THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN - ALL BY MYSELF

"When I was young

I never needed anyone

And making love was just for fun

Those days are gone

All by myself, don't wanna be

All by myself anymore"

ERIC CARMEN (Single from 1975)

Sent: June 10th, 1999

From: Jen Rocks

To: A Girl Named Joey

Subject: Almost there ...

It's almost summer vacation time! Of course, you already knew that, but I still had to write it because it's just so frigging awesome! With my last finals over and done with, all we have to do is turn up for a half day of school tomorrow, that ends with what hopefully won't be too many speeches in the auditorium, before we're let loose on an unsuspecting world! Of course, there's also the sophomore prom to look forward to and it's just a crying shame, that you won't be home already by then. I'm going with Jack (duh!), Pacey is going with Andie as friends and nothing else (as they've both been making it perfectly clear!), while Abby is going with Melissa. Dawson, now that him and MB have broken up, isn't sure if he's going or not, in spite of already having shelled out money on tickets for the both of them.

Speaking of MB, she's the reason why I have a bit of a guilty conscience these days. I haven't seen her around town at all, since her and Dawson (for what Dawson claims were "Private Reasons", that don't concern anyone else besides them), suddenly ended their relationship several weeks ago. I want so badly to tell her that I still want to be her friend, no matter if she's with Dawson anymore or not, and assure her that she'll still be a part of our little clique, like she's been ever since her and the good Mr. Leery began their love affair. Has he told you anything, that he hasn't told the rest of us, by the way?

Oh, and I also have to talk to Hannah, something I'm really not looking forward to at all! Jack keeps telling me that all I have to do is give her a chance and I might grow to like her, but my gut is telling me otherwise and if I had to guess, my guess is that she'll bite my head off, before I get out word number one. I know that stranger things have happened than a pair of teenage girls, who didn't like one another, suddenly becoming friends. In this case though, I don't see it happening!

Can't wait to see you again soon!

Jen

Sent: June 10th, 1999

From: A Girl Named Joey

To: Jen Rocks

Subject: Almost there too ...

Hi, Jen. Over here, it's safe to say after a month of not doing a whole lot more than having our heads buried in books, vacation is definitely in the air too! Which, I have to say and don't take this the wrong way, is a little bittersweet, since it also means that I'll soon be leaving my life here for the past six months behind as well. I'll still try to stay in touch with my host family and it goes without saying that Emma and I will continue on as pen-pals, but knowing that it's literally the end of the world as I've known it (to quote an old R.E.M song, that's one of Emma's favorites) is a feeling that I've never tried before and now that I have, it makes me glad to know that I won't have to feel this way again, until I leave for college in a few years' time. Then again, I'm also looking forward to coming home again, so to say that these conflicting emotions have me a feeling little confused inside would be the understatement of my year, so far! Most of all though, I'm just glad that this past half year has gone as smoothly, as it has and that it really feels to me, like being on my own (not entirely, but you know what I mean!) has prepared me far better for what my life will be like after I've left Capeside, than I felt when I got on that plane in Boston, all of those months ago.

And no, Dawson hasn't told me anything either, apart from a few lines about how he's been feeling, since the day of the big break-up. His usual reaction to emotional turmoil is to hide away in his room, so I'll try to convince him to go to the prom with you guys, I just can't guarantee anything. Over here in France, they don't have proms in the same way that we do, but there's an end of the schoolyear party at our school, that Emma and I are planning on checking out. It feels too, like we should have some sort of big finale, after everything that we've meant and will continue to mean to each other, not to mention how we've busted our behinds in school these past several months!

See you in less than a week!

Joey

The past year of Mary-Beth's existence on earth had been nothing, like she'd imagined it would have been, when it began. A year before this, she was still practically a ghost at her own school. A girl, who rarely talked to anyone during a school day (if it wasn't something school related and she'd have to) and when she walked down the hallways, it wasn't like any heads were turned, or anyone paid any attention to her, really. Even the bullies among the other girls (of which there weren't all that many, to be honest) avoided her and stuck to the victims that they knew, they would get their desired reaction from and when she came home, it was always to more of the same. She loved her parents as much as life itself, it wasn't that, and they tried to make life as comfortable for her, as they could, but if there was one fact about her that even they (with their rose-tinted glasses on) couldn't deny, it was that she was becoming desperately lonely. With how shy, she'd always been, they probably feared as much as she did, that this could carry on into her adulthood as well.

