Chapter Seventeen
Rory Gilmore was curled on the couch talking to someone on the phone as Paris Geller entered the room with her typical purposeful stride. Life was especially wretched this particular Monday. Chemistry—ever her downfall—was crushing her with particular vehemence today. She had performed the experiment three times and still could not get within the 0.05 standard deviations of the required percent yield of product. She was convinced that the insipid blonde bimbo across from her had switched her lab equipment—she had thought the collection flask looked a little foggy when she removed it from her drawer. It was the only probable explanation for the unusual ochre color her solution turned after she added the ethyl acetate. The vapid twit no doubt thought such puerile tricks would win her the highest grade and set the curve for the rest of the sheep.
Paris snarled in frustration as her bag flew against the wall and slid to the floor. The moronic teacher's assistant who ran the class was thick enough to suggest that she had contaminated her own equipment, but her next two trials had placed her results within acceptable parameters. Acceptable parameters! As if Paris Geller would endure such jejune banality as a mediocre A. She wanted the A, the grade that set her apart from the rest of the flock. She wanted it, and she would get it. Paris Geller always got what she wanted. She was no sheep to follow blindly the flock to the cutter's block. If that meant she had to work four times as hard as anyone else did, then so be it.
She would make the sacrifice.
She grimaced again, this time at a loud guffaw from the common room. Rory Gilmore. Bane of her existence. Her greatest rival. Her truest friend.
Her only friend.
Rory Gilmore was the only living being she considered her equal. She knew it the moment she saw the fire in the decorous waif who dared answer faster than she did in second year European History. Usually, she attacked such challenges with swift and brutal humiliation. Their eyes would bulge, and they would run. All of them. They would sweat. They would cry. They would lose.
Everyone that is, except for Rory Gilmore. She refused to back down and she never cried. Every time someone pushed her, the girl just pushed back. She matched Paris push for push, step for step. Rory never relented or gave up. She struggled, she fought, she persevered, and she won. Paris had grown to grudgingly respect and then appreciate the camaraderie and rivalry Rory offered. Because of Rory, she pushed herself, forced herself to succeed and chase the Dream when she would have slipped into ignorant complacency.
More importantly, Rory talked to her and listened when she responded. The day Rory had offered her ear and shoulder to cry on in the Chilton cafeteria had cemented the bond. She had betrayed Rory, thrown her and her mother to the wolves and gossipmongers of the hallowed halls of Chilton, and Rory had forgiven her without question, without pause. Rory had seen Paris' pain; a pain she had not shone to even her closest friends. She had understood.
Now, here she sat in her room in the dorm she shared with her best friend. "Yeah, Mitchum said that I can work on the weekends and semi-freelance." Rory sounded happy. There was nothing unusual about that. "I know but I'll work it in somehow." She sighed in exasperation. "I now you miss me. I miss you too. I'll be there for Spring Break. I promise. No, Logan's going to Europe, and I'm just about Europe'd out at the moment. I promise. You, me, and a bag of Red Vines every non-sleeping moment." She laughed again. "Farewell, O Great Giver of Life." Paris rolled her eyes. The bond between the Gilmore mother and daughter was almost unnatural. They were always laughing, together or at each other. It was freakish. No mother should be that close to her daughter.
Paris envied that connection.
She walked into the common room, swallowing the bitter resentment at her family that burned like bile in her throat. The last thing she needed to do was think about them.
"Hey, Paris, what's up?" Rory looked at her as though she were about to breathe fire.
"The fates have conspired against me today." She took out a large carton of macaroni and cheese from the refrigerator. "Today, the universe, and all the rest of Creation snubbed their collective noses at me."
"What's the problem?"
"Biochemistry."
"What about it?"
"Its continued existence isn't enough evidence to warrant my eternal enmity?"
"I've seen you have more reasons—credible reasons—for refusing to eat green Jell-O."
"I still say they make it from the byproducts of food processing plants. I can't find the article I read that proves it right now…"
"And, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I can't sympathize with you if I don't understand the problem."
"Whatever happened to female solidarity?"
Rory grinned and threw her hands to the ceiling much to Paris' displeasure. "Ya-Ya!" The waif at least had the temerity to blush in embarrassment. "Sorry, I've spent a lot of time talking to my mom. "
She waved her hand dismissively with a long-suffering sigh. "Whatever. Look, biochem isn't going the greatest and I just want you to hate it too."
"Alright. Damn biochemistry! Damn the carbon atom! Damn all metabolic processes!" She glared fiercely at Paris' offending textbook. "So wanna hear news?"
Paris shrugged as she nestled deeper into the couch. "Sure." Anything was better than thinking about her problems. Her real problems.
"My mom and Luke are back together!" Could Rory's smile be any brighter? Christ! She looked like her dad had just given her a pony and a unicorn for her birthday.
Sometimes, she really hated Rory.
Still, she needed to show at least some interest. Friends did that for each other, she had found. "Luke? The guy who went to your graduation?"
Rory nodded, her smile growing even wider as she began to tell the great love story that was the Luke and Lorelai Saga. Paris allowed the prattle to wash over her and soothe her own troubled mind. It really was a sweet tale, complete with drama and a malevolent villain (who only grew more cruel and vile with each recounting). It was a true love story fit for the movies. The two had separated and returned to each other against all odds, like fate. Paris wondered if she would ever find a love like that.
She dismissed the wistful thought with a flip of her honeyed hair. Paris Geller was not wistful. She was not some addled ditz who swooned over a man with a dashing smile or waited for the 'perfect guy' to come and sweep her off her feet. Those were not the required characteristics of a boyfriend. Compatibility was essential; respect, too. Some drive and ambition would be nice. Those qualities were necessary, and far too hard to come by in her opinion. Everything else was the base and licentious desires of a shallow heart swimming in a tide of never-ending puppy love and teenaged crushes.
Still, it would be nice to be swept.
"Paris, are you alright?" Concern thickened Rory's voice. How long had it been since she last responded?
"I'm fine. Excuse me if listening to the inspiring events of the sappiest love story ever told doesn't set my girlish heart all aflutter." She angrily turned away and devoured another spoonful of macaroni and cheese.
"Something is wrong, Paris! You're eating dairy." Paris began to speak in her defense but Rory quickly cut her off. She was the only person who dared do that. Professors quivered in fear beneath the baleful gaze such actions would inspire. "And your loathing of biochemistry is not enough to warrant such a desperate act." She leaned back in the couch a triumphant glimmer sparkling in her eye. "Spill."
"It's just been a rough couple of days." Paris looked in her carton with distaste, wondering how to not be caught lying to her friend. "My parents are going through another cycle of will-they-won't-they and…"
"They're bringing you into it again?"
Paris shook her head. "Actually, they've left me completely out of it, and I don't know which is worse: knowing everything and feeling torn, or knowing nothing and being left with the sinking feeling that I'll be celebrating Passover in two houses."
"Divided loyalties?"
"No, I'll just have to do it twice. It's either eight days spent between two houses, or they'll both insist on having the whole holiday, and I'll have to bounce between them like a stupid ping pong ball. I cannot do that Rory. I can't. It's bad enough I have to deal with them together. But at least then it's one house, and one time." She set the carton down on the table and took a steadying breath. Rory, for her part, seemed thoroughly confused by the entire idea. Of course she would be, she loved her mom. "Alright, tell me something good. I need something to renew my belief that the world is a good place."
"Oh well, I got an internship working at a paper for Logan's dad."
Paris tried to hide the disappointment in her voice "Oh that's great." Unsuccessfully.
"What? It is!"
"I thought you were all 'moral-girl'. You were going to do it on your own, no handouts. But hey, if you want to fall pray to the ethical pitfalls of nepotism, be my guest."
"I thought you'd be happy for me. This is a wonderful opportunity."
"You've always fought against kids at Chilton who did this: you've always said it was too easy to have things just given to you, or use Daddy's name and money. Why the change?"
"I want to be a correspondent for CNN; this is the kind of stuff I need to do."
"Sleep your way to the top?"
"What?"
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "You won't allow your grandparents to pay for college, but you will let your boyfriend get his dad to give you a job?"
Rory sighed, "This is different."
"How?" Paris' voice was cool, hard; she could not believe the Vestal Rory could be so corrupt or naïve.
"It just is."
She sighed again, this time in defeat. Rory could be so oblivious sometimes. Usually, that abstractedness worked in the girl's favor, and shielded her from the petty engrossments that filled the average teen's life. Now, however, Paris cursed that quality in her friend. "Nepotism just seems so evil."
"It does, however, make the world go round."
Paris dumbly nodded as she watched her friend in mute shock. Rory was changing, and not for the better. This was not good, not good at all.