THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD

"It's my own design

It's my own remorse

Help me to decide

Help me make the

Most of freedom and of pleasure

Nothing ever lasts forever

Everybody wants to rule the world"

TEARS FOR FEARS (From the album "Songs From the Big Chair" (1985))

Sent: February 27th, 1999

From: ThatAbbyGirl

To: AGirlNamedJoey

Subject: Wish me luck!

We´re only a few days away from the election and it´s safe to say that the tension at school is so thick, that you could cut it with a knife! Okay, so maybe I´m overdoing it a little and if I have to be honest, it´s probably only half of us there, who care about the election result in the slightest! It´s still pretty exciting though, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

I almost completely forgot to ask you how you´re doing! Isn´t that just like me?

Hoping that you´re doing great!

Abby

Sent: February 27th, 1999

From: AGirlNamedJoey

To: ThatAbbyGirl

Subject: re: Wish me luck!

Hi, Abby. It´ll be hard for me to keep my fingers crossed for you too, considering that I´ve already promised Dawson that I´ll do the same for Mary-Beth. Maybe, I could keep my toes crossed for you and that way, it could even itself out? As long as Belinda doesn´t win, that´s the main thing, right?

Over here, the time has been flying away since I got home from Paris. It still feels like it was five minutes ago, that we got on the train there and hopefully, that feeling won´t go away anytime soon.

Say hi to everyone at home for me!
Joey

Things were getting mighty strange at Capeside High. "Twilight Zone" levels of strange, if you asked Jen. From the day that she´d arrived there, it had seemed like exactly what she´d pictured that most of these smalltown high schools were. Full of old fashioned teachers, who had perhaps heard of modern teaching techniques, but as far as implementing them, were more likely to quit teaching altogether, than to change anything in the way they´d been doing their jobs for years. As for the school pecking order, it was basically like something out an 80´s teen movie, where the jocks and cheerleaders rule unconditionally, while all of their fellow students have to live with things being this way, and are expected to not complain too much over it. That was what it was like at their school too, until a tiny, little hurricane came along and hit it with full force. A tiny hurricane by the name of Abby Morgan.

When Abby had first mentioned the idea of running for student body president, the only reason that she´d agreed to help out, was to get a whole lot of alone time with Jack out of it. Which, you could say had worked out pretty well for her, seeing as she had scored him to be her date for the school dance, taking place a week to the day after the student body election. While even Jen herself would admit that her motives hadn´t been entirely noble, something in the way that she viewed this election had changed over the past weeks, now where the campaign that her and Jack had come up with for Abby, had gained so much momentum that it was now looking as if the election would end up being a two-way nail-biter between Abby and the constellation of Belinda and Chris (who had so far solely made himself by remarkable by taking as little of a part in their opposing campaign, as he could). Mary-Beth was the only other candidate, who was hanging in there as a strong outsider to win, after she´d done such an amazing job at rounding up those, who were looking for the most competent person for the job, rather than the one, who was best at dishing out dirt on her opponents. In anything, Jen guessed that Mary-Beth focusing on selling her ideas in the best way possible and refusing to take part in any kind of "dirty campaigning", had probably scored her more votes, than any of the mudslinging between Belinda and Abby had for either of them. To be honest, if Jen wasn´t feeling forced to vote for Abby out of loyalty, she too would have cast her vote on "MB - The Girl for Me!" (as Mary-Beth´s, quite clever, Jen had to admit, campaign slogan went).

To be perfectly honest, Jen didn´t care all that much who won, as long as it wasn´t Belinda and with only a few days to go until the election, making sure that Belinda didn´t take the cake had become top on her list of priorities. After scoring with Jack, it almost went without saying!

"If only we could get some of the jocks on our side, that would almost be sure to seal my victory" Abby thought out loud, while she was glancing through the school paper and like Jen herself, waiting for their next class to start.

"It almost sounds like you want to win now. You´re not telling me that this new-found popularity is getting to your head, are you?" Jen asked back, and it made Abby put her paper down and consider it for a moment.

"Maybe, a little bit. Don´t get me wrong, this is still about rubbing Belinda´s ugly face in the horrible stench of defeat, but ..."

"What about the fact that you´re always behind on your school work and that you´ve been falling even further behind, ever since this journey began for you? Or that you have an after-school job and a girlfriend, who I´m sure will also want to see a little of you, once in a while?" Jen reminded her friend, who shot her a cheeky smile in return.

"She can see all of me, anytime that she wants to!" Abby winkingly replied, getting her a few whistles from a pair of boys sitting in the row behind them, that must have overheard her.

"You know that wasn´t what I meant! How are you planning on finding the time to do all of those things, and still have time for a social life? Not to mention, just having the time to get a few hours of sleep every night! I think, we can both agree, that if there´s one thing you aren´t, it´s someone who turns up fresh and ready for school, every Monday through Friday!"

"Okay, I´ll give you that as far as my morning-freshness or lack thereof goes, I´m a hundred percent guilty as charged! No arguments there! I won´t know until I´ve tried though, will I? Maybe, I´m capable of so much more, than I ever thought I could do, if I´m given the chance to show that I can. Have you considered that?" Abby asked her, but before she could come up with a suitable answer, it was time for their class to begin.

Pacey had made the wise decision to stay as neutral, as could be, when it came to the election. If past events in his life had taught him anything, it was that when you had two friends, who weren´t agreeing on something, it was better to take the high road and declare, that he while agreed somewhat with both of them, it wasn´t a strong enough agreement, that he was willing to pick sides. This had worked for the most part too, although he had broken his self-declared "Neutrality Pact" a couple of times, when he´d taken an extra shift at the video store for Dawson, who´d been too busy with helping his girlfriend win the election, to turn up for work. He didn´t mind working the extra hours at the store either, now that it was freezing cold outside for the most part, and with the way things were going financially for his parents, it was quickly becoming clear to him, that if he was going to move out on his own right after high school ended, then the money for a security deposit on a place to live, along with the dough for some furniture to put inside of said place, would have to come entirely out of his own pocket.

On this day though, he´d decided to (with the exception of going to school and doing any must be done homework that might be sent his way) on taking it easy for once. Dawson would be making up for lost time at the video store, meaning that he didn´t have to come in for work until the evening shift the day after, and his grades, while still not being entirely on the same level as those his best amigo was getting, had been surely and steadily improving since the start of the semester. From the last talk he´d had with the principal, it sounded like there was a good possibility, that he would be able to get away with taking a few classes in summer school and that if he did that and kept up the improvements, then he´d be able to avoid getting held back year, which was still the worst-case scenario, as Pacey himself saw it.

Which in it´s own way would also be ideal, since his beloved Joey would be attending summer school too, to make up most of the credits that she´d missed out on for spending half a year in France. Already now, thoughts of them sneaking away from their classes to do some R-rated "Extracurricular Activities" down in the boiler room, were enough to send the blood rushing to his groin. Unfortunately, this also included sometimes in situations where he didn´t want it to happen, but those tiny bits of embarrassment were a small price for something, that helped him to get trough even the bleakest of days, that were sure to come along here and then. The question of what he was going to do on this "Half-Day Off" of his, was exactly what he was pondering during his first break of the day, over a cup of hot chocolate in the near empty cafeteria, when Abby came practically barging in and steered steadfastly towards him.

"I need your help, Pacey!" she told him imploringly, before taking a seat across from him.

"I didn´t hear the word please!" he replied teasingly, getting a small eye-roll from her in return.

"Will you please help me? I have a problem and I need a boy to help me with it!" she said and like the cheeky "Han Solo-Like" scoundrel, that he couldn´t help himself from being sometimes, he gave her a small suspicious glare. "I didn´t mean help me "That Way"! I can perfectly well take care of that myself, I´ll have you know!"

"I´m sure that you can! My answer all depends on what you´re asking of me, so say what you have to say" he replied smugly, now that there was finally girl who wanted something from him again.

"It´s nothing big! I just need you to help me with sealing the deal on this whole election thing!"

"Already, I´m leaning heavily towards a hard no! I´m sure that I don´t need to remind you that ..."

"Dawson is you best bro or whatever and you don´t want him to get mad at you, for helping someone other than his girlfriend win! I get that whichever bro-code you two live by forbids it and if it had been Jen doing something to sabotage my chances of winning, I´d be pretty miffed with her too!"

"Why are you asking me, then?"

"Because, you won´t directly be doing anything to ruin Mary-Beth´s chances of winning. If you spin things the right way, you could actually say that you helped her get closer to winning" Abby explained, sounding no less like a fox in a hen house, than he´d ever heard someone sound before.

"I´m going to regret saying this, but I´ll hear you out!"

"You and Chris used to be buddies, didn´t you? What happened there?"

"I won´t say that we´ve ever really been friends as such. He´s just a guy that I´ve talked to every once in a while, ever since we were little, that´s all. What´s with the sudden interest in Chris? You aren´t thinking of changing teams again, are you?" he jokingly asked. The laugh that Abby let out however, told him in no uncertain terms, how far that ship had already sailed away from it´s former port of call.

"Not in this lifetime or the next ten ones to come after it, at least! Haven´t you noticed how he´s barely ever been there, whenever anything campaign related is going on?"

"I can´t say that I´m too surprised. Can you imagine Chris attending one of those meetings? Knowing him, he´ll be looking for the fastest way out of there, before they´d even begin with the first point on the agenda!"

"Then it isn´t just me, who´s smelling something fishy and it isn´t only the smell of those lousy fish sticks, that we´ll be having for lunch for the fourth time in the space of two weeks! We all know that the only reason why most of the jocks are voting for him and through that Belinda, is because they see him as one of their own and none of us other candidates are. Of course, they´d rather vote for him than someone like me or Mary-Beth! Would they still vote for Belinda though, if she didn´t have him to boost her numbers, is what I´m asking myself?" Abby threw out there and he could easily see what she meant. Even if he´d overheard a good few of the jocks bragging about scoring with Belinda in the past, for the most part, she wasn´t anymore well-liked by them, than she was by the majority of the students at Capeside High.

"What´s your plan?" he asked back, seeing as he wasn´t any keener on the idea of Belinda being student body president, than any of his friends were.

"Have a chat him and try to find out why he´s doing something, that he obviously doesn´t give two hoots about in the first place! If Dawson asks why you did it, you can just tell him that ..."

"I did it to try to score some more votes for Mary-Beth. I´ve got ya on that one! You have my interest piqued, Morgan, I´m just still not entirely sure ..."

"What if I ... agreed to be your servant for six hours?" she asked, clearly not liking the idea anymore, than how funny it sounded to his ears.

"What an interesting idea, Abby! Twelve hours and you have yourself a deal!"

"Nine hours, and I want it to be spread out over two days. There´s a limit to how much humiliation that I´m willing to put myself through though, so I will reserve the right to refuse any task, if I think that it´s too demeaning!"

"How does sanding down my boat, before it´s time to give it a fresh coat of paint for the spring, sound to you?"

"Incredibly boring, but acceptable! You have to give it the old college try however, or the deal is off the table" Abby slightly reprimanded him, before they nodded at one another as a sign of agreement.

As an added extra bonus, he now also had a plan for what to spend the rest of his day on!

Just as school for the day was coming to an end, it also became time for one of the almost daily rituals in Jen´s life (that she could do without), to repeat itself: Her (once again) refusing Chris Wolfe, when he tried to ask her out. To start off with, the only difference this time, compared to all of the other times that he´d tried it, was that he picked the worst time possible, just as she was getting a drink from one of the water fountains, and the small shock that he gave her was enough to send water spraying all over her shirt and jeans.

"Ooh!" was all he said in reaction to this new predicament, that he´d put her in, and it didn´t help much, when it came to much patience that she had with him, or how little that she felt like talking to him.

"I´m standing here looking like a fool and it´s all thanks to you and all you have to say is "Ooh"? What part of "I´m not interested in you and there´s a bigger chance of me suddenly growing a tail, than it ever happening!" does your single-celled, idiotic, caveman brain not understand?" she practically yelled at him, drawing stares from nearly all of those nearby. Not that she cared nearly as much about it, as Chris did.

"I thought that you were just playing hard to get!" he tried replying innocently, coming off about as intelligent as a chimp trying to solve a Rubic´s cube in the process.

"How many ways can I say it, Chris? I think that you´re a total scuzz-ball, who treats us girls like we only exist for your own amusement and here´s a news flash for you: You´re not nearly as hot, as you think you are! In fact, I could name thirty guys here that I think are way hotter than you! In addition to that, your sleazy personality is so incredibly off-putting to me, that I´d rather date any other guy here, before I took a chance on you! So, pretty please, with mother-flipping sugar on top! Will you get lost and leave me alone from now on?" she angrily told him off, in what had to be the worst way that she´d ever done it to someone.

At first, it had felt like a weight off her shoulders too, but the second that she´d said it, something in her mood changed. Perhaps, it was the hurt puppy-dog look on his face, but it didn´t take many moments for Jen´s emotions to shift from feeling relieved, that she´d finally told him where to stick his date proposals, to feeling like the biggest low-life in the entire world, for not only having done it front of a hallway full of people, but also to a boy, who for all of this over the top macho bravado, she also had to admit to having severely prejudged beforehand, from the moment that she´d first laid eyes on him.

"All I did was try to get to know you, Jen. I thought that I saw someone a little bit like myself in you, but I must have been wrong. By the way, you don´t have to worry about me asking you out again. I can´t see why I should waste anymore time on a stuck-up bitch, who thinks that she´s above everyone else here, just because her parents are stinking rich and she´s from New York!" he fired back sharply, before storming away from her.

As she stood there, taking in what he´d said and trying to ignore the probably well-deserved stares and whispers, she was getting, she couldn´t help thinking to herself, if parts of what he´d said hadn´t been correct. For as much as she´d tried to come to Capeside with an open mind and had tried not to judge anyone, before she had a chance to get to know them, she´d undeniably done so in far more situations, than she would have liked to say it had happened in and with many more people, than she should have, with Chris probably being on top of that list. When she thought back to Joey and the rather negative first impression, she´d gotten of her, it had been nothing even remotely similar to the caring and loyal friend, that she´d turned out to be. A girl, who she had more in common with, than she´d ever had with a girl before, at least since she´d hit her pre-teens. Who was to say that she wasn´t just as wrong about Chris and hadn´t just humiliated a guy in public, who´d done nothing to deserve it?

Sometimes, Jen really didn´t like herself all that much!

Pacey had spent most of the rest of his school day, after his talk with Abby earlier that day, coming up with how to spin the issue of talking about the election with a guy, whom he´d never talked to about anything except for girls and how sexy, they respectively thought that they were. A few times, they´d also talked about football, but that was the extent of their friendship so far and if it was up to Pacey himself, that was how it would stay. He had enough friends in his life without having to add a guy like Chris, that he had little to nothing in common with, apart for them having played on the same playgrounds growing up and a guy, whose views of women and girls, he felt belonged better in a faraway past, parts of which were better left forgotten.

Just as he was in the middle of trying to come up with an opening line, Chris came over to him looking enraged, exactly as he was putting his books in the locker and locking it up for the rest of the day.

"What the hell is Jen´s problem? She totally blew a gasket at me in the middle of the hallway, for no reason!" Chris exasperatedly said to him, doing nothing to hide his frustration.

"You don´t think that it could be ... you know, her time of the month? We all know that chicks sometimes get a little moody, when they have their monthly visitor!" he replied, trying to cool Chris down, before he could start a conversation with him.

"I guess that you could be right, but this went far beyond your normal kind of moody! This was like Belinda, when she goes into "Horrible Bitch-Mode" times a hundred! Sometimes, I just don´t get girls at all, man!" Chris sighed, as he slumped up against the neighboring locker to Pacey´s.

"You think, you´re the only one? I´m glad that I have Joey, because she´s the only one out of them that I come close to getting!" he replied, in part to play up to agreeing with Chris on things and in part also, because it was true. Even if he´d become friends with a whole lot more of them, than he had been just going back to the summer prior to this (when his social circle, as far as girls that he wasn´t closely related to went, still was only comprised of Joey and no one else), there were still many things about them that mystified him and that he could guess, would for some time to come.

"You don´t know how lucky, you are! Can you image how horny, she´s going to be for you, when she sees you again after you´ve been apart for that long? You´ll be lucky, if you´re able to walk, after she´s done with you!" Chris joked and although, Pacey found his joke to be a little on the tasteless side (especially considering where it was being spoken), he also knew that it would be far easier for him, as far as his objective went, if he had Chris in a mood to talk and not still upset over what had happened with Jen, so for that reason alone, he laughed along with him.

"I hope so!" he joked back. "What are you doing after school today?"

"Nothing much. I have my mom´s car for the day, so I was planning on taking it out for a spin. You want to come?" Chris asked and it wasn´t too long after this, that they were driving away from their school in what looked to Pacey like it was practically a brand-new Toyota. Either that, or it was extremely well-kept.

"Nice ride! When did you get your license?" he asked, while making sure that his seatbelt was well-fastened, since Chris was clearly taking the idea of speed limits with a grain of salt.

"Last week. When I turn twenty-one and my trust fund gets paid out, you´d better believe that I´m getting myself a sweet-ass ride, that´ll put this one to shame! Oh, well. Beggars can´t be choosers, can they?" Chris rhetorically asked him back, just before he had to hit the brakes hard to avoid crashing into the car ahead of them, filled with what looked like a mother with her three kids.

"Learn to drive, will you? Pacey, you wouldn´t believe the idiots, that you run into out in traffic!" Chris annoyedly said, even if it had clearly been him, who´d been speeding and hadn´t begun slowing down soon enough.

"Tell me about it! On second thought, don´t!"

"I know what you mean. It isn´t like there aren´t enough things in this world to annoy the living hell out of a guy, without having to add a few dumbasses behind the wheel of a car on top of it!" Chris complained and for the first time that Pacey could remember, something that he´d said actually interested him. Somewhat, at least.

"Like what? I would have thought that a guy like you had everything going for him".

"That´s what I try to make people think, but it isn´t the entire truth. Remember that party, I threw at my parents house a few months ago? They´re still giving me tons of flak, because someone made a couple of burn marks on my mom´s favorite rug and the cops came there to shut it down! Can you believe that?"

"Parents can be a pain sometimes, can´t they?"

"Isn't that the truth! Your´s too, huh?"

"They´re the yoke, that we´re born with and have to carry around everywhere!" Pacey joked and the small laugh that he got from Chris, told him that striking time, when it came to asking some certain pressing questions, was coming close.

"If it wasn´t for them ... nah, forget it!"

"You wouldn´t be running in the Student Boby election? Don´t you think, you´d be bored to death at their meetings?"

"Hey, I can´t stand Belinda either! She treats me like I´m her dog and thinks that just because our parents are old friends and I need to win this election, in order to get my parents to like me again, she can talk to me however she wants to!" Chris blurted out, unknowingly putting every piece together in Pacey´s plan, in doing so.

"Hmm ..." Pacey said, while contemplating it all for a moment.

"I´d drop out of that election in a second, if I could, but she´s grabbed me by the balls and she isn´t about to let go anytime soon! If I was at least getting laid with her, that would be something, but I´ve been caught in a lose/lose situation here!" Chris continued, before banging his hands on the steering wheel in sheer frustration.

"Have you ever talked to Hannah Von Wenning before? You should give it a try" Pacey suggested, getting a strange look from Chris in return.

"Sure, I have, but why?"

"Just trust me on this. The two of you will get along splendidly!"

As they drove on for another hour or so, before Chris dropped him off in front of his and his mom´s house, Pacey couldn´t help feeling a sense of accomplishment along with a sinking feeling, that by the time they showed up for school tomorrow, there would be a few changes to look forward to.

The rest of Jen´s day, after her emotional bust-up with Chris in the hallway, had consisted of a mix of self-loathing, self-pitying and at a few points, her even stooping so far as to feeling the need to call her mom up, to have a talk. Grams, who must have picked up on how low she was feeling, had tried to cheer her up by baking her favorite cookies and they´d spend the evening watching TV together, most of which had gone in through one of her ears and out the other. She´d always hated prejudicial people, so to come to terms with to some extend being one of them wasn´t an easy pill to swallow. She needed to apologize to Chris for her outburst, that much was clear to her and even if she wouldn´t go so far as to go on a date with him as an apology, she would also try to start things off on a fresh slate with him, if he was up for it.

When she got to school the morning after, she therefore wasn´t looking all that much forward to what was to come. That quickly began to change, when she saw Abby and Melissa with smiles so wide, that you´d think, they´d just been told that they´d won a million dollars. Each!

"Top of the morning to you, Jen! Have you heard the best news ever?" Abby smilingly asked her, so giddy that Jen had rarely seen the likes of it from her before.

"That ... it´ll be at least a month, until they serve those unbelievably dry and only barely edible fish sticks again in the cafeteria?" she joked, even if parts of her joke was masked in frustration at how bad the food had been in the cafeteria lately.

"We can only wish! Belinda has withdrawn her candidature!" Melissa told her and immediately by doing so, sent a huge wave of relief through Jen´s body and soul at the same time.

"Get this! Chris completely denounced her all over the school internet message board last night, saying how she´s been mean to him and everyone else and best of all for us, that she would be the absolute worst choice out of anyone at this school, to become Student Body President! People have been handing printouts of it out at school all morning. Look" Abby said, before handing Jen a sheet of A4 paper with the printout of everything that Chris had written about Belinda front and center on it.

"Wow! He really didn´t hold back, did he?" Jen blurted out, as she was reading her way through it.

"This basically makes it a two-horse race! Right now, they´re actually saying that I´m the favorite to win! Would you ever have believed that, when it was just me, you and Jack at the video store, discussing my crazy idea to run for student body president?" Abby asked her, still so hyped up, that she could hardly get the words out!

"It wasn´t as crazy, as what´s going on right now! I wonder what made him do this, though. It doesn´t seem to me like he has a whole lot to win by it" she thought out loud, just as Melissa pointed something out to her, that soon came close to making her jaw drop.

"It´s just a hunch, but I think that his new main squeeze could have something to do with it!" Mellisa quipped, as all three of their sets of eyes were sent over towards the school´s new power couple. Chris Wolfe and Hannah Von Wenning, holding hands and playfully flirting with one another, as they walked down the hallway together.

"Who could have seen that one coming, huh?" Abby casually asked her and for once, Jen had to admit to being at a complete loss on what to reply. And, it wasn´t just because she´d never imagined seeing Chris looking like a normal boyfriend, walking the hallways and holding hands with his girlfriend, or that it was someone like Hannah, whom she´d figured had to be way too street-smart, to fall for his easy to pull apart, juvenile macho act.

The main reason was because, for some to herself totally unexplainable reason, she found herself being filled with an onslaught of jealousy, that it wasn´t herself holding his hand and being flirted with by him.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE