Chapter Six: Ring-a-Ding-Ding!

"You know your situation! UCLA won't accept you if you drop out of this program!" Al Spencer sternly reminded his star quarterback in a loud, raspy whisper.

"I know, Al, I know," David Nolan assured his coach and father - well, adoptive father, anyway. "It's just that -" he continued meekly until Al cut him off.

"It's just that what?" Al demanded, his voice becoming lower and more threatening. He quickly glanced over at a blond girl a few yards away, who seemed piqued by their conversation. David had noticed her too, but hastily averted his eyes. "It's just that you want to throw everything out the window? Everything you've been working your entire life for? What I've spent my whole career on? This is your chance to get out of this Podunk town and play for the big leagues. No more fifty people in the stands. Crowds of fifty thousand will be chanting your name! You'll be rightly revered for all your talent, and I'll be alongside you, helping you every step of the way. I'll be proud to call you my son." Al placed a gentle hand on David's shoulder

"Really," David said hoarsely, swiping Al's hand away. "I thought you were already proud." He stalked off, not knowing where he was going, but anywhere was better than standing next to his step-father. He found himself in the parking lot, absent-mindedly hopping into his car and shoving the keys into the ignition. It was cold inside his old, barely functioning '79 Chevy, but he didn't turn the heat on. He wanted to feel the numbness. He felt guilty about the way he treated his father - after all Al had sacrificed to help him succeed, it wasn't fair for him to lose his temper like that.

David never had a father - a father he remembered, anyway. He was long gone before David was born. David had been content having just his mother, Ruth, not missing the fatherly relationship he never had. He had nine years with her - only nine - before she died of cancer. It felt more like seven, really, when he knew the real her. Not the limp body on the hospital bend with tubes sticking out of her. He was left with the neighbors most of the time she was unwell, since they couldn't afford a babysitter, all expenses going towards keeping her alive so she could take care of her son. It was a fool's errand. She could barely walk, let alone take care of a small boy. Still she tried, and it would break her heart every time she came home from the hospital, and David would ask: "Are you all better now, Mommy?"

"Yes, I'm getting better, sweetie," she would reply, smoothing out his hair, and kissing the top of his head.

One day, Ruth went to the hospital, and David expected her to be home in a few days like always. Only she didn't come back. He sat in the driveway for nearly a week, with rations and a cup to pee in, (he did the later behind some bushes, thankfully) the rest of the neighborhood whispering behind his back. But he didn't care. The only thing that mattered was his mother.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, David's football coach at the rec center, Al Spencer, walked up to him on the driveway, the only one brave enough to face the sight of a little boy crumbling to the ground at the dreaded truth. David smiled as his mentor knelt down next to him. Everyone on the block was watching through their blinds.

"Are we on a stakeout, champ?" Al asked, ruffling David's hair. This only made him grin wider. Al frowned.

"I'm watching for my mom," David explained. Al, of course, already knew. The townspeople had already given him fair warning as to what he was about to get himself into.

"Your mom, huh?" Al repeated, prolonging the inevitable devastation. "Where's she been?"

"The hospital," David replied nonchalantly.

Silence. David looked up at the graying man crouching beside him

"I'm sorry," Al shook his head abruptly. "I know where she's been." David shifted his gaze, staring straight ahead, looking for any sign of his mother. There was none. "She loves you very much," Al went on.

"I know," David gave a lopsided smile, one that would melt girls' hearts in a few years.

"I'm glad," Al smiled sadly. "And you know that whatever happens, even the worst imaginable, she will always love you. No matter what."

"Yeah," David's voice trembled, and he was starting to look worrisome.

"David," Al whispered as he smoothed the little boy's hair, just as his mother had always done. "She's gone."

"Gone where?" the little boy's voice caught in his throat. But no sooner than David had asked the question, it hit him. "She's not coming home, is she?" His was beginning to quiver, but he looked up at Al, hope still behind his eyes.

"No, she isn't, son," Al choked out, pulling the boy into a tight embrace and cradling his head. At first, David cried silently. But the quietness turned to whimpering, and the whimpering turned to sobbing, and the sobbing turned to wails. Everyone watching from their blinds turned away, unable to watch.

Al had already adopted David by the time the feeling of being an orphan hit him. Yet, it never went away completely. It was burning a hole in his chest as he sat motionlessly in his car. And the worst part was that he had no one to talk to about it - except Regina. Out of everyone at Storybrooke High, Regina was the only one who knew. And he loved her for it. He loved how he could tell her things, and how trustworthy she'd been by not telling anyone else. He didn't want to be seen as a victim. As far as everyone knew, Al was David's biological father and his mother was always away. They may have sounded somewhat pitiful, but having an alive and breathing mother who was successfully providing for her family by traveling on business trips was overlooked fairly easy compared to a mother lying six feet under ever since she's finally succumbed to cancer. Tears welled in David's eyes as he thought of her. Her curly black hair and warm smile. Her laugh. The way she told stories - they were all so vivid. He'd forgotten her voice though. That made him saddest of all. But he could remember her smell, faintly, still, but he remembered nonetheless. She always smelled like carnations. Carnations and dogs - but in a good way. She'd been working at the pet shelter since before he was born. That was why he volunteered there now, in remembrance of her.

The first teardrop trickled down his face. He hastily drove out of the parking lot before another fell.

Mary Margaret had every intention of riding her bike all the way home as fast as she could. Maybe even breezing past an old woman clearly in need of help while crossing the street. She was that desperate. She was about halfway there (no old women, thank God) when she skidded to a stop in front of an alleyway. Sliding off the bicycle seat, she escorted her means of transportation to the brick wall that made up one side of the alley and propped it up with the kickstand. She leaned against the cool brick, relieving the back of her neck of some of its tension. She couldn't let her fear of Regina keep ruling her life like this. She wasn't very concerned with herself - utter, socially-ruining humiliation she could take. Mary Margaret had always yielded to the Queen of Storybrooke for her mother's sake. Mrs. Blanchard had been made senior partner at a law firm, along with one her closest friends. That friend happened to be male. An anonymous rumor had been started, accusing the two of sleeping together on a regular basis. The rumor was false, of course, but there had been similar instances at the firm before, and they weren't taking any chances. The alleged lovers were shunned, particularly Mrs. Blanchard. It had been less than a day after Mary Margaret and Daniel's spin the bottle kiss. And the call came from an office at the high school board building, where Cora, Regina's mother, worked. It wasn't hard for Mary Margaret to put the pieces together. Destruction. That was Regina's endgame. And she was getting Mommy to carry out her dirty work.

Mary Margaret didn't tell her mother about the threats she constantly received from Regina. Her mother would only want to do something about it, and with Cora on the school board... there was no telling what could happen to Mary Margaret's college plans all because of her say-so. But why stand up for herself now? Why risk everything when she was so close? Acceptance letters came in a few months. She didn't want anything to jeopardize her getting a scholarship somewhere. It was something Emma said. About being adventurous during their senior year. Mary Margaret found herself looking back on the past three and half years of her high school experience with regrets. She didn't want to remember the whole thing that way. She'd been mooning over David Nolan ever since he was singl, like, a millennia ago. And how many times had she talked to him? Even with working at the same place for nearly seven hours a day? None. He'd said hello to her when they started at the pet shelter together, and you know what she did? She made an unattractive squeaking noise and shuffled away. Way to make a good first impression.

Mary Margaret stood there for a while, grunting in confirmation whenever a particularly nice passerby would ask her if she was alright. She realized wallowing in self pity and fear wasn't going solve her head-bitch-out-to-get-her problems, so reenergized herself and jumped on her bike with a renewed purpose.

But first, she would have to ask her father for permission.

David had no idea where he was going, but he knew somehow that he'd end up turning to his mother. He always did when he felt sad or angry. Sometimes he could talk to Regina about these little tiffs with Al, but Regina wasn't his mother. No one was anymore. But he liked to fool himself and visit her anyways, pretending she could hear him. It wasn't long before he reached the cemetery - it didn't take long to reach anywhere in Storybrooke period, that's how small it was - but it took him much longer to arrive at her grave. He felt so empty going there, his pain magnified a thousand times over. Still, he came.

"Hi, mom," he greeted the headstone, wiping off the cobwebs. It had been too long.

He stared at the epitaph, brushing his fingers across it - it was the closest thing he had to touching her - and sitting down cross-legged on the wet grass, as if he were about to have a conversation with the grave marker. He kind of was, actually.

"I should have brought you flowers," he reprimanded himself for her.

"That's not the reason your here, David," his mother would have told him.

"I know," he responded to her voice inside his head. "I should be here more often to do that, though."

"What's on your mind," she would have asked, ignoring what he had said.

"I treated Al disrespectfully today."

"Why?"

"Because of this football program I'm in at Augusta College. I don't want to do it anymore. Scouts aren't even looking there anyway. It's not prestigious enough."

Her voice paused, and he leaned in expectantly. Wow, he must have looked weird.

"Are you sure that program isn't the only thing you don't want to do?" Ruth's voice finally answered with another question.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you say you're ambitious enough to jump at every opportunity to get noticed by a college, why aren't you jumping?"

Ruth's voice became muddled, but she had given her son plenty to think about. Of course I want to! he mentally shouted at himself. How could he even consider such a thing? But it worried him that he knew exactly what his mother was talking about: football in general. Football was his only shot at attending a top-notch university... but it didn't have to be that way in the beginning. He'd gotten straight A's all throughout middle school, and he'd started as quarterback in the league championship his eighth grade year. (They'd lost, but still...) But as soon as he hit high school, Al had been pushing football, and David had graciously let him because he loved the sport. That also meant less attention to his studies. He usually got B's, and some C's here and there if he ever came across a rough patch. His junior year there were a lot of rough patches... one so rough that he'd gotten a D in chemistry. He took summer school to make it up, so whatever, right? Everything was good. It was when he told Al and a couple of his other friends when it started to tick him off. They'd been okay about. No shock whatsoever. One of them even had the gall to say, "well your a jock, right?" Seriously. He realized then how people saw him: just another blond-haired, blue-eyed quarterback who, combined with the rest of his team, had the IQ of a box of rocks. He didn't care to admit it to anyone, but he didn't want to be valued only for his skills on the field - and his devilishly handsome smile, of course.

Another downer to not passing chem was that he didn't pass chem junior year. The most important year of his high school career.

"Nonsense," Al had told him dismissively when David had related that oh-so-crucial fact. "Senior year is the most critical. No one cares how good a quarterback you were last year. It's the here and the now, buddy. How you finish is the only thing that matters."

And there it was again, being only given credit for his athletic talent. They had him so squeezed into that pigeonhole. And sometimes it sucked ass.

David, not wanting to think anymore (thinking? Wow! That's a new one for you, Dave!) trudged back to his car, and glanced at the flower shop across the street. I really should get Mom some flowers, he mused. Before he knew it he was hearing the quaint little bell ring as he stepped inside. The entire place had an aroma of flowers, (surprise, surprise) the gruff looking middle-aged man stationed behind the counter looking glaringly out of place. "Welcome to Belles Fleurs," the man said warm-heartedly, the intimidation leaving almost immediately.

"That means... beautiful flowers, right?" David racked his brain. Regina was taking French, and he'd help her study sometimes.

"Very good!" the man was impressed. "And how original, I know," he quipped. "My daughter named it when she was young. Our last name is French, so... But she doesn't come around here anymore... we had a-uh - falling out a few years ago."

"I'm sorry," David tried to console the blabbering man as he searched for flowers for his mother.

The pair instinctually looked up as the bell rang, announcing a new customer.

"Ah, Mary Margaret!" the man behind the counter exclaimed joyously.

David's eyes widened a little. It was the girl who he worked with at the pet shelter on Saturdays.

"Hello Mel!" she greeted just as affectionately.

She'd made a high-pitched squeak and ran away when David tried to speak with her. What was up with that?

"How's business going?" she asked, making a beeline for a tub of white roses.

"About the same as it's been going since last week," Mel chuckled.

"And the week before that?" she said in teasing tone.

"And the week before that, and the past twenty years, pretty much," he added, playing along.

"Mary Margaret's basically my whole enterprise," Mel joked, directing his remark at David.

Mary Margaret whipped around, noticing David awkwardly surveying the buckets filled with different colored carnations. Her eyes fluttered, shocked. David managed a weak smile.

"We go to school together," they both explained in unison, and with exact same need to hurriedly explain themselves. It bordered on cute. Mary Margaret smiled internally.

"I see," Mel observed, cracking a lopsided grin.

The customers went back to searching for the perfect combination of flowers, going at a snails pace, waiting for the other to finish first. Finally Mary Margaret felt as if had had enough, and went ahead with paying. David found himself staring. Mel pulled a red rose out from underneath the table and handed him to the beautiful - whoa, she kind of was beautiful, he allowed himself - brunette in the wholesome cardigan.

"Oh, Mel," he heard Mary Margaret sigh. David was about to vomit at that - a high school girl and that old dude? gross! - but then she redeemed the conversation. "I give these to her every week, and she always throws them away. She doesn't even read the card."

"Belle will read it one day. She's always loved books," he contradicted optimistically, both of their lips tugging upwards in reluctant smiles.

His daughter, David realized. But how did Mary Margaret know her? And then the pieces started to fit together. French. Belle. Belle French, Principal Gold's secretary. Mary Margaret helped out in her office whenever she could. Wait - how did he know that? Because he'd seen her walk in their every Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon. He noticed? He wasn't particularly observant... It was probably because they worked together on Saturdays. They never spoke, though. And why did that bother him? He was snapped out of his reverie by the ringing of the bell above the entrance, only this time, it announced someone leaving instead of arriving. David quickly gathered up a few pink carnations - the ones he had been staring at so tentatively - and riddled the arrangement with baby's breath. Slapping a few bills on the table, he wrapped the stems in tissue paper and tied a rubber band around it. After collecting his change, (a whopping thirty-two cents) he walked out of the flower shop in a daze, that stupid bell sounding again as he left.

So we've finally got some Snowing interaction! Yay!

And we get a ton of insight on David, plus a little bit of his relationship with Regina.

"The plot thickens," is all I have to say regarding Belle, Mel, and Mary Margaret. Stay tuned dolls!

Tootles!

- C.J.