Knight in Shining Letterman's Jacket | Community | Troy/Annie
Knight in Shining Letterman's Jacket
Troy/Annie
~3,400 words
In which Annie isn't Josie Grossie, Troy's team kinda sucks at football, and Abed knows everything.
For Libby, who put this idea in my head.
---
Annie hates high school romantic comedies. It’s her least favorite movie genre, the only one she avoids like the plague, because at the end of the day, horror movies are fun to watch in the blanket fort with Troy and Abed, when Abed guesses the twist and Troy screams like a pre-teen girl. But when Annie looks at a TV screen and sees the awfulness of high school reflected back at her, well, that’s a scary movie she’ll cover her eyes for.
There’s really only one variation of the genre, too: popular guy falls for unpopular, ugly duckling girl. And maybe Annie was an ugly duckling that grew up to be-okay, not a swan, but a duck people liked to feed at the park. A cute duck. A respectable duck. But her popular guy never fell for her. She stared at the back of his head in Algebra class every single day of senior year. There were days the Adderall made her head swim and his hairline was so clear, so precise, she had to sit on her hands in order to stop herself from running her fingertip along the space where his hair met his skin. It looked so soft.
It wasn’t all bad, she guesses, because even though he never took her to the prom or sang her a song at graduation or anything like that, he did end up becoming her best friend and her roommate and maybe that was better than some cliched ending. Annie was in rehab during prom and graduation, anyway. She wouldn’t have even been there so it’s probably a moot point.
But still. Annie doesn’t like thinking about high school, about the teasing and the loneliness and the hours spent pouring over textbooks. She doesn’t like to think about the scar right above her knee from that stupid plate-glass window. She doesn’t like to think about the look of pity and disgust on Troy’s face when she ran through it and emerged on the other side. As far as she’s concerned, none of that ever happened. Her life began when she was discharged from rehab and when she started classes at Greendale. Mature, healthy duck.
So when she comes out of her bedroom, freshly changed into her pajamas, and finds Abed waiting to press play on 10 Things I Hate About You, Annie freezes. “What are we watching?”
“Tonight’s theme is high school,” Abed answers.
Friday night is Movie Night. This is non-negotiable, found underneath the addition about the Dreamatorium in the lease, written in Troy’s hand with purple crayon. Pajamas. Popcorn. Orange sodas. Not attending Movie Night for any reason-dates, homework, watching Jeff and Britta get too drunk-results in an actual punishment, to be determined by the rest of the apartment.
It’s Abed’s turn to choose the theme. Last week Annie had queued up a marathon of non-princess Disney movies. And the week before, Troy made them watch his favorite football movies, which was really just Remember the Titans three times in a row. Usually Abed’s choices were a bit more... refined, out there. Like the night they watched silent films. Or Academy Award-winning foreign films. Or even Star Wars.
Subconsciously, she rubs the scar on her leg and frowns. “I thought we were marathoning James Bond tonight?”
“Changed my mind,” Abed replies.
Troy turns around and pokes his head out from behind his recliner. “You want to sit here, Annie? I’ll take the floor.” He slides down to rest against the front of the chair, where Annie’s knees would be if she was sitting.
Annie shoots Troy a small smile and hesitantly takes her seat. “Why the sudden change?”
“You mentioned you didn’t like these kinds of movies. I thought I would pick out a few that you might like regardless.”
One Friday night, Troy skipped movie night to go to a birthday party for one of his teammates. Abed and Annie gleefully teamed up to find the appropriate punishment, which turned out to be much less harsh than either one probably intended: Troy had to supply them with pizza and ice cream and reenact ten scenes from Friends of their choosing. Annie doesn’t have the extra cash for as much pizza as the boys can eat and she’s rusty on her acting skills. So she settles back into the recliner (Troy’s is more comfortable than Abed’s because Troy likes things that are softer; Annie always chooses to sit on the top bunk when they huddle in the blanket fort) and turns her attention to the TV.
In the end, it’s not so bad. Abed’s list also includes Never Been Kissed (“Not as much of a high school movie as others, but it still works”) and Clueless. There are plenty of worse movies out there, movies with bullies and mean girls and plain, chubby girls with acne and braces, even if Annie does have to firmly stare at the wall behind the television when the egg was thrown at Josie on prom night. But Troy leans against her knees and it helps her remember who she is now. She’s not Josie Grossie anymore, either.
Annie snuck a VHS copy of She’s All That into her bedroom when she was in middle school. She wasn’t allowed to watch PG-13 movies without the actual parental guidance, but this was during her Freddie Prinze, Jr. stage and she was only eleven and someone had told her the main character said “fucking” so she knew her mom would never let her watch it. So she waited up one Friday night until her mom went to bed and tip-toed downstairs to watch the movie with the volume down low, her finger hovering nervously over the remote the entire time.
The kids in sixth grade thought Annie was weird. They called her a teacher’s pet and made fun of the sweaters she wore, the ones with kittens or butterflies on them. And she wasn’t allowed to hang out at the ice skating rink on weekends so they teased her for being a baby. Instead she read a lot of Nancy Drew books and dreamed about going away to college, where she would have a super handsome but nice boyfriend who would hold her hand in the library.
So when everyone was mean to Laney, and even though it ended happily and that Sixpence None the Richer song played and everything was great, Annie still cried during the whole thing because college was so far away and what if high school was exactly the same as middle school? She turned the movie off and went to bed and when she brought the tape back to the video store (the sketchy one, not Blockbuster, where you needed a card to rent movies and they asked how old you were) she didn’t even smile at the middle-aged woman behind the counter.
---
Annie goes straight to bed after the credits roll on Clueless, shrugging off Abed’s insistence that they analyze each film. She dreams about high school and her mother’s disappointed face and the B+ she got in AP English. And the next morning she rolls out of bed and takes a deep breath and puts it all behind her.
But for some reason, the topic keeps coming up. Annie spends the weekend mostly holed up in her bedroom doing pre-Thanksgiving break homework but she can hear Abed and Troy continuing their high school movie marathon. Then they watch the entire first season of Popular. Annie writes her political science paper with headphones on, blasting cheery pop music.
On Monday, she walks into study group and Shirley and Britta are talking about homecoming dances. Shirley recalls how handsome Andre looked in his tie and jacket and Britta rants about how she skipped it to smoke pot behind the gym.
Tuesday is the last day of classes before Thanksgiving break and that night Troy has a big football game against City College. Ever since their first year, Annie’s always been there for every home game. She has her regular seat in the bleachers. She’s gotten better at making signs. And she even kind of knows what’s going on.
It’s a big game because City College is sort of their rival and since it’s the holidays, alumni and family members and friends are all in town. The stands are more crowded than usual. There’s a line at the concession stand: non-regulars who don’t know better than to eat the hot dogs.
Annie hates going to City College games, even though they’re the most important, because so many of her high school classmates now attend school there. Most kids from Riverside High never leave the area, but they do end up choosing the more prestigious of the two local community colleges. Annie picked Greendale so she could avoid them, so she could move on with her life and not think about them.
She recognizes a lot of the football team. They’re mostly Troy’s old teammates and friends, and she watches as he leaves the Greendale bench before kick-off to high-five some of them. Football Troy still makes her a little nervous; he’s not her best friend and roommate and partner in crime when he’s around his sports friends. Suddenly he’s strutting down hallways in his letterman’s jacket again, ignoring her, cracking jokes in math class instead of paying attention to what Mr. Ryan is saying. It’s hard for Annie to reconcile these two different people as one, the Troy of her past and the Troy of her present. Her Troy.
Abed sits next to her during the game and between the two of them they follow what’s going on and cheer for Troy and wave blue and white pom-poms. During halftime Abed gets them each a styrofoam mug of hot chocolate to warm their hands.
City College wins-by a lot, it’s really not even close-but when Troy meets them outside of the locker room after he’s showered and changed clothes, he doesn’t look too upset.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” he says. “Annie, I love your sign this week.”
Annie grins and switches her sign from one hand to the other. It’s blue with sparkly letters that say, “TB is my QB.”
“Hey, the team is going out to that bar over on Fourth. You guys should come! It’ll be fun, we can celebrate classes being over.”
“Cool,” Abed says. “Annie?”
For the most part, the guys on the team are loud and obnoxious and rude, but if Abed’s there with her, they can hide in the corner and ignore everyone. So she nods and the three of them pile into her car. She rolls up her sign and neatly tucks it into the trunk. She needs to stock up on glitter glue. Football season’s almost over, but next year will be here before she knows it.
---
It turns out that the Greendale football team isn’t the only one who made plans to meet up and celebrate at the bar. City College’s team is there, too-celebrating an actual win and not just the fact that they managed to make it through another game.
Annie stiffens as they step through the door. The boys don’t notice.
“Grab that table over there,” Abed says, pointing. “I’ll go get us drinks.”
Troy leads Annie to an empty table and slides into the booth after her. “Hey, you okay? You’ve seemed kinda sad lately.” He puts his hand over hers and squeezes a little bit.
“It’s just weird, isn’t it? All those guys from City College. We know them. We’ve known them our entire lives.”
“You mean Jim and Derek and all them?” Troy asks, confused.
“They were your best friends in high school. It’s strange to think about.”
“But you and Abed are my best friends now,” Troy says. “And Jeff and Shirley and Britta and Pierce.”
Annie watches Abed try to get a bartender’s attention. The place is crowded, two nights before Thanksgiving crowded. She opens her mouth to reply to Troy when two people approach the table and Annie’s mouth goes dry.
Adam and Tommy are probably the worst of Troy’s old jock friends. They’re offensive, crude, and mean-or at least they were in high school. Annie can’t imagine they’ve changed very much. They were two of the most popular boys in high school, dated two equally blonde, equally vicious cheerleaders, and were the ones who came up with the name Annie Adderall when Annie’s backpack broke during lunch and her pills-three bottles worth-spilled all over the cafeteria.
She jumped through the window three days later.
“Troy! How’s it going, man?” Adam asks. “I’d apologize for the complete ass kicking we gave you out there, but I’m not sorry at all.”
“Aw, you know next year that trophy has our names on it,” Troy says, bumping fists with each of them.
Tommy leers at Annie. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Annie. You remember her, from high school? Annie Edison?”
Annie holds her breath as recognition dawns over Adam’s and Tommy’s faces. Her pulse speeds up and she feels sweat bead on her upper lip.
“Annie Adderall!”
She doesn’t know which one of them says it. She shoves Troy out of the booth and bolts, slips through the crowd and out into the cold November night. Her breath clouds in front of her as she takes in big gulps of air.
I’m leaving now, please meet me at the car if you want to come, she texts Abed, her fingers flying frantically over the keys. She doesn’t text Troy.
She imagines them all back inside, laughing about that stupid freak who was addicted to pills and went crazy. But when she pictures it, everyone’s face is blurry; she can’t see Tommy or Adam or Jim or Derek or anyone. She only sees Troy, laughing at her, forgetting that she’s an entirely different person now.
She gets into the car and sits in the driver’s seat. She doesn’t start the car, just sits with tears blurring her vision, and a few minutes pass before the passenger door opens and Abed slides in.
“Where’s Troy?” he asks after a minute of silence.
“I figured one of his friends would give him a ride home.”
“Oh. Are you okay?”
She turns the ignition and shifts into drive. “I’m fine.”
The ride is quiet and they’re halfway home before Abed speaks again. “Those are guys that made fun of you in high school, aren’t they? Troy’s old friends?”
Annie feels Abed’s eyes on her and nods.
“And you’re afraid that they’re making fun of you again and that Troy’s reverted back to his mean, popular jock self.”
She nods again.
“And this has been a recurring theme this week after I made you watch movies that take place in high school. And you’re secretly still in love with Troy so you’ve been thinking about how much you hated high school and how unattainable Troy was back then.”
“I’m not...”
“It makes sense. And since you moved in with us, I’ve been seeing more of it. Your thing with Jeff isn’t really going anywhere, so you’re looking back to a guy you gave up on because he wasn’t interested. But Troy’s changed a significant amount since we started at Greendale. If he reverts back to his past self, you think you really won’t have a chance.”
It’s not true, not really, Annie tells herself. She hasn’t deluded herself into thinking she and Troy are star-crossed lovers or anything like that, unlike her seventeen year old self. There were no butterflies in her stomach when Princess Annie kissed Woodsman Troy after he saved her from Bad Neighborhood Forest, she was just excited about moving in with Troy and Abed. She attends every football game because that’s what friends do-that’s what roommates do-and frankly, she should berate the rest of the study group for not showing up more often. And if she rolled her eyes when Abed confided in her that he thought Troy might have a crush on Britta, well, that was more for his own well-being than anything else; they would be a terrible match and Troy would end up heartbroken.
So, Abed’s totally wrong.
“If I were to make a high school movie,” Abed says as they pull into the apartment’s parking lot, “my main characters would be a girl and a guy who go to school together, but they’re not friends or anything, they just know each other. They meet again in the future and they’ve both changed, but for the better, and they fall in love gradually but surely. I think it would be pretty good.”
Annie turns the car off and turns to Abed with a sad smile. “That sounds nice, Abed. But movies and real life are different. I think we’ve all learned that by now, haven’t we?”
“Actually, I’ve learned not to rule anything out,” he says.
---
Annie goes to bed as soon as they get upstairs, but she can’t sleep. Instead, she burrows underneath her covers and thinks about Abed, about how he knows everything except he doesn’t really, about Troy at the bar, fresh with stories about how Annie Adderall isn’t all that different now-same freakouts, less pills.
There’s a quiet knock on her door and she figures it’s probably Abed with hot chocolate with extra marshmallows: the cure-all for sadness. “Come in,” she calls, and light floods her room but it’s Troy in the doorway.
“Troy?” She sits up and pulls the chain on the lamp beside her bed. “What are you doing?”
He’s holding something in his hand, cradled to his chest. “Hey, Annie.” It’s not until he sits on the edge of her bed does she realize that he’s not holding anything, but his hand is swollen and bloody, wrapped in a bar towel.
“Oh my god! What happened to your hand?” She gently unwraps it and examines the blooming bruises, the clotting cuts.
“Yeah, I punched a bunch of guys in the face,” he says, in a very unbelievable trying-not-to-cry voice.
“Who? There was a fight at the bar?”
“What do you mean, who? Who do you think? I punched Adam and Tommy and then Derek and then I lost track.”
“Troy! Those are your friends! Why did you punch them?”
He tsks. “You’re the smartest person I know, Annie, but you’re really dumb sometimes. You think I was just going to sit there while they made fun of you? Those guys used to be my friends, but they were never very good ones. Not like you.”
“What?”
“Look, I’m really sorry. I totally forgot they were bullies to you in high school. Sometimes I don’t remember stuff like that. If I had, I wouldn’t have gone to the bar, or asked you to come with me. Can you forgive me?”
Annie opens and closes her mouth a few times, but only a high-pitched squeak comes out.
“I got punched in the stomach like four times so please, just say you forgive me?”
He looks like a puppy, she thinks, all shining eyes and big heart. One time, someone pushed her in the hallway and all her books fell on the floor. And before she could come to terms with how ridiculous and cliched it all was, he was on his knees, gathering them up in his arms. She wrote about that moment in her diary every night for over two weeks. Her knight in shining letterman’s jacket.
It’s like the opposite of that moment now. Or, maybe not the opposite, but it’s definitely not the same at all. Because when she leans in to kiss him he doesn’t hesitate one bit, like she thinks he might, and his uninjured hand winds itself in her hair.
She’s probably thought about kissing Troy Barnes more than she’s thought about anything, except maybe school or Adderall. More than she’s thought about kissing Jeff, for sure. But the way his mouth fits against hers, the way he smells like soap, the way her heart is racing, she’s never thought about any of this. And she wonders if she’ll ever think of anything else again.
Troy pulls away and his face is pained and Annie panics. It must be written on her face because he shakes his head.
“No, it’s not... you just smooshed my hand a little bit with your, uh, chest area.”
She laughs a relieved giggle. “Oh, I’m sorry. Come on, we should clean your cuts out and get you some ice.”
As she leads him to the bathroom, she sees Abed poke his head out from the blanket fort. He gives her a smile and a thumbs-up. Okay, so maybe Abed does know everything after all.
Troy/Annie
~3,400 words
In which Annie isn't Josie Grossie, Troy's team kinda sucks at football, and Abed knows everything.
For Libby, who put this idea in my head.
---
Annie hates high school romantic comedies. It’s her least favorite movie genre, the only one she avoids like the plague, because at the end of the day, horror movies are fun to watch in the blanket fort with Troy and Abed, when Abed guesses the twist and Troy screams like a pre-teen girl. But when Annie looks at a TV screen and sees the awfulness of high school reflected back at her, well, that’s a scary movie she’ll cover her eyes for.
There’s really only one variation of the genre, too: popular guy falls for unpopular, ugly duckling girl. And maybe Annie was an ugly duckling that grew up to be-okay, not a swan, but a duck people liked to feed at the park. A cute duck. A respectable duck. But her popular guy never fell for her. She stared at the back of his head in Algebra class every single day of senior year. There were days the Adderall made her head swim and his hairline was so clear, so precise, she had to sit on her hands in order to stop herself from running her fingertip along the space where his hair met his skin. It looked so soft.
It wasn’t all bad, she guesses, because even though he never took her to the prom or sang her a song at graduation or anything like that, he did end up becoming her best friend and her roommate and maybe that was better than some cliched ending. Annie was in rehab during prom and graduation, anyway. She wouldn’t have even been there so it’s probably a moot point.
But still. Annie doesn’t like thinking about high school, about the teasing and the loneliness and the hours spent pouring over textbooks. She doesn’t like to think about the scar right above her knee from that stupid plate-glass window. She doesn’t like to think about the look of pity and disgust on Troy’s face when she ran through it and emerged on the other side. As far as she’s concerned, none of that ever happened. Her life began when she was discharged from rehab and when she started classes at Greendale. Mature, healthy duck.
So when she comes out of her bedroom, freshly changed into her pajamas, and finds Abed waiting to press play on 10 Things I Hate About You, Annie freezes. “What are we watching?”
“Tonight’s theme is high school,” Abed answers.
Friday night is Movie Night. This is non-negotiable, found underneath the addition about the Dreamatorium in the lease, written in Troy’s hand with purple crayon. Pajamas. Popcorn. Orange sodas. Not attending Movie Night for any reason-dates, homework, watching Jeff and Britta get too drunk-results in an actual punishment, to be determined by the rest of the apartment.
It’s Abed’s turn to choose the theme. Last week Annie had queued up a marathon of non-princess Disney movies. And the week before, Troy made them watch his favorite football movies, which was really just Remember the Titans three times in a row. Usually Abed’s choices were a bit more... refined, out there. Like the night they watched silent films. Or Academy Award-winning foreign films. Or even Star Wars.
Subconsciously, she rubs the scar on her leg and frowns. “I thought we were marathoning James Bond tonight?”
“Changed my mind,” Abed replies.
Troy turns around and pokes his head out from behind his recliner. “You want to sit here, Annie? I’ll take the floor.” He slides down to rest against the front of the chair, where Annie’s knees would be if she was sitting.
Annie shoots Troy a small smile and hesitantly takes her seat. “Why the sudden change?”
“You mentioned you didn’t like these kinds of movies. I thought I would pick out a few that you might like regardless.”
One Friday night, Troy skipped movie night to go to a birthday party for one of his teammates. Abed and Annie gleefully teamed up to find the appropriate punishment, which turned out to be much less harsh than either one probably intended: Troy had to supply them with pizza and ice cream and reenact ten scenes from Friends of their choosing. Annie doesn’t have the extra cash for as much pizza as the boys can eat and she’s rusty on her acting skills. So she settles back into the recliner (Troy’s is more comfortable than Abed’s because Troy likes things that are softer; Annie always chooses to sit on the top bunk when they huddle in the blanket fort) and turns her attention to the TV.
In the end, it’s not so bad. Abed’s list also includes Never Been Kissed (“Not as much of a high school movie as others, but it still works”) and Clueless. There are plenty of worse movies out there, movies with bullies and mean girls and plain, chubby girls with acne and braces, even if Annie does have to firmly stare at the wall behind the television when the egg was thrown at Josie on prom night. But Troy leans against her knees and it helps her remember who she is now. She’s not Josie Grossie anymore, either.
Annie snuck a VHS copy of She’s All That into her bedroom when she was in middle school. She wasn’t allowed to watch PG-13 movies without the actual parental guidance, but this was during her Freddie Prinze, Jr. stage and she was only eleven and someone had told her the main character said “fucking” so she knew her mom would never let her watch it. So she waited up one Friday night until her mom went to bed and tip-toed downstairs to watch the movie with the volume down low, her finger hovering nervously over the remote the entire time.
The kids in sixth grade thought Annie was weird. They called her a teacher’s pet and made fun of the sweaters she wore, the ones with kittens or butterflies on them. And she wasn’t allowed to hang out at the ice skating rink on weekends so they teased her for being a baby. Instead she read a lot of Nancy Drew books and dreamed about going away to college, where she would have a super handsome but nice boyfriend who would hold her hand in the library.
So when everyone was mean to Laney, and even though it ended happily and that Sixpence None the Richer song played and everything was great, Annie still cried during the whole thing because college was so far away and what if high school was exactly the same as middle school? She turned the movie off and went to bed and when she brought the tape back to the video store (the sketchy one, not Blockbuster, where you needed a card to rent movies and they asked how old you were) she didn’t even smile at the middle-aged woman behind the counter.
---
Annie goes straight to bed after the credits roll on Clueless, shrugging off Abed’s insistence that they analyze each film. She dreams about high school and her mother’s disappointed face and the B+ she got in AP English. And the next morning she rolls out of bed and takes a deep breath and puts it all behind her.
But for some reason, the topic keeps coming up. Annie spends the weekend mostly holed up in her bedroom doing pre-Thanksgiving break homework but she can hear Abed and Troy continuing their high school movie marathon. Then they watch the entire first season of Popular. Annie writes her political science paper with headphones on, blasting cheery pop music.
On Monday, she walks into study group and Shirley and Britta are talking about homecoming dances. Shirley recalls how handsome Andre looked in his tie and jacket and Britta rants about how she skipped it to smoke pot behind the gym.
Tuesday is the last day of classes before Thanksgiving break and that night Troy has a big football game against City College. Ever since their first year, Annie’s always been there for every home game. She has her regular seat in the bleachers. She’s gotten better at making signs. And she even kind of knows what’s going on.
It’s a big game because City College is sort of their rival and since it’s the holidays, alumni and family members and friends are all in town. The stands are more crowded than usual. There’s a line at the concession stand: non-regulars who don’t know better than to eat the hot dogs.
Annie hates going to City College games, even though they’re the most important, because so many of her high school classmates now attend school there. Most kids from Riverside High never leave the area, but they do end up choosing the more prestigious of the two local community colleges. Annie picked Greendale so she could avoid them, so she could move on with her life and not think about them.
She recognizes a lot of the football team. They’re mostly Troy’s old teammates and friends, and she watches as he leaves the Greendale bench before kick-off to high-five some of them. Football Troy still makes her a little nervous; he’s not her best friend and roommate and partner in crime when he’s around his sports friends. Suddenly he’s strutting down hallways in his letterman’s jacket again, ignoring her, cracking jokes in math class instead of paying attention to what Mr. Ryan is saying. It’s hard for Annie to reconcile these two different people as one, the Troy of her past and the Troy of her present. Her Troy.
Abed sits next to her during the game and between the two of them they follow what’s going on and cheer for Troy and wave blue and white pom-poms. During halftime Abed gets them each a styrofoam mug of hot chocolate to warm their hands.
City College wins-by a lot, it’s really not even close-but when Troy meets them outside of the locker room after he’s showered and changed clothes, he doesn’t look too upset.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” he says. “Annie, I love your sign this week.”
Annie grins and switches her sign from one hand to the other. It’s blue with sparkly letters that say, “TB is my QB.”
“Hey, the team is going out to that bar over on Fourth. You guys should come! It’ll be fun, we can celebrate classes being over.”
“Cool,” Abed says. “Annie?”
For the most part, the guys on the team are loud and obnoxious and rude, but if Abed’s there with her, they can hide in the corner and ignore everyone. So she nods and the three of them pile into her car. She rolls up her sign and neatly tucks it into the trunk. She needs to stock up on glitter glue. Football season’s almost over, but next year will be here before she knows it.
---
It turns out that the Greendale football team isn’t the only one who made plans to meet up and celebrate at the bar. City College’s team is there, too-celebrating an actual win and not just the fact that they managed to make it through another game.
Annie stiffens as they step through the door. The boys don’t notice.
“Grab that table over there,” Abed says, pointing. “I’ll go get us drinks.”
Troy leads Annie to an empty table and slides into the booth after her. “Hey, you okay? You’ve seemed kinda sad lately.” He puts his hand over hers and squeezes a little bit.
“It’s just weird, isn’t it? All those guys from City College. We know them. We’ve known them our entire lives.”
“You mean Jim and Derek and all them?” Troy asks, confused.
“They were your best friends in high school. It’s strange to think about.”
“But you and Abed are my best friends now,” Troy says. “And Jeff and Shirley and Britta and Pierce.”
Annie watches Abed try to get a bartender’s attention. The place is crowded, two nights before Thanksgiving crowded. She opens her mouth to reply to Troy when two people approach the table and Annie’s mouth goes dry.
Adam and Tommy are probably the worst of Troy’s old jock friends. They’re offensive, crude, and mean-or at least they were in high school. Annie can’t imagine they’ve changed very much. They were two of the most popular boys in high school, dated two equally blonde, equally vicious cheerleaders, and were the ones who came up with the name Annie Adderall when Annie’s backpack broke during lunch and her pills-three bottles worth-spilled all over the cafeteria.
She jumped through the window three days later.
“Troy! How’s it going, man?” Adam asks. “I’d apologize for the complete ass kicking we gave you out there, but I’m not sorry at all.”
“Aw, you know next year that trophy has our names on it,” Troy says, bumping fists with each of them.
Tommy leers at Annie. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Annie. You remember her, from high school? Annie Edison?”
Annie holds her breath as recognition dawns over Adam’s and Tommy’s faces. Her pulse speeds up and she feels sweat bead on her upper lip.
“Annie Adderall!”
She doesn’t know which one of them says it. She shoves Troy out of the booth and bolts, slips through the crowd and out into the cold November night. Her breath clouds in front of her as she takes in big gulps of air.
I’m leaving now, please meet me at the car if you want to come, she texts Abed, her fingers flying frantically over the keys. She doesn’t text Troy.
She imagines them all back inside, laughing about that stupid freak who was addicted to pills and went crazy. But when she pictures it, everyone’s face is blurry; she can’t see Tommy or Adam or Jim or Derek or anyone. She only sees Troy, laughing at her, forgetting that she’s an entirely different person now.
She gets into the car and sits in the driver’s seat. She doesn’t start the car, just sits with tears blurring her vision, and a few minutes pass before the passenger door opens and Abed slides in.
“Where’s Troy?” he asks after a minute of silence.
“I figured one of his friends would give him a ride home.”
“Oh. Are you okay?”
She turns the ignition and shifts into drive. “I’m fine.”
The ride is quiet and they’re halfway home before Abed speaks again. “Those are guys that made fun of you in high school, aren’t they? Troy’s old friends?”
Annie feels Abed’s eyes on her and nods.
“And you’re afraid that they’re making fun of you again and that Troy’s reverted back to his mean, popular jock self.”
She nods again.
“And this has been a recurring theme this week after I made you watch movies that take place in high school. And you’re secretly still in love with Troy so you’ve been thinking about how much you hated high school and how unattainable Troy was back then.”
“I’m not...”
“It makes sense. And since you moved in with us, I’ve been seeing more of it. Your thing with Jeff isn’t really going anywhere, so you’re looking back to a guy you gave up on because he wasn’t interested. But Troy’s changed a significant amount since we started at Greendale. If he reverts back to his past self, you think you really won’t have a chance.”
It’s not true, not really, Annie tells herself. She hasn’t deluded herself into thinking she and Troy are star-crossed lovers or anything like that, unlike her seventeen year old self. There were no butterflies in her stomach when Princess Annie kissed Woodsman Troy after he saved her from Bad Neighborhood Forest, she was just excited about moving in with Troy and Abed. She attends every football game because that’s what friends do-that’s what roommates do-and frankly, she should berate the rest of the study group for not showing up more often. And if she rolled her eyes when Abed confided in her that he thought Troy might have a crush on Britta, well, that was more for his own well-being than anything else; they would be a terrible match and Troy would end up heartbroken.
So, Abed’s totally wrong.
“If I were to make a high school movie,” Abed says as they pull into the apartment’s parking lot, “my main characters would be a girl and a guy who go to school together, but they’re not friends or anything, they just know each other. They meet again in the future and they’ve both changed, but for the better, and they fall in love gradually but surely. I think it would be pretty good.”
Annie turns the car off and turns to Abed with a sad smile. “That sounds nice, Abed. But movies and real life are different. I think we’ve all learned that by now, haven’t we?”
“Actually, I’ve learned not to rule anything out,” he says.
---
Annie goes to bed as soon as they get upstairs, but she can’t sleep. Instead, she burrows underneath her covers and thinks about Abed, about how he knows everything except he doesn’t really, about Troy at the bar, fresh with stories about how Annie Adderall isn’t all that different now-same freakouts, less pills.
There’s a quiet knock on her door and she figures it’s probably Abed with hot chocolate with extra marshmallows: the cure-all for sadness. “Come in,” she calls, and light floods her room but it’s Troy in the doorway.
“Troy?” She sits up and pulls the chain on the lamp beside her bed. “What are you doing?”
He’s holding something in his hand, cradled to his chest. “Hey, Annie.” It’s not until he sits on the edge of her bed does she realize that he’s not holding anything, but his hand is swollen and bloody, wrapped in a bar towel.
“Oh my god! What happened to your hand?” She gently unwraps it and examines the blooming bruises, the clotting cuts.
“Yeah, I punched a bunch of guys in the face,” he says, in a very unbelievable trying-not-to-cry voice.
“Who? There was a fight at the bar?”
“What do you mean, who? Who do you think? I punched Adam and Tommy and then Derek and then I lost track.”
“Troy! Those are your friends! Why did you punch them?”
He tsks. “You’re the smartest person I know, Annie, but you’re really dumb sometimes. You think I was just going to sit there while they made fun of you? Those guys used to be my friends, but they were never very good ones. Not like you.”
“What?”
“Look, I’m really sorry. I totally forgot they were bullies to you in high school. Sometimes I don’t remember stuff like that. If I had, I wouldn’t have gone to the bar, or asked you to come with me. Can you forgive me?”
Annie opens and closes her mouth a few times, but only a high-pitched squeak comes out.
“I got punched in the stomach like four times so please, just say you forgive me?”
He looks like a puppy, she thinks, all shining eyes and big heart. One time, someone pushed her in the hallway and all her books fell on the floor. And before she could come to terms with how ridiculous and cliched it all was, he was on his knees, gathering them up in his arms. She wrote about that moment in her diary every night for over two weeks. Her knight in shining letterman’s jacket.
It’s like the opposite of that moment now. Or, maybe not the opposite, but it’s definitely not the same at all. Because when she leans in to kiss him he doesn’t hesitate one bit, like she thinks he might, and his uninjured hand winds itself in her hair.
She’s probably thought about kissing Troy Barnes more than she’s thought about anything, except maybe school or Adderall. More than she’s thought about kissing Jeff, for sure. But the way his mouth fits against hers, the way he smells like soap, the way her heart is racing, she’s never thought about any of this. And she wonders if she’ll ever think of anything else again.
Troy pulls away and his face is pained and Annie panics. It must be written on her face because he shakes his head.
“No, it’s not... you just smooshed my hand a little bit with your, uh, chest area.”
She laughs a relieved giggle. “Oh, I’m sorry. Come on, we should clean your cuts out and get you some ice.”
As she leads him to the bathroom, she sees Abed poke his head out from the blanket fort. He gives her a smile and a thumbs-up. Okay, so maybe Abed does know everything after all.