[fic] signifying nothing (3a/3)
fic: signifying nothing
characters: dawn summers; buffy, janice, tara, spike, willow, originals
word count: 14,000/31,000
setting: season six character-study; after her sister's death and resurrection, Dawn grapples with her own humanity and tenuous relationship with reality; as her depression swings her from reckless to numb, she reaches out to friends for help and a new perspective.
a/n: I am really proud of this little story and so excited to be able to share it with you!
Part One
Part Two
“Oh my god, what the hell is wrong with you today?” Dawn slammed one of her books shut and leaned back in her chair, leveling her gaze at Celeste.
“What is this in regards to?” Generally Dawn wasn’t very chatty and most weeks Celeste had to pull at her just to get a ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ that sounded halfway civil. Discussing genre, editing, the English language, anything in their books, that was one thing. Having an actual conversation about themselves was quite another.
Dawn shook her head, “You’ve just been off today, I can’t explain it.”
Celeste looked up from her stack of papers, three of her many multi-colored pens and highlighters she used for editing clutched in each hand, hair a bit askew, “We’ve been sitting here for all of ten minutes.”
“Yeah and you are acting weird.”
“I’m EDITING!”
Somewhere behind them, a librarian tsked disapprovingly and Dawn grinned, “I don’t think a librarian has ever tut-tutted in your direction in the whole of your entire life.”
Celeste blushed.
“Come on, I see you every week, don’t you think I can tell if something is wrong?”
“Dawn, I have literally cried sitting six inches away from you before and your response was to ask me for a synonym for celebration.”
“You were reading the end of Sloppy Firsts, that wasn’t personal that was literature.” When Celeste just widened her eyes, Dawn huffed, “Of course I’ve read it, don’t look at me like that.”
“No… I mean… well…”
“I’m OBSERVANT,” Dawn bristled.
“You really aren’t.”
“Stop changing the subject,” Dawn took a bite of brownie and chewed thoughtfully, “I know when something is weird and you have a weird vibe.”
Celeste took a drink from her thermos of tea and sighed, “It’s nothing.”
“Ah… it’s a relationship something,” Dawn reached over and snatched the pile of papers in front of her and held them over her head, “You could probably kick my ass, but I have the librarians to back me up - you won’t get these until you tell me.”
“What are you doing, Dawn? You’ve never showed any interest in my personal life before.”
“Either I’m tired of you mooning and disturbing my vibe so I’m forcing you to tell me what’s going on so I can fix it for you and go back to my work,” she waved at the piles of books and scraps of paper in front of her, “or - and I know this is a stretch - or I’m actually not an automaton and may give two shits about the people around me.”
“I don’t know… that second one is a bit of a stretch.”
Dawn gave Celeste her best version of an angry glare, which only made the older girl burst into a spasm of giggles. A couple of heads turned in their direction and Dawn turned her glare on them until they went back to studying.
“Okay… you’re right. It’s a relationship thing, kinda.”
Dawn thought of the football player that somehow made Celeste look like a magical fairy princess instead of the giant Amazon that she really was and nodded, “Cheating? Different college on the horizon? Wore their socks during sex?” Celeste raised her eyebrows at the last one and Dawn leaned forward to whisper, “I hear that’s a huge turn-off.”
Celeste chuckled softly, “No… it’s nothing like that. It’s not even about them. We’ve been together… oh since we were babies. I think they fell for me the year I had a growth spurt and was a good foot and a half taller than everyone… still thought I was magnificent.”
“You are.”
Celeste shook her head, “Anyway, it’s been forever. And yet, you know? Their mom still acts like I was plucked out of the gutter yesterday. No matter what I do, no matter how nice I am or how much I help or how invisible I make myself. We just do not get along.” Celeste looked out the window, “My mom, she died when I was eight years old. And I guess, I’ve been trying to get her to… like me, love me, fill the void or something; but we can hardly even be civil. I’ve tried everything.”
Dawn chewed on her third brownie silently.
“At this point, I’d just like to get through a dinner without feeling like a leper.”
“Do you feel better, saying it out loud?”
Celeste put the lid back on the brownies, “No more chocolate until we’ve been halfway productive.”
Dawn hedged, “You know, maybe she knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Maybe she knew you were looking for a replacement or something. Maybe she… maybe she didn’t want to get too close unless you guys broke up because then you’d have lost someone else. Or maybe she was worried that you just wanted a family and don’t care about Eli the way you should. Maybe it wasn’t about you at all, maybe she was protecting … everyone.”
Celeste’s eyes glistened.
Dawn shrugged, “That’s what I’d do… I mean, in the unfortunate event that I ever have a teenage son dating someone as amazing as you I’d maybe… keep my distance out of a sense of helping rather than harming.”
The older girl stared at her for a long time without saying anything.
At the end of the hour, when Celeste stood up to head to softball practice, she looked down and said, “Maybe you are observant.”
“It comes and goes,” Dawn said sullenly, not looking up from her books.
Someone bumped her table and Dawn swore under her breath, looking down at the huge line of black ink that now spread across her careful notes. She looked up to see who had interrupted her and found Janice smiling across the table from her, sitting in the seat that Celeste had only moments ago vacated.
“Janice?”
“You forgot my name already, so much for loyalty and friendship,” Janice snapped her gum loudly with a smile.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m busting you out,” Janice took on a ridiculous stage-whisper. “We haven’t done anything fun in like weeks.”
Dawn wracked her brain, it felt like she had just made pancakes with Janice at her house a few days ago, but lately time was passing in strange clumps without her noticing, “I’m busy?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Janice raised her eyebrows. And then suddenly she slammed her hands on the desk loudly and stood up, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DAWN SUMMERS!!!!!”
Every head in the library whipped towards them.
“Janice,” Dawn hissed, “What are you doing?”
“OH THAT’S RICH! AS IF YOU DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID!”
Dawn looked down at her books, mentally planning how to get out of the library as quickly as possible. Janice had started picking fights with her in PE class a couple of years ago. Turns out, in order to end an altercation, teachers would send them to the office and never ask them to make up their running times. It only worked once a semester, too much drama and they’d start to notice it was a performance. It’s just that Janice had never used this technique against her before, as a means to propel Dawn into an action she didn’t necessarily want to do. It wasn’t worth fighting.
Dawn stood up with a great clash, her chair falling down behind her. “As if it’s any worse than what you did!” she hissed, her hands busily putting away all of her things as orderly as she could without it appearing as though she was preparing to leave.
Janice winked at her, “I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS! NEVER!!!”
Dawn’s chin started to wobble, she was always better at faking sadness and Janice always took lead on being the loud, angry one. Maybe that said something about the two of them, maybe it said nothing whatsoever.
During their façade, Dawn’s eyes flickered between her busy hands and Janice’s loud protestations. She didn’t notice the dark circles under Janice’s eyes, or the slight wobble in her step.
Janice was always the one that screamed into the void, when maybe it should have been the other way around. Maybe she was the one that needed to cry and sit still, to bury herself in pain instead of running from it.
By the time they had been personally escorted out of the library, Dawn handed a tissue by a concerned security guard while Janice wailed and professed promise we’ll always be friends!, Janice had her emotions under control once again. They were also sure to have a strong reconciliation at the end of any such show - Janice said that it gave the audience closure and made everyone feel better afterwards. Dawn took Janice at her word.
Standing outside the library, Janice put her hands on her hips and grinned, “So. What do you want to do?”
They dropped Dawn’s books in her locker and walked to the mall, ate oversized pretzels and ice cream, and made up stories about the people they saw. Dawn grabbed a knick-knack here and there, Janice sometimes pointing out something that she particularly wanted. It felt normal, just like being a real girl.
Spike’s crypt was always ten degrees too cold in the winter and thirty degrees too hot in the summer. Which is why she loved being there so much. And he stopped being surprised to see her long ago.
Long had such a strange sense of unbalance. She was an immortal Key from long ago, which probably made her few months of interrupting Spike’s life rather paltry and recent. On the other hand, she’d only really been alive for a handful of months in the grand scheme of things, so long felt pretty apt in that context.
Sometimes she’d spend full afternoons there - when she probably should have been somewhere else - sitting in a patch of sunlight and thinking of absolutely nothing. She never took her research there, never thought about it, never let it cross her mind. It was private.
“SPIKE!!” she liked to enter while creating as much noise as possible. “Spike where are you?!”
He appeared from below with a shirt still in the act of being tossed over his head, “Stop that bloody racket, I’m here!”
“Spike I need to ask you an important question.”
He rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette, “I’m sure the universe waits on bated breath.”
“It might.”
“Just ask it already.”
“Who do you think assassinated Kennedy?”
Spike stared at her, “Seriously?”
She sat down on the ground and picked at her sleeve, “No. You probably know the right answer and that takes all the fun out of it.” She drew a heart in the dirt on the step next to her.
Spike swept the floor a bit with his boot and then sat down next to her, “Why so blue, Niblet?”
“Buffy hates it when you call me that.”
“Your big sis hates a lot of things about me.”
“Do you think she would have liked you when you were a ponce of a human?”
Spike took a long, hard look at her, “I wasn’t fit to kiss her shoe when I was a human.”
Dawn leaned her head on his shoulder.
They sat together for a while, not saying anything. Spike was always good for a round of stubborn silence. Or comforting silence. Or something. He was good for something.
She felt like there was something she should be asking, something she should be saying, but she couldn’t wrap her head around what it was. She had wandered over as if by instinct.
“Spike?”
“Hm?”
“When’s the last time I came down here?”
“About a week ago.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t remember?”
Dawn sat up straight, running her hand through her hair in exasperation, “I don’t know.”
“You gave me a lecture on the perils of trusting ancient scribes to do their jobs correctly and then tore off.”
“Sounds like me.”
He looked over at her and then kicked her with his boot gently, “Now piss off. Its poker night and I can’t have you here where you might get eaten.”
“Save me a kitten, Spike,” she called on the way out the door.
It was just about dusk outside and she walked home, not even noticing the chill.
“So that’s the whole story. The … short version of the long version anyway.”
Sania sipped her espresso and raised her eyebrow, “If I didn’t know what I know I’d say you were full of shit.”
“If I didn’t know what I know I’d say the same thing. Sometimes it seems totally… not possible.”
“So these monks?”
“Never met them. Or… I don’t really get it. But Dawn - me Dawn - has never met them.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
“So the … the spell?”
“I wanted to see the original memory of something. From before the monks meddled.”
“And it worked?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Dawn shifted forward in her chair, leaning over the table. “Buffy’s memory matches what I saw, sort of… I mean, it’s more plausible in a way… but nothing matches what I remember.”
“So… wait what does that mean?”
“It means… there’s like three different versions.”
“Maybe your sister is just remembering it wrong? Maybe she doesn’t remember the details the way that you do.”
“But she’s so sure.”
“Hon, I’m sorry but why is this important?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Sania sighed. “Why does it matter what she remembers and what you remember? Everyone remembers things differently, monks or no monks. That’s just human.”
“Except Buffy and I aren’t exactly human.” Dawn picked up her salted caramel latte with raspberry sauce and took a large gulp. It was too hot. She’d have a burn on the back of her throat for days.
Good.
“You want to know if something else is wrong?”
“What if I’m wandering around with this memory that … doesn’t mean anything?” Dawn stiffened and fixed her gaze at a group of guys a couple years older than them at a table across the coffee shop. She heard the word terrorist float through the air and then a huge burst of laughter when she looked over at them.
“Don’t listen, just focus.”
Dawn looked down at her coffee, face turning red, “I should give them a piece of my mind.”
“Let it go. Focus on our conversation?”
“Focus on my whining while those guys say-”
“I invited you out for coffee and I wanted to talk to you about this. I really, really don’t want to talk about them.”
“What if they come over here?”
Sania shrugged and smiled, “So then they come over and I pretend not to speak English while you get the manager.”
Dawn grinned.
“Why does this matter, Dawn? What is it that’s really bothering you?”
“I just… I feel like I can’t trust my own mind. All these memories swirling around, making up me as I know myself and they aren’t real. What if everything I think is different? What if… what if I’m not who I think I am?”
“What if the world isn’t what you grew up to believe it is?”
Dawn slumped back, “I know. It’s ridiculous.”
Sania picked at Dawn’s bagel, “Those guys over there. They think they are right about me - about you. They’ve watched the news and they think they know. They think I really could be carrying a bomb in my skirt.” A sneer crossed Sania’s face, “They think my hijab makes me a terrorist instead of just a supportive sister and … dubiously devout Muslim. They have memories and facts and information swirling around in their head that’s wrong about me. That’s wrong about you. It’s shitty and it sucks and most days I …” Sania paused, biting her lip. “You can’t change their minds.”
“Sania…”
“Are they any less real than you and me?”
Dawn fell silent. The group of guys stood up and walked out the shop. They didn’t pass any insults Sania’s way, their gazes full of curiosity and not a little prejudice. When the door shut behind them, some tension left Dawn’s shoulders.
“You’re still going to keep looking for answers, aren’t you?”
Dawn sipped her salted caramel latte.
Jeremy St. Clair has long fingers which his father always claimed would make him a champion quarterback and which his mother swore would make him a concert pianist, facts which they both still despair they could make true if they only pressure him in the right way. Jeremy St. Clair has long fingers with stubby nails because he chews them down to the quick, a habit no one really notices unless they look at him very closely. Jeremy St. Clair has long fingers and right now they are tapping a directionless sort of beat on his leg as he pretends to listen to his friends trade insults and dirty jokes back and forth across the table in the little coffee shop he goes to in order to avoid conversations like these. He knows how to keep up, how to play the star quarterback for his dad, the concert pianist for his mom, a limited 17 year old bro for his friends.
But all he really wants to do is watch that girl.
Of course they notice.
“She’s way out of your league, J.”
Antoine squints over his chair - that he’s sitting in it backwards, legs spread out and elbows on the back, “Hey isn’t that Buffy Summers’ little sister?”
Caleb, a skinny kid that Jeremy wishes he could like, but is actually one of those annoying sort of hangers-on that pretends to be a nice guy and will probably be singing that same song when he’s a twenty-three year old internet millionaire, bursts out, “Buffy? My cousin went to school with her, said she’s a real head case.”
Eli cuffs Caleb on the back of the head, “Shut up, idiot. Everyone knows who Buffy Summers is.”
Jeremy blinks at them, “Is this chick famous or something.”
Miguel steals the espresso from in front of him and takes a swallow, grimacing, “How do you drink this shit?”
“Seriously, what are you guys talking about?”
Caleb sniffs and leans back in his chair, “She’s nobody.”
“Abbie was in her graduating class, said Buffy single-handedly saved the whole town from a giant snake,” Dylan doesn’t look up from the sketchpad he has out in front of him. Jeremy’s never really understood why he is always with Miguel, Eli, and Antoine - probably a story that goes back to monkey bars or something like that.
“A giant snake?” Jeremy looks back over at the girl. She uncrosses her legs and leans forward. Her friend laughs at her and she tosses her long brown hair over one shoulder.
Eli shakes his head, “Bro I keep forgetting you just moved here.”
He kicks Dylan under the table, “You’re joking?”
Dylan fixes him with a steady gaze, his pencil poised in mid-air, “Giant. Snake. Look it up.”
“It was a joke. A practical joke,” Caleb crosses his arms over his chest.
Antoine rests his chin on the back of his chair, “My cousin Leticia died. Her boyfriend was in Buffy’s graduating class. I see him sometimes, he won’t talk about it.”
“Terrorist attack? Crazy gun nuts? Tell me it’s something that isn’t a giant snake?” Jeremy feels a little queasy.
“Believe it or don’t believe it. Just know that Buffy Summers is the most bad ass female in this one-Starbucks town,” Miguel says.
Antoine has a haunted expression on his face, which is kinda weird, since he’s the most cheerful person Jeremy knows, he’s also the biggest linebacker Jeremy’s ever seen. He somehow makes even Eli and Miguel seem small, which is a fucking accomplishment. Rumor is he already has a scholarship lined up for Texas State next year. They’ll all be watching him in pro-games within the next few years. Which doesn’t mean he’s dumb. He’d probably rather go into Electrical Engineering like his sister. But a scholarship is a scholarship.
“So… giant snake?”
“I heard she broke some guy’s nose on the swim team because he tried to ask her out,” Caleb says darkly.
“My brother knew that asshole. He probably tried to feel her up or something,” Dylan is bored. He’s always bored. Especially if Caleb is talking.
Jeremy smiles over at Antoine, “Would you ask out Buffy Summers’ little sister?”
Antoine slides his gaze over to where the leggy brunette is sitting with her friend, “A bit too skinny for my taste.”
Miguel laughs, “I bet you ten bucks you don’t have the balls.”
Dylan is chewing on a smile, “How long have you been staring at her, anyway?”
Jeremy considers, “About a week.” It’s the biggest lie he’s ever told his friends and most of them will see through it in an instant. There are better coffee shops. Quieter ones. There’s even one with a fireplace a bit closer to his house. But about two months ago he was sitting at this very table and she came in, hair tucked up in a stupid knitted cap, with a pile of books that looked older than dirt. She got a cup of something with three extra shots and settled in for what became a four-hour study session. She looked like she was curing cancer or something over there with her half-a-dozen books and paper flying everywhere. Sometimes she wasn’t here when he came, but that was fine. It was a nice enough place. And he wasn’t stalking - not really… just enjoying the view.
Eli sticks out his hand, “I’m on team-Jeremy. Ten bucks that he asks her out.” Two meaty hands meet in the middle of the table and shake.
Dylan purses his lips, “But that’s not the interesting part.”
Antoine’s eyes glint with mischief, “Ten bucks says she turns him down.”
Miguel hoots with laughter and Jeremy catches the girl shooting them a dirty look. He blushes and it makes them all join in, even Dylan cracks a smile.
“Ten bucks says she breaks his arm, or her sister does,” Eli puts in.
“A hundred bucks she says yes,” Jeremy says, feeling rather bold.
“So go do it,” Caleb says coldly. His interest is gone now that his opinion has been so wildly neglected.
Eli pats Jeremy on the back, “Go get her, bro.”
Jeremy settles back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, “Not today. You’re all making asses of yourselves. I gotta play this my way.”
“Carry a copy of the Bell Jar,” Caleb sneers. “It’ll make you look sensitive.”
“I am sensitive,” Jeremy’s face molds into false alarm. “Miguel thinks I’m sensitive, don’t you Miguel?”
Dylan is looking over at her, “She’s too smart for something that asinine anyway. If you try to lie to her even a little, she’ll probably break your arm.”
“Sure you’re sensitive, buddy. Cried watching The Notebook and everything,” Miguel slings his beefy arm over Jeremy’s slight shoulders.
Antoine looks up from his phone, “Who doesn’t cry while watching The Notebook?”
“Oh you have got to be shitting me,” Caleb shifts in his chair uncomfortably.
Eli grabs his arm, “Celeste made me watch that movie, man. It’s fucking amazing.”
“No-” Caleb has been around for long enough to know what’s coming next.
Dylan smirks, “Ten bucks Caleb cries.”
Antoine is already on his phone, “Hey babe. Caleb hasn’t seen The Notebook! … I know, I know… Trust me, I know …”
Miguel squints down at his phone, “Gabby? … Wait, Victoria told you what? … Well of course we’ll remedy the situation…”
Eli hauls Caleb to his feet with one arm and puts his phone to his ear with the other, “Hey mom, is Celeste there? … already making popcorn? … yeah I’ll pick up Papa Murphy’s on the way home,” he angles the speaker away from his mouth and turns to Jeremy, “bro, get three large pizzas on your way to my house.”
They tromp out the door, Caleb complaining loudly as they go, Dylan bringing up the rear with a snicker. Jeremy sneaks a glance at the girl on their way out, brushing her chair with his leg “accidentally” and is greeted with a look of pure, unfiltered malice.
Maybe he shouldn’t have bet so much money on this.
Good news is, if it works out he’ll be doing his best to piss her off whenever possible. She’s even hotter when she’s pissed off.
Dawn was sitting in her favorite coffee shop, waiting for Sania with a stack of old tombs she snatched from the Magic Box. Three of them are going to need to be translated before they can make heads or tails of the bizarre narrative poetry - which is what the other two are there for. Honestly, Sania is just coming to keep her company and stop her from going insane.
Which, you know, she might already be.
She was on her third cup of black coffee (with cinnamon) when she felt someone sit down in the chair across from her.
“Just a second, Sania,” she muttered into her pages, scribbling fiercely. “I’m almost done with this.” Translating an ancient demon text would be a hellava lot easier if the Watcher’s Council hadn’t had parts of it translated into Latin back during the Renaissance, and badly it turned out. It looked like they had been using a previous translation in Akkadian as their guide for years, and some nitwit had translated that into Latin as his senior project, which gave her two conflicting texts in Latin. It took a lot of emails to get copies of the original sent to her, but now that it was here it turned out it was all an even bigger mess than she thought. Several passages in the Latin translation had no corresponding section in the original and vice versa, due to some fire or theft around the 600’s, if the scribe’s notes were anything to go on. It was a bit like running a three-legged race, with Akkadian and Latin versions all contradicting each other. She pulled out a post-it from her backpack and scrawled on it NOTE: ALWAYS JUST GET THE ORIGINAL and then slapped it on the open page in her planner. There were several little notes like that sprinkled throughout. She liked post-its, made her feel like she could actually tackle the million or so projects that passed through her head at any given time.
When she finally looked up, there was a boy with broad shoulders and sandy hair and light freckles sprinkled across his tan face and long fingers gripping the smallest cup of coffee she’d ever seen sitting in the chair that Sania should have been in.
“You aren’t Sania,” she blurted out.
“Sania… that’s your friend, right? The girl who comes in here with you sometimes?”
Dawn’s eyes narrowed, which caused him to smile tiny crinkles appearing in the corner of his eyes, “What are you stalking me?”
“It’s hard not to notice you,” he took a sip of his drink and then it hit her.
“You were in here the other day, with a bunch of your buddies.”
He sighed deeply, “My friends are idiots. I’m sorry if they bothered you.”
Dawn leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest, “What was so funny?”
“What?”
“That day, you were all looking over here and laughing. What was so funny?”
“They were just being assholes.”
“What. Was so. Funny,” her voice took on a hard edge and for some reason that made his smile widen. A fact that only made her more angry.
“They were daring me to come over and talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you are totally drop-dead hot and they could tell I was into you.”
Something clanged in her chest. That was one hundred percent not what she was expecting. He saw her defenses soften and charged forward.
“It’s hard not to… I mean, I’ve noticed you in here. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to talk to you for a … while…” he faltered. “Your sister isn’t going to kill me, is she?”
Dawn blinked, “My sister?”
“Caleb thinks she’s like a wack job or something but Antoine and Eli think she’s an FBI agent undercover and like… whatever…” he waved his hand as if to erase their words, “if I ask you out, what are the chances that I wind up dead in a ditch somewhere?”
“Pretty high, actually,” her voice came out strangled.
“Like seventy percent, ninety percent, what are we talking here? I’m willing to go as high as eighty percent, but my mom really likes having me around and I’d hate to deprive her of my presence just for one date.”
“Mortality rates for teens in Sunnydale are already pretty high, so I mean your chances of survival don’t really go that far up or down just by asking me a question,” the corner of her mouth lifted slightly.
His cheeks hurt from smiling so much, “So, I’ll pick you up around seven tomorrow?”
“You haven’t asked me yet,” she pointed out calmly.
“I’m worried the odds are stacked against me.”
“What … do you think your odds are?”
His gaze skittered down to his hands for a second, picking at the fingernail on one thumb, before fixing his gaze back on her face, “Maybe, fifty-fifty?”
She whistled, “Mighty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’m quite a catch.”
“Really?” she laughed then, surprising herself.
“Star quarterback, know my way around a piano, not too bad of a reader, great conversationalist, sexy,” he listed them off on his fingers. “I’m the full package.”
“Okay, full package. Sounds like you could have any girl you bat your boy band lashes at, what does that have to do with me?”
“You’re mysterious.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She slaps a book closed and reaches for her messenger bag on the floor at her feet, “I’ll get more work done at the library.”
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, “Just… wait. I said that wrong.” She stared at his hand, fingers wrapped around her small bone. Maybe that cup of coffee in his hands wasn’t small. Maybe he just made everything look small by comparison. She eyed the cup warily, refusing to meet his gaze again. “You’re totally hot.”
“You said that,” at this point in the conversation, Janice would already have a promise ring or something. Hell, Janice would have dragged him off to the co-ed bathroom in the back and his pants would be around his ankles by now.
“It’s not just that, it’s… what are those books?!”
“You want to go out with me because I like weird books?”
“Weird doesn’t cover it, these are. Are these ancient?” he pointed to an illuminated dragon on the corner of one page. “That looks like it belongs in a museum.”
“I got it at the Magic Box, it’s a shop in downtown. You can go there yourself at looks at all the books you want. Can you let go of my arm now?”
“It’s not the books!”
“Look, whole package. This is the first conversation we’ve ever had. What could you possibly know about me?”
“Isn’t that the whole point of a date, to get to know each other?”
“Generally people don’t start out cold turkey.”
“On blind dates they do.”
“I’m not a riddle for you to untangle, whole package.”
“So then tell me something, because all I know is that you love books, you always drink coffee with more sugar than caffeine, you could probably kill a man with your eyes under the right circumstances, and you hate shoes.”
Dawn blinked.
“Also your sister is scary as fuck and probably killed either a giant snake or some domestic terrorists, I can’t really figure it out. Neither really makes sense.”
Dawn thought back to the conversation that she thought she had heard a few days ago, about Sania. That they all were sitting around talking about her and her sister was either more embarrassing or less, but it was definitely nearly as infuriating. How many more demons did Buffy have to kill before the world woke up?
He was staring at her, she scrambled around for the perilous thread that would lead her back into the conversation. “I love shoes,” she insisted lamely.
“You kick them off the second you sit down and tuck your feet under you as soon as possible.”
“You really are a stalker, whole package.”
“My name is Jeremy and you don’t have shoes on right now. Even if this was the first time seeing you, I could extrapolate from there.”
Dawn relaxed slightly, “So what do you want to know?”
Jeremy smiled, “Tell me three truths and one lie and see if I can guess which one is the lie?”
“My name is Joan, I am translating these books into English for fun, I am fifteen but have only been alive for about a year, my best friend’s name is Janice, and your first guess doesn’t count.”
A barista that Dawn was on friendly terms with came over and topped up their cups with a smile, “I got a cheese Danish with your name on it, Dawnie. Should I heat it up?”
“That would be great, Zoe, thanks.”
“Your name is Dawn, you are freakishly good at translation, you had a religious experience last year,” he chuckled at her raised eyebrows, “and your best friend’s name is Janice.”
“You’re turn.”
“My name is Jeremy-“
“Doesn’t count, you already told me that.”
“I am an only child, I love sky-diving, I hate playing football, and even if you were the most boring person in the history of Sunnydale, I’d still want to take you out.”
“You have three older brothers.”
“Wrong.”
“Really?”
“I have two older brothers and a younger sister, Emma.”
“What if I was the ugliest person in the history of Sunnydale?”
“I’d still want to take you out this Friday.”
“Why?”
“Three truths, one lie:: My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird, I have ADHD, my mother still thinks I might be a concert pianist someday, and I take my Chemistry notes in a Lisa Frank notebook my sister bought me for Christmas.”
“You take your notes in a standard notebook, just like any other jock.”
He winked at her and put a pink and purple notebook on the table in front of them, a unicorn smiled up at her, “My favorite book is Where the Red Fern Grows.”
“I found my sister’s Doogie Houser fanfic when I borrowed her laptop a few months ago, I have a standing date with her ex-girlfriend every other Saturday to eat junk food and pretend she’s still family, I hate pickles, and I haven’t seen my dad in at least three years.”
“Your sister never wrote Doogie Houser fanfic.”
“I love pickles.”
“If you were a troll with a humped back I would still ask you out because the only time I feel calm is when I look up and can see you sitting across the room, I hate tomatoes, my sister’s goldfish is named Skywalker because she lost a bet to me, and I can speak fluent Italian.”
“Your meds work just fine and you are always calm.”
“I can’t speak a word of Italian. I am terrible at languages, I’ll never be able to help you,” he gestured at the books on the table between them.
Dawn takes a bite of her cheese Danish and chews it slowly.
“I’ve been in mortal peril more times in my life than you’d believe, I believe in dragons but not in unicorns, I have a cat named Miss Kitty Fantastico, and if you ask me out I’ll definitely turn you down.”
Jeremy leaned over, putting his elbows on the table with his arms still folded, “Please let me take you out this Friday?”
“Don’t make me regret this, whole package,” she tried to make her voice sound hard and sturdy, tried to channel Tara’s personal strength.
“I won’t,” he looked like he wanted to lean forward or reach forward or something, but she flipped open her book and picked up her pencil, dismissing him.
“Meet you here at seven?”
“Make it five,” she looked up and up and up. Damn, he’s tall. “I have a really strict curfew. And Buffy is pretty scary.”
“What is it? Nine? Ten?”
“Sunset.” He gaped down at her and she smiled, “Which in May is around eight o’clock.”
“Always?”
“Well… if I’m with Spike, I can stay out later,” Dawn kept her voice measured. She liked dropping Spike’s name into conversation nonchalantly. Most people assumed he was her dog - she’d even had the guidance counselor inquire over Spike’s health in a way that definitely sounded like she thought he was a dog. There’s was very little chance that any of these people would ever discover the truth, but she held out hope.
“Do you ever sneak out?”
“Never,” and the expression she gave him was so guileless he had to believe it.
Seconds after he walked out the door, a little bell announcing his departure, Sania and Naila plopped down at her table.
“I knew he’d talk to you today, I just knew it!” Sania crowed happily.
Dawn raised her eyebrows at her friend, “What are you talking about?”
“Please, Dawnie. He’s been watching you for weeks,” Naila wiggled two fingers at the barista behind the counter.
“But-”
“Don’t worry,” Sania pat her hand comfortingly, “sometimes you aren’t one hundred percent unobservant.”
Naila giggled into her coffee cup, “Yeah. Sometimes you actually notice when we’re talking to you!”
“So the other day--?”
“They were talking about you. From what I gathered, there’s a few bets that you’d say no,” Sania’s eyes sparkled.
“Oh my god,” Dawn groaned and face-planted into her books. “Kill me now.”
Naila looked at her sister with a horrified expression, “What is she going to wear?!”
Janice took the news that Dawn had a date with Jeremy St. Clair with a kind of viciousness akin to Anya’s love for money, or … no, there was no other comparison. She apparently knew a lot about him from sitting next to his best friend, Dylan, in homeroom the past two years. Something about their last names being similar.
“I don’t think he’s asked anyone out since Lindsey Morgan dumped him at the Spring Fling last year,” Janice chattered happily.
“I thought Lindsey and Morgan were two different people?”
Janice shook her head. “Lindsey Morgan and Lindsey O’Neill are juniors and either rivals or best friends, kinda depends on the week,” her tone suggested that this kind of behavior was pedestrian, “Morgan Pace is a sophomore … Jesus Dawn do you not pay attention?”
Dawn stared at her friend, wide-eyed.
“Apparently not,” Janice rolled her eyes and pulled a slinky red shirt off a rack and shoved it into Dawn’s arms. “Okay. Dressing room time.”
Dawn looked down at the pile of clothes Janice had piled on top of her like she was a pack mule, “There’s no way I’m wearing any of this.”
Janice ushered her into a dressing room, “Half the fun of a first date is the shopping beforehand.”
Once behind a curtain in her own dressing cubicle, Dawn glared down at her friend and plopped the clothes in her lap, “I thought the fun of dating was the dating.”
“Fifty percent: shopping. Thirty percent: getting dolled up. Ten percent: free dinner. Ten percent: the guy. If you go in thinking that the guy is going to Colin Firth his way through the date, you’ll just be disappointed in the morning.”
“Even the wondrous Jeremy St. Clair?” Dawn put the back of her hand to her forehead in a mock swoon.
“Guys are guys,” Janice shrugged. She pulled a black something that looked like lingerie out of the pile, her eyes glinting, “Try this one on first.”
In the end, Dawn whittled Janice down to a pair of skinny jeans and a new white linen top, with the promise that she’d wear a cute bra underneath and a pair of Buffy’s boots. On the way out the door, bags in hand, Dawn spotted a green cardigan on a discount rack. It was the color of a bright emerald and simple, no flourishes. Seventy percent off. She looked around and then pulled it off the hanger and put it into her bag with a smile.
It was the color of her dreams. It brought out the slight glint of green in her eyes.
When she got home from her ‘date’ with Jeremy, Dawn closed the front door and leaned against it with a sigh, pulling her new sweater tighter around her waist. There were worse experiences, probably. Too bad she was a complete klutz and had no idea how to talk to anyone about something other than demons and ancient Sumerian texts about demon mythology. And no matter how lame or ridiculous her responses became, he still seemed genuinely interested in everything she had to say.
It was exhausting, that level of attention.
Maybe it was better to be invisible.
She had about a half-dozen txts from Janice and Naila, wanting a minute-by-second playback of everything that happened and everything that was said.
It was fun. she sent to Naila.
No, he didn’t feel me up. she sent to Janice.
And then promptly turned off her phone.
There was a pint of ice cream in the freezer that she had been saving for a particularly hard day. She really didn’t think that it would be necessary after a date - that from anyone else’s perspective probably went really well - but she also wasn’t really interested in saving it anymore, either.
Buffy was at the kitchen island, looking at an old family photo album when Dawn walked in.
“You’re home early.”
“It’s almost nine. I’m nearly an hour past curfew. And shouldn’t you be out patrolling?” she didn’t mean to be harsh, but a pint of ice cream didn’t go very far with Buffy in the room. Slayer metabolism or something.
“I was looking for something.”
“In the old album?”
Dawn looked toward the fridge and weighed her options. Buffy should be leaving to patrol any second, does she stand there awkwardly, or does she just get the ice cream out and let the chips fall where they may?
“There was this dress dad bought me once and I just wanted to find…”
Dawn shifted from foot to foot. She’d been too nervous to eat at the Chinese place Jeremy picked out. She could get away with eating ice cream for dinner, right?
“What dress?”
Buffy blinked up at her, “I can’t remember. That’s why I’m looking. I really, really wanted it, but I think I only wore it like once before we moved to Sunnydale.” Dawn shook her head and went to the freezer, Buffy couldn’t eat that much of her ice cream, surely. “It was red and had these really adorable purple flowers on it and I can’t remember why I wanted it so badly.”
Dawn pulled the ice cream out of the freezer, set it on the counter, pulled off the top with a pop! And then grabbed the chocolate syrup from the fridge and dumped it right on top, not even bothering with a bowl. She had a spoonful in her mouth before Buffy looked up.
“Chocolate syrup on sherbet? Seriously.”
“Mow oo won eaa in,” Dawn said through a mouthful of deliciousness.
“Well that’s true.”
“You’re looking for a red dress with purple flowers on it? Are you sure it was a dress?”
“Yup.”
“It couldn’t be the sweater that you are wearing right now that you’ve worn a half a million times so it’s not even red anymore and all the flowers have fallen off?”
Buffy looked down at her arm, stretched it out in front of her and smiled, “Hey! That’s right! It was a sweater.”
Dawn looked down at the sherbet. She suddenly had a loss of appetite. “Why did you want that sweater so bad?”
Buffy shrugged, “I thought it was pretty.”
“It was kinda hideous at the time.”
Buffy considered her sister for a minute and then sighed, closing the photo album, “I found out that I was a Slayer like two weeks before he bought this for me, it seemed… I don’t know … like something that I could grow old in. My Watcher kept telling me I was going to die, like any second, he didn’t have much faith in my ability to live.” She gave Dawn a watery smile, “And this - it was like something an old maid would wear. A middle-aged lady who worked in a library and had a dozen cats and loved Dateline.”
“But you don’t ever want to work in a library and have a dozen cats,” Dawn pointed out.
“I wanted the choice, though.” Buffy looked down at her watch, “I gotta go patrol. Don’t stay up too late. And please eat something with nutritional value.”
“I will,” her voice echoed in the empty kitchen.
“Where are all your old notebooks?”
Janice had decided that a lack of play-by-play of the date from the previous night warranted her attacking Dawn with a pillow the next morning at an ungodly hour. An hour at which - if anyone had asked Dawn before - Janice didn’t know the right side of, at least not on a weekend anyway.
“What?” Dawn looked down at Janice who was lying on her floor, looking up at her bookshelf with a little frown.
“There used to be like ten or something notebooks in here, all Harriet the Spy style.”
“You mean my journals? You read my journals?”
Janice propped herself up on her elbows and snorted, “Not the journals. The spy notebooks. They were my fucking jam.”
“I don’t … you’re talking about my journals.”
She rolled her eyes, “Whatever. I know what a ten year old’s journal looks like and that wasn’t this. They were like all these little stories and stuff about your neighborhood and your parents. Some really hilarious shit about the kids in your class.”
“I didn’t think that you knew what Harriet the Spy is,” Dawn said dubiously, turning her attention back to painting her toenails purple.
“I do read, Dawn Summers,” she sounded a little wounded. Dawn rolled her eyes, confident she couldn’t see. “I can see you! God you are a class-A bitch today, what the hell.”
“I burned them,” Dawn said, blowing on her toes.
“Before or after you cut yourself?”
“I can’t remember. It was all a blur.”
“Too bad, you probably could have published them someday. They were fucking hilarious, Summers.” Janice popped up, “Start a new one!”
“What?”
“Yeah, start a new one. Don’t write anything personal or like poetry or shit like that. Write like you did before, about the people in class and in the neighborhood.”
“Why?”
Janice shrugged, lying back down on her back and lifting her feet in the air, twirling them a little, “To entertain me. I’m bored.”
Dawn laughed and threw a pillow at her.
By Wednesday, she had a collection of Lisa Frank notebooks in her locker to choose from, all with a note on the first page from Janice that said NO EMO SHIT!.
She treated Tara to milkshakes and cheesy-jalapeno fries.
Tara treated her to a movie with lots of explosions and terrible dialogue and guys running around without shirts on.
“Is the cure still worse than the disease?”
Dawn wrinkled her nose, “Maybe there’s no one cure-all, maybe you keep finding new ones when the old ones don’t work anymore.”
That night she wrote about Tara’s mom in her notebook with the panda bears on the cover. Janice stole it from her in third period French class, causing a bit of a riot when she cried right there in front of everyone. After class - or more exactly, after Madame Belgard was sure Janice wasn’t about to go into the ladies to off herself - she thrust the notebook back in Dawn’s hands.
“Write about my parents.”
“Why?”
“I want to see what you get right.”
“What are you writing, Niblet?”
“Nothing. Everything. What do you want me to write?”
“Something for posterity?”
“How about something true?”
“I only tell the truth, love.”
The story she wrote down was vastly different than the words he spoke aloud to the cold cemetery air. The story she read back to him made him laugh and throw her up in the air as if she was a child of three or four and not a fifteen year old girl with limbs too long for her body and a heart that weighed like a stone in her chest. Vampires were good to keep around - they made one feel so much younger and smaller than they really were.
She wrote down the stories of the sweater and gave it to Sania.
“You are terrible at this,” she said helpfully over a cup of coffee while they ignored Jeremy and Dylan sulking in the opposite corner by the window.
“At writing?”
“At telling your own story.”
“It’s not my story - it’s the sweater’s story.”
“Really?” Sania looked down at the page. “All I see is you.”
Dawn pulled out the notebook with a unicorn on it that Elizabeth - Jeremy’s charming little sister - had given her with a slightly sticky grin, “Here, read this one about Jeremy’s aunt Beatrice. I met her over the weekend and she’s a laugh riot.”
Sania studied the page. After a few minutes she giggled, “Okay. You are good. But … it’s weird.”
“What?”
“I feel like I learned more about you than about dear old aunt Beatrice.”
Dawn looked down at the notebook on the table in front of her. She was writing about the time Tara’s family came in to town. It was a hard memory, but it felt important. “Isn’t that what writing is, exposing the author?” Sania gave her a look and Dawn shrunk back into her seat. “You disapprove.”
“No. I’m thinking.”
“About my genius?”
“About mine.”
Dawn smiled, “Did you just find the answer to world peace in your brain?”
“Let me take this home. I want to write the story of the sweater and see what happens. I want to see what I get wrong.”
“Hey! There’s a party this weekend, come with me?” Jeremy sat on the table next to Dawn with a sudden plunk all excitement and twinkling eyes.
“Jer, you scared the crap out of me,” Dawn brushed at her jeans where she had just spilled her coffee.
“Oh, hey. Sorry. I said your name like three times.”
Dawn sighed, that was probably true. She was actually really enjoying the latest unit in her English class and had asked Ms Kaloyan for some extra reading (Celeste had twinkled a bit, but thankfully didn’t say a word) and had a way of completely disappearing into whatever she was reading. “What’s up, Jer?”
“Party. You and me. Saturday. You game?”
Dawn looked up at him. He was pretty. And funny. And she actually had a good time hanging out with him, to her surprise. She’d even got in the habit of coming over to help him babysit his sister on Fridays. But it didn’t feel magical or heartbreaking or anything. She’d be the first person to admit that she did not want to follow in her sister’s footsteps, nothing soul-crushing. She wanted a steady, simple boyfriend. In the event that she ever wanted a boyfriend. Which, unfortunately for Jeremy, wasn’t what she wanted at the present moment. And it didn’t seem fair to keep dating him when she didn’t want what he wanted. She’d bumped into him talking to some of his friends once, Miguel and his girlfriend Gabby. There was something about Jeremy’s face, looking at them, something wistful. He wanted that, couplehood thing. Where you bicker over what movie to watch on Fridays and eat each other’s French fries.
“Jeremy… I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” she tried to put everything in her face so that she wouldn’t have to say the words aloud.
He grinned down at her, “It’s just some friends getting together. You’re allowed to have friends, right?”
“… right,” she smiled hesitantly.
“Get away from my student, St. Clair. You know I can take you in a fight,” Celeste’s cheerful voice came from behind them.
“Hey!” Jeremy leaped off the desk and swooped Celeste in a hug, “Convince Dawn here to come to your party.”
“What party?” Celeste brushed