THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - WHITE RIOT
"White riot, I wanna riot!
White riot, a riot of my own!"
THE CLASH (From the album "The Clash" (1977))
Sent: March 5th, 1999
From: AGirlNamedJoey
To: SpielbergsDisciple
Subject: The footage, you sent to me.
Hi, Dawson. I managed to download that short video clip, you´d sent to me as an attachment to your last e-mail (which btw took me forever, plus I had to ask a teacher for permission, before I could download anything to their school computers) and while the footage that I saw was VERY GRAINY, it still looks and sounds like an interesting idea for your movie and one that I think, you should stick with. If you want to run any ideas by me, don´t hesitate to ask, okay? Just because I´m not physically there to lend a hand, doesn´t mean that I´m not ready to help you out, any way that I can.
Best of luck with it all!
Joey
Sent: March 5th, 1999
From: SpielbergsDisciple
To: AGirlNamedJoey
Subject: My movie.
Hi, Joey. I´ve just watched that clip in its digitally transferred version for the first time and I´m sorry, but it seemed like an easy idea, to send it to you that way, so that I could get some feedback from you. I guess that while George Lucas is apparently ready to try what´s it´s like to shoot an entire Star Wars trilogy in digital, the rest of us mortals have to wait a few more years, before it really becomes useful to us! I can´t wait to see what he´s come up with though, when the first movie in his new trio of movies set in a galaxy far, far away, premieres a few months from now!
I´m glad that you liked my idea and right now, that´s also the story I´m leaning towards going with, a tragic high school love story gone wrong sort of movie, if that makes any sense!
Have fun and take good care of yourself!
Dawson.
When Abby woke up that morning, it was for once in a rare while, with a smile on her usually grumpy in the morning face. In this world there are A-People (like Bessie, who´s working like a dynamo from the moment, she wakes up), B-People (like Bodie, who needs a few cups of coffee and a shower, before he´s good for anything) and then, there were people like herself, who fall outside of both categories and on most days don´t even begin to properly wake up, until they´ve been up for a couple of hours, at the least. This morning though, she´d felt a surge of energy from the moment, she´d begun to come to and unlike her usual ritual, where she (if she didn´t have to go to the bathroom immediately after waking up) would lie still for a good fifteen minutes and allow herself to slowly come to that way, by the time Bessie had breakfast for the four of them in their little household ready, she´d already showered, picked out the perfect "Professional looking, yet not so much that she didn´t look like someone, you could come over and talk to" outfit for election day and had even had a few extra minutes to go over her acceptance speech, for when she was sure to be crowned the winner and new student body president later that day.
"What sounds most like what a real politician would say? "Thanks to all of you, who voted for me" or just "Thanks for all of your support". I kind of thinking that the first one sounds like I´m blaming all of those, who didn´t vote for me and I don´t want them to think that I have against them or anything like that, just because they were too blind to see, that I´m clearly the number one candidate to win this election!" Abby asked Bodie, who was looking over the paper from yesterday (that he hadn´t had time to read yet) and Bessie, who had both hands full with Alexander occupying one of them and her trying to fill up the dishwasher with the other hand.
"I´d go with the second choice" Bodie half-heartedly answered her, while turning a page in his newspaper.
"Don´t you think it´s a little early to be working on your acceptance speech, when the first vote hasn´t been cast yet?" Bessie asked her, before closing up their practically ancient dishwasher (that had been on its last legs for years and only by some miracle was still more or less working, like it was supposed to) and getting it´s rinse cycle started.
"You can´t tell me that every candidate for president, no matter how far they were behind in the polls before the election, didn´t have a winner´s speech prepared, just in case?" Abby asked back, right before settling on "Thanks for your support" being the best opening line to go with.
"She´s got you there, Bessie!" Bodie teased his fiancée, who shook her head at him in reply.
"Like you´d know, Bodie? When have you ever run in an election?" Bessie asked him and it got him to put down his paper for a moment or two.
"Even if I´ve never run for anything myself, I´ll have you know that I´ve helped out on a few election campaigns in the past. Like for a guy that you might know named Bill Clinton?" he told them, drawing sceptic stares based on his claim. It even looked like Alexander was sending him a pair of them too, although you´d have call it extremely unlikely that he would have any idea, who Bill Clinton was or what the whole big deal with politics was, anyway!
"You planned President Clinton´s presidential election campaign? Bodie, you know that I love you, but I have to call BS on that one!" Bessie sharply answered him, while Abby herself nodded along in agreement.
"I never said that I planned it, only that helped on it! I was among the several thousands, who helped to organize a whole lot of young voters, to vote for the first time in that 1992 election and why did Clinton win that election? In great part because of people like me, who worked our butts off to get so many first-time voters to support him over that fossil George Bush, whose only plan was to continue doing what everyone, except for him and his rich buddies, could see wasn´t working! I rest my case!" he explained to them smugly, before getting back to reading his newspaper.
"That´s the same as saying that me and Joey are helping with saving the rainforest, because we send e-mails back and forth and don´t send letters to one another! It doesn´t count!" Abby interjected and it looked to her, like Bessie was for the most part agreeing with her.
"In any case, it sounds a lot to me like you´re selling off the pelt, before the bear has been shot yet. We just don´t want to set you up more disappointment, than I´m sure you´ve already had enough of in your life so far, Abby" Bessie caringly said, while looking into her eyes (in the same manner that she usually did, when the control freak inside of her had to be sure that what someone was telling her was the truth and nothing but the truth).
"I´m not, I swear! I mean, look at it this way: I came into the election, thinking that I had next to no chance of winning, so even if I lose, it isn´t like I´ve REALLY lost, if you know what I mean? Just the fact that I, who was a complete and utter nobody at our school less than a month ago, managed to use my wits to stop the worst girl in the entire world from winning the election and in turn, turning that entire school into her personal little hellhole, is more than enough for me! Winning today would be the cherry on the sundae, nothing more!" she tried to convince Bessie, who didn´t look like she was entirely buying it, but at the same time probably didn´t want to start any arguments over such a tiny thing.
Was it true, though? Hell no, it wasn´t! Only a week or two ago, it would have been the truth, but not anymore. Now, Abby didn´t only want to win that election, she wanted to win it in style!
How many times had Dawson tried to tell himself, that he needed to stop what he was doing right away and get back to reality again, while he´d been half-nakedly making out with Hannah down in the boiler room? The answer was so many times that he´d lost count minutes earlier, but with their next class (Peterson´s English class, AKA the last class that you wanted to be late for!) looming ever closer, he´d have to call a close to their make-out session, unless that he wanted the entire school to know what kind of sordid affairs, he´d been getting up to with that irresistible little minx on a near-daily basis, since their first hook-up a few weeks earlier. He knew that what they were doing was wrong, yet the ways she had of turning him on would always leave him helpless and ready to do, whatever she wanted him to. In other words, he´d become the Ducky to her Molly Ringwald and almost the worst part of it, was that he was doing it willingly.
"We have to stop this and get to class!" he tried telling her, even if he knew that him telling her to do something, so far had never resulted in her doing it.
"You don´t think that it would be a lot funnier, if we got the entire school talking about us? It sure doesn´t take a lot around here!" she cheekily asked him, while reaching down into a place in his pants, that she was the only girl, who´d ever touched before. As far as he knew (and wanted to know), anyway.
"Don´t you think this is messy enough, as it is?" he annoyedly asked her back, before pulling her hand out of his boxer shorts and buttoning up his "Goodies", so she wouldn´t get to them. "It was one thing when it was just Mary-Beth being the unsuspecting victim in all of this ... whatever it is, that we´ve become!"
"I believe that the correct term would be friends with benefits".
"That´s the thing, though. We´re not even friends! I´m just a guy that you use to fulfill your needs, whenever they need fulfilling!"
"And what´s so wrong about that? I´m fifteen, close to being sixteen. You can´t expect me to live like a nun!" she objected, before putting her own clothes back on again, now that their little break away from eyes of the rest of the school was obviously coming to an end.
"Don´t you care about love and the idea of being faithful to someone, who places their trust in you at all?"
"You mean, like you are to your mousy, little girlfriend?" she asked him tauntingly.
"That´s low and you know it! I should ..."
"Do what, Dawson? Break up with me? Go ahead, see if I care! Of course, if you do, then you can also wave goodbye to those five thousand dollars, I´m investing in your movie. Come to think of it, I might just also have to have a little talk with Mary-Beth about the kind of things, her boyfriend likes to get up to down in the boiler room, or any of the other many places around town, where he more than willingly made out with me!"
"I´d like to see you try! Either way, what´s to stop me from telling Chris on you? It´s practically the same thing, you´re doing to him!" he told a now game for an all-out verbal war Hannah, who looked him tauntingly and directly in the eyes.
"Chris and I have gone out on a couple of dates, that´s all. You spent months earning Mary-Beth´s trust, painstakingly awaiting the moment where she would open herself up enough, to give herself to you. Plus, it´s Chris, we´re talking about here! Let´s face it, he isn´t exactly the deepest guy out there, when it comes to the whole scope of emotions thing!" she said, and he had to agree with her there.
"Still, you can´t just go around and playing with people´s emotions like this! Can´t you see that ..."
"I´m the one, who´s playing with people´s emotions? Try taking a good, hard look in the mirror for once, Dawson, and then tell me, what you see! Unlike you, I don´t have a habit of filling the heads of my lovers with my lies and I´ve already made it as clear as day to him, that I intend to be back in an adequate private school by the start of the next schoolyear. My guess is that if he has a fun evening out with his friends and he´s lucky enough, that some doll-faced bimbo takes enough pity on him, that she´ll want to suck face with him, there´s zero chance that he won´t have already entirely moved on to her and forgotten all about me, before he goes to sleep that night! What you´re doing to Mary-Beth, though? Whew! That´s the kind of revelation that could scar a shy and innocent girl like her for life! You realize that she could end up being a spinster for the rest of her life, after the way you´ll inevitably end up crushing her fragile, young heart into a thousand pieces, don´t you?" she continued, taunting him to try to get a reaction out of him further with every syllable, that came out of her devilish mouth.
"Even you wouldn´t be that heartless!" he told her off, trying to hold his ground, even if it clearly was a losing battle.
"You can believe me or not, I couldn´t less which you choose to, but I have a soft spot for girls like her, who never do anything bad towards anyone else, who try to make this world a better place, because they want to and not because someone is telling them, that they have to do it for their own reward and mostly, who all deserve to have far better boyfriends than dogs like you, so I won´t resort to telling her, unless you make if my final option. Trust me on this though, you don´t want to try me, Dawson! Now, be a good boy and go up the stairs first, so we won´t be seen together! Even if Chris isn´t more than a useful fool at the best of times, he does have a driver´s license and regular access to a car and I´m sure that I can still find some way, where even the dumbest out of the many, many dumb boys at this school, can be of some kind of use to me!" she menacingly said, not holding back in the tone of her voice at how little she clearly thought of the both of them.
He first only opened the door up to the hallway slightly ajar, to make sure that no one saw him come out from there. Once he saw that the coast was clear, he quickly made his way out of the door and shut it behind himself, leaving no evidence of what had just transpired down there less than a minute earlier.
He only had less than two minutes to make it to class on time, though and with him also having to stop by his locker to get his books for it, this meant that he had to make a solid run for it, if he was going to make it on time. When he got to class, he was both feeling gassed and surprised to see that Hannah had already made it there before him. Otherwise, he just tried to ignore her the best he could, as he took his usual seat next to Pacey.
"Why is the usually first or second one to get there, before class begins, almost late for this one, I wonder?" Pacey whisperingly asked him, giving him the need to come up with a quick excuse.
"Ehm ... my dad made this really spicy Mexican food for dinner a few days ago. It tastes amazing going in, but when it´s time for it to come out again ..." he began whispering back.
"That´s okay, Dawson. I don´t feel any particular need to hear the details about your bowel movements!" his friend whispered back, while making a disgusted face, giving him the out that he needed.
For the next hour or so, while Peterson rambled on and on about something, that he wasn´t paying any real attention to, there were two sets of feelings overcoming him. The first was feeling angry with himself, for being such a lousy boyfriend to an incredibly wonderful girl, who deserved only the best, that life could offer her and for "Making a deal with the Devil", as Pacey had previously put it, when he should have been smart enough to know that nothing comes without a price. Especially, when you´re dealing with a borderline militant, feminist sociopath, whose head is filled to the brink with serious issues, when it comes to men and boys as a whole, as he´d now come to find out that Hannah obviously was!
The second set of feelings were a mix of fear and regret, because he knew deep down that Mary-Beth was almost certain to find out the truth some way in the future and that when she did, he´d be confronted with what a horny idiot of a teenage boy, he was acting like right at this time of his life. Sure, he knew that he wasn´t alone in it and that just in the same classroom, he was sitting in, there was sure to be at least one other guy, who´d done something with another girl than his girlfriend at the time, that he wishes that he hadn´t done afterwards. That still wasn´t an excuse and no one knew it better than he did, so what other explanation could he have for her, other than "She tried to seduce me, and I went along with it"?
For now however, he only had one plan to stick to and if all went well, then he would also get the bonus of being able to finally get a full night´s worth of sleep and for the first time in days, not wake up in the middle of the night, just so he could lie there and think about his girl troubles, until seven o´clock hit and it was time for him to get ready for school. Whether she´d won or lost the election (which they would find out before the school day ended), he would spoil Mary-Beth to the absolute best of his abilities and if he could keep a Colgate smile on her mouth from the second that she saw him, until they bid their goodnights, it would mean that he´d at least done something nice for her, to atone for all of the not-so-nice things, he was also far too guilty of perpetrating towards her.
Abby had to admit that with all of the excitement of the election filling her head, it hadn´t been easy to keep her mind on school during her morning classes. She´d only more or less managed to concentrate during her biology test and even that had entirely been because she had what her teacher had called "A Very Low D-Minus" in the subject, that she needed to pull up before the end of the schoolyear, or she´d be taking it again in summer school. Unfortunately, Biology was far from the only subject, she was suffering in and unless her finals went far beyond expectations, there was little chance that Pacey and Joey wouldn´t have her for a classmate over the summer, when she could have been spending it having fun by the creek, if she wasn´t going out on cool little daytrips with Melissa or her friends.
"Abby Morgan, would you come to the principal´s office, please?" came out over the speakers from a voice, that was clearly that of the school secretary, just as her final class before lunch was coming to a close.
As she made her way down there, she wondered what it could be about this time. In her so far year and three-quarters at the school, it was safe to say that she´d been one of most frequent visitors down there, but she hadn´t done anything against the rules, since she´d punched Belinda in the face and she already had two more months of Saturday detention to go, before she´d served her time on that one. What else could they do to her, with the exception of kicking out?
"What did I do now?" she tried humorously asking the principal, just after she´d taken a seat across from him, with his office desk separating them.
"Abby, in my twenty plus years as a principal, I haven´t had anywhere near as many talks with a student over such a short period of time, as I´ve had with you, since you started here. Before you came here, I honestly didn´t think that it would ever be needed, but it is what it is! Which is also why I´m hoping that you´ll trust me, when I tell you that what I´m about to say, is solely for your own good. Are we clear on that?"
"Crystal clear!" she smilingly answered him, even if she already didn´t like where this was heading.
To her slight surprise, he handed her a rather thick book.
"The school charter. Look up what it says on page seventy, paragraph sixty-three" he told her, and it only took her a few seconds to find the part, he was referring to.
"Paragraph sixty-three" she began reading. "It says here that: "If a student is suspended or on academic probation, they are not allowed to take part in activities such as student body committee meetings, sporting events or other kinds of competitions, associated with the school". Isn´t that what they usually refer to as "The Football Player Rule"?"
"Some do. Abby, with the way your grades have been on a solid downhill slide since your election campaign began, after they´d actually begun to up a little, it would be nothing short of academic suicide, for you to do both things at the same time. As your principal and the one, who´s here to act in your best interest, I´m placing you on academic probation, which disqualifies you from running in the election, I´m afraid" he explained to her and although, part of her wanted to plead her case, to let her run in spite of her bad grades, the rational side of her knew that he was probably right.
"How´s this for karma coming back to bite you in butt? Pardon my French!" she said jokingly, while trying to force a smile for him.
"Abby, you´re still only a sophomore here. So, you didn´t become student body president this year, but no one says that you can´t try your luck again next year! If you ask me, I think that you´d make for a fine student body president, you just need to get those grades up, so we don´t need to have as many of these little talks, as we have been. It isn´t that you aren´t a clever girl, Abby, you just need to channel your energy to where it´s needed and not on all other kinds of things. Okay?" he told her with a kind smile in return for the one, she was giving him.
"Okay. Can I ask you something?"
"I can´t see why not".
"If you were a student here, would you have voted for me? I mean, if you could have".
"Abby, no one here believes in your untapped wealth of potential more than I do. As for whether I´d vote for you, that part I´m keeping to myself" he told her as kindly, as he could.
As she left the principal´s office, there was still a part of her that was disappointed that she wouldn´t at least find out, how the election would have ended, had she run in it. Apart from that however, it really didn´t bother her all that much.
"He actually said that you have an "Untapped Wealth of Potential"? Those are some mighty big words!" Jen quipped, while they were standing in line to cast their respective votes for Mary-Beth.
"I know! Let´s say that it was you and someone said that to you, what would do with that information?" she jokingly asked back.
"I don´t know! Start my own company or something, I guess!" Jen joked back and they shared a small giggle.
"Right now, all it´s good for is as a morale boost, while I hunker down to try to get my grades up to an acceptable level. Unlike most of the people in our class, I can´t add the word "Again" to that sentence, so it would make for a nice first for me!"
"Let me know how it feels, will you?"
"Sure thing. It looks like MB has this thing locked down, huh?"
"I guess so. You´re really not the tiniest bit angry inside, that they wouldn´t allow you to run, after all of that hard work, we put into your campaign?"
"What hard work? Just admit it, Jen! This has been one long win-win situation for you!" she explained to a Jen, who was curious as to what she´d meant.
"Explain".
"Let´s start with the subject of Jack, shall we? Remind me, what was your status with him, before this election campaign began?"
"I´d talked to him a good handful of times, but I didn´t really know him yet".
"And now, he´s your date for the dance next week! To quote Bodie: I rest my case!"
"I´m sure that someone used that expression long before he did, but go on?"
"Plus, you helped with putting Belinda in her place and in doing so, probably stopped her from terrorizing lots of other outsider girls, who are exactly like we are, in the future! Face it, Jen! Your karma has gone from the lowest levels, since the days of Djengis Khan, to current-day Mother Theresa levels over these past weeks!" she quipped to a smiling Jen, who couldn´t help but let a small giggle out.
"I see your point! You can´t tell me that you didn´t end up in a win-win situation either, though. If we forget about you getting put on academic probation, of course! And you can´t call yourself an outsider anymore either! You´re far too popular for that now!"
"Yeah, I guess so. I think that whole outsider thing went out of the window, when someone freshman girl, that I´d never talked to before, came over to me and asked if she should dump her cheating boyfriend!" she told Jen, recalling one of her favorite moments from the whole "Election Campaign" period.
"What did you tell her?" Jen asked.
"To dump that zero and find herself a hero, of course! Hey, here´s a thought! Maybe, I could use some of that untapped wealth of potential to become the next Oprah?" she threw out there jokingly, drawing a laugh not just from Jen, but from a few of those surrounding them as well.
"If that´s your plan, I guess that I´d better try my hardest to stay friends with you!" Jen laughingly replied, just before the two girls were handed their voters cards and did their little part, to take part in the democracy process at their school.
After Abby had pulled out of the election, there had been practically no competition left to stand against Mary-Beth, who´d been elected with over seventy percent of the votes. It had been the biggest landslide win in the school´s history and Dawson couldn´t help from feeling a little proud, that if it hadn´t been for him putting the idea into her head, there was practically no chance that she would have run in the first place. He´d been with her, when the election results had been read out over the PA, and the ear-to-ear smile on her face, as she hugged him tightly and thanked him over and over again, he was sure would be one of those images, that would forever be burned into his brain for all of the right reasons.
After school, they´d had a small victory party down at The Ice House, attended by all of Mary-Beth´s friends, nearly all of which he could claim that she had thanks to him. The more he thought about it, and perhaps as a way to soothe his guilt over his infidelity with Hannah, the more Mary-Beth had him to thank for. Then again, the only reason why he´d done those things for her, was because she´d made him want to, not like Hannah through threats and intimidation, but through her innate sweetness, that was also why his parents were so fond of her already.
They liked to joke that he was lucky, because he´d already met his future wife and when they did, he found it hard to disagree with them. Joey had for so long been the only girl in his life, that he´d learned to ignore all others of her gender and age, but in many ways, you could say that her and Pacey becoming a couple, had also been the best thing that had ever happened to himself, as well as it had for them. With Joey being distinctly off-limits and for the last two months also far away physically, it had opened up a new world of girls to him, that it would have taken much longer for him to begin exploring, had she still been there as an option for a girlfriend. He was missing her in many ways, if nothing else to provide him with a moral compass in his life, but now where he´d found out that life for him without her in it wasn´t unbearable at all, she also wasn´t the most important girl in his life anymore.
That honor belonged to a girl, who trusted him with all of her heart. It was just a crying shame for the both of them, that he wasn´t deserving of that trust.
END OF CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX