THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - ÇA PLANE POUR MOI

"Ça plane pour moi

Ça plane pour moi

Ça plane pour moi, moi, moi, moi, moi

Ça plane pour moi

Ouh-ouh-ouh-ouh

Ça plane pour moi!"

(Translation:

"Everything is grooving for me,

Everything is grooving for me,

Everything is grooving for me, me, me, me, me

Everything is grooving for me

Ouh-ouh-ouh-ouh

Everything is grooving for me!")

PLASTIC BERTRAND (From the album "An 1" (1978))

It was the first day of school after a Christmas vacation, that to Pacey had felt like it flew by way too fast and already, he'd begun it in his usual fashion by being late for his first class, thanks to his bicycle getting a flat tire on his way there. After a few seconds of cursing his bad luck, he'd put his chain lock on it and left it by the side of the road, to be picked up after school was over for the day and following this, made his way there on foot. Even if he walked as fast as he could, he knew that he'd still be at least ten minutes late and it starting to rain on the way there only served as the dot above the i, not to mention leaving him rather wet for the first classes of the day.

He'd only just gotten there, when he saw a pair of students that he hadn't seen before, a very slimly built blonde girl and an athletic looking dark-haired boy, who was getting told off by the girl.

"I can't be late for my first day of school, Jack! You only get one chance to make a first impression!" the girl, in a rather shrill voice, told the boy.

"Relax, Andie! You going into a panic won't help us find that classroom any sooner!" the boy, whom Pacey could now easily guess was named Jack, told the girl, who apparently was named Andie. It didn't seem to help, though and the poor girl looked like she was almost about to cry, as Pacey made his way over to them.

"New here?" he asked with a friendly smile and got a few in return from them.

"Please tell me that you know where room 46 is? We're completely lost!" Andie asked him.

"It's the exact same way, I'm heading. I'm Pacey, by the way" he introduced himself.

"I'm Jack and this bundle of veritable panic is my twin sister Andie. We've just moved here from Providence" Jack replied and the two boys shook hands.

"You can make new friends later, Jack! Right now, we desperately need to get to class!" the (kind of bossy) girl told her brother.

"It's this way" Pacey told them, before leading them up there.

After their US history class, most of which had gone in through one ear and out the other for him, it was time to get caught up with those, he hadn't talked to for a few days. One of them being Abby.

"Have you heard the latest gossip?" she asked him excitedly.

"No, and I can't say that I care all that much about it" he truthfully told her. The only gossip he would have wanted to hear was that Peterson had been fired, but since he'd just seen him moments earlier, that was clearly not the case.

"From what I've heard, Melissa is a lesbian" Abby told him with amount of glee, that didn't seem to fit with what her "news" were.

"You don't think it could just be Belinda wanting revenge for the public humiliation, she suffered at the beauty contest?" he asked and Abby (to his slight surprise), looked a little disappointed.

"I guess, you could be right. It wouldn't be out of character for her at all, to do that sort of stuff".

"Anyway, why would you care if she's a lesbian? It isn't like you're looking to date her, is it?" he joked.

"No, of course not!" Abby quickly replied, although it seemed to him like there was something, she wasn't telling him. Just then, a flustered looking Jack came over to them.

"I hate to do this, but we need your help finding our way to the next class again, Pacey" Jack said.

"Yeah, sure. This is Abby, by the way. Abby, meet Jack. Him and his sister Andie just started here today" Pacey introduced them to one another.

On the way there, he found out a little more about them. From what he gathered, it was only them and their mom, who'd moved down here, while their dad was still working in Providence. Andie seemed to love talking about him, but when it came to Jack, it was hard to get a single word out of him, until they switched the topic to talk about the school as a whole and what the siblings had to look forward to as students there.

Joey's first day of school in France wasn't going all that much better. Even if she was close to fluent in French, following her classes was still a lot harder, than it had been back home in Capeside and more than a few times, she'd felt like she was falling behind, when she had to spend a moment to translate something in her head, that one of her teachers had said. The way the other students were clearly scoping her out had her feeling like an outsider too and for the first half of the day, she could count those who had spoken to her on one hand.

Her trip over to France being on January 1st and her having to be at the airport in Boston early in the morning, had also meant that her New Year's Eve had been a pretty quiet affair, with Pacey, Jen and Dawson coming over to visit and them spending most of the evening either watching movies on TV or playing boardgames. Hugging them goodbye at the end of the evening had been an emotional experience and now where she was without them, it felt like she was missing a limb or something akin to it. Her host family, the Carpentier family (consisting of her host father Jaques, a 42-year-old journalist for one of the local newspapers in Joey's new home city of Toulouse, his 38-year-old Spanish-born wife Clara, who worked at a day-care center and last, but not least, their much-beloved cat Zizou) had been friendly with her from the second they'd picked her up at the airport (Zizou so much, that her host-parents joked that their cat had finally found it's soulmate). However, dealing with them would clearly be far less of a challenge, than it would to get the kids at school to give her a chance.

After sitting through her morning classes, it was time for her first lunch break and being the new kid at school also meant that where and who she sat with, could have an impact on how the rest of her time in France turned out. After being (rather impolitely) turned down at the first tables, she tried to sit at, she was already starting to wish that she was back in Capeside, where'd she'd be sitting with all of her friends and feeling like she was wanted there. Looking around, she only saw one student sitting alone, a black-haired girl with what Joey thought were cool-looking red stripes in it, that looked to be her own age. With no tables free in the cafeteria, she also looked like the best choice for a lunch companion.

"What in the sodding, bloody hell is this supposed to be?" Joey heard the girl swear to herself in a thick British accent, while looking down at her food, as Joey made her way over to her with her tray.

"Is it okay, if I sit with you?" she asked shyly, and the other girl lit up in a rather cute smile.

"Only, if it's okay with you that we stick to speaking English! I've had more than enough of France and the entire French language for one morning!" the girl sweetly replied, and Joey sat down across from her.

"My name is Josephine, but everyone calls me Joey" she introduced herself.

"Like the dumb one from "Friends?"

"Kind of, I'd just like to think that I'm more intelligent, than he is!" Joey joked back and it got a giggle out of the British girl.

"I can already tell that you are! Emma Jones, it's a pleasure to meet you, Joey" the girl said, and they smiled at one another. "You're American, aren't you?"

"Born and raised on the East Coast!" Joey answered, before getting stuck into her lunch meal, that only looked slightly more appetizing than a usual lunch meal in the Capeside High cafeteria.

"You'll have to pardon me, but my very limited knowledge of American geography leaves a lot to be desired! Just trying to remember what everything is called where I come from is enough of a challenge!"

"England, right?"

"The accent sort of gives it away, doesn't it? Nottingham, to be more exact."

"The birthplace of Robin Hood!" Joey quickly stated, since it was the sole thing, she'd ever heard about Emma's hometown.

"If he ever really existed, like they say he did. So, Josephine, who everyone calls Joey, from the American East coast. How did you end up over here?" the girl asked, and it didn't take many minutes for Joey to find out that she'd found a potential best friend in this slightly Punky looking English girl, who had also been feeling like somewhat of an outsider on this, her first day at their new school too.

Ever since the day of the "Miss Windjammer Contest", Abby had been finding herself regularly fantasizing about one of the girls, she'd seen there, in particular: Joey's old friend Melissa. It wasn't that there weren't other pretty girls at their school, plenty of them in fact, but there was something infinitely sexy to Abby about the way Melissa both looked and carried herself, and trying not to be too obvious over how she was checking her out was one of the hardest things, Abby had ever had to do.

"Could you want her more?" Jen teasingly asked, while they were standing by Jen's locker, with Melissa walking towards them, only a short distance down the hallway.

"Quiet, Jen! I don't want her to know!" Abby interjected and as Melissa passed by them, she shared a very shy smile with her. Jen's smile though, was one of knowing.

"Maybe, I should explain how the whole dating thing works, Abby! If you like someone and you want to get it on with them, you have to at some point tell them how you feel, or it'll never happen" Jen quipped, as Abby rolled her eyes at her.

"I know that much, duh! What if she ... isn't like me, if you catch my drift?"

"Do you get a "Vibe" from her, that she could be?"

"Kind of, but I'm still not entirely sure, if it isn't just myself imagining something, that I want to be true. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened, remember?"

"Then, go and ask her! It can't be that hard to find out!"

"I'm enough of an outcast as it is, without adding more to fuel the flames of those, who don't like me. Jen, I know that you've only been here for a short while, but if do anything to single yourself out around here, the so-called moral majority will pounce on you like a Puma attacking a helpless wilder beast!"

"Yeah, I know. If there's one thing they clearly aren't in short supply of around here, it's judgmentalism! You can't let that stop you!"

"I won't, it just a very delicate situation" Abby explained, while wrecking her mind with how to go about it. She couldn't just ask Melissa, could she?

Unbeknownst to herself, her chance would come before the end of the school day, when she saw Melissa being bullied in the hallway by a small group of her former "so-called friends" from the cheerleader squad, led by the queen of bitches herself, Belinda.

"Get out of here, you disgusting pervert!" Belinda taunted poor Melissa with.

"Dyke!" another girl chimed in with.

"Leave me alone!" Melissa panicking said, but doing so only made her bullies go even harder on her.

"No one wants you here, so go to hell, Melissa!" a third girl practically yelled, before pushing Melissa hard into the side of a locker. Seeing her chance, Abby made a brave decision to be the hero, for the first time in her fifteen years on earth.

"Why don't you try picking on me instead, Belinda? Or do you want everyone here to know what happened on our grade six field trip to that nature reserve?" Abby bravely said, in spite of knowing that Belinda was probably the last girl at their school, you'd want to make an enemy out of. Thankfully though, it turned Belinda and her cronies' attention away from Melissa, who was able to slip away unseen.

"You wouldn't!" Belinda taunted, while giving Abby a death-glare, that left no questions left unanswered.

"Try me!" Abby taunted back, standing her ground against their grade's Queen Bee.

"Say anything about it and I'll destroy you, Abby! You know that I'll do it!" Belinda fired back.

"I don't think, you will! In fact, I think that you'll leave Melissa alone from now on, if you know what's best for you!" Abby replied and after a few seconds of considering it, Belinda did indeed back down and stormed up the hallway, with her "devoted followers" trying to keep up with her. Shortly after they'd left, Melissa came out of hiding and came over to her.

"Why did you do that? You know that she won't stop and that all you've done is put yourself on the hitlist as well?" Melissa asked, still clearly a little upset over what had happened.

"Because it was about time, someone did! I seriously hate that girl!"

"You and me both!"

"Are you okay?" Abby asked, even if she from Melissa's body language could tell that she wasn't.

"Not really. I guess, this is what it feels like to be hated by everyone here. Not that it shouldn't be a familiar feeling to me" Melissa sadly answered.

"Not everyone! There is a small group of us, who don't want to let girls like Belinda set the agenda and stick together, outside of the usual cliques here. There's always room for one more in it and you already know a few of us, so I'm positive that they'll gladly let you join. Even if they don't want to, I'll just make them accept you in, anyway!" Abby assured Melissa, who looked almost ecstatic to be treated with a kindness like this.

"Not to be a busybody, but what happened on that field trip? It has to have been something big, or there's no way Belinda just would have backed down like that!"

"Let's just say that our dear friend Belinda had the kind of embarrassing accident, that you don't want people to hear about, ever!" Abby explained and the two girls shared a warm smile between them.

Thanks to the lousiness of his grades on his mid-terms, Pacey had already prepared himself for a likely visit to the principal's office sometime during the school day. It didn't mean that he was looking forward to it, though. Only to getting it over with.

"Pacey, I won't waste yours or my time by trying to wrap things in cotton for you ..." the principal began and already, Pacey was sending longing looks towards the door.

"I know that it's bad. I'll just have to shape up, is all" he tried saying, in a meek attempt to get this over with ASAP.

"I don't think you're entirely aware of just how bad it is. I've done the math and if you don't manage to at least pull home a B average for the rest of the school year, we'll have to hold you back a year, I'm afraid" the principal explained and although, he had suspected it, hearing it said this bluntly was still something, he wasn't ready to hear.

"Please, you can't!"

"With a D-plus average so far this year, after you only by the skin of your teeth didn't flunk last year? It's for your own good too, even if it doesn't feel that way to you right now. If you're having this much trouble getting through your sophomore year, you won't stand a fighting chance, when you get to your junior and senior years. What I think we should do is call in your parents for a meeting, where we can discuss what's best for you" the principal told him and if there was one thing Pacey wanted to avoid at all costs, it was getting his parents involved in this at a time, where simple communication between them seemed like an impossibility. It wasn't hard for him to picture that he could become the punching bag, stuck in the middle between two warring sides, unless he did something to stop this from happening.

"I'll do anything! Take extra classes, join some extra-curriculars, get a tutor, you name it! Please, there has to be something, I can do!" he imploringly said.

"It would look much better on your record, if you joined some extra-curriculars, so that's a start. It'll take a lot more than that, though. You'll have to change the entire way you approach your schoolwork".

"I can do it! Just give me three months and you'll see a huge change in my grades, I promise!"

"I can give you two months, but if we agree to this, I expect to see some drastic changes. If I don't ... well, we don't need to get into that again, do we?"

By the time he left the principal's office, one thing had become too clear to Pacey: That his time of slacking off in school would have to come to an end pretty much instantly, or he would have to deal with a very unpleasant alternative, that he didn't want to think about, so scary was it.

Joey's day, on the other hand, had taken a turn for the better, after she'd started getting to know Emma at lunch and although the two of them had their differences, she quickly began finding herself growing fond of this out-going girl from across the Atlantic. After school, they went to a cafe where they could talk in peace, not that all that many of those they went to school with spoke English anyhow, save for knowing the commonest terms.

"You still haven't told me why a girl, whose French isn't much better than my boyfriend's, ended up living here?" Joey asked, before taking a sip from her cup of Café au Lait.

"I got into a lot of trouble back home, after I fell in with what my parents like to call "The Wrong Crowd". It was either this or a going to a boarding school back home and at least here, I can just ignore people, when they try to pick on me for being different from them. Sometimes, not having a clue what people are saying about you is a blessing, trust me!" Emma explained and it wasn't like Joey couldn't relate to what she was saying.

"I would have loved to have had that going for me back home. People can be really cruel sometimes, am I right?".

"They were cruel towards you? Sorry, Joey, I just can't imagine that anyone would want to do anything even remotely bad, to a sweetheart like you!" Emma exclaimed.

"Unfortunately, my small hometown, as beautiful as it is on the surface, is also a place where you're considered guilty for the sins of your parents. Thanks to what my dad has done, my family is about as wanted there as a fart is in church!" Joey explained and it made Emma involuntarily giggle to hear her say it that way.

"Sorry, I know that I shouldn't laugh!"

"It's okay. I mean, I have my small family, some great friends and a boyfriend, who always treats me like a princess, so I shouldn't be feeling sorry for myself, when there are so many that have it so much worse, than I do".

"When you put it that way, it doesn't sound too bad. I'm still on the lookout for my first boyfriend but seeing as I can barely communicate with the boys down here, I'm not holding my breath for it happening sooner, rather than later!"

"Isn't all you need to know, how to do this?" Joey asked, before forming a round hole with her fingers on one hand and sticking a finger from the other through it. Once again, it was enough to get a hearty laugh out of Emma.

"I'm sure that we'll end up becoming great friends, before this semester is over, Joey! You seem like you're my kind of girl!" Emma smilingly said.

"I could say the same you!" was all that Joey answered and for the next hour or so, they talked about everything between heaven and earth, while the French coffee and the delicious, filled croissants kept flowing in an even stream.

After Melissa's run-in with Belinda and her gang of pom-pom swingers, she understandably stayed close to Abby for the rest of the school day and if there was one thing Abby didn't mind, it was acting like what had to be the world's smallest bodyguard for the girl, she was crushing hard on. Now that she was getting to know Melissa a little better too, it wasn't like her crush was beginning to go away. Like all wonderful things though, it had to come to an end and that end came when Abby had to report in for work at the Ice House, after Melissa had walked with her all of the way over there from their school.

"When do you get off work?" Melissa asked, as they were coming up to the door to the restaurant.

"Usually, a little after nine. Why?" Abby asked back.

"I was just thinking that I could come down here and we could hang out afterwards. Despite how it started out, I've really enjoyed myself with you today" Melissa said very cutely and Abby had to fight a whole lot of internal instincts, not to tell her then and there how gorgeous she thought Melissa was and about all of the, mostly naked, things she wanted so badly to do with her.

"I have too. I'd really like to, but I have homework to take care of. Part of the deal with me living with Bessie, Bodie and Alexander is that I try hard in school, and I don't want to disappoint them, either. I'm not working tomorrow though, so we can spend practically the entire day together, if you want to?" Abby offered back, to Mellissa's liking, it seemed.

"Sure, I'd love that! Abby, can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead. As long as it isn't school related, then you're asking the entirely wrong girl!" Abby joked and it looked like Melissa had to work up her courage for a moment, to ask the question that she wanted to ask.

"Are you ... because I'm kind of getting the feeling, that you are ... the same, as I am" Melissa stutteringly got out, like she was almost ashamed to be asking the question to someone.

"Are you talking about a three-letter-word, that begins with a G and ends with a Y, and isn't the word "Guy"? Because I think it should be kind of obvious, that I'm not one of those! A guy, I mean!" Abby answered, while the two of them stared deeply into one another's eyes.

"So ... now that we know that we're both ... one of those people ... what do we do about it?"

"I think, we just let nature play it's course and see, where it takes us. I should really get in there, or Bessie will chew me out for not being responsible again" Abby nervously said.

"Of course! You're really a fox, Abby, even if no one else can see it, except for me. Now, I can't wait for what tomorrow brings!" Melissa gladly said, before they waved goodbye to each other, and Abby headed inside.

"Making new friends, I see?" Bessie asked her, right after she'd reported in for work.

"Something like that" was Abby's cryptic answer and until she was sure that this would become more than her first real flirt with a fellow girl, she didn't want her new foster family to know any more about what was going on in her romantic life, than they absolutely had to. For the entirety of that shift however, she couldn't help herself from smiling all of the time and she saw no reason to stop with it.

After school, Pacey had to go to work at "Screen Time". Just to his luck, it wound up being a very busy day for a Monday and as for him getting any studying done, it wasn't nearly enough compared to the effort he'd have to start putting in, if he was to avoid getting held back a year. For most of the shift, he had Dawson there to help him, but with Dawson leaving an hour early to have a not-so-secret hook-up with Mary-Beth, he had the store to himself and hoped, this would mean that he could get some work done. It worked for him, to some extent, still with the massive amount of homework, he'd been given on his first day back, getting through all of it looked harder to him, than climbing Mount Everest without any climbing equipment or winter clothes would have been. He was just about to throw in the towel for the day and begin the locking up process, when the last customer of the day came into the store. It was Andie, Jack's sister, whom he'd so far talked to for less than two minutes, if you counted it up with the number of times they'd talked at school that day.

"Is it too late to rent a movie?" Andie asked him and although, he was in the right to say no to her (seeing as it was right before closing time), with how politely she'd asked, he didn't feel like he should refuse her request.

"Not as long as you know which movie that you want to rent, McPhee, because I have to close up soon" he quipped and the girl, whom he had to admit had a certain "Je ne sais qois" about her, smiled back at him.

"Just something nice and uncomplicated, that I don't have to think too hard to follow. A romantic high school comedy or something like that".

"You actually like school enough, that you want to think about it, even when you aren't there?" Pacey had to ask, since the concept was quite foreign to him.

"I've always loved school!" Andie cheerfully replied. "You don't?"

"I love it circa as much, as I do going to the dentist or getting a hard kick on the shin".

"You don't like going to the dentist either? I guess, we have something in common, then!" Andie quipped and now that they had a little bit of common ground to go by, he quickly found himself liking this girl.

"Okay, so romantic high school comedies! Let's see ... have you seen "10 Things I Hate About You"?"

"That doesn't sound like a very romantic movie, Pacey!"

"It's one of the few of them that I can stand to sit through. And it's extremely romantic, don't worry!" he assured her and from what he could tell, she seemed to like his answer.

"In that case, I think we have a hit on our hands!" Andie cheerfully joked and if there was one thing, he already liked about her, it was how optimistic she was for most of the time (just not, when she was late for her first class at her new school).

After he'd found the movie and as he was scanning it out, she caught a glimpse of his textbooks lying on his side of the counter.

"I guess, while you're here, you might as well get some studying done?" she asked while nodding towards his books.

"It isn't like I want to, believe me! Seeing as I'm being threatened with getting held back a year however, it isn't like I have much choice on it".

"I could help you out, if you want. It's really the least, I can do, after you've been so overly nice to me and my brother today" Andie offered and out of the alternatives, he'd been offered so far, getting tutored by her didn't feel like the worst one of them, by a long shot.

"Are you sure? You'll be dealing with a guy, who's only once gotten above a C on his report card" he told her truthfully, although it didn't seem to faze Andie one bit to hear it.

"We'll make a deal, okay? My brother Jack, for as much as I love him to death, is pretty bad when it comes to making new friends. To put it another way, he's absolutely terrible at it! If you could help him to fit in, in return for a little help with your schoolwork ..."

"Sure thing! Your brother seems like a really nice guy, I'm sure that I can help him to feel at home here in no time. In fact, it would be my pleasure!" he told her, before handing the video tape to her.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE