THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN - LIFE'S WHAT YOU MAKE IT

"Baby, life's what you make it

Celebrate it!

Anticipate it

Yesterday's faded

Nothing can change it

Life's what you make it!"

TALK TALK (From the album "The Colour of Spring" (1985))

A/N: Before we get started on this chapter, I want to take a moment to recognize and pay tribute to a truly inspirational human being that left this world behind on Saturday, August 31st, 2024: Obi Ndefo, who did such an amazing job at portraying Bodie on "Dawson's Creek". For those who don't know (I didn't for one, until I read about his passing away), Obi had to live for the final five years of his life as a double leg amputee after a hit and run car accident in August 2019, but he didn't let it ruin his life and instead became an inspiration to others who have suffered the same sort of unlucky fate through his YouTube videos, not to mention his work with non-profit organizations that help the weakest members of society to hopefully create a better life for themselves.

Rest in peace, Obi. We could sure use having more of his kind in this increasingly cold world that we're living in and even if it's only a small homage, I named this chapter in his honor.

After all, if there was one thing that his life and proven ability to overcome even the biggest of struggles proves, it's that life truly is what you make it.

Thank you for reading my little foreword and tribute here. Now, let's get on with the fourth to last chapter of this season.

To Abby, most of her schooldays were more or less the same every day, with the only thing really changing being which classes that she had to attend on which given day. As it had become a force of habit for her, she'd come in around fifteen minutes before the first class started (which was solely thanks to her walking with Joey to school every day and her "Practically Half-Sister" needing to get a bit of "Morning Smooching Time" in with Pacey, before the first classes began), sit through the morning classes being mostly bored, while she waited for the lunch break to come and after that, just try to get through the rest of the school day as easily as she could. Of course, now, with mid-terms looming ever closer in the near distance, it also meant that she had to put in a little bit more of an effort into her classes than she usually did, but the carrot of knowing that there would be a nice Christmas holiday to come afterwards made it so that it didn't bring her too much down.

This week hadn't been like your regular school-week however, and it wasn't just thanks to the first handful of inches of snow of the year having fallen outside and the temperatures seemingly from day to day having gone from mostly pleasant to "Holy crap, it's cold outside! I'd better get back inside again, where it's nice and warm right away!". Having been a Capesidian for entire life, such a thing was predictable to her and as her mom liked to say: "If being cold and getting a bit of rain now and again isn't for you, then you should find someplace else to live, that isn't Capeside". A saying that certainly rang true and was probably why the town in its early period had never come close to exploding in size like Boston for example had, in spite of the town having been founded only a few decades after the huge city that along with New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburg had become one of the major capitals of the North-East.

One thing that she hadn't been prepared for however, was that she would all of a sudden start feeling sorry for a girl, who'd done her best to make her life a living hell, practically from the moment that they'd first met one another. Although, to be honest, Abby couldn't even remember anymore when the first time that she's met Belinda was, but she figured that it was probably very early on in both of their lives and from the first memories that she had of her former rival to the last, she would have been extremely hard pressed to find a single positive one among them. Sure, hitting Belinda square on the jaw with that punch had felt all kinds of satisfying, still the more that she'd thought about it over the time that had passed by since then, she could also see how she'd basically shot herself in the foot by doing so and if it had been any other girl at her school, then she probably would have at least tried to offer up a sincere apology to her long ago. Another important part of that story too was what had happened when Pacey had been senselessly attacked, and with her being a convinced pacifist to the absolute core now, she couldn't condone any kind of physical violence anymore, not even if it had been committed by herself and against a girl, who'd done more than her share to deserve it.

"Doesn't it make you feel the tiniest bit bad for Belinda, when you're seeing her looking this miserable?" she casually asked her girlfriend Melissa, who was getting some books from her locker and as Abby was casually gazing over at a now completely friendless Belinda, who'd basically been shunned by the entire rest of the school, ever since she'd returned to school that past Monday.

"Considering what she's done and how many lives that she's tried to ruin, just because it amused her that she could, I can't say that it does. Mine included, in case that you've forgotten it" Melissa answered her, right before she found the book that she'd been looking for and was able to close up her locker again.

"I haven't and I don't think that she deserves to be forgiven entirely, but don't you think that there's somewhat of a double standard going on here, when you compare how she's being treated by everyone to how Chris is?" Abby asked, referring to how Chris (after doing some sucking up to those that he'd been a jerk towards, not to mention his old team-mates from the football team) had been practically accepted back with open arms and in the case of Belinda, the complete opposite was the case.

"Don't get me wrong, I'll never be a fan of Chris Wolfe, and I'd rather just stay away from the guy, but at least he's trying to show everyone that he's sorry for what he did, even if his apologies sound a more than a bit hollow to my ears. I still haven't received an apology from Belinda for what a horrible bitch that she was towards us, or for how she basically outed both of us to the entire school and until I get one, she can royally kiss my butt!" Melissa said like she meant it, and in many ways, this was how Abby felt too.

Then again, she also knew all too well how it feels to be shunned by everyone and knowing how terrible it feels, it wasn't a fate that she would have wished upon her worst enemy. Not even when that enemy was named Belinda McGovern and had been a nuisance in her life for practically as long as she could remember.

C-Minus. C-Minus!

As Andie looked down on the grade that she'd received on her latest Geography test, it came close to feeling like her entire world was falling apart again, for the third time in recent memory. One time before, way back in grade six, she'd received a B-plus and even then, she'd had a valid excuse for it, seeing as she was horribly sick with the flu, was running a heavy fever and feeling like she could pass out at any moment, while she was taking that test. She could still easily remember how both Jack and Tim had tried to convince her to stay home and take a make-up test later, but seeing as doing so didn't fit into her plans, she'd gone down the far too stubborn route, paid a small prize for it and it had bugged her for weeks afterwards, how she could have made such an incredibly dumb and badly thought out decision in that particular moment, when she otherwise prided herself on her remarkable intelligence.

Could she even claim to have a "Remarkable Intelligence" now, considering the headshaking answers that she given on a test that she usually would have aced with ease ninety-nine times out of a hundred? While it wasn't a secret to her why she'd bombed so badly on it, and she knew as well as anyone that she only had herself to blame for it, seeing those large red letters written in permanent marker on the front page of her test still felt like it was a blow to her confidence and everything that she thought that she knew about herself. What was an even more pressing question of course, was how she was going to spin this to her dad when report card time came, and he was sure to notice that one of the things on that page wasn't like others. The thought of it alone was enough to make the hair rise up on her arms and already, she was beginning to make up excuses for why she'd done so badly.

"All that you need to remember is three letters: PMS! Trust me, it always works on my dad, and he's never asked for any further explanations afterwards!" Casey advised her. With no one else to talk to that knew about her "Secret Life" in its entirety, Andy notwithstanding of course, Andie had felt like Casey was the one to go to for advice, seeing as she didn't want Andy to worry over her and potentially call an end to their little escapades together out of a fear that he was leading her down the wrong path.

"What about your mom? How do you spin it to her?" Andie asked back, just to cover all of the bases.

"If you can't drink, eat, smoke, drive or wear it, then the optimal that my pathetic excuse for a mother can offer up is a casual interest at best. Just between me and you, I'm sometimes surprised that she can even remember where we live!" Casey quipped to cheer her up and although, Andie could also detect a hint of truth and underlying pain in her new friend's words, the deeply ironic way in which it was said did still cheer her up a little bit.

"She can't be that bad!" Andie tried to counter with, and she quickly began to see what Casey was doing, by making her see that things weren't all that bad for her, just because she'd bombed on one test out of many.

"If you ask me, she's walking proof of why some people are way too self-centered to be allowed to become parents. My dad at least tries, even if his attempts at parenting are fumbling to say the least. Oh, well! That's just my life, I guess!" Casey blankly stated, while she shrugged her shoulders. "It's only one bad grade, Andie. With your big brain, you can make it up later and still get into whichever college that you want to."

"I guess that you're right. Can you please not tell Andy, though? I just don't want him to worry about me."

"I won't, if you don't want me to. Look, I know that things haven't been easy for you lately, so try not to be too hard on yourself, okay? No one is expecting perfection from you all of the time, least of all me and I'm sure that all of your other friends feel the exact same way. Give them a chance to understand where you're coming from and they might just surprise you" Casey advised her and from the way that she said it, perhaps coming clean to one or more of them about what her life had been like wouldn't be the worst idea.

There was Joey of course, that she could try to go to, yet she wasn't sure if Joey wouldn't judge her for it, considering what kind of a "Play by the Rules Girl", she was most of the time. Jack was another option, but she knew that he already worried enough about her as it was, and with her knowing that he was still deep in the healing phase after losing their mom like she was, the last thing that she wanted was to pile even more worries on top of them and in the worst case scenario, make him take steps backwards that would only prolong the immense grief for both of them. Pacey would be understanding, as he always was with anyone who came to him with a problem, the only problem there being that they weren't nearly as close anymore, as they had been while Joey had been away over in France.

There was one option left, though. A wild card, if you will. A girl, who herself had lived a life much wilder than anything, Andie was getting up to and for that reason, perhaps wouldn't look down on her as much as the others would, for wanting to try a little of it for herself.

When Nikki had woken up that morning, the first thought that had hit her was the number thirteen, as in how many hours that it would be from then until opening night on "Barefoot in the Park" had arrived, and she would have to put her complete trust in her cast to pull off a performance that she still wasn't sure if they had in them. Things had improved over the past weeks for certain, in no small way thanks to her being able to leave some of the responsibilities in Dawson's hands and thus allowing herself to concentrate on making sure that everything would run smoothly from a technical point of view. Still, you couldn't exactly claim that their dress rehearsal the day before had been any kind of a roaring success and for this reason, the stress was building exponentially up in her with every passing minute throughout her morning classes.

In contrast to herself, Dawson seemed to be a whole lot calmer over the whole thing and he'd tried to reassure her several times that with it being a high school production, no one came into it expecting perfection and that once those bright lights came on, it would all come together liked she'd imagined that it would, from the moment that she'd said yes to the job of being the show's director in the first place. Would it, though? Sure, there were plenty of positive signs that she'd seen during the dress rehearsal, like Mandy clearly feeling a lot more at ease now than she had been in the previous rehearsals, something that was no doubt highly attributable to her and Henry having come clean to each other about their feelings towards one another, and already having gone on their first official date, as one of the most adorable couples that Nikki could remember ever having known or seen before. Unexpectedly too, this looked like it had made Jen feel a whole lot more at ease around the two of them and compared to the tension that she'd sometimes felt on stage between her main cast, she'd instead begun to feel a sense of cohesion between the three of them that hopefully and with a little bit of luck, would shine through in their performances that evening.

Abby had (for once) tried her best to follow her classes that day, but with the dilemma of how to deal with "The Belinda Situation" clouding her mind, it was hard for her to concentrate on anything else. One thing was that (thanks to her own miserable personal experiences) she hated to see anyone being lonely, it was just as much that it felt infinitely unfair to her that Chris (whom she was a hundred and ten percent sure had done lots of dubious things that he hadn't confessed to yet) was able to go on with his life practically as if nothing had happened, while most of the girls wouldn't even give Belinda a second glance, not even those who'd pretended to be her friend to get in with the popular crowd. While it wasn't anything new to her that girls of her own age can be unbelievably mean to one another, in ways that would make most of the boys their age shudder to even think about, in her opinion, this cruel and inhumane treatment of someone whose actions were more misguided than anything else, was still taking it a step too far and again, having tried it herself, it didn't make it all that hard for her to picture herself being in Belinda's shoes.

The kicker for her deciding to stand up for her former rival though, came more out of coincidence than anything else, when she happened to be walking into the girl's room just in time to see Belinda being ganged up on and bullied in much the same way that Belinda herself had done to Melissa. In fact, the three girls who were guilty of it were exactly the same girls that back then had been her cronies and had gladly joined in, whenever it was time to cut someone down to size for their own sick amusement.

"You're not so tough now, are you, Belinda?" one the girls snarled at Belinda, who was being held by force up against a wall by the other two and looking like her worst nightmare was coming true in this very minute.

"Look how scared, she is! Are you going to cry and pee your pants now, Belinda?" one of other girls taunted Belinda with, right before she spat in her face.

"If you think that your life is bad now, just wait until we're finished with you!" the third girl told Belinda, just prior to Abby's former rival receiving a hard punch in gut from the first girl and it putting a blissful end to his horror show that Abby had just become an unwilling witness to.

As she saw Belinda slumping down on the ground and trying to catch her breath, Abby's heart began to go out to her and not just because she found herself being ganged up on by the same girls next.

"You didn't see anything. Are we crystal clear on that?" one of the girls, the one who'd thrown the punch, menacingly asked her and seeing that this was a situation where keeping her mouth shut would clearly be the optimal solution, all Abby could do was nod and hope that the three bullies would soon leave them, like they thankfully did.

"Damn, that was scary! Are you okay?" she asked Belinda, who was still trying to catch both her bearings and her breath after what had just happened.

"Don't pretend like you care about me, Abby. Just leave me alone here with the misery that I've inflicted on myself" Belinda quietly answered her, as she wiped the drool from her face and made a meek attempt at pretending that she hadn't been even more scared than Abby was of those three girls.

"If you tell the principal about what happened ..."

"It'll only get worse, which is why you can't tell him about it either. Please, Abby, even if I haven't done anything to deserve your pity, can't you do this one thing for me? I'm basically begging you here" Belinda asked of her, and perhaps it was seeing the tears streaming down Belinda's cheeks that made her see it her old rival's way, but in any case, Abby made the quick decision not to start an argument over it.

"Yeah, I guess that I can. Do you need some help to stand up?" she calmly asked Belinda in the friendliest tone that she could and surprisingly, it actually got the tiniest of smiles out of the girl that until a handful of days earlier, she never could have pictured herself having this friendly of a conversation with.

"After all of the horrible things that I've done to you, you still don't hate me, do you? Why?" Belinda asked her, quite logically, she supposed.

"Hatred is an extremely over-rated emotion, if you ask me. Then again, it could also be because I've been in your shoes, and I know how it feels to be treated as the lowest of the low. It sure isn't a barrel of laughs, is it?"

"You can say that again. Actually, getting a hand to help me stand up again wouldn't be the worst idea right now" Belinda answered her and she let out a small groan of pain, as Abby helped her to get back on her feet again.

"All I can tell you is that things can get better, like they have for me. It all starts with being honest with yourself, though" she told a somewhat understanding looking Belinda, whom she also didn't feel like she could leave alone. Not right now, anyway, with the shock of being attacked still being so fresh in her memories.

"Honest, how?" Belinda asked back, leaving Abby for a moment being stumped on how to properly explain it.

"I can only speak for myself, but in my case, I had a whole lot of pent-up anger that a big part of me didn't want to accept me having, so instead I acted out and did a lot of stuff that I'm not proud of nowadays. Looking back on it now, I feel like such a dumbass for how I was always ruining things for myself, only I couldn't see that I was doing it and that's almost the worst part of it. In other words, and take it from someone, who's tried it, learning to be honest with yourself is a long process that doesn't happen from day to day" she explained to Belinda, who by now had managed to calm down enough that she was ready to face the rest of the school day.

As for Abby, she couldn't help feeling a little proud of herself.

After the shock of getting that C-Minus had begun to slowly subside in Andie, she'd made a snap decision to put full effort into the rest of her classes for the day and in some strange way, the familiarity of it comforted her. After all, this was who she'd always been for as long as she could remember: Andie McPhee, the constant overachiever that can do what she sets her mind to and is the apple of her parents' eyes.

Was that still who she was, though? The past year especially, it had begun to feel like this "role" that she'd created for herself was also a cage, and like she was missing out on everything else that teen-life has to offer by keeping her head buried in books. Andy and Casey had given her an opportunity to break out of that cage and while on one hand, she could see that what she was doing wouldn't have been approved of by her mom, her mom wasn't there anymore. All that remained of her now were the memories and pictures of her, so why should she still feel compelled to live by her rules? When it came to her father, it was becoming harder by the day for her to continue to respect a man, who'd never truly opened up to her and she wasn't sure if he ever would, so why should she do what he told her to? Because he paid the mortgage and kept a roof over her head? Anyone with money in their bank account can do that much for their children, but it takes something else to be a dad than it does to be a father and the more that she'd thought about it, the clearer it became to her that whatever this thing was, her father either didn't have it or had never shown that he had it.

Maybe, she thought from time to time, this was who she'd been destined to become from the beginning, one of the outsiders that don't fit in with society's norms and find their own ways to get through this crazy thing called life.

"I'm guessing that this isn't the right time to bring up the name of a certain Scottish play in front of you?" Joey teasingly asked Nikki while they, along with a handful of other "Randomly Picked Students" were spreading road-salt on the pavement that led all the way up to the entrance of the school and by doing so, were clearing it for snow. A job that it would have seemed logical for the janitor of the school to do, but with him being at home and nursing a sprained foot for the next couple of days and the job needing to be done, this was the best immediate solution that Nikki's dad could come up with. In all honesty, she didn't mind at all getting a bit of fresh air either, even if it was of the very cold kind.

"Go ahead, if you want to. I'm far from the superstitious type. Are you coming to see our play?"

"If I wasn't there for moral support, I'm sure that both Dawson and Jen would be very disappointed in me. Honestly, I'm pretty excited to see how it's all turned out. I'm sure that Pacey is too" Joey told her with a cute as a button smile to match, that only reminded Nikki of how perfect Pacey and her were for one another, and why the chances of them ever breaking up were so small that there was probably a bigger chance of herself winning the grand prize in a lottery than it ever happening.

"Speaking of Dawson. Has he said anything about me to you?" she asked Joey, who stopped with her "Important Job" for a moment, so they could discuss more pressing matters.

"What would you want him to say about you?" Joey probingly asked her and even if was close to sub-zero temperatures (on the Celsius scale), Nikki still found herself blushing a little.

"I'm kind of getting the feeling that he likes me, I'm just not all that experienced when it comes to picking up on stuff like that. Has he said anything to you about wanting ask me out or anything like that?"

"Not really, but it isn't the sort of stuff that we usually talk about. You know, relationship stuff?"

"I guess that with you dating his best bud, it sort of makes sense. Was there ever a time when you and Dawson ... almost became more than friends?"

"I can't say that there was, but I did have a crush on him for a long time, so I know where you're coming from. Let me explain something about Dawson to you. See, he's always seen the world as black and white, because that's what it's like in most movies. In "Star Wars", the rebels are the good guys, and the empire are the bad guys, so you know from the start who to root for and in "E.T.", you find yourself falling in love with that little puppet, because he's the ultimate underdog and kids can relate to that. Real life just isn't that simple and it's something that Dawson is still learning with every passing day. Deep down, he's still that kid who wants to believe that there's a right and wrong without shades of grey in between. Any girl, who wants to be his girlfriend has to be accepting of that part of him, or it'll never work out between you. Look, I'm not trying to dissuade you from asking him out here, I just thought that you should know what you're getting into, before you start something up with him" Joey explained, as they slowly began to get back to work.

Having never tried what an opening day of her own play is like, Nikki didn't entirely know what to expect from it either, but it basically came down to three distinct feelings that kept changing within her seemingly at random: Dread, excitement and trying to remain indifferent enough, that it didn't feel like her entire future in the arts was resting on whether her cast could remember all of their lines, not to mention whether her rag-tag crew could pull of their parts of it without any glitches that might throw the actors and actresses off and indirectly effect their performances in a negative way. All of these were still great unknowns to her, as was why she'd seen what looked like it was the entire Capeside marching band dressed in their uniforms and with their instruments waiting in out in the hallway, only an hour before they were scheduled to start letting the public in.

"Is there a pep rally tonight that no one has told us about?" she casually asked Dawson, who was somehow still keeping a far cooler head than she was, even if the minutes were counting down fast to this, their make-or-break moment that would surely decide if they would ever get to direct a play at their school again.

"Not that I've heard of" Dawson answered her back, like he didn't have a clue what she was going on about.

"Then why is the marching band here tonight, looking like they're ready to put on their biggest show of the year?" she asked Dawson, who looked like he was as little in the know as she was.

"Beats me. Maybe, they're here to make a statement or something" he suggested.

"A statement about what?" she logically asked him back.

"How should I know? It's your dad who's the principal, not mine, so it's you that should know those things" he told her and since her father hadn't mentioned anything about it to her, all she could do was try to pretend that it hadn't happened, at least until after the play was over.

After she'd spent most of the rest of her school day making sure that Belinda wasn't on the verge of some kind of breakdown (a decision that in no way was popular with her girlfriend and had led to the closest thing that they'd had to a fight so far in their relationship), Abby figured that the rest of the day wouldn't have all that many, if any, surprises in store for her. Having been to a few school plays before, she knew to set her expectations relatively low and if she had to be truthful, then she probably wouldn't have shown up if one of her best friends wasn't in it. Once she got there though, and got nestled into her seat in between Grams and Bessie, she couldn't help feeling just a tiny bit excited for what was to come and in a fleeting moment, wished that it had been herself who'd signed up for the drama club and would be the one to soon take the stage, until she reminded herself of the hard work that also came with it and quickly decided that it wasn't worth it, at least in her own eyes.

Was the play a success, however? The crowd certainly thought so and even if Abby found some of the wording in the play to be dreadfully out of date by a number of decades (who calls someone else a stuffed shirt, anyway?) and you could see the nerves come into play now and again whenever someone slightly stumbled over their lines or had to take a handful of moments to remember them, it didn't take too much away from the experience as a whole. Of course, it could be that Abby was more than a little bit biased in her opinion, seeing as it was her best friend up there on stage and for the most part was killing it in ways that she couldn't have seen coming, but applauses speak for themselves and the one that the cast and crew had gotten spoke volumes in a positive way on how happy their crowd had been with the entertainment that they'd been offered up that evening.

What she hadn't expected was what was to come right after the play was over and that it was Dawson Leery, a guy that she often considered to be the most boring boy in town, who provided it was yet another thing that she in a million years couldn't have seen coming.

He'd started out his "Prom-Posal" (Or "Winter Formal-Posal", if you want to be exact on it) for Nikki, by telling her over the microphone that their actors weren't the only ones, who knew how to act (a reference that must have been alluding to something personal between them) before he'd brought the entire marching band out on the stage and they'd played "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You", while he not just sang it to her, but got the entire crowd involved by the end of it!

Abby had seen a lot of things at that school and roughly, she would guess that at least ninety percent of it had been so every day and boring that it wasn't worth remembering, while other five percent of it were things that she didn't want to remember.

This however, had to be the most romantic gesture that she'd ever seen anyone pull off in real life and when Nikki gladly accepted his proposal, she found herself cheering as hard for them as anyone else was.

Would her own latest relationship spat be that easy to fix, though? Only time would tell.

Andie at first hadn't planned on attending the play, but with Andy and Casey both going to it along with all of her other friends, her only alternative was staying at home with her dad, who would be spending most of the evening with his head buried in paperwork related to his job, not forgetting the ghost of her deceased brother that was sure to bug her again, like he'd been doing increasingly over the past months, whenever she had a few moments to herself. By the end of it, she was glad that she'd taken her brother up on his offer to come with him and while she hadn't expected the performance to be as good as it was, the highlight of the evening had still come afterwards when Dawson had offered up an invitation to Nikki that it would have been hard for any girl to say no to.

She hadn't planned on attending the afterparty either, but with her dead-set on going brother also being her ride home and her not feeling like going on a rather long walk in a pair of shoes that were created for the opposite purpose, staying to wait for him was still by far the lesser of two evils.

One thing that it also gave her was a chance to test the waters with Jen, when it came to if she could be trusted or not.

"You were all great tonight" she shyly told Jen, who was taking a break from all of the praise that she'd been receiving, to get some relative peace and quiet outside.

"Thanks. Now, I just have to get through tomorrow's performance, and I can put my career as a theater actress to rest. For now, at least" Jen smilingly told her back, with the sound of relief being as clear as day in her voice.

"Maybe, you should consider it as future possibility. You're really talented and I'm not just saying that because we're friends."

"Try to tell my mom that and she wouldn't believe you! As far as she's concerned, I'll always be her screw-up daughter, who can't do much of anything right" Jen said, as the smile ran away from her face. "Can you believe that I actually called her up and invited her to come here tonight to see me perform?"

"She didn't come, did she?" Andie asked Jen, who scoffed at the question.

"And do the slightest thing to show that she actually gives a damn about the daughter that she's visited a total of one lousy time, since I came here? Not likely! She's still one visit up on my dad, I can say that much for her, but I'd expected it from him, not her. Parents sure can suck sometimes, can't they?" Jen rhetorically asked her.

"At least, you have a mom" Andie snapped back and while it hadn't been her intention to, it still made Jen look like she'd just said the worst thing in the world.

"I didn't mean to ... why do I always have to say the worst things at the worst possible times? It's like a disease that I can't get rid of! I'm so sorry if I reminded you of ..."

"It's okay, Jen. You don't have to feel like you need to walk on eggshells around me. I'm still the same girl that I was before my mom took her own life. More or less, anyway" she tried to convince Jen, who looked relieved that nothing was being held against her.

"How is your relationship with your dad?" Jen inquired while at least sounding like she cared.

"The best way to describe it is lukewarm at best. He isn't a bad father to us by any means, I just don't think that he has it in him to begin opening up to me or Jack yet about what's going on inside of him. What's yours like?"

"Too obsessed with how much money he's making and how much he gets his ass kissed to care about anything else. I seem to remember him caring about me when I was little, but as I got older, I think that he lost interest in being a father altogether. The last years that we lived together, there would be weeks on end where I wouldn't see him at all, because I just wasn't a priority in his life anymore. How it can be surprise to him that I began to look for love in all of the wrong places, when he could find it in himself to give me even the tiniest bit of it, is anyone's guess" Jen sadly sighed.

"What were these wrong places?"

"Pretty much anywhere, where they would allow me to be a part of their day-long parties that only end, when someone either winds up dead or in jail. I can still remember the first time that I smoked weed, believe it or not."

"Is there a story that goes along with that little teaser?"

"Not exactly an earth shattering one, if that's what you're thinking. I just remember that I'd had this day from hell, where it felt like everything had gone wrong and I'd had a huge fight over my already sliding grades with my mom, so I stole a fifty from her purse, snuck out of the apartment through the fire escape and made my way down to Central Park, where I knew one of the dealers that hung out down there. He wasn't too keen on selling to someone as young as I was, but I still managed to convince him to."

"How old were you?"

"It was a few weeks before I turned thirteen. Anyway, soon after I'd bought it, I ran into this boy named Drue that I knew from school, and we went off to get high together. None of us knew how to properly roll a joint yet, so it took several attempts until we'd managed to make one that wouldn't fall apart like a badly built LEGO tower, the moment after we'd lit it. After that day, we both spent the next three years trying to chase that perfect high again, until it all came to a head, and I got sent here to live with Grams and the rest of you guys. It's a hell of a feeling when you're so high that you can pretend not give a rat's ass about any of the bullshit in your life. Am I right?" Jen probingly asked her and for a moment, Andie thought about lying again. Not that she did, and the reasons why weren't entirely clear to her, except for maybe knowing that if anyone of her friends was the one to open up to, it was the girl that she was presently in the company of.

"Yeah, it can be" she replied with sigh of relief. "How did you know that I've done it too?"

"I sort of caught you in the act, you just didn't see me. Look, Andie, I could stand here and give you a thousand reasons why doing drugs isn't the way to deal with life's ups and downs, but I know that I would be wasting my time because it'll likely fall on deaf ears. Just do me a favor and try not to go down that same path that I did, okay? And if there's anything that you want to talk about, I've become known as a pretty good listener as well. You don't have to deal with all of this by yourself, is what I'm saying here."

"Anything? Even sex?" Andie asked and from the knowing look that she got in return, Andie knew that she'd found exactly what she'd been looking for.

A way to feel like things were getting back to normal again.

"Did you really convince the entire marching band to turn up tonight, just so you could ask me to the Winter Formal?" Nikki asked her new semi-boyfriend, while he was walking her home and holding her hand after an evening to remember.

"I also had to "donate" fifty bucks to their party fund. What did you think of my singing?" Dawson asked her with a wry smile.

"You're no Frankie Valli, but you poured your heart into it and that counts for a lot too" she sweetly told him back. "Did you get the idea from watching "10 Things I hate About You"?"

"Perhaps subconsciously, I did. If you want the truth, I mostly chose it because the lyrics are so easy to remember" he told her with blatant honesty, as they came up to the intersection that led down to the house that she lived in with her dad.

"The next time that you want to invite me out on a date, all you have to do is ask. Of course, with an invitation like that, I'm also expecting our time at the dance to live up to it. Do you think that you can handle it?"

"There's only one way to find out, isn't there?" he flirtingly asked her back and not long after, they reached her father's house, which finally put an end to their evening.

An evening that the young Nikki was absolutely sure that she wouldn't soon forget!

With the day after the play being a Saturday, Abby had to make her way over to Melissa's parents' house, if they were going to talk it out, when it came to how to handle this "Belinda Situation" that they suddenly found themselves in.

"I can't just out of the blue, all of a sudden forgive her, Abby" Melissa told her, after she'd been invited up to her room, where they could discuss it all in private. "If you ask me, she deserves what's happening to her."

"You don't know all of it. Yesterday, I saw her being beaten up in the girl's room at school. If we don't nip this in the butt, who's to say what it can escalate to?" she told Melissa, who with this new information looked far more torn on what to do than she had been only seconds earlier.

"Can't you just tell the principal?"

"She asked me not to and I told her that I wouldn't. Look, I don't particularly like her either, for the same reasons that you don't, but I can't just sit back do nothing. Anyway, I seem to remember that it wasn't all that long where it was you, who was practically begging someone for their forgiveness?" Abby reminded her girlfriend, who from the looks of it knew that she'd been cornered.

"Okay, I'll try! Just don't expect any miracles to happen here, Abby. Belinda is still in my top 0,0000000000001 percent least favorite girls in the world!" Melissa told her and although, it wasn't exactly a glowing piece of foreboding for the future, it was still a possible path towards something.

The only question was towards what it was leading to.

END OF CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN