Sorry it took me so long. I've had a bad week, I just had my worst birthday ever (I got really sick and couldn't do anything!), and I think I'm having a quarter-life crisis (if there's actually such thing). Oh, and the rain is wearing me down. Luckily, this chapter was finished before the weather managed to bring me down (not much to do, you know, though it gives me an excuse to drive around in my new caaaar!!!). But that's beside the point. End of phase one. Too many phases yet to go.

Shouts out to my good mate, Sebastian Melmoth whom, even if he's unable to co-write this with me as we had originally planned, has decided to be my beta reader nonetheless and contribute that way in the making of this fic. I really appreciate his assistance, and I'm sure he'll do a fine job. Oh, and thanks for the birthday present!!!! I loved it!!!!

Disclaimer: Don't own recognizable characters or names or places or events. They belong to Barbara Hall and CBS. I do own original characters, names, places and events. I'm not making any profit off of this.

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The Beginning of the End

-by La Gioconda

Chapter Four – All I need is a little discourage

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Joan was glad Saturday had finally come so she could sleep in after a long first week of school, and after all the tossing and turning she had done the previous nights, which she blamed on the drugstore incident. Now that things had been straightened out, she could rest her mind. Besides, she didn't think her houseguest would have wanted to get up early on a Saturday, either. It wasn't until a quarter to twelve when they began to wake up, reluctant to get out of bed just yet.

They talked quietly over bowls of Cheerios about what they were to do now that Joan knew about Jordan's kleptomania; apparently, Jordan had not only a bottle of Ralph Lauren perfume to return, but also a pink top to the local Suzy Shier, a stapler and a set of screws to the hardware store, and she would have had to return a pack of gum to the convenience store, if she hadn't eaten it already. After recovering from the shock of that information, Joan agreed she would accompany Jordan to each place on Monday afternoon, to return the respective items, and Jordan would have to apologize profusely to the store managers and clerks. Neither knew what reactions to expect from these people, but they could only hope for the best; after all, the worst that could happen was that Jordan could get banned from the stores, the stores could press charges (perhaps Joan would be turned into a sort of scapegoat and get dragged into the mess), and they would both be utterly embarrassed. At least they both would have a clear conscience. Jordan, of course, was hesitant about going through with it at all; to hell with clearing her conscience, she hadn't even taken those things purposely. But she knew she owed it to Joan, because she was trying to help her overcome this problem, so she agreed.

Around two, Joan walked Jordan to her house, since there was not much else to do. The air was dense and the sun was a non-show, auguring rain.

"So tell me about you. I barely know anything about you," Joan was saying as they strolled down a long picturesque street she had never gone by, full of sprawling Victorian houses with well-kept gardens.

Jordan kicked a stone with her boot. "Like what?"

"Like… well, you mentioned a best friend… Dante was his name?"

"Yes, Dante Venútolo," Jordan replied with a grin. "He's my childhood best friend. A great guy. He's an artist, like me, except that his field is photography. His father's a photographer for this weekly magazine, which is like the Italian version of the Time. And I think that, to some extent, Dante eventually will follow on his father's footsteps. He's been travelling a lot with him lately, to these otherworldly places, like Egypt and Siberia. Right now, I don't even know where he is. When I was on my way here, he was setting off to Thailand…" she trailed off and looked longingly at the sky, and then she sighed. "I miss him."

"I can imagine," Joan replied, not knowing what else to say. They remained quiet for a while, until Jordan spoke again.

"You know, Adam actually reminds me a lot of Dante," she began, and Joan nearly winced. Just when she was starting to like Jordan; there was something about listening to Jordan talk about Adam that Joan didn't like. As if Jordan and Adam were long-time-no-see ex boyfriend and girlfriend reminiscing on shared moments and Joan had no business in their little club. Which was completely untrue, but it still made her feel hurt; as if Adam was acting like that on purpose, just to smite her.

"Really?" she said, trying to be nonchalant. Jordan nodded.

"They're both so sweet and soft-spoken. And they're true artists; like it's not so much about the knowledge or the backdrop, but about putting their hearts into it." Joan only nodded, not very sure she knew what Jordan meant. "They're just so genuine. And they both seem to have that gift of looking into people's souls. You think they're off into their own little worlds, but actually they might just be the most perceptive people in the room."

Joan nodded, and was thoughtful for a moment. Yeah, that sounded like Adam, alright. And the fact that Jordan knew this caused that little annoying itch on the back of Joan's mind to start prickling again. Right, so it was back to not liking Jordan, she thought bitterly. This girl had no right to swoop in a steal Adam away just because they clicked right from the beginning. Ok, so it wasn't like Joan owned Adam or had any sort of power over him whatsoever, but if there was a chance there could be a tug-o-war over Adam Rove between Jordan and Joan, then Joan wasn't going to give up so easily.

What in the world am I talking about? Joan asked herself, feeling silly. Here she was planning her counterattack, when she couldn't even be sure if there was actually any sort of spark between her supposed boyfriend and the new girl. And she sort of owed it to Jordan to not draw rash conclusions about her anymore. She had set the record straight with her once; now she had to do it again.

"Here's my stop," Jordan said all of a sudden, startling Joan out of her mind rambles. They stood in front of a white Victorian house, barely visible from the curb because of the large cherry blossom tree planted in the front and all the bushes and hedges growing around the property. Definitively someone who lived in a house like this one didn't steal out of necessity.

Jordan pushed the door of the white picket fence open. "Thanks for walking with me. I would invite you in, but my house is a mess. I promise, some other time, when it looks decent, I will have all of you over," she said and began to wave goodbye.

"Wait! Jordan," Joan said quickly before Jordan turned away. "Before you go, be honest with me." Deep breath. Here goes… "Do you like Adam?"

Jordan grinned. "Of course. He's so nice," she replied. "It's so hard to find guys that are genuinely sweet as he is."

"No, I mean… do you like him like him… if you know what I mean?" Joan asked again. Jordan blinked in surprise; Joan tried not to look mortified.

"Oh… well, I guess I… don't know. I hadn't even thought about it," Jordan began tentatively. "I guess I could. I mean, he's cute and sweet, but… well, I was so glad that he was talking to me, that someone was talking to me, when I first got to Arcadia High, that I didn't even consider it. I guess not, not really, we didn't hit it off like that, we just… hit it off." She fell silent, and looked at Joan as if waiting to see if her answer was satisfactory.

"I see," Joan replied, keeping a straight face. Well, that was settled. Jordan didn't look at Adam that way; but there was still the matter of how Adam looked at Jordan.

What if he had a crush on her? It was possible, even when Joan assured herself Jordan was not Adam's type of girl (what type of girl was Jordan, exactly, anyway?) However, Joan never knew what to expect from Adam. He had been acting very oddly these past days, indeed, and it brought her no sense of security. Sometimes it felt like he was ready to fall out of love with Joan –if ever he was in love with her, or anything more than merely infatuated—, forget he had ever liked her, and just move on. Joan remembered she had once actually hoped that would happen, so that things between them could become uncomplicated. Now… now she wasn't so sure. Now she just wanted things to go back to the way things were, before the new girl showed up, before she started feeling so insecure of herself…

"Even if I did like him," Jordan continued, interrupting Joan's thoughts again, "I don't think he would feel the same way."

Joan was slightly taken aback. She thought about something nice to say. "What do you mean? He could like you… you're pretty and nice… any guy could like you." She couldn't believe she was actually saying that to Jordan Canavaggio. Surely Jordan was not a girl who would need a boost of ego when it came to guys.

Jordan smiled sheepishly and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "How sweet of you to say that," she said. She glanced behind her shoulder at her house, and then looked back at Joan, leaning casually on the fence door. "But he's obviously caught up in someone else."

Joan froze on the spot. "He… he is?"

"Oh, I thought you'd know. I thought you guys were close."

"We… are…" Joan couldn't register what she had heard. I knew it, she suddenly thought miserably. She had been right, to a certain point, about Adam's odd behaviour… maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Maybe Jordan was making wrong assumptions. After all, Jordan didn't seem to know that Joan and Adam were sort of an item… to a certain, very abstract, hardly definable extent. If Jordan didn't know about it, Joan wasn't about to tell her; she had to find out what she was talking about, perhaps this is what she and Adam had discussed so privately ever since they met.

Well, maybe you know better than me," Jordan said, not noticing Joan had gone very still and very quiet. "His manner is completely different when he talks about her. It's not so much about what she's like, but about how she makes him feel."

Great, Joan thought. Now what am I supposed to do? She started to feel very bad. If there was a chance that Adam had finally moved on from Joan, then she was messed up. Because she just figured out that, besides the trouble with Jordan's shoplifting incident, Adam Rove –and the feeling that she was losing him— had been the real reason why she had been tossing and turning the past few days. She did not like the feeling at all.

"I can't wait to meet her," Jordan said with a grin, oblivious to Joan's misery. "Sounds like she's great."

"Do you know her name?" Joan asked, determined to uncover the mystery once and for all. It was impossible that she could feel any worse than she already did. She just had to know whom Jordan was referring to.

"Oh, well, I don't know her surname, but her name is Jane," Jordan answered nonchalantly. "So… do you know her?"

Joan couldn't answer at first. A very amusing tingling sensation had just exploded inside of her. If she had heard right –and she was pretty sure she had—, then Jordan had just made her day, her week and maybe even her month.

Jordan suddenly looked worriedly at Joan, wondering why she was not speaking. "Joan?"

"Oh," Joan mumbled, coming out of her trance. "Um… I'm Jane."

Jordan blinked a couple of times, thinking she hadn't heard correctly. "But I thought your name was Joan," she pointed out, breaking into a smile, as if she figured Joan was pulling her leg.

"Adam calls me Jane. He's the only one who does. It's like a pet name." Joan was trying not to smile.

"Oh," Jordan said, frowning in comprehension. "Oh…" she repeated, realizing perhaps she shouldn't have said anything at all. "Uh-oh…" she muttered under her breath, suddenly looking fearful. She looked uncomfortably at Joan, then grinned stupidly. "I've got to go," she blurted out and hurried away without giving Joan a chance to say anything else.

"Bu- Jordan, wait!" Joan called after her, reaching out to grab her arm but missing. Jordan yelled goodbye and rushed through the front door, disappearing inside the house.

Joan laughed. She wished she hadn't scared her away. She felt like hugging Jordan and swinging her around and dancing. As she walked the path they had come from –with a slight skip on her step—, she suddenly felt very silly, not only because she was speechless, but because she was giddy with joy and suddenly the sun was shining, the flowers were singing, and nothing could dampen her Disney-music-sequence, Singing-in-the-rain mood right now, not even—

"Hello, Joan."

Joan stopped skipping like an idiot and found God –had to be Him- raking around a flower bed inside the garden of a yellow house nearby. He was a stout white man with scarce hair and a pot-bellied shape beneath a blue jumpsuit.

"Oh, it's you," Joan said, pretending annoyance, when actually she was glad for once to see the Almighty hanging around at hand. God gave her a wry smile.

"I take it things went quite well," He said. Joan knew He meant 'things with Jordan'.

"As if you didn't know," she replied.

"But it doesn't end there. You know that, don't you?"

"You weren't worried at the beginning, were you? Why worry about it now?"

"Oh, no, no worries," God conversed casually as He continued with His work. "But I should get too confident. You might get distracted now that some very valuable information has been revealed to you."

Joan knew what God was referring to. "Well, I've been worried about Adam's attitude toward me, but now that I know I've been wrong about it, I can relax. It's not like I'd get sidetracked because of it. I'm still kind of mad at him because he's ignoring me."

"He's not ignoring you. You take up a lot of his time."

Joan stared dumbfounded at God. He knelt beside the flower bed and studied the blossoms; they were red and had many thin long petals. "Just don't play hard to get; it's very annoying when you do that." He picked one and stood up, then held it out to Joan. Joan looked at it strangely.

"What is it?"

"Your birth flower," God said matter-of-factly. Joan cocked an eyebrow and God rolled His eyes. "Chrysanthemum," He added.

"Oh… thanks."

God nodded and went back to raking. "Now go do your homework. It's your last year; your grades are important. Don't slack off."

Joan stomped her foot. "Ooh, you can be such a… a… an extortionist!" she complained. God looked unabashed.

"Aw, Joan, you know it's for your own good."

Joan wanted to throw a comeback, but none came. She huffed and stormed away.

"Have a nice weekend, miss!" God called after her as she was going. She glared at him over her shoulder and continued. The nerve! she was thinking to herself. God is manipulative. Who would have guessed? And then He wonders why people fear Him—

"Jane."

Joan stopped dead in her tracks and looked up. As she reached the end of the street and came out to the main road, she saw Adam walking quickly toward her with a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He grinned when he saw her; she was taken off guard by this encounter. "Adam… h-hi, um… what are you doing here?"

"Looking for Piedmont Street. This is it, isn't it?" he said.

Joan looked overhead and found the green sign that read "Piedmont St.". "Apparently," she answered. "You're not here to see Jordan, are you?" she asked, in spite of everything she had found out in the past fifteen minutes; she was still wary. If Adam liked her so much, why didn't he show it?

Adam looked puzzled. "Jordan lives here?" he asked, and that was good enough for Joan. "I didn't know. Oh, well, no, there are some of my dad's clients who live here. I'm running a few errands for him, got some things to deliver. And I'm running late, so sorry if I don't stay and chat," he explained in his usual soft paced voice, even when he was in a hurry. Joan smiled in spite of herself.

"Oh, don't worry, we'll talk later," she replied with a wave of her hand. Adam suddenly gazed fixedly at Joan's hand. She realized he was looking at the flower God had given her. He pointed at it curiously.

"Chrysanthemum," he said. Joan was surprised he knew the name.

"Yeah, it's, um… well, apparently it's my birth—"

"Your birth flower. Yeah, I know," Adam interrupted her, sounding very serious all of a sudden. Joan frowned in confusion. He cleared his throat. "So ahem… who gave it to you?" he was trying to sound casual. Joan could have burst into a laughing fit. Oh so that was why he was like this!

"Oh, it's from… a friend. Nothing more," she answered nonchalantly, trying to hide her wicked smile. Adam nodded in understanding, even when he didn't look convinced. He cleared his throat again. Joan did too. "Okay, well, I've gotta go, and I guess so do you, so I'll see you later." She wished she could stay there and be with him.

"Yeah, okay," he said after a pause. Joan dedicated him a smile.

"Bye, Adam."

"Bye, Jane."

Joan started walking away, but when she crossed the street and reached the opposite sidewalk, she glanced over her shoulder at him. Just then she realized Adam was looking over his shoulder too; their eyes met for a second, and then they both looked away and went on. Joan felt her cheeks flush, and she guessed Adam was blushing, too. But what the hell; she was too content to care. Looking back again, she saw Adam walk past God still raking around the flower bed of the yellow house. God watched Adam walk by, then He caught Joan's eye and grinned. Joan grinned back and waved.

Well, she had had a very amusing week, and an even more amusing one ahead of her. Maybe this was the omen for the rest of the year that she had been waiting for. Maybe this was, after all, only the beginning of one very interesting year.

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Alexz: Alright, for those who don't know it, Erika Weston is based on our friend Patricia (who is really Aussie and really demented, by the way), Dante, whom you will meet in future chapters, is based partly on Mike himself and partly on our friend Jake (he's a modern day Harry Potter, I'm telling you. Even looks like him.) And Jordan or Giordana is based on –what a shock!— me. Now I'm not saying I'm super gorgeous or super popular (and I'm definitively not a kleptomaniac), but I'm quite pretty, aren't I?

Mike: Lovely.

Alexz: And I've got my way with people.

Mike: You're a charming little snob.

Alexz: Unfortunately, I am a snob.

Mike: You say it like it's a bad thing.

Alexz: And you say it like it's not, because you are a snob too.

Mike: You're worse than me. And that's it; I've had the last word.

More coming soon. Read and review, please. Grazie, Fanfiction Net! Good night!

[ In the darkness ]