11th Grade, High School
Age: 15-16
September 2008
…
It feels like States. Car horns blare. Cow bells ring. Warm up music blares over the loudspeakers. Both sides of the bleachers are just as full and loud as the other. The two rival bands try to outdo each other with their renditions of current pop music covers. Right at the front of the bleachers is a small group of elementary school kids, all dressed up in red and blue, some even with face paint on their cheeks. Spinelli's eyes key in on a little girl, standing right in the middle of a bunch of boys, two giant red bows in her hair.
The girl looks nothing like her, but she's suddenly transported back to being ten herself, sandwiched between TJ and Vince with a whole host of other neighborhood boys around them – and usually Gretchen, begrudgingly conned into joining them, sitting down on the bleacher beside her with a book.
"Spinelli!"
She turns away from the little kids, who are happily waving little flags that the cheerleaders had been passing out at the entrance on the way in, and climbs up the bleacher steps. Meghan Rigalli looks her up and down when she arrives at their row, eyebrows raised.
"So much school spirit, Miss VP," she mocks.
Spinelli glares at her and pulls the zipper of her leather jacket in response. She is wearing exactly what she wore to school today – her black boots, a pair of ripped black skinny jeans, a black long sleeve shirt under her black leather jacket. She scrubbed the red and blue polish from her nails and stayed up late, going through Spanish vocab as she repainted them black.
It had made a statement. She is still trying to gauge if it's enough to gain her reputation back, but it's at least a start.
"Where's TJ's letterman?" one of the other girls asks.
That was a decision she had hemmed and hawed over for nearly an hour before leaving for the game. Typically that's what she would wear to the games. It's an unwritten rule that the girlfriends of the players wear the jackets during the games and she knew TJ would be disappointed if he saw that she purposefully didn't wear it. But she figured that he would understand her need to reclaim her identity.
However, half her teammates are staring at her as if she has a piece of hot gossip to share and she quickly shakes her head.
"I didn't have time to change," she tells them. "Ballet."
Which is a lie. She didn't even have ballet today. Just soccer practice and then a few hours of trying to decide on an outfit.
Meghan rolls her eyes. "You need to just quit ballet already. I think you've played along with your mom long enough."
"Yeah. Just tell her you don't want to be a prissy dancer anymore," someone else says.
Spinelli sighs and stares out at the field. The players aren't out yet but the banners for them to run through are beginning to be set up by each team's cheerleading squad.
"You don't know Flo," she mumbles, hoping it puts an end to the topic.
The girls take that as a sign to move on and start talking about something else, their words mingling with the sounds of the stadium. Spinelli just keeps staring at the field, waiting for the game to start. The faster the game starts, the faster the game will end and TJ promised that he was all hers after the game. She hasn't spent any extended time alone with him since school started and, while it's only been a few weeks, it has felt like torture.
The only time she feels normal is when she's with TJ. She doesn't feel like she needs to be a certain way. At school and ballet and everywhere in between, she feels like she's putting on a show. She has to say a certain thing or behave a certain way in order to protect her image and while she so desperately wants her reputation intact, it is beginning to weigh on her. And apparently she's been slipping up, to the point where she's doing this damage control, which is unbearably exhausting. With TJ, it's like time and society doesn't exist.
Maybe she should have worn the jacket.
"Yeah, let's do it. Spin, you in?"
She turns back toward the girls and Meghan nudges her.
"Homecoming dress shopping this weekend?"
She doesn't even want to think about homecoming, least of all what she is going to wear to it. Buying a dress for the dance has always been a last minute endeavor for her and Gretchen.
"I'm going with Gretchen."
"She can come too!" someone says.
Spinelli shakes her head, knowing that Gretchen would probably balk at this request. Gretchen is logical in a way that extends to her dress shopping and she doesn't see her best friend having a good time with the group of girls that will no doubt dilly dally and use the experience as more of a social hour.
"I can ask," she says.
The girls all nod. Then someone says, "Oh, and did you hear? There's talk that people want to vote for TJ for Homecoming Prince since he couldn't be president."
"Which will really piss off Vince," Meghan says with a chuckle. "But at least we won't have to listen to him and Ashley A have their annual screaming match."
"Yeah, but if TJ is Prince, we should get some talk out about getting Spinelli as Princess instead of Ashley A."
Spinelli freezes as the girls continue.
"Oh, could you imagine how angry she'd be?"
"We may still get a screaming match!"
"She really thinks she has this in the bag."
Spinelli shakes her head and gestures with her hands for the girls to stop.
"No, no, no, no, no," she says quickly. "I don't want it. Don't even put that idea out there as a joke."
Meghan rolls her eyes. "Oh, come on, Spin, it's not that big of a deal. Besides, if TJ gets the vote, do you want him dancing with Ashley A?"
"Why don't people vote for Vince still?" she whines. "Tell people to do that – I don't want it."
"Bawk, bawk," Meghan teases.
"I'm not a chicken," she says. Then she crosses her arms and tries her best disinterested face. "I don't even know if I'm going to go to homecoming. So, it's better to pick people to vote for that are definitely going to go. Like Vince and Ashley A."
The girls complain for a bit and she just turns back toward the field, trying her best to ignore them. Luckily for her, the announcers begin their opening segment and their attention gets turned back toward the field.
She can barely pay attention. She cannot be a Homecoming Princess. That would go against everything she is attempting to do. Back at Third Street, no one would have even thought to nominate her. Even during her first and last beauty pageant, her entrance was only because of a joke. Her image is that of the little punk anarchist, not a Homecoming Princess.
She needs more damage control than she originally thought.
By the end of the first quarter, the stands are alive. Everyone around her stands on the bleachers themselves, hooting and hollering, gesturing with hand signals. Spinelli sits down on the cool metal and rubs her temple with her fingers. Her head is pounding and with each stomp of the bleachers, it reverberates through her body, jolting her head.
She takes the chance during the transition to the second quarter to tell her teammates she is going to try to find Gretchen and Mikey. If nothing else, she knows Gretchen carries a small pharmacy with her wherever she goes in the event that one of them needs pain relief or Neosporin.
In the sea of red and blue, she knows that it will be a small miracle to find them on her own. She reaches into her pocket and grabs her phone, sending Gretchen a message to ask for their location. Then she waits for the response, taking a seat on the top stair of the bleachers. She picks at her fingernails while she waits.
Her phone vibrates in her lap and she looks down. Gretchen has given her basic directions. Spinelli sighs and summons enough energy to stand. Once she's upright, she pauses and lets the sudden pounding in her head diminish. She knows that it's from lack of sleep. By the end of most days she has a headache. It's like a never-ending cycle. She can't sleep because her mind is spinning. The lack of sleep zaps her energy and makes her head throb. The headache makes it hard to fall asleep. And then the cycle continues.
She finds Gretchen, the only person in the stands with her nose in a book. The redhead sits on the bleachers in an area with mostly older adults, slightly quieter than the rowdy student section Spinelli had just come from but considerably closer to where the band and cheerleaders sit. She has on one of Vince's old Warrior Basketball sweatshirts, but otherwise looking at Gretchen there would be no way to tell whether she was sitting in the stands of an intense football game or in the library.
Spinelli sits down beside her.
Gretchen finishes what she's reading, flipping the page before shutting the book and glancing over. She immediately frowns and Spinelli crosses her arms defensively.
"Do I really look that bad?" she grumbles. "I've got a massive headache."
Gretchen reaches for her bag and withdraws both a bottle of Tylenol and eye drops.
"Your eyes are very bloodshot," she says. "I take it the breathing exercises I gave you didn't work."
Desperate, she had asked Gretchen for advice on getting sleep. Gretchen had done some quick research and gave her some breathing exercises that were supposed to help her fall asleep. She had tried them. They had failed.
Spinelli grabs both of the items Gretchen offers. As she deposits a drop in each eye, Gretchen continues.
"I think you need to tell your parents."
"I think you're nuts if you think that's gonna happen."
Gretchen's lips tighten into a straight line, her eyebrows raised in disapproval and Spinelli shakes her head, dry swallowing two of the Tylenol pills before handing the bottle back.
"Don't give me that look."
"This is more than just losing sleep," Gretchen hisses. "This sounds like anxiety, which is something a doctor can help with, but you have to tell your parents first."
"And have Bob and Flo freak out? I don't think so," she hisses back. "I'm. Fine. There is no need to get everyone in a tizzy, which you know is exactly what will happen if I get my parents involved."
Gretchen relents and Spinelli smiles with her small victory. Gretchen knows her parents better than anyone in the group, even TJ. Mostly because Spinelli keeps TJ at as big of a distance as she can with him living down the street, hoping to avoid any embarrassment. But Gretchen was the first, and really only, friend that she has ever invited over to her house willingly.
She knows that she is lucky to have her parents – parents that love her unconditionally. But the issue with her parents is that they love her almost too much. It feels suffocating at times how fiercely they love her and Joey. It isn't unwarranted on their end. Her parents went through the ringer trying to have kids and she knows the story well. Joey was easy – easy to conceive, an easy baby, a cute toddler. Then Vito came next and again it was easy – easy to conceive, an easy labor, a perfect happy baby.
And then he turned blue.
It was the eighties. Ultrasounds weren't as good as they are now and his heart defect was missed. Her parents prayed for a miracle that never came and Vito lived to be six months old. After a year of grieving, they came to the decision that having another baby wasn't going to replace the one they lost. They had always wanted a big family and if they hadn't lost Vito, they would still be trying again. They both came from big, loud Italian families and that's what they wanted originally. In their young twenty-something minds, her parents planned their ideal family as a family of six – two boys, two girls, the dog, the white picket fence, and all that jazz.
They tried and tried and tried. Five miscarriages later came one that stuck and her mother was so scared that she didn't even tell anyone in the family until the twenty week ultrasound was complete and the doctors were cautiously optimistic about this high risk pregnancy. Her mother was due on Thanksgiving, started having contractions on the first day of October and was placed on hospital bedrest until they couldn't wait any longer. At thirty-three weeks and five days along, her water broke. Then the monitor started showing the baby having some signs of distress and the waiting game was over.
Spinelli was born on a Tuesday and she stayed in the NICU until the day before Thanksgiving. And then her mother almost never let her out of her sight until she went to kindergarten.
She wouldn't call her parents helicopter parents. Bob and Flo let her traipse all over the city with her friends as long as she's home by curfew. They're just very concerned with her health and Joey's. When her brother started having migraines in high school, her mother brought him to the pediatrician worried about a brain tumor. When everyone's parents came to pick them up from school after their crew tried to fake being sick in fourth grade by drawing pock marks on their faces with Crayola markers, all the other parents looked angry but her mother was nearly in tears.
If she tells her mother that she's having trouble sleeping, she will without a doubt overreact because that's who her mother is – over the top, dramatic, and a worrier. It's not a great combination as a parent.
And besides, she's fine. She just can't sleep.
"I will figure it out," she says, watching Gretchen place the eye drops and Tylenol back in her bag.
"I hope so," Gretchen says. "Because you can't sustain like this forever."
Spinelli crosses her arms, pouting as she turns away. Of course Gretchen is right. Gretchen is always right. But, maybe this time she's wrong.
Mikey returns from the concession stand and apologizes profusely when he sees her and doesn't have something to give her. Her throbbing head is making her nauseous anyway, so she shakes off his apologies and takes a single fry when he offers his entire basket to share
The game ends up in overtime and everyone around her is on their feet, shouting along with the cheerleaders and Spinelli is counting down the seconds. Her head is still pounding, the Tylenol not touching what needs to be cured by sleep. Normally, this would be the type of game that she lived for, but today she just wants it to be over. Maybe she can convince TJ to watch a movie for the few hours they'll have before curfew. She could use his chest as a pillow, close her eyes, and pretend to watch.
The stands suddenly erupt and she looks up from her hands to see what's going on down on the field. One of their defensive players has the ball, clearly picking up a fumble, and their team now has possession of the ball with less than forty yards to the goal.
The rest of the game after that happens quickly. The quarterback connects with a wide receiver for twenty yards and a first down. Then they run the ball. Finally, the game ends with the quarterback connecting with Vance Lombardi, who jumps over a tackle into the endzone. Game over.
In the aftermath of the win, it takes forever for her to find TJ among the throngs of students that have stormed the field. Mikey finally spots Vince from afar and the three head over to where a group of the junior players are grouped on the field. They swerve through their classmates until they meet up with their friends.
The boys' energy is palpable when they approach. When TJ sees her, he rushes toward her and lifts her up, spinning her around. She closes her eyes to keep herself from throwing up.
"Did you see that?" he says, his voice full of excitement. "Oh, man. What a game!"
She wishes she could match his energy.
He sets her down and she sees his face drop, just as Gretchen's did. She tries to smile, but TJ's concern stays the same.
"What happened?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "I just have a headache," she tells him. She toes her boot into the grass. "I didn't get a lot of sleep."
"You look exhausted," he says, bringing a hand to her cheek and gently rubbing his thumb under her eye.
"I'm fine. Really."
He looks ready to argue, but is interrupted by one of the other players slamming his hands down on his shoulders.
"Teej, my man! You in?"
TJ turns just slightly away from her and begins to shake his head. Over his shoulder, her eyes land on Sam and she can already hear his voice in her head. He's going to joke about TJ being whipped and the whole team will laugh and TJ will just smile and wrap an arm around her shoulders, as if nothing in the world would make him happier. But tonight she doesn't want to be part of the joke. She doesn't want to be the girlfriend that steals him away from his friends after a massive win.
She is not going to be a diva.
WIth a squeeze of his hand, TJ turns back to her.
"Go ahead," she encourages.
"I promised you," he insists.
She nods. "I know. But you deserve it tonight and honestly I just need to sleep."
He eyes her, as if he's worried this is part of a test. She gives him a small nod and leans forward to kiss her forehead.
"Sleep well," he tells her. "And I want a text first thing about how you're feeling in the morning."
After a kiss goodbye, she stands back to watch him rejoin his friends. Once he's far enough away that she's sure he can't see her, she brings her hands to her face and presses her pointer fingers to the bridge of her nose, pressing down on the throbbing near her eyes. She feels someone place a hand on her arm and she glances over to Gretchen.
"Can I catch a ride with you guys?" she asks.
"Of course," Gretchen says, leading her over to where Mikey has found Gus. "Let's get you home."
…
Monday is grueling. They have a big soccer game on Wednesday, so Coach Ramsey runs the girls ragged so their practice on Tuesday can be a little lighter. By the time she gets to ballet, Spinelli wants to collapse into the ground. Every muscle in her body aches. Then she has to stand on her toes.
It isn't her best rehearsal. She struggles with some of the easier steps and when the practice is over her entire body deflates.
But she has one last thing she needs to do before she can leave. Since she agreed to help Mikey out with his dumb play, she knows that she needs to start thinking about what she'll actually do for her dance. She could probably choreograph it herself, but if she is going to do it, she doesn't want to look like an idiot. Thus, she is going to enlist Madame Pavlova to help her make her minute on stage look as good as it can.
As the other girls start heading toward the locker room, she walks over to the ballet instructor. Madame Pavlova still remembers Mikey and asks about him every so often, so when Spinelli tells her that it's Mikey's play, the teacher is thrilled to help out. They discuss a few basic ideas and then agree to meet again after the next rehearsal to talk about it more.
She turns to head back to the locker room and sees the Megans loitering near the door, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Spinelli blows out a breath and decides the best plan of action is to just ignore them. The girls are already dressed in their street clothes, but they follow her back into the locker room.
"So, like, what was that all about?"
"Did Madame correct you on your form today because you were severely lacking?"
She pushes by them and into the locker room, hearing them follow her inside. She groans and finds her locker, trying not to listen as the girls talk loudly amongst themselves.
"Madame must be so disappointed."
"Bet she wishes she didn't give that solo to her for the winter show."
She grinds her teeth together, focusing on her breathing to ignore them. In and out. In. Out. In. Out. She shoves her school clothes into her bag. In. She pulls on her boots and leaves her pointe shoes in her locker. Out. She turns to leave. In. She pushes through the wall of Megans.
Out.
She keeps her head down as she approaches the front door, but hears Madame Pavlova call her name. Her eyes glance behind her at the Megans, who all watch as Madame approaches. Each of the girls has a single eyebrow raised.
"Can you ask Mikhail if I could have a copy of the script?" Madame asks. "I'd like to read it before we choreograph it."
She nods her head and her teacher bids her goodbye once more. Spinelli pulls on the straps of her backpack, nearly running down the steps of the building to the bike rack. Unfortunately, in the time it takes for her to get to her bike, the Megans are able to catch up.
"What script?"
"What are you doing?"
"Why didn't we hear about this?"
She looks up from her bike lock and glares at the girls. "It's none of your beeswax."
"Mikhail is Blumberg, right?" Megan Prince asks, crossing her arms and a smirk on her face as she starts to connect the dots. "Is precious Princess Spinelli going to dance in the school play?"
"No one told us about this," Megan Cavanaugh says, pouting. "There should have been open tryouts."
"Special treatment again," Megan Stepanian whines. "Which I just don't understand!"
"What don't you understand?" Megan King says, rolling her eyes. "She's dating TJ. It gives her social immunity for everything. If they broke up the whole school wouldn't care less about her."
Spinelli pulls the lock and frees her bike, glancing back up at the girls. Megan King doesn't appear like she's throwing insults to get under her skin. Annoyance crosses the girl's face, but not maliciousness. She is stating a fact.
With her bike unhooked, Spinelli turns around and starts riding away, physically leaving the Megans behind her. However, she can still hear Megan King's words in her head. By the time she reaches her neighborhood, her vision is blurred with tears and she pulls into Third Street's playground before she crashes her bike. She drops her bike at the entrance and looks around. The playground is empty, all the students already home. Vince isn't at the basketball hoop. Most of the teachers' cars are gone. It's a perfect place to hide for a bit.
She sits on the swing and lets her eyes drain, tears streaming down her cheeks.
She knows that her popularity is intertwined with TJ's. It always has been. But she does wonder about her inherent value outside of her relationship. This thought has kept her up at night all summer, after the Ashleys suggested she run with Vince. She can still hear Ashley A's voice in her head. We run Spinelli on a TJ platform. As if her only worth to Vince as a candidate was as a stand-in for TJ.
Do people even like her? Vince seems annoyed by her all the time and recently so has Gretchen. Plus, Gretchen has been spending more time with Vince. She wonders if the two talk about her – Gretchen complaining about how Spinelli won't follow any of the advice she gives and Vince complaining about every little thing she does. Gus and Mikey seem okay with her but Gus and Mikey are nice to everyone. She supposes she has her soccer friends but they have inside jokes from last year's JV season that she wasn't part of – leaving her in this awkward in-between.
She has spent every day since her first day of kindergarten trying to be Spinelli, different from the other Ashleys in every way possible. Someone unique. It's how she created her reputation in the first place. Her reputation as a little punk anarchist. The one that's slipping. She worked so hard.
She remembers buying her first leather jacket in third grade. Going into the boys section while her mother sorted through racks and finding it, bringing it to her and begging – pleading – with her to get it for the new school year. She remembers telling her parents the wrong names so they wouldn't stumble upon her friends and rat her out as an Ashley. She remembers using Vito in a story to tell the school – that her older brother forced her into wearing his boots as a joke, but that she actually liked them when in reality she had used all her birthday money to buy them herself.
And somehow, when she wasn't paying attention, everything fell apart.
Who is she now? She's definitely not the same Spinelli as she was at Third Street. She doesn't instill fear into her classmates. If she did, Sam wouldn't tease her as much as he does. It's exactly like Megan King said. She's just a silly girl who managed to attract the most popular boy in school. Her worth doesn't extend farther than that.
She wipes her cheeks with the back of sleeve and looks across the playground to the kindergarten area. The door is ajar, not holding in the younger kids to keep them separated from the greater school yard, and she sighs. Kindergarten was so much easier. No one knew her. She could be whoever she wanted to be.
But, maybe, that's what she needs to do. She can start over and get her reputation back.
She races home and runs up the stairs before anyone can see her. With the bathroom door locked behind her, she stares at her red, swollen eyes in the mirror. She runs the cold water and drenches the wash cloth before pressing it against her face. She sits on the floor and keeps the cloth to her face until it grows warm, then she repeats the process.
Her face is still pink when her mother shouts her name for dinner, but it's considerably better. Nothing she can't write off as a bad day at soccer practice. She tells her parents she took a ball in the gut and got the wind knocked out of her. But she's fine. And they buy it because why would she lie?
That night, she tosses and turns as usual, but once the sun begins to peak out of the clouds she gets up to ready herself for the day. She grabs her black ripped skinny jeans once again and a black top. From the bathroom, she grabs her mother's eyeliner and once she's somewhat happy with the concealer, she lines the rims of her eyes in the same style that Meghan Rigalli wears. She throws her hair in two messy braids rather than the neat Dutch braids she typically wears, hoping it will come across as disinterest rather than try-hard.
She sends TJ a text to say she has an early meeting with a teacher and feels a pit in her stomach at the lie. But she wants to get to school alone. This appearance is not about TJ. This is about Spinelli and getting her reputation back.
If she thought she made a statement on Friday, she knows she does today. As she passes people in the halls, she straightens her shoulders and tries to ignore the pounding in her chest. It's working.
Look confident. Look like you don't care. Remember, punk anarchist.
When she arrives at her locker, she presses her face inside so she can blow out a breath away from prying eyes.
The lockers reverberate around her and she pulls her head out to see what moron slammed a door. What she sees isn't someone closing a locker door. Instead, Vince has leaned against the locker beside hers, arms crossed over his chest. When their eyes meet, he raises his eyebrows in surprise, but recovers quickly, hardening his gaze with a blank expression.
She should really take lessons from Vince.
"Did you forget that Halloween is in October?" he asks. He uncrosses one of his hands and gestures to her face. "What's with the raccoon eyes?"
"I'm trying something new."
"You've been hanging around Rigalli too much," Vince grumbles under his breath. Then speaks for her to hear. "Well, you tried it. Now you can go back to normal Spin."
"This is normal Spin," she insists. She puts her hands on her hips and glares at him. "What, you don't like it?"
"It's...different." Then he smirks, letting out a quick chuckle. "Has Teej seen this yet? Because he's going to flip."
"TJ is not my keeper," she snarls.
Vince visibly recoils, stunned into silence by her tone. She feels the unpleasant gurgling of her gut at her reaction. She bites her lip, aware of the unnecessary harshness and kicks the locker lightly with the toe of her boot.
"Sorry," she mumbles. In just as quiet of a voice, she asks, "What do you want?"
"I saw you in the hallway. I figured I would say hi. You know, since we're friends." Vince sighs and shakes his head. "Wasn't expecting to get my head chewed off."
"I said I was sorry," she says. She grabs her backpack and whatever is in there, slamming the door to her locker. "I have to get to class. I'll see you at lunch."
She pushes by him, hearing him say goodbye while she clutches the straps of her backpack. That was definitely not keeping her cool, but she had to get out of there. Instead of heading to her math class, she walks right by the door, going to the bathroom down the hall. She goes into one of the stalls and leans against the door, trying to take deep breaths.
Vince is going to tell TJ that she chewed him out this morning for no reason and she is going to have to take the blame for it. But it will just further prove to TJ that something is wrong with her. There is nothing wrong with her though – she's just tired and because she's tired, she's snappy. It isn't like that hasn't been part of her personality in the past. Spinelli isn't a happy bubbly person – TJ should know that. TJ is the sunshine. She is the grump.
She shouldn't even care. Caring about what people think about her goes against her image. She portrays a girl who doesn't care. A girl who does what she wants when she wants. If she wants to chew Vince out for no reason, then so be it.
Gus's eyes nearly pop out of their sockets when he sees her walk into math class and she just ignores him. When he asks about her new look, she just gives him a disinterested shrug. Eventually, he accepts that she doesn't want to talk about it and by the time the two of them walk to lunch, she thinks he may have even forgotten about it. Which is good. It's the beginning of her new normal.
…
Notes
Spinelli is called a "jaywalking punk anarchist" in "Officer Mikey" (Season 1).
Spinelli's mother calls her friends by the wrong names in "Parents Night" (Season 1).
Mikey is called Mikhail by their dance instructor in "Dance Lessons" (Season 2).
The episode where the gang covers themselves in fake pock marks to get out of school is "Omega Kids" (Season 2).
Vito is only mentioned in one episode "Prince Randall" (Season 4) where Spinelli says Vito made her wear his boots. Joey on the other hand is mentioned in multiple episodes, as early as "First Name Ashley" (season 1). I created this headcanon about the Spinelli family structure a long time ago and this was the first chance that made sense to share it. To me, there seemed to be something distinctly different in how the show depicted Spinelli's family – Joey (who never appears, unlike the other siblings) seems a lot older than her, Vito is only mentioned once, and the Spinellis are shown as excessively doting parents. Also, the fact that Spinelli in the show is an unreliable narrator and known liar gives any writer a bit of creative license. The Spinelli family fascinates me and if anyone is interested in some outtakes, I'd be happy to write them.
The next chapter picks up shortly after this one leaves off – it was getting too long to post all as one chapter.
