Chapter 15

"Mom, have you seen my sweater?"

"I dunno!" Lorelai shouted from upstairs.

Rory frowned, rummaging through her obsessively neat drawers. "How do you not know?"

"It's not my sweater."

"Then why do you insist borrowing it all the time...?" Rory muttered.

"I heard that," Lorelai said, coming around the corner into Rory's room. Rory closed the draw and put her hands on her hips. "I said it out loud. Duh."

Lorelai raised a brow, then fell to her daughter's bed, cuddling Colonel Plucker underneath her chest. "Why such a charming mood tonight?"

Rory turned back to her drawers, reopening the ones she just rummaged through. "I can't find my sweater."

"Um..." She quirks her mouth to the side and stares up, pretending to think. "Check under the bed."

Rory sneers. "Why would my sweater be under the bed?"

"Be-e-cause it didn't wanna you to get caught cheating on the jeans?" She grinned cheekily and Rory stared at her with her failed attempt of a stern face.

Lorelai gave a quick brow raise. "Wow, Veronica Sawyer strikes again," she says sarcastically.

"What's you damage, Heather?" Rory half-heartedly snaps, keeping up on the outdated reference. Rory sighs, closing the drawers sharply and slumps over to the bed. Lorelai reluctantly nudges over for Rory to plop down. She closed her eyes. Lorelai tapped Rory with Col. Plucker's fluffy foot. "Hey."

"Mm?"

"What's wrong?"

Rory opened her eyes and stared into her mother's. "I don't wanna go to Grandma's tonight."

Lorelai's eyebrows were raised so high, she looked like Captain Crunch (his eyebrows come from out of his hat). "Really?"

"Don't act so surprised."

Lorelai smiled. "Sorry – it's just weird... Sort of like looking into a mirror..."

Rory rolled off the bed onto the floor and began searching for her sweater. "That would be insulting."

"Hey, you'd be lucky to look as good as I do at my age," Lorelai said, assuming her moody daughter was joking. She began patting proudly at her cheeks.

When Rory didn't respond, she continued in a more motherly manner. "Don't worry – I'm sure one of us will say something unpatriotic about George Bush's name, or mistakenly make fun of the polished silver, and we'll get kicked out before the poisoned desert even arrives."

Rory sat up on her knee caps, looking confused. "Poisoned?"

Lorelai scoffed like it was obvious. "Well, surely the maid will be pro Al Gore, get upset and either poison us... or set fire to the house."

Rory shrugged. "Well, it's better than cornering us into a bathroom, taking an axe to the door and saying 'here's Johnny'." She smiled innocently, then returned to looking under her bed. Lorelai sat up. "Ugh, just borrow one of mine."

"You mean from the person who hasn't done her laundry in over two weeks."

Lorelai gasped. "What, you keeping tabs on me, now?"

Rory's head popped back out again. "Well, someone's got to," she said then went back down under – don't interpret that dirtily.

"Okay," Lorelai began, removing herself from the bed, "You're crabby. And your crabby-ess – crabby-ess-ness? Crab-uless?"

4"–Crabby-ness," Rory corrected.

Lorelai placed Col. Plucker down on the bed gently. "Right." She pointed a dainty finger. "Well, your crabby-ness is starting to make me crabby too, so I'll leave you to your search for Neverland."

Rory sighed. "Thanks."

Lorelai left, then did a double-take, a hand resting on the door frame. "Oh, and be careful when looking in the closet – you might fall through and find yourself trapped in the magical world of Narnia."

Rory smiled half-heartedly. "Give me twenty minutes."

"I'll give you twenty-one minutes because you smell nice," she said with a positive tone and a cheesy smile, making Rory laugh.

Then when her mother left, she continued to search for the very specific sweater, for absolutely no reason in particular. Honest. (DO NOT READ ANYTHING INTO THE SWEATER.)