Author Note: This is my first Dawson's Creek fic. Please R&R tell me if you like the cliffhanger!
Disclaimer: Don't own DC in any way if I did, it would still be on the air. Love it. PJ!
Summary: Beginning-mid season four. After studying at Grams' house one night, the gang leave and Grams finds a suicide letter. Grams goes into full Miss Marple technique. Who does it belong to and can Grams find out in time?
"Hey, are you guys still coming around to my place, tonight?" Jen Lindley asked as she approached her friends, Joey and Pacey.
"Sure, count us in." Joey replied, to which she received a slight dig in the ribs from Pacey.
"I'm sorry, Lindley," Pacey started. "Whta my beloved here meant to say is, 'Will Dawson be there?' Well?"
"Well, that depends on what you define as Dawson being there, pers'e."
"I take it that's a yes, Jen." Joey smiled, pulling away from Pacey's grip. "And yes, we will be there."
Jen left the pair, just as Pacey took Joey's hand and led her to a deserted classroom.
"Jo, I thought we said it was best to stay away from Dawson for the moment? Things aren't at their greatest right now and we've hardly spent any time together since we got back. You bailed on me last night to go to some art thing with Jack and now this."
"Pacey," Joey began, pulling him closer to her and biting him softley on his lower lip.
"Hey, don't do that, Potter. You know you always win an argument by flirting. Don't flirt, this is a serious conversation."
"Okay, Mr.Witter!" Joey giggled. "I think we should go. We have nothing to hide and we're not ashamed of anything. All we're doing is spending a night with our friends, studying. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all."
"Okay." Pacey surrendered, taking her hand and squeezing gently. "I will go with you, Miss Potter; but I have to say, if that man pisses me off, I will have to give him a wedgie."
"You asked them?" Dawson shouted at Jen, throwing his hands into the air in disbelief. "How could you do that! You are the only person who knows what I have gone through this summer. It has been so hard from me, Jen! I have been living my life on a knife, just trying to forget what happened last year. It is bad enough that I have to see them around school, but to socialise with them too is just asking far too much!"
"If they can put it behind them for one night, I'm pretty sure that you can, too. It won't be that hard, Dawson. It's only a study session. A couple of hours; I mean, it's not as if they'll be dry humping on the kitchen table." Jen said, taking Dawson's arm, leading him away from the front entrance to the canteen.
Jack, who had been standing at the side, smiled at Jen's words, but the smile was soon wiped off his face, imagining what Dawson would say if it happened.
"Fine!" Dawson said, swinging his book bag over his shoulder, heading awy from Jen and Jack.
"Fine!" Jen repeated, laughing. "Be there at seven thirty. I'll order pizza!"
Andie McPhee leaned back in her chair in her English class. Glancing out the corner of her eye, she could see Joey Potter, The Woman Who Stole Her Man. No, not really. Andie and Pacey had split up a long time ago and she knew that he would eventually find someone else. She had prepared herself for it; just not for it beign so soon or with anyone so close. Recently, Andie had spent a lot of time just thinking about things. Not about Joey and Pacey in particularly; mostly about school and her older brother, Tim. For some reason, now more than ever she wanted to see Tim. He always seemed to posess the ability to make her smile, no matter what. That was what she wanted right now, to smile. The tablets she was on didn't let her do much of that. She couldn't really feel any emotion at all. She wanted to be happy and she knew that on some level, she must be, because she had most everything she hoped for - Jack was living back home now and getting on well with their father, school was going good and it looked promising that she would hear from Harvard soon. Why shouldn't she be happy?
Somehow, she felt unable to answer that question as she was feelin as low as she ever had done.
"Oh, Jackie, please don't touch me! Your hands are so . . . big and manly!" Squeeled Dave Rowan, one of the jerks on the football team. Needless to say, some of his followers applauded him by laughing along.
"Hey, shut your mouth, Rowan!" Jack's friend, Billy yelled back. "Hey, Jack, don't listen to them, man. They're creeps, they don't know you."
"I don't know why you defend me, Billy. Those guys were your friends too, 'till recent. You'll just end up getting the brunt of their abuse, too." Jack protested.
"Hey, my brother is gay and I don't like the way he was treated. He used to come home from school all the tiem with black eyes and once he even had a cracked rib. I used to stand by and watch, wishing I was old enough and strong enough to do something about it, but I couldn't. Do you know what happened to Aaron, Jack? One day, some guys on his football team bet him up and they just wouldn't stop. They actually left him for dead and he wasn't found till two days later. He died of internal bleeding to his brain. I'll be damned if I stand by and watch that happen to someone else, just because some guys are jerks."
Jack pulled on his sweater and hit Billy on the shoulder, gently. Billy nodded and Jack left the locker room.
Flinching, he pulled up the helm of his sweater to reveal bruises on his torso. He had gotten them the day before, but they were still raw and hurt like hell. It wasn't through beatings, like Billy had described, but it might as well have been; three guys had jumped him during yesterday's practise game. He told himself that it was just the disadvantages of football, but he knew fine well that the guys who did it clearly had problems with him being gay. Dave Rowan being one of the three.
Jack had tried so hard recently to tell himself that if he was honest with people, they would be recipritive towards him, It hadn't worked out like that, however. Most people in Capeside were like Billy and his friends: accepting him for who he was, but there were still a large majority of narrow-minded people who avoided him in the street or spread rumours about him at school and that was one thing that Jack couldn't take. He stopped dead in his tracks on his way over to meet Andy at the auditorium, Billy's words sinking into his brain.
Billy's brother died Jack thought to himself. He actually died because people wouldnt' accept him. What if things get worse for me? What if I don't have the strength to fight them off and I end up like Aaron Coulson? The thought scared Jack so much that he nearly fell to his knees when he came to the large oak tree that sat in the school grounds. He dropped his back to the grass and let his back slam against the bark as tears began strolling down his face and thoughts into his head. If things got worse, how would he survive it?
"Dawson, are you okay?" Gail Leery asked her son as he stormed in through the front door from school that afternoon.
"No, Mom, as a matter of fact, I'm not!"
"What's up, son?" His father, Mitch enquired, emerging from the kitchen with a bag of pretzels.
"You know how I told you that Jen, Jack, Andy and I were having a study session for our exams tonight?"
"Yeah, I remember." Said Gail, urging him to continue.
"Well, Jen took it upon herself to invite Joey and Pacey. I just don't get it, she knows what it's been like for me, how could she possibly ask me to sit in the same room as them for a few hours and make small-talk?"
"Well, Dawson, maybe Jen just wants the best of both worlds and who can blame her? She has a right to be friends with all of you and you have to accept that or you risk losing Jen, Jack and Andy, too. You have to start anew. Look at me and your mother. We couldn't be happier and it's all because we put the past behind us and moved on. Joey and Pacey are still your closest friends, no matter what you say or what happened. Maybe it's time to forgive and forget."
"Why can't you just let me have one teenage-angst related crisis without the morality? I don't want to hear what I should do, I just want to hear you sympathise. Is that too much?"
"Well, I'm sorry, honey," Gail began, taking the pretzels from Mitch. "We are your parents. We do the 'loving advise thing' not the 'sympathise and ignore thing'. Maybe you should go to the likes of Joey for that."
Dawson could hear his parents laugh at his dilemma as he made his way upstairs. Why couldn't they just understand? Why did they have to confuse his pain with over-exagerrated drama? Right enough, how could he expect his parents to understand him when no one else did?
He had just experienced the worst summer of his life and just as he thought the pain may be easing, the wound was slashed open again in the shape of Pacey and Joey's return. No one could comfort the loss and agony he was feeling; not even the movies, which surprised him, as he had once thought that no matter what his problem he would always find an answer and a solution in a film. Truth was, he hadn't even watched a single film since the night that he had first found out about Joey and Pacey's affair. They had ripped his heart out, destroyed his soul and stamped over the very essence that Dawson thought he was. He couldn't bring himself to watch a movie in the fear that it would leave him hurting all over again. Joey was the love of his life. There was no doubt about it. He loved Joey Potter, he needed Joey Potter and he hated Joey Potter. All at the same time he experienced those emotions; it seemed impossible to function from the pain he was feeling. desperately needed something to make it stop. He would have to find something to make it stop. If he couldn't have Joey then he felt the next best thing was that he would not have to relive the agony each day of seeing her with someone else.