Growing up in Star's Hollow isn't the best. The only things to do are get addicted to coffee and read. Everyone knows everyone, so everyone's in everyone's business. But the thing that I remember most about growing up in Star's Hollow was Auntie Lorelai. She was this eccentric, old lady who would tell us stories about Star's Hollow when she was raising her daughter. Every morning, you could catch her in the infamous Luke's Diner, drinking her coffee, ready with a brand new story to tell us every day.
A long time ago, Lorelai had had a daughter, also named Lorelai, but everyone had come to know her as Rory. Rory no longer lived in Star's Hollow, or anywhere, for that matter. Rory was a reporter, pregnant at the time, with her fiance Jess's baby. She travelled quite a bit, and one day, the plane went down. Jess, Luke, and Lorelai were all devasted.
Sometimes, it seems like the only way that Auntie Lorelai could preserve the memory of her loving daughter was to tell us all stories. Stories about Rory and what it was like raising her here in Star's Hollow.
I was born the year Rory died, but I didn't know her, even though it felt like I did.
When I was small, I dreamed about her coming back to life, her baby in her arms, and the whole town greeting her. Jess, who had moved to New York a year after her death, would be able to speak when he came to visit Luke and Lorelai, and the Gilmore and the Danes would have more purpose in life than serving or drinking coffee.
I was adopted, actually. My mother had known Rory, and was very close friends with her. She used to hold me close at night and say, "Sometimes, I wish you could've know Rory. Sometimes, I wished I'd have the courage to just think 'Paris, tell Rory that she's pregnant. She shouldn't be on the job. Especially eight months in.' But I just couldn't."
My parents died when I was very young. That's why Paris adopted me. She also knew my parents. But, she wouldn't tell me who they were.
Star's Hollow was home to many an interesting character, not just Auntie Larelai and Luke. There was also Lane Kim, world famous drummer. When she wasn't on tour, she hung out in her hometown of Star's Hollow with Paris and I.She'd take me to listen to Auntie Lorelai every morning when she went to Luke's and she'd drum on the table and I'd glare at her for disrupting Auntie Lorelai's stories, but it never bother Lorelai.
The story that I remember most was that of Rory, Lane, and Chrysalis. A long time ago, a young Irishwoman with green hair and drawn on eyebrows came to Star's Hollow to open up a record store. Lane automatically became addicted, and dragged Rory there one day. Rory was home for the week-end from Yale.
The moment Rory entered the store, she was in love. Thousands of CDs and records of bands she had never heard before, but would grow to love. She would spend every hour she could in there, even drag her boyfriend at the time, Logan, in all the way from Yale.
One day, Chrysalis, the record-store owner, told Rory that someone had special-ordered a package for her, and that it had just arrived at the store.
"Who would special-order a package for me?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but it's large and heavy."
Rory opened it up, only to find a painting of her face inside a coffee-filled mug, a rare Clash LP and a note. The note said the words 'Coffee Girl: offered thirteen hundred... sent it for free.'
"What does this mean?" She showed Chrysalis the note.
"I dunno. Who's it from?"
"You're the one who got the package, you tell me."
"I have no motherfucking clue where it came from."
"Weird."
"Show me the painting."
"Huh?"
"The painting, can I see it? I lived in New York several years, lassie, I know a lot of artists by their paintings, even if I never seen 'em afore."
"Okay..."
Rory handed the painting to Chrysalis.
"Aha... mhm... yup, baby, just who I thought it was."
"Who is it by?"
"No clue."
"What?"
"No, I know who its by, I've seen his work a million times. In fact, I taught him just about everything he knows."
"Since when did you paint?"
"Since I was born. Me mum gave birth to a baby and a canvas."
"So, who is it by?"
"I can't remember his real name, but his pseudonym was Dodger. Some weird Oliver Twist reference I'm assuming."
"Dodger..."
Auntie Lorelai told that story once, but everyone knew who Dodger was. Lore could never bring herself to say his name aloud.
"Jess..."
"Yes! That was it! His name was Jess. Dodger. Damn you boy, and your love of the caffieneaholics."
"Jess paints?"
"When I first met him, he was a boy pissed as hell. I told 'im to get into painting, it was incredible outlet. Next thing you knew, Dodger was the # 1 Underground painter on the South side. Sold a bunch in Boston. Haven't seen 'im since."
"Wow..."
"You his 'ex?"
"Yeah."
"Sad. I never expected him to give up someone so good as you. But, its human nature, right?"
Lorelai said that the very next day, Rory went to New York, found "Dodger's" apartment and gave him her piece of mind.
Lorelai was never told that conversation, but, somehow, it led to a baby and an engagement.
Today, I was back in Star's Hollow. I've been told that I'm this generation's Rory. I'm nineteen years old now, and I go to Harvard.
It was early on a Monday morning. Surely Auntie Lorelai would be inside, telling the stories to the kids, drinking her coffee, Luke looking at her adoringly, wondering how she can still do it.
I still wonder that myself.
There was someone sitting at the counter who looked slightly familiar. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a broody mood about him. He had suffered from an icredible loss. He had paint stains on his arms and shirt, and was watching Lorelai talk to the six year old twins in front of her.
"And then, out of nowhere, she said 'No you don't. Dean is incredible and he's special to me and I bring him here and you attack him. '"
The kids smiled and looked at Lorelai instensively. "The what did Richard say, Auntie Lorelai?"
I noticed that the paint-stained guy cringed at the mention of Dean's name, even though he'd been listening to this story. It was Dodger.
I sat next to him at the counter. "Good morning Dodger."
He smiled at me, not talking. He never spoke. When he came close to it, he would be on the verge of tears. "Hi Luke."
"'Morning, Sunshine. What can I get you?"
"Two coffees, one black, one with cream."
"Paris joining you?"
"Of course."
Just then, the woman in question, the one who had raised me, sat in the seat next to me. There we all were: Lorelai, at the end of the counter near the register, the two kids seated on the floor in front of her, Luke behind the counter, looking at Lorelai lovingly, Dodger staring at Lorelai painfully, with me in the seat next to him, and Paris next to me.
"You're looking well, Sunny."
"Thanks mom."
"I love the hair."
"Chrysalis hair."
"Its too bad you never met that woman. Scared her straight back to the Emerald Isle, I did."
"Must be proud of yourself, Mom."
"You have no idea."
Dodger sighed and turned back to his coffee, staring at it deeply, as though looking for the face he had put in his painting long ago. "You miss her more than anything, don't you?"
He smiled, and stared at his coffee, not looking at me or anyone else. He nodded slowly.
"Jess..." Paris began, but stopped herself. Dodger stood up and nodded in Luke's general direction. He went up the stairs to what I knew to be Luke's apartment from all of Auntie Lorelai's stories. Now Luke lived with Lorelai in the Gilmores girl's old house. Paris touched my arm lightly, and pulled me upstairs to the ex-apartment.
It was different than I had pictured. Someone had been living there, there were paints and canvases everywhere. Dodger's place now, I assumed.
"Jess, do you mind?"
He was sitting on a bed in the corner. He looked up at Paris and I and gestured to two chairs across from him.
"What's going on?"
"Sunshine, Jess and I have something really important to talk to you about."
"But Dodger doesn't talk."
"He will, trust me."
We sat in the chairs across from Dodger. He was dark and depressive, but handsome and self perserved. He would be in his early or mid forties by now. He was about 24 when Rory and the baby died. He sighed heavily, coughing slightly, either from paint fumes or cigarette smoke.
"Jess... I really think you should be the one to tell Sunshine."
"Paris..." his voice was cracked and dry, as if he hadn't used it in nineteen years. He closed his mouth and swallowed. "Its not that I didn't want to get to know you Sunny. But you... were a painful memory that I couldn't bare."
"What's Dodger talking about? Mom?"
"Sh, let him talk."
"The whole town has treasured you as a sort of second Rory since her tragedy." He was on the brink of tears, Paris, too. I was just confused. "Lorelai looked at you like her granddaughter for a reason." Glistening tears ran down his face as he looked at me. He was taking me in: my green hair, my blue eyes, my pierced nose. "You're nineteen, you deserve to know the truth."
"What truth."
"Your parents. Your mother. Your mother... was Rory."