It wasn't until a week later that the subject of the tapes popped up again.
Rory had never been one to handle deficiency with grace. Unfortunately, she'd never been a person shop teachers favored very much either. Evidently, Rory found it unjust that favoritism (or in this case, lack of) could play such a crucial role in her GPA, and did not fail to address her complaints to the shop teacher.
"Rory," the teacher had spoken with eerie calmness, despite that the madly convulsing girl standing before him had accidentally dropped a hammer on his foot the day before, "The reason why you got a C in shop is has to do with an event that took place eight weeks ago."
"You mean when I set the sand paper on fire?"
"No, that was nine weeks ago."
"When I accidentally hit Jess in the face with the hot iron?"
"After that."
"…I almost tore Lane's fingers off with the dresser maple?"
"Presser table. And no, it was before that."
"You're going to have to specify, sir."
As it turned out, a tight-lipped knot had been apparent on her shop grade since the beginning of the quarter.
Her first project, a ceramic elephant, ended up blown to bits after she'd accidentally set the furnace on a high. Sadly, she (along with every other kid's project that had the misfortune of sharing a rack with hers) received an F on that assignment.
Furthermore, her woodburning- of which was essentially supposed to resemble the picture of a 'shadowy lighthouse', subsequencially ended up more 'shadowy' than 'lighthouse' after a brief attack by the forces of nature. Apparently leaving a murderously hot piece of tin next to an oily rag formulated a giant bombardment of flames.
As a result of her savagely destructive actions, Rory, always the unrelenting overachiever, found herself caught in a hapless ordeal.
Fail the easiest class known to caveman, or delay her social life to make up assignments in the time allotted after school. Indubitably, it was the latter.
Not a lot of people could be found on a Thursday afternoon- post learning hours. The woodshop teacher, not crazy enough to leave Rory Gilmore alone in a room with a hot iron, was indebted to stay with her. But eventually, torpor took its course on the pitiable man, and Rory was indeed left by herself with a hot iron while her teacher blew his Z's in the land of Nod.
Ceramic elephants were harder to make than they looked. It involved a good bucket of hand/hand coordination and the ability to use a stove, both of which she poorly lacked due to pathetic genetics from her mother's side.
But Rory had managed to push through it eventually. Sure, she'd settled for the microwave in the teacher's lounge as a strategic substitute for the furnace, but never mind that. A gloopy, melting elephant was better than no elephant. Rory figured sucking up with a couple 'Gee Mr G, you've been looking less fat' lines should do the rest.
After Operation Ceramic Elephant was completed, Rory had all intentions of heading home. Home sweet home, where she looked forward to fuss to her mother over her lack of domestic skills. This, however, never happened.
One was because the shop teacher was not as impressed with oozing clay-ish specimen as one might hope. Thus, Rory was forced to use the furnace, while the teacher dropped back into his much-needed beauty sleep.
So off she went on her merry-fuming way to the home-economics room, figuring an oven and a furnace to have many-a-thing-in-common. This was a mistake, as it was the cause of the unveilment of--
Two, the tapes. Rory had discovered the tapes all by accident, but when she did, boy was she sorry.
It started off innocently enough, she'd set the oven on fire. As a last attempt to salvage her beloved GPA, Rory managed to Ladder 49 her violently abused ceramic elephant by sticking an el cheapo fork in the further-more maltreated objet trouvé.
Gravely, our heroine overlooked a slight deficiency in her wordlessly moronic actions. Yes, fire was hot.
So the poor burning elephant, after being impulsively tossed from the hands of a rueful schoolgirl screaming of conspiracy, proceeded to eat up half the couch with it's flames.
At that point, not even Rory's genius decision to make use of the nearest fire extinguisher could've helped that ceramic elephant from meeting it's doom.
The fire was put out, and Rory gave up all hopes of passing shop. Figuring the least she could do was conceal the scorched sofa, Rory began the literally back-breaking task of dragging the behemoth out to the dumpsters.
She was halfway out the door when the first tape was discovered, casually apparent as monstrous cotton couch-stuffing poked out beside its dormant form. Wondering what kind of idiot stuck a videotape in a place where people rested their napping posteriors, Rory removed the object-in-question from its prison.
'How nice,' she thought, 'Now what could it possibly be? An episode on the evolution of sandwich fungus? Mary-Kate and Ashley's Sleepover Party?
Far from it, actually. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of the messy words imprinted across the side.
'Mr. G and S's closet-sex footage'
The tape was hurled across the room in disgust, and then retrieved after Rory decided to spare the vacuum lady from the atrocity.
As far as she was concerned, there was only one Mr G in the school. And that was the lazy bum dozing away in the metalshop room with the hot iron she'd unintentionally left on. She couldn't think of any reason why anyone would want to have sex with that guy. Scratch that, she didn't want to think about sex and Mr G in any context at all.
"Ew…." Rory sniveled, engulfed with the shuddering ickiness that comes with the territory of imagining your educator partaking in crimes of passion. Purged with the sudden desire to become a nun, she made a hasty effort to stick the tape back inside the couch. As a result, two, three, then five other cases of black plastic came into view. Good grief, it was an entire empire of porno films.
She yanked the second case from the cotton padding. 'Mr. G and S's classroom-sex footage', it read, in the same discordant scrawl. The painfully familiar discordant scrawl.
Rory scowled at the lettering, having recognized it as belonging to the very same lunkhead who wrote insulting gibberish all over the margins of her Anne of Green Gables.
"Jess, that sick buffoon," she muttered, yanking the couch cushion of distorted tapes along with her on the quest to liquefy the hooligan.
OOOOOOO
"Soda or vodka?"
Rory tried remaining collected under the not-yet-liquefied hooligan's scrutinizing gaze, though failing madly as thoughts of the tapes resurfaced. "I'm actually not very thirsty Jess. My appetite for all things toothsome has been tainted."
Jess cast her a long glance, the third one that evening, "We have chairs, you know." He was referring to her insistence on sitting upon the polluted sofa cushion dragged arduously off the back of the late Home Ec couch all the way up to Luke's apartment. There'd been a couple funny looks and a few fingers pointed in her direction, but never mind, that was not the issue here.
"Oh yes, those chairs. No thank you, I prefer to sit on this. It's like comparing generic toilet paper to Charmin'. Inconceivable." It really was.
His gaze didn't leave the cushion, "Uh huh. It looks painfully similar to couch in the Home Ec room."
Rory chuckled nervously, patting the seat a little too enthusiastically, "What? You mean this fellow? No! No it is not the cushion of the couch located in the Home Economics room, although it may appear to be of the same material, it is in fact, not." Not even Pinocchio could match up to her horrendous lying credentials.
Jess knew this. "Get off."
Rory frowned, "Excuse me?"
"How many cushions have twenty different forms of swear words written out on the side? Get off the cushion, Gilmore."
She crossed her arms with admirably mulish panache, overlooking that it was often considered folksy to sit on moth-eaten woolsacks. "For your information Jess Mariano, I appear to have developed a recent infatuation for all things relating to testosterone-fueled sleazeballs, this happens to include the forms of blasphemy they use."
"And apparently their butt-rests as well. Stop being such a ballsy pighead and get off my tapes." Jess made a brash grab for the cushion
Rory pulled it instinctively from his line of contact, "Aha! So you admit it!"
"I never denied it, idiot."
"Well you implied it, jerk."
"You don't know what's inside them, give it to me." The gangland glare was now in order.
"Oh really? Because I think it was written out pretty clearly, regardless of your slovenly penmanship."
Gangland glare fizzled out to mere displeasure. "Good grief. Then tell me. Tell me what's inside the couch."
"This," she shook the latter, "is not a couch. It is a cushion. And you know perfectly well what's inside the--"
He made a dive for the cushion. And though emerging successful, Jess soon discovered himself, however eminent in his tackling qualifications, arising turbulently empty-handed.
The cushion was tossed. "You stole my tapes."
"No actually, I stashed them. And I will burn them and they will be lost forever until there are some heartwarming confessions done right now, as you sit vulnerably atop my palm. Oh wait- but if you even begin to describe in gruesome detail what intimate hankerings are contained in these sin-cases of plastic--"
"For the love of god, they're not a sex tapes."
"Nice try, bud."
"They're footage of the varsity coach stealing funds from the treasury."
Rory scoffed from her cross-legged position on the floor, unfazed by the fact Jess was now towering over her form, "What, do you think I was born yesterday?"
"You sure act like it."
"Ah, burn. I don't believe you."
"Then go ahead and watch them."
Her mouth dropped, "Like hell!"
"Luke's been on my back lately, so I wrote sex-tape on them to get Mr. G to lift my shop grade, after your stupid ceramic elephant exploded in that furnace and broke my pot."
Oh yes. That.
"He and Shane were involving in this whole illegal sex escapade thing for a while, and I figured I'd do the smart thing and use her promiscuous tendencies to my advantage."
Promiscuous indeed.
This new revelation was pondered briefly, "But…you… Gah, you're such a beatnik! Why in the world would you hide it at school? And in a flammable couch of all things."
"Easy access."
"Idiot."
"Yes. Can I have my tapes back now?"
"Ha. No sooner should I stick forks in my nose."
"That can be arranged."
How dare he. "How dare you. Now you can't have your tapes back."
"Then I'll find them."
Rory resisted the urge to chuckle sinisterly. "Will you?" she asked gleefully, failing to appear unoffending, "Because while you were off shooting squirrels as a tot, I was playing scavenger hunt with all the normal little kids."
"You forget that you often hid your retainer in my sink."
She chose to ignore the comment. "Do you know what karma is, Jess Mariano?"
"A series of coincidental events often mistaken as twists of fate for the comfort-seeking god-may-help-us-ers."
"Yes, well then irony-" and evidently morbidity, "-will rule the world again. Your tapes, for the time being, are mine. Do you know what this is called, Jess?"
"Foreplay."
Ah, she decided to high-hat that as well. "This is called consequences for your petulant blackmailing of guileless beings where in return you yourself and you are having your own disgusting cough medicine shoved back down your esophagus." Awfully long title.
"Whatever. I don't really care about the tapes anyway."
"Haha! I know what you're doing!" she pointed an accusing finger at the airily blasé boy, "This is called reversed psychology! You slimy slug—
"They're junk."
"You're trying to trick me! But no matter, I watch Dr Phil. And as Dr Phil, I say that you are a compulsive liar!"
"Jeez…"
"Not so smart now, are you?"
"No, I'm just wondering how long it'd take this idiot girl pointing her finger at me to realize she's got a tape sticking out of her jacket."
Oh curses. She made a futile try at concealing the tape once more, only to find herself savagely tackled and eventually straggled in a vicious headlock. Rory pondered briefly on whether or not this was a low-cost substitute for the candy and flowers thing other couples were doing. Perhaps Jess was too thifty to afford chocolate hearts and sunflowers, maybe that was why he was trying to throttle her in the middle of the living room.
His fingers closed on the plastic, wrenching the tape from her disadvantaged grasp in a barreling lurch. Her hands instinctively moved to recollect the possession, opening her mouth to yell blasphemies at the imbecilic barbarian lying astraddle on her poor crushed form.
It was her fourth Godzilla mistake that day, as she soon discovered herself wasting her denunciations through Jess' mouth.
'You heinous bastard' transpired as 'Blue paint is mustard', and 'Get off me' was reduced to 'Ticks on fleas.'
The insults remained unheard. So Rory, having learned a thing or two from Ralph Macchio, did not hesitate any longer to bash Jess first in the gut, then on the side of the head with her fist. Unconcerned with the prospect of him possibly receiving brain or spleen damage, she jerked the tape (and her mouth, for that matter) back into her custody.
Her next impulse was to forrest gump her damn ass out of the agonizing Hades den. And just as the illustrious concept of freedom tasted fresh over her tongue, it was shattered, after realizing her face was now mashed into the carpet.
Determining that the determinant of the misery of her face was Jess, who managed to get a good hold of her knees and was in the process of aspiring to snatch back the video, Rory aimed to kick the aggressor's ill-used noggin. When this failed, she settled for her last resort.
"Luke!" she shouted, still holding the tape above her head, "Jess is manhandling me!"