Then came the day, where it all began to change. The day, when Dawson had asked her to be his date for a double-date with Jen and Cliff, her then big crush. These days, it almost felt weird to her to think, that for so long Cliff had been the end-all, be-all to her, as far as the boys as her school went. It wasn't as if she hadn't been more aware than anyone, that she wasn't the big-breasted bimbo types that guys like him usually preferred and she'd gone on that double date thinking that if this didn't work, then nothing would, and she'd have to try to move on to someone else, who much better fit the profile for the kind of guy that a mostly quiet and somewhat nerdy girl like herself, could feasibly get it on with.

That it would be Dawson, who ended up with the prize, shouldn't have been that big of a surprise to her either, considering the lack of real alternatives there were to him, that she could say that she spoke with on at least a semi-regular basis. In one way or another, they would always have some kind of turn-off to her, and Dawson was (until very recently) the only one out of the lot, that she'd never had the slightest bit against. Sure, they were different in some ways, and you couldn't say that they had the same opinions on everything or the same hobbies, but neither did her parents and you couldn't say after twenty years of happy marriage for them, that it hadn't worked out in the best of ways, that it could. Maybe, it was for this reason that she'd quickly begun to envisage a future for herself with him. Which (as she again was all too aware) was kind of foolish, since most of the other romantic relationships that had been "fostered" in the grade over the past school year had struggled to make it past the one-month mark and in over half of the cases, had been over and done with within a week or two.

To think then, that her very first attempt at starting a relationship with a boy would last for all eternity, should have kept her more grounded and she was almost as angry at herself over not having seen the end coming, as she was at Dawson and to a lesser extent, the girl he'd cheated on her with. Looking back on it, there had been small signs here and there, that she could and probably should have picked up on, like the times that he'd had bad excuses for where he'd been at any given time, or the times where she could have sworn that the smell of the deodorant, he claimed to have used, hadn't smelled suspiciously like a girl's perfume instead. Would she still have broken up with him though, if she'd found out about his affair some other way, without Dawson knowing that she knew? Logic stated that at some point, it would start eating away at her enough, that she'd practically be forced to confront him over it, still she couldn't say that she was entirely sure of how she would have reacted, or what she would have done in it's wake. There were lots of things to consider, before making a snap judgment like that and one of the biggest was that without Dawson's friends in her life, she really didn't have any close friends of her own, she could fall back on.

The prospect of becoming as lonely again, as she was before, therefore filled her head as she sat in her room and worked on her speech, that she was to give at the final school assembly of the year. In the weeks that had passed, since her now ex-boyfriend had revealed his infidelity to her, she'd had an excuse to hide out from the rest of the world, seeing as she had finals to deal with and everyone knew, that she was a straight A student or close to it. With her not having that excuse anymore and the summer vacation looming ever closer, it was time for her to face the rest of the world again and if she had to be perfectly honest about it, she wasn't close to certain that she felt ready to yet. Or, when it came to that, giving a speech in front of the entire school.

"You're doing the only sensible thing here" Jen was told by Jack, while they were splitting a small portion of the "famous" fish and chips (or at least, that was how the restaurant themselves billed it) from "Dom's Seafood Shack", the number one choice for Fastfood by the harbor, if you were too lazy to walk the half a mile from there to the Ice House. At the same time, she was still contemplating how to go about starting a conversation with a girl, who probably had very little love lost for herself.

"You really think so?" she asked him back, since she still wasn't sure that the whole thing was a good idea.

"Some people would even call it the adult thing to do".

"Jack, I thought that I'd already told you, never to use that horrible swear-word in front of me again!" she joked, even if it was only a half-joke, if she had to be honest.

"Like it or not, you choosing to talk it out with Hannah, instead of trying to mess with her from afar, is a sign that you're becoming one of those ... people, who are older than us and whose title, you refuse to take on!"

"Everything was so much easier, back when I was a kid" she mused to herself. "If there was a girl that I didn't like, I'd say something mean to her to make her cry, before either the teachers or my parents would force me to apologize to her for it. That's if I didn't instantly start feeling guilty and apologized right away, like I did nearly all of the time".

"Jen, Hannah might have more money in her bank account, than everyone else here, including the mayor, the chief of police and most of the rest of Capeside's population, do combined between us ..."

"You're probably not entirely wrong there!"

"At the end of the day, she's just a girl, who's kind of like you are".

"You mean as in full of parental issues? We aren't exactly the only two girls here with those problems, are we?"

"When I had my little talk with her outside of the Ice House, she kind of reminded me of you in some ways".

"You can't be serious!"

"Think of it this way: What's the worst thing, that can happen? If she tells you to get lost, at least you can say that you tried" Jack reasoned and for as little as she liked to admit it, more or less had her there.

Now, the one pressing question was how to go about this new "undertaking" of hers. She knew where Hannah lived (not that practically everyone in Capeside didn't know, since it was the biggest and most expensive house in a town, that had more than its fair share of them), so she could try paying her an unexpected visit to see if that would work, but her gut instincts told her otherwise. Her only other choice, as far as she saw it, was to run into Hannah at one of the many restaurants in town, that her parents either owned or frequented several times a week. Again though, this was a long shot at best and it would require her to know exactly when and where, they would be at any given time and if Hannah would be with them there.

With all this in mind, it was all starting to look a little hopeless, as she was walking back to Grams' house. Walking the streets of Capeside and lost in her own thoughts, she didn't even hear the car coming up to her from behind, before it pulled up to the curb and a familiar face stuck his head out of the window.

"Need a ride, New York?" Chris asked her with the kind of cheeky smile, that he had on his face most of the time, whenever he was talking to a pretty girl. Not that Jen would necessarily have called herself one, but that was a different matter altogether.

"Are you sure that Hannah will like it? We can't exactly say that her and I are like Laverne and Shirley, can we?"

"She's my girlfriend, not my wife! This is just a friendly guy offering to do something nice for a girl, because he can already guess that she's likely to be on her way home to her grandma's and it isn't much of a detour for him to drop him off on his way" he slickly offered, before opening the car door, for her to get in.

Had this been a few months earlier, she never would have said yes to a ride from him, unless they were in the middle of a hurricane, or a tornado was heading straight for her, and he was her sole hope of salvation. Now, on the other hand, it felt more to her like an invitation, that was too good to refuse.

"Do promise that you won't use this as an opportunity to hit on me again?" she asked sternly, before sitting down in the passenger seat.

"I won't. Scout's honor!" he reassured her and although, she had a hard time picturing him ever having been a boy scout, she still chose to believe him.

"Anyway, it isn't like I`m kidding myself into thinking that I can steal you away from Jack McPhee. I just hope that he knows what a lucky guy, he is" Chris said, before hitting the accelerator hard.

"Chris, you promised ..."

"I'm not hitting on you, if that's what you think! Is it that unthinkable to your warped big city mind, that a guy can see a girl for the catch that she is, without wanting her for himself? Not to mention how you've made it more than clear, that I'll never stand a chance with you and since I don't particularly feel like getting humiliated in front of a hallway of full of my peers again ..."

"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?" she asked him playfully, in a way that was almost flirting. Not that she meant for it to come out that way, it just did!

"Believe it or not, a few positives came out of it".

"Like?"

"I taught me to watch my steps cautiously, when it comes to girls from New York, for one thing!" he quipped, and they shared a small chuckle.

"They're not all as damaged, as I am! It might sound crazy to you, if I'm the only one from New York that you've ever met, but there are actually plenty of perfectly normal girls there too!" she joked back.

"Normal has never been my type. I've always preferred my girls to be wild and unpredictable! Like Hannah is" he confided in her, even if she wasn't sure that he meant it or that he'd able to keep up with any of the truly wild and unpredictable girls, she'd grown up with back home.

"You really like her, don't you?" Jen asked and from the look on his face, when she asked the question, she could already tell that he did.

"The strange thing is, that I can't really say why I do!" he continued. "We don't really have anything in common and most of the things that she's into, I honestly couldn't care less about, if I tried! I know that she feels the exact same way about my personal interests, so why it works is hard to say. It just does!"

"And, it doesn't have anything to do with her willingly doing whatever you want her to, when you're naked underneath the bedsheets together?"

"I didn't say that did I? Maybe, it's knowing that it'll all be over between us soon, that has me feeling this way, but I really think that I'm going to miss her next year, you know?" he rhetorically asked, before turning down onto the road, that led to Jen grandmother's house.

As she laid there in bed that evening and tried to fall asleep, Jen (like it had happened so many times before, that she'd long since lost count of them) had a head full of a mix of concerns and plans for what she was going to do the day after. The only thing that she was sure of was that she had to tell Mary-Beth, that she still wanted to be friends with her. That part was sure to be the easy part and could count for her positive deed of the summer, before it had even really begun yet. What to do about Hannah, Chris, Dawson and all of that debacle though, she wasn't entirely sure of and to be honest, she was only really sure of one thing: that she wanted to start her summer with a clear conscience and if she was going to do that, then there couldn't be any skeletons in her closet holding her back.

Mary-Beth had felt from the moment that she woke up, like there was a giant knot in her stomach and there was no doubt what it was filled with: Fear, of several different kinds. She knew that her speech would at least be better than the principal's speech, that besides being the last one on the ballot, would no doubt also be so tedious and boring to listen to, that it always had at least half of the attendees looking longingly towards the doors, before he was a quarter of a way through it. Or, as Dawson's friend Pacey liked to put it, the best nap that he got all year, every year! Even if she wasn't expecting to receive any huge applause or anything like that, she still knew from experience that her keeping it short and to the point was exactly what her crowd on this day wanted the most out of her.

It was more seeing Dawson and his friends, that she worried over and whether or not, they'd all start treating her again, like they did before Dawson and her became a couple. Someone, they didn't care about in the slightest and if they did, then they certainly never showed it. As for what would happen when she saw Dawson again, that part was still very much up in the air and in truth, she had no clue how she would feel when it did. The first week after their break-up, she hadn't wanted to see even the shadow of him, but now where she'd had some time to digest what had happened, she'd also come to an acceptance that even if it hadn't ended in the best of ways, what they'd shared together had still been special to the both of them and although, she wasn't feeling ready to entirely forgive him yet, she also still wanted to at least be friends with him again.

It was with these thoughts in her head and as she was heading up towards the door of the school for the last time that schoolyear, that Mary-Beth saw Jen coming towards her, like she'd been waiting for her to arrive.

"Last day of school, huh?" Jen asked her with a sweet and kind smile. "Are you excited about giving your speech, or just excited to have it over and done with, so you can start your vacation with the rest of us?"

"Mostly option number two" Mary-Beth replied candidly with a smile of her own, to match that of Jen's.

"I'd probably feel the same way, if it were me. Not that you'd ever find me giving a speech to a huge group of my peers! Just the thought of having to do it is enough to give me a month's worth of nightmares! Look, I don't know if we'll get the chance to talk again today, with everything that'll be going on and your part in some of it, but I just wanted you to know that if you feel like hanging out over the summer, my schedule is embarrassingly open! Seriously, I have like two days planned out so far and no clue what I'm going to pass the rest of those seven weeks on!" Jen said, and even if it had been spoken in a somewhat rambling fashion, Mary-Beth still got what she meant. And, what it meant, filled her stomach with a nice and warm feeling, too.

"Does that mean you still want to be friends with me, even though Dawson and I aren't a couple anymore?" she had to ask, if nothing else just to be sure that she didn't get it wrong the first time.

"MB, I think that I speak for all of us, who call ourselves your friend, when I say that you're a girl, it's simply impossible not to like! Okay, so you still revert to becoming a little too mousy for your own good sometimes, but I'd and by that, I mean we'd like to think, that we've all played our little parts in helping you to come out of that thick and hard shell of yours over these past months. And guess what?"

"What?"

"What we found underneath it was a girl, we all consider ourselves lucky to call our friend. Even Abby, believe it or not!" Jen quipped and they shared a small giggle.

"Now, you have to be exaggerating!" she quipped back.

"Abby's just not the kind of girl, who would ever say it to your face, but I've heard her saying in private, how much she admires you for how you conducted yourself under the election campaign, when most of the other candidates were busy slinging as much mud as they could at one another. If I remember her exact words correctly, they were that you were "Elegant and Lady-Like", not to mention a far better fit for a student body president, than she is right now!"

"That's nice to know!" was all that Mary-Beth could think of answering, even if she wanted to say more than that and thank Jen, for how she'd already made her morning and then some.

"You have friends here now, Mary-Beth and it doesn't matter who you're dating or not dating, we'll still continue to be your friends, because we like who you are! You're nice to everyone, sometimes almost to a fault and believe me, if my mom knew that I'm friends with a girl like you now, she'd be ready to throw a full out parade in your honor, because that's always been her wet dream for me!" Jen joked and now they both couldn't help themselves from laughing out loud, in spite of those who looked at them funnily.

As for her next encounter with Dawson, that part wouldn't come until later in the day, after she'd already given her speech, that while it could have gone down a little better, at least wasn't attracting all that many yawns from her fellow students!

The two first times that Jen had seen Hannah that morning, it hadn't really been an opportune time to chat her up. First, she'd seen Hannah vigorously swapping spit with Chris, seeing as they, like many other couples clearly also were, had decided to give a big middle finger to the school's rather strict PDA code, now that it was the last day of school and there wasn't any chance that they'd get punished for it. She'd tried to get Jack to do it too, but had already known that he wouldn't be into participating in a protest like that (something Jen attributed to him knowing that his twin sister would chew him out endlessly for breaking the rules without considering how it would reflect on her) and so, she had to settle for a peck on the lips so small, that it must have made the adorable scene with the two little kids kissing from "My Girl" look like "Nine and a Half Weeks", in comparison to her own sorry excuse for one. The second time had been, when she was in a hurry to go and use the girl's room, leaving her with only one more realistic chance to, before they had to head off to the auditorium and listen to a bunch of boring speeches to cap off the school year.

She'd gone over possible opening lines in her head hundreds of times already that morning, but when it came down to crunch time, all she could think of saying was:

"Can I talk to you for a minute, Hannah?"

It came out, when she saw Hannah standing a little by herself on the school lawn, that she like many others had decided to use for her free time in between classes. Part of her had expected Hannah to just ignore her completely, but she quickly discovered that it wouldn't be the case.

"About?" Hannah quickly answered, not looking too much in the mood to talk, but not entirely dismissive of it either.

"I sort of feel like you and I got off on the wrong foot and now, where I'm hearing that this is your last day, I don't want to leave things with there being any bad blood between us" Jen stumblingly got out. Either way, it drew a small smile from Hannah, so it couldn't have been the worst thing, she possibly could have said.

"You mean because of that little spat, we had outside of your grandmom's house? That was nothing, if you ask me! Just a small disagreement between two girls, who both perhaps got a little too caught up in the moment, is all" Hannah calmly answered, sending a small wave of relief through Jen's body. Even if her parents weren't too bad off, willingly making an enemy out of one of the principal heirs to the Von Wenning family fortune would still be one of the dumbest things, anyone in their right mind could possibly do!

"I'm glad that you think so too. See, back home I had a lot of these minor enemies, most of them girls that I'd had some fight with over something and just never made peace with again, so I decided when I came to Capeside ..."

"That it would be a thing of the past. It sounds like we've been having a lot of the same thoughts on that particular subject" Hannah answered and for the first time, Jen could tell that she was being completely honest.

"You too, huh?"

"When I got caught cheating at my former school, do you know how many of those that I thought were my friends, came to my support? Not a single one of them!"

"That had to have hurt like a bitch!"

"It did. You want to know what else? Right before I left and as I was saying goodbye to her, the girl that I thought was my best friend told me that she'd only been using me for my popularity, and that no one would ever want to be my friend again, because I'm an evil and coldhearted bitch. Her words, not mine" Hannah explained and in another first for her, it looked to Jen like Hannah was showing some actual human emotions and not just that front of confidence, she showed to the rest of the world. "The worst part is that she was absolutely right, that was who I was".

"It doesn't mean that it's who you have to continue to be, for the rest of your life".

"I tried here, at first, anyway. That first week or two, I actually came close to having myself convinced that I could grow to like it here, but the reality is that a small town like this just isn't a place to live for a girl like me. You're from the city, so you must get what I'm talking about, right? I mean, don't you miss the city on a boring Saturday evening in Capeside, when the best entertainment available comes in the form of a trip to the video store?"

"Weird as it may sound, it's sort of become my version of heaven here".

"You have to be kidding!"

"I'm not, in any way. Sure, back home I had a world full of options, if I was at home feeling bored and lonely, but I never knew my friends there, the way that I do with the ones I have here. If that makes any sense!"

"I guess, it does".

"Most of my so-called old friends were in and out my life, usually in less than a year and I'd begun to accept that it was just how life is. The friends that I've made here though, like Joey, Pacey, Dawson, Abby and so on, are friends that I'm sure that I'll still have for years to come, maybe for the rest of my life even. Capeside has its faults, we can both agree on that and sometimes, the bigotry from the conservative majority here is enough to make me want to hurl, still when you look past all of that, it can be pretty great here. Provided that you have the right friends and know the right people, of course" Jen honestly explained, drawing a small nod and smile from Hannah in return.

"You're a lucky girl, you know that?" Hannah asked and there was no doubt, what the answer was.

"Chris really likes you. I'm sure that he'd be into it, if you asked him to try a long-distance thing" Jen asked, if nothing else to change the subject to something less emotional.

"Let's keep it real here, Jen. It wouldn't last a month, before phone sex wasn't enough for either of us anymore! No, it's better for the both of us, if I cut him loose entirely, like it was planned from the start. Don't feel too bad for him, he got what he wanted out of most of our hook-up's!"

"And what about Dawson?" Jen almost asked, before deciding with herself that now where there the cat was out of the bag anyway, it was better to let the past be the past and move onto the future with a clean slate.

Soon after, the attendance bell rang for the final time of the year, ending their little round of peace talks, or whatever you want to call them. Hannah was right in that Jen was lucky and, in any case, what she had been up to with those three boys had probably been rather innocent, compared to the crazy things that she'd heard about her old friends doing back in NYC. Sitting down in the seat that her boyfriend had saved for her, just before the assembly was about to begin, all she hoped for Hannah in the future was that in her next stop in life, she would be as fortunate, as Jen herself had been in Capeside.

A town, she could say that she was glad to call home.

Mary-Beth had already conceded that she wouldn't talk to Dawson before school came to an end for the year, when she finally got her chance to. It came as she came out from the backdoor to the auditorium, that was strictly to only be used by those with permission to.

"I liked your speech" he said with a boyish smile, that immediately sent butterflies racing to her tummy.

"You did, huh? What was your favorite part of it?" she teasingly asked him to test, if he'd actually been listening.

"When you talked about the future and how we write our own".

"I was thinking you, when I came up with it. So, when are you leaving for Philly?"

"I still have a week and a half here, before it's adios to little Capeside and hello to the big city for the next four weeks. How long are you going to be in Arizona for?"

"The same. Look ..." she began, before he cut her off.

"Mary-Beth, I've been waiting for weeks for the chance to say this to you, so can say it first and then, you can ask me whatever you need to?" he asked and a quick nod from her told him to continue.

"Look, I know that screwed up. That goes without saying and if I could change what happened, I would without giving it a moment's thought, because what matters more than anything to me, is you and us. I won't ask you to forgive me, because that has to be up to you, I just want you to know that I'll never stop caring about you or wanting nothing but the best for you" he told her, before finishing the little speech of his own with giving her a kiss on the cheek, before he began to walk away from her.

"Do you have date for the sophomore prom?" she asked him, after only a second or two of thinking about it.

As he turned around and smiled at her, she already knew what his answer would be.

END OF CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN