Sorry for the wait, but here is the end of Part 1. Part 2 will be up by next week.
If you enjoy it leave a review.
My great grandmother patiently told my Father that I was much too intelligent to go to a public school, and thus I became the second person in my family to attend Chilton, on a check written from Emily's check book. I stick out there, my accent, my hair, my love for books that were considered less than reputable by the teaching staff. I sit alone at lunch, and wander the corridors alone.
One day wandering the empty halls, wishing to be anyone else, I stopped and looked at the graduation pictures of long past, and the slightly distant past. There she was, smiling with the gold ribbons around her neck. She looked happy, successful, and like the world was at her fingertips. But I know that at that moment as she was smiling with the cap and gown for the camera, she already knew she was going to have me. She knew that I was going to come and ruin her life. I found myself coming past that picture again and again, taking long ways to my class, to stop and look at it for a second, to stare into the eyes of the girl, I had never met. I began to wonder what she said to the graduating class, as she got up on that podium, knowing that every person there had plans, and a future and knowing that hers were about to take a nosedive. It bothered me so much, that I looked it up in the last graduating copy of the Franklin 2003. There is was, black and white, word for word. I think it perhaps made me understand a little bit better, her sheer blind ambition.
I guess I'm left with three options, I can be like my Mom and despite obstacles keep trying with blind ambition and become the valedictorian, I can be like my Dad I can skip classes, smoke outside the gym and throw everything away and hope that somehow I'd be able to accomplish something, or I can pick my own way, a mixture of the two. I still haven't decided. In the meantime, I'm doing my work and being the person everyone at my school loves to hate.
Living in Stars Hollow is hard, it's difficult to have people I don't know come up to me and state what a lovely girl my Mother was. Difficult going to my grandmothers house where there are pictures of her. I think it's the worse for Le-Le, she could probably strain her memory and not come up with one memory of our Mom, she was barley two when she left. Some days I feel sorry for her, because she never got to see the high points, she never got to see my Dad wake me up in the morning with a smile on his face, because that day was an 'airport holiday' where he would speed to the airport and we would wonder around the airport for an hour or more waiting for her to arrive. Le-Le will never know the time Mom and I had when she was pregnant, a time when I think she truly loved me. Sometimes I'm jealous of her, because I don't think Le-Le lays awake at night wondering why your Mom would chose to leave you, because for her it's the way it's always been and my Dad always candy coated the truth for her. For Le-Le Dad has always been there, she never needed anybody else. I have the good memories of Mom and the bad memories of Mom and they both hurt some days.
Those days are closer between living in Stars Hollow. Strain from being uprooted from my life, from school, from ghosts of my Mom whirled around leading into a fight between my Dad and I, that left Le-Le fleeing to Grandma's and Dad and I screaming at each other until our voices were hoarse and then some. I screamed things I didn't mean, and words I never thought I would use in pure hatred towards my Dad. I couldn't stop all the hate coming out of me, and he got it all. I stormed out and pounded the streets of Stars Hollow, smoking with a vengeance and listening to my music with the headphones cranked all the way up. Finally, I sat down on the bridge, dangling my feet in the water, still angry and trying not to feel guilty about the things I had said to him.
"Hey." In a moment, he was beside me, his feet dangling, pulling out a loose cigarette from the package beside me.
"Tomorrow I tell you you're not allowed to smoke." He stated exhaling smoke.
I nodded.
"I'm sorry Addy. I'm sorry for moving you here, for taking you away from your friends and your school and away from where things make sense."
"No, it's not you; it's just everything building up. At school, I feel so alone, all the kids are judgemental and rich, and they don't care about real things. They care about what type of car their parents money will buy, what they have to write in their essays to be get the right marks to get into Harvard, whose the most popular, who's the best. I don't want any of those things. Here is, difficult, I was taking orders for Luke and this overly large woman started fussing over me and how I talked, and all of the sudden she says, oh your Rory's boy. I wanted to scream at her, no I'm not. I'm sick of running into Mom everywhere I go in this town."
Dad exhaled. "I know what you mean, here I am 32 years old, a successful journalist, a single father of two great kids." He paused gave me crooked smile. "most of the time, and I come to this town and I feel like I'm 17 again. Still corrupting the town princess, still ruining her life. But it's good to be near Luke again, you guys have been getting along now that you're working there a bit?"
I shrugged. "Yeah." I liked Luke, I liked working in his diner taking orders and making the occasional hamburger.
"Dad, tell me the truth, all of the things I never heard, the real truth."
He told me. I wish I could tell you that this story will end in happily ever after. I can't say for sure. We may stay in Stars Hollow we may not. One day Le-Le may dance on Broadway, next to her headshot in the program, she'll thank her Father for always being there for her, her dance instructors, the original cast of Cats circa London April 2015, she may even thank me, one person will not grace the names on her program. Dad and I will be there when the curtains raise and the first to give a standing ovation. One person will always not be there. I don't know what I'll be, I don't know what the future holds for me but I know that whatever is out there for me, My Dad will always be there to catch me if I ask him, he will never write me off, or not be there for me. Because were family. The three of us, but I will always wonder even though now I know all of the things she said, why she didn't want me.