THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - STRANGE DAYS

Just a little head´s up for what´s to come, before we get started on this chapter. I´ve decided to make this season and the following ones 30 chapters each, instead of the 20 chapters that the first season consisted of (since we basically came in "Mid-Season" in season one). I´m planning on continuing with the "E-Mail Exchange Openings" throughout this season, but they´ll of course come to an end, once Joey returns to Capeside.

As for this little part of the story we´re in the middle of here, this is "Part 3" of a six-parter with six main characters, who´ll each get their POV parts. The first two chapters it was Dawson and Andie, these next two it´ll be Jack and Abby and the final two it´ll be Jen and Pacey. With that out of the way, I just hope you´ll all enjoy this chapter!

"Strange days have found us

Strange days have tracked us down

They're going to destroy

Our casual joys

We shall go on playing

Or find a new town"

THE DOORS (From the album "Strange Days" (1967))

Sent: January 15th, 1999

From: JenRocks

To: AGirlNamedJoey

Subject: I miss you so much!

Hi, Joey. Now that the first few weeks without you here has passed, I can safely say one thing: This town just isn´t the same to me without you here! A few things have happened lately, that I can fill you in on, including a potential improvement on the sad and pathetic status of my love-life.

I told you about Abby and Melissa and their budding romance in my first e-mail to you. They´re so adorable together, that I could just die! A few days ago, myself, Andie and Jack (more on him later) went to the movies with them to see "Shakespeare in Love" and I caught them romantically holding hands in the dark, so expect to get lots of more news on that front in the coming months. I don´t think they´ve reached the kissing stage yet, but my sixth sense tells me that they aren´t far from it. Mostly, I´m just ecstatic on Abby´s behalf that she´s found a girl who´s both "like she is" and she clicks with so incredibly well.

Believe it or not, I´m actually making a new friend on my own! Well, sort of, since it was Pacey that introduced us to one another. His name is Jack, he just started here at the beginning of this semester and I´m not exaggerating when I´m telling you that he´s so hot, that he could be a model, if he wanted to! Seriously, he´s by far the biggest hunk, I´ve ever met in real life! I can´t say that if he wanted to ask me out, I wouldn´t say yes in a heartbeat (it isn´t like the rest of the selection here is anything to write home about, not that I needed to tell you) and from what I can tell so far, he´s just as single, as I am. There´s a dance coming up in a few weeks and I´m planning on asking him to go with me "as a friend", but if he wants to be more than that, I´m game all the way! We have so much in common, that so far it feels like I´ve found my soulmate in him, so keep your fingers, toes and everything else crossed for me!

His sister Andie (real name Andrea) has started here as well, but I haven´t talked to her as much, as I have with him. She loves school even more than you do, not that I thought it was possible! Apart from that, I don´t know all that much about her so far, but she´s been helping Pacey out with his schoolwork and she already has him working harder, than I´ve seen him work on his school work before. The only thing that worries me is that she´s clearly beginning to crush on him (not that I can blame her lol!), but at the same time, I´m sure that he wouldn´t dream of doing anything to hurt you.

That´s about all of the news I have this time! Everyone you know say hi and we can´t wait to have you back home with us again!

XOXO

Jen

Sent: January 15th, 1999

From: AGirlNamedJoey

To: JenRocks

Subject: I miss you too!

Hi, Jen. It´s so nice to hear that you´ve finally found a guy that you like in Capeside (that isn´t named Pacey) and I can´t wait to meet him, if he manages to live up to your high standards for a potential boyfriend! Pacey wrote that he likes him too, so he has some big appraisals to live up to, when I´ll finally get to meet him lol! I´m thrilled for Abby too, although I could easily see them having lots of obstacles in their way. Over here, they´re more accepting of gays, than they are in our hometown and there are a handful of (relatively) open same sex couples at my school. From what I can tell, it isn´t like they´re getting harassed or anything like that, like I know that they would have most likely been back home in Capeside. I can only hope for Abby and Melissa´s sake, that they won´t get treated too badly by the "moral majority". I haven´t always been friends with those two, but I still think that they both deserve all of the happiness, that can come to them.

You have me a little worried over this Andie girl, though! We both know that Pacey is sometimes too nice for his own good and if she really likes him, like you think that she does, I could see it being tough for him to say no to her. Is there any way, you could find out for sure, perhaps? I trust him, it´s not like that, but it would be nice to know for sure.

