished talking to me, she patted my back the way she did when I was little and hugged me.
* * *
Madeleine Prezzioso has never been there for Jenny, and Jenny hates her for it. It's a strange kind of hate, of course, a mother-daughter hate that means she'll willingly tattle out her sister when Andrea "borrows" Mom's red silk blouse. Other days she knows with one look what Andrea thinks, and how desperately she needs Jenny to cover for her, and Jenny does, because she knows that her sister protects her right back. She doesn't know what that says about her.
She likes spending time at Claire's house better. Claire's the only one left at home now, three bedrooms for one child – what a change from just a few years ago, when there were eight kids crammed into those three small rooms – but somehow her house still has the sagged-in, well-worn personality of a place that used to be full of kids. Half of Claire's jeans used to belong to Mallory, the other half of Nicky. The posters of baseball players belonged to Adam and Jordan; the National Geographic tear-outs came from Byron. When Margo went off to UConn they bunked the beds, so now there's a little more space in the tiny bedroom. Claire sleeps on the bottom bed, and the quilt that used to be Vanessa's still shows blue ink stains from all the nights Vanessa fell asleep holding her poetry notebook.
Today Claire's hand is moving lightly under the covers against the soft skin beside Jenny's collarbone, and it tickles. Jenny shrugs impatiently, the way you do when a mosquito lands on your shoulder. "Can you stop that?"
"Sorry." Claire's hand stills, cool fingers at Jenny's neck. "So what's going on?"
"Nothing."
"How's your dad?"
"Fine."
"How's the college thing going for you?"
"Fine." Jenny stifles a sigh. Why does everyone want to talk about college all the time these days? They're only three months into their senior year, but Andrea is also quizzing her like she wants to know how soon she can take over Jenny's bedroom, and some kids have already gotten college acceptances. James Newton applied early decision to Brown, and his letter just came the other day. His entire homeroom watched him open it and then applauded. And Nina Marshall has always known that she wants to apply to NYU's Shirley M. Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, and she was accepted in November. Jenny finished sending in her applications at the beginning of the month, but she won't hear from anyone until spring, and Claire knows that, so why is she asking?
"Are you ever going to tell me where you applied?"
"Oh."
"You forgot that little detail, huh?" Claire rolls over and rubs the curve of Jenny's hip gently. Her voice is a mixture of amusement and irritation. "Jen, is there something you don't want to tell me about college? You're absolutely avoiding the subject, and when I talked to Andrea the other day, she told me that all you do is talk about how excited you are – "
"You talked to my sister?" Jenny still hasn't gotten over the fact that Andrea's actually a teenager now, much less the fact that she's capable of actual conversations that don't revolve around tea parties and borrowing Jenny's clothes. "When?"
"Um, yesterday. Or maybe the day before." The covers shift slightly as Claire shrugs. "Does it matter? Anyway, she said that you don't seem … you aren't really … well, excited, you know. I mean, you say you're excited. But you're not."
Jenny isn't comfortable with having someone call her on the feelings she doesn't really understand. Isn't your mother supposed to do that? Mothers are always supposed to know their daughters, and it's supposed to plague and irritate their daughters until they grow up and have daughters of their own. But Mom has never been that kind of a mother. "Claire, I don't really want to talk about it."
Her girlfriend is silent for a long moment, until Jenny finds her mouth in the dim light of a green banker's lamp that used to sit on Mallory's desk at boarding school, and then silence turns to kisses and kisses turn to ignorance.
* * *
I could have found out where she applied, I know I could have. The guidance office isn't allowed to give out that kind of information, but I knew who she asked for recommendations, and I could have asked them to tell me. Or I could have looked on her computer to see what schools she wrote application essays for. But I didn't. I guess I didn't really want to.
Willful ignorance is a funny thing.
* * *
Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Chapman, Menlo, Westmont. The return addresses, with zip codes that all start with the number 9, glare up at Claire Pike.
She is surprisingly calm, like honey floating through warm milk. Her stomach sinks and her eyes are scratchy. "You could have told me, you know."
Jenny is also calm. Her brown eyes were ready to put up a fight, but they have cooled, old coals at the end of a fire, and her fists are crumpling the hem of her red merino sweater, crushing it with sweat. She is surprised that Claire isn't saying more, and so she asks her, surprising both of them, "Well? Aren't you going to say anything else?"
Claire shrugs and hands the large, heavy envelopes back to Jenny. "What do you want me to say? I'm really happy you got in. And they all look like really good schools. But every place I applied is on the East Coast. I never thought of going to California."
Jenny can hear the silent rebuke in Claire's voice, the testy reminder that she didn't know Jenny was thinking of going to California, either. But it doesn't matter, because the acceptances are in her hands, and now she just has to decide whether she wants her college diploma four years from now to say Pomona, or Chapman, or Westmont.
Because it wasn't a decision, she know that now, she knew two years ago when she started looking at college websites and course catalogues that she was going as far from home as she could get. She looked at some schools in Chicago and a place called Carleton in Minnesota, but there weren't really any good colleges between the Midwest and the West Coast, and that brought her eyes all the way out to California. And it was before she and Claire were together, and before she knew how hard a time Andrea would have in their family, so what does Claire expect her to say?
"Are you going to Williams then?" she asks her girlfriend out of politeness.
Claire shrugs. "I like it a lot. But it depends if they'll give me the financial aid. Same with Bennington. If not, I'll probably go to UConn too."
Is that another pot shot? Jenny can't tell. Whatever she thinks about her sister and her mother, she does know that she's lucky that her father has a good job, that he's assured her they'll be able to afford her education wherever she decides to go. "Well, I hope you get it."
"Me too." Claire reaches out and touches the heavy white envelope addressed to Jennifer A. Prezzioso, and then quite without warning she bursts into tears. At first her shoulders are shaking so hard and her fists are clenched so tight that she looks like she's having a tantrum, but after a while it's just trails of blue water making slow, deliberate paths down her slightly freckled cheeks, and Jenny puts her arms around her, and the college acceptances crash to the floor.
"Sorry," Claire says, taking in a large gulp of air, when Jenny's shoulder is soaked like she forgot to blow-dry her hair.
"It's okay."
"Are you coming back?" Claire asks finally. Her fingers are playing with a piece of Jenny's straight brown hair, but she doesn't bother looking into her face.
Jenny forces a smile, but it's one without any promise behind it. "Sure. I'll be back."
Claire's blue eyes are flickering like stars, and she looks like she believes her.
* * *
That was three years ago, and she hasn't come back to Stoneybrook once. I'm not really surprised. When she said yes to me that day, I knew she was lying. And more than that, I knew that she'd leave the first chance she got, and find every excuse possible not to return.
I'm also not sure I blame her.
Sometimes I really hate Mrs. P for everything she did to Jenny, but then I know that's not fair. She didn't hit her or hurt her or deprive her of everything, and my mom reminds me that Jen did have other options besides going to school in California and never coming back. And I can't really hate her, she's been my parents' friend forever, and I grew up around her because Jenny and I were always forced to play with each other when we were little. She put Band-Aids on my knees and chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen counter, and you can't hate someone who did that for you.
Jenny and I kept in touch – e-mail, and Instant Messenger, and even a few phone calls – after she went to Pomona and I went to Williams. In December she got a girlfriend, and dated a couple other girls that year, and I knew that she was happy to be away from here and from her sister. And mostly her mom. As far as I know she's never told Mrs. P anything, and her mother has never found out.
Sometimes, when I'm home for vacation, I ride my bike past the Prezziosos' house (please, like I actually have a car to drive when all seven of my brothers and sisters are here for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter) and wonder how Andrea's doing, with just her and her mom. Andrea would be sixteen now and I bet she's looking at colleges too. I know, because Mom told me, that Mrs. P hasn't been doing so well since Jenny left for college. Left and never came home, I mean. I don't blame Mrs. P for not doing so well, either.
But last spring, when I was home for spring break, I went into SHS to see some of my old teachers and it was just after school was getting out. Andrea was just leaving when she saw me and waved, and I couldn't help laughing, because she was wearing jeans and a blue sweater that used to be Jenny's.
finis