So far, it´s been a huge learning experience over here and their school system is completely different from ours, but I´m quickly getting the hang of it. Luckily, I have Emma (the British girl, I told you about in my last e-mail) to help me through it and this past Sunday, we went to a soccer game (what they call football over here. As I´ve come to find out, you should never call it soccer in front of a European, or they won´t have a clue what you´re talking about!) with our local team, that plays in the top French division. Even though it was freezing cold and I can´t say that I know much about soccer (I still don´t have a clue how the offside rule works, for one thing!), it was still a fun experience to be in a stadium filled of people singing their club songs. Seeing as "our team" also won, by far the most of them left happy as well. Emma, just from being English, grew up with the game, so she´s teaching me about the finer points of it and in return, I´m helping her with becoming better at speaking French. She´s really cool and I just know that you two would become friends in no time.

Au Revoir for this time! (I don´t know what "XOXO" means, so please explain it to me in your next e-mail!)

Joey.

To feel damned if you do and damned if you don´t. That tired old phrase perfectly summed up, how Jack McPhee felt about his life at this stage of it. One the plus side, the peaceful surroundings of his new town were quickly beginning to calm his nerves, at least over some things in his life. That his twin sister wasn´t constantly on the cusp of a mental breakdown anymore, had taken an enormous load off his mind and also meant, that for the first time since his older brother Tim was torn away from them in the most brutal way thinkable, he was in a position to start doing whatever he wanted to do again, without having to feel guilty over it taking away time, he could have spent trying to keep their family together. While their mom was still in a serious state of denial over Tim´s death, he hoped that the worst of what they would go through as a family had passed by and it was time to begin looking towards the future again. Best of all was that Capeside, a small town that he´d only heard of here and there in passing before this, also happened to be populated by a small group of friends, who had welcomed himself and Andie practically with open arms from day one.

Most of them, he was still only in the beginning of getting to know, like the movie nerd Dawson, his highly intelligent, but painfully shy girlfriend Mary-Beth or Jen´s rather stylish friend Abby. So far however, they all seemed to him like people, that he wouldn´t have the slightest issue getting along with. Out of the boys, Pacey was the one he´d talked the most with so far and he seemed to Jack like a down-to-earth type of guy, kind of like himself and the few close friends, he´d had back in Providence. Talking to Pacey came natural and he could easily see them becoming long-time buds, if himself and Andie ended up staying in Capeside for the rest of high school.

Finally, there was Jen, who´d gravitated towards him almost instantly and besides being very easy to talk to, she wasn´t like everyone else at school, since she´d only been living in Capeside for under half a year, after having moved there from New York. The "Small-Town Disease" therefore wasn´t in her (yet, at least) and it shone through brightly in comparison to the rest of his fellow students in just about everything, she did. In every way, she should have been everything he was looking for in a girlfriend and she was more than pretty enough too, it wasn´t like that. His only problem was that for as much as he tried to, he just couldn´t get turned on by her. Whenever he tried to picture himself doing erotic things with her (in those moments that he´d never told his sister or parents about!), his thoughts would twist and turn into himself doing things with another guy and on most occasions, it would make him shamefully stop what he doing. Sometimes however, he couldn´t help himself and continued on pleasing himself to thoughts, that a great part of him wished didn´t turn him on as much, as they did.

"Do you and Andie want to go together with me on a last-minute gift for Pacey´s birthday? I´m thinking something in the region of fifteen dollars from each of us" Jen asked him, while they were heading towards the cafeteria and the lunch, that awaited them there. On the way they would be meeting up with his sister (who´d been attending one of her many gifted classes), but he couldn´t help noticing how much Jen relished every bit of alone time, she had with himself.

"Fifteen sounds reasonable. Any ideas?" he asked back, a little relieved that he wouldn´t have the trouble of finding a present for a guy, he didn´t know well enough yet, to know for sure what he liked and didn´t.

"Not yet. I was thinking that we could go present shopping after school, just the two of us?" Jen asked sweetly and the hopeful look on her face, how adorable she was being, combined with his fear of confrontations, made it a near impossibility to say no to her. It was the sole reason why he´d stayed in his relationship with Kate, his former neighbor and ex-girlfriend from back in Providence, for as long as he had, when he´d wanted to break up with her much sooner, than he eventually did. He could handle just about anything happening to himself, but to know that he´d hurt someone else, was just about the worst feeling, he´d ever tried in his life, the few times it had happened.

"Maybe, my sister will want to come" he tried with, as a way to make it feel as little like a date, as he could. It only got him a headshake from Jen, though.

"She has to study with Pacey after school. He told me at work yesterday. It´ll just be you and me!" she told him cheerfully and with that excuse out of the window, he didn´t have any other option, than to go shopping with the unbelievably lovely Jen Lindley after school. If he´d only been close to fifty percent positive that he was straight, this would have been a dream scenario.

Abby could barely believe how swimmingly life had been going for her lately, considering how low she'd fallen only a few months before this. In the months up to her starting off her friendship with Jen, it had felt to her, like she didn't have a friend in the entire world and as for the future, it hadn't felt like there was anything to be positive over. Now, where it had all turned around so quickly for her, the only thing she felt was finding it hard not to smile constantly.

And why shouldn't she, everything considered? Living with Bessie, Bodie and her "Bonus Little Brother" Alexander provided her with the kind of stable home life, that she hadn't had since she was a kid, long before the marriage of her parents started going the way of the dodo. She still regularly talked to her mom, who along with awaiting her upcoming trial for DWI and reckless endangerment, was also clearly using the interim time to get as much drinking in, as she could. To Abby, this was sad for sure, but she´d also made the tough decision, that she refused to be her mom´s babysitter/verbal punching bag anymore. Although, you couldn't say that they had anywhere close to the healthiest parent/child relationship in town, they could at the least keep things on a civil level now. As long as they didn´t have to live together again, that was hopefully how things would stay. Her dad would call her once every week or so, probably as a way to soothe his own guilt over how he'd left his only child in the care of a raging alcoholic for so long. Still, just to know that he loved and cared about her was a most welcome change, from all of those months of complete radio silence.

Perhaps best of all, was how her social life had improved immensely since those dark days and for a girl, who'd always had a well-above average need to feel loved, this was a huge part of the equation, as far as things that made her want to constantly smile went. Her friends, even if she wasn't equally close with all of them, made her feel welcome every day, when she turned up for school, making it feel less like a chore to have to go there five days a week. As insane as it would have seemed to her previous self, she was considering trying her luck with getting an education, once high school came to an end, another thing she attributed to not being lonely and bored in school all of the time anymore.

Finally, there was Melissa. It was sometimes funny to her, how you can have been a small part of another person's life for so long, yet not really know what they're like behind that mask, they put on for the rest of the world to see. Then, once you find out what they're really like, you find out that you're close to being exactly the same on the inside. Even if they'd practically grown up side by side on the same playgrounds and gone to the same schools, they'd belonged to different friend groups and because of this, had barely spoken more than a handful of words to each other, prior to them becoming friends (thanks to both of them now ranking high on Belinda's most hated list).

The romantic part, they were taking slowly and by doing so, were also carefully avoiding any situations that could ruin this wonderful "Whatever it Was", they'd found in one another. That´s not to say that Abby didn´t want to take it faster, just that she was okay with taking it slow for now, until Melissa was ready for more than romantic handholding, gentle kisses on the cheek and whispering sweet nothing´s to one another.

With Capeside being as small as it was, it also meant that no one had ever seen the point in building a mall there or close by. Their one and only "shopping street" consisted of a mix of eateries, that for the most part survived solely on the tourists (which was also why many of them were closed, when it was out of season) and the kind of establishments, that you´d think every small town had one of, almost no matter how small it is. As for places that you could buy a birthday present for a sixteen-year-old boy, this narrowed them down to "Speedy´s Sports Emporium" (owned by the closest thing Capeside had to a sporting celebrity, former one-season 3rd choice back-up NFL running back Jared "Speedy" Speedman), "The Sound Shack" (the town´s one and only source for buying music) and finally, the aptly named "Who Cares if it´s Used?", Capeside´s only second-hand/pawn shop and without a doubt the place, where Jack and Jen would get the most for their money.

After a good three quarters of an hour of gift shopping, they decided on getting Pacey two of those short sleeved Hawaiian shirts, that he loved (according to Jen) to wear in the summer (costing them a total of 20 bucks) and a cool looking sixtant to celebrate Pacey´s love of the sea, that he hadn´t heard of either up to this point (costing fifteen bucks), both from "Who Cares if it´s Used?". To cap it off, they bought him a CD compilation of the best rock songs from the 70´s (for 10 bucks) from "The Sound Shack". Most of the afternoon had thankfully been relatively flirt-free on Jen´s part and he hoped that the signs, he was trying to send her, that he only wanted to be friends, were getting through to her. As they left the music store though, he had to smile to himself that his worst problem at that moment, was that a pretty damn awesome girl might have the hots for him.

His smile faded quickly, when he saw his mother on the opposite side of the street, looking confused and flustered again, as she was trying to explain something, to an almost as confused looking Abby.

"Crap!" he muttered to himself, too faintly for Jen to hear it.

"That´s my mom over there with Abby. I should see, if I can help her" he excused himself and before Jen could answer, he was already too far away to have been able to hear any response from her.

"He has to be here somewhere! You have to believe me!" Jack heard his mother panicking tell Abby, who clearly wasn´t sure how to react to all of this.

"I believe you! How old is your son?" Abby concernedly asked and it only made his mom look even more confused, as she tried to remember.

"Mom! Not that I´m not glad to see you, but shouldn´t you be at home right now?" he asked kindly and calmly. and as his mom turned her head to look at him, the panic began to seep out of her.

"Tim was supposed to be home by now, so I got worried and went out to look for him. Have you seen him, Jack? I´m really worried that something could have happened to him" she asked with a look to her that told him two things. One, she hadn´t taken her medication and two, he needed to her home as quickly, as he could, so he could convince her to take them. Just as he was wondering what to do, Jen came over to join them.

"What´s going on?" she asked, like it was something he wanted to explain to her and Abby in the middle of the street and while his mom could hear.

"This is my mom. Look, I´m sorry, Jen ..."

"This is the Jen, Andie has been telling me about you liking so much, Jackers?" his mom butted in, making an already bad situation even more embarrassing for him.

"I don´t think there´s anyone else named Jen in Capeside, mom" was the best answer he could come up with. To his relief, he saw a cab coming towards them, that with any luck would also be empty. Seeing it pull over in front of them, after he´d used his arm to signal it to, was perhaps the biggest favor, life could have granted him that day.

"I´m sorry, Jen. I have to get her home" he exasperatedly told an understanding looking Jen.

"What about Tim? We can´t just leave without him!" his mom tried arguing, making him even more annoyed with her and over the whole situation, than he already was.

"He could have come home, while you´re been out looking for him, Mrs. McPhee" Abby suggested and as he looked into her eyes, he saw that she knew what she was doing and was trying to help him.

"That´s right! He could be at home alone, worried where we all are" Jack followed up with, while looking into his mom´s eyes. Knowing that this one-two punch to get their mom to get into that taxi, before the cab driver became too impatient and drove off, was his best chance to, made him hold his breath in anticipation.

"Of course. It´s was nice to meet you two" his mom smilingly said to the girls, who kindly smiled back at her. After waving goodbye to them, the bad dream he´d just lived through finally came to an end, as the taxi driver began driving them home.

That evening was about learning for Abby. With January also came another lull at The Ice House and they´d had so few customers, that Bessie (probably also out of wanting to pocket all of the tips herself) had sent her to help out Bodie in the kitchen. He didn´t need whatever little help Abby could offer of course, but along with always enjoying his soothing company, she also figured that it could be helpful to learn some cooking skills, for when the day came, where she wouldn´t have anyone to do the cooking for her.

"Can you taste your sauce? Sorry, that came all wrong!" she grinningly asked him and he quickly obliged by handing her a spoon.

"Don´t worry about it! What do your taste buds tell you?" he asked, as she tried to decide with herself, if it was completely perfect.

"I can´t find anything wrong with it" she answered.

"In that case, I´ll take your word for it".

"Really? I´m not an actual chef, you know?" she had to ask, now unsure if she should have said something else.

"Neither was I, until someone gave me a chance, to show that I could become one. I wasn´t much older than you, when I had my first evening working in a kitchen. It wouldn´t have happened though, unless someone had shown faith in me" he assured her, filling her with a bit of the old "I can do this" enthusiasm.

After they´d sent their dish up to the pass and while they were waiting for the next order to come in, a small clean-up was taken care of. While she was wiping down kitchen equipment, flashes of her run-in with Jack´s mom kept replaying inside her head. Her mom, in some of her "clearer" moments, had told her about some of the most shocking things, she´d seen on her job as a nurse. She could remember her mother telling her about having run-ins with mourners, whose minds wouldn´t accept that their loved ones weren´t among us anymore. It could be near-impossible in those situations, to get them to understand that there was nothing the hospital staff could do for them. She hadn´t talked all that much to Jack and Andie yet, but surely, they would have at least told one of her friends, if they had a little brother at home.

One side of Abby thought that this was a private family matter and none of her business, to get herself involved in. It was just a shame that it wasn´t that smaller side of her, the larger side of her usually listened to.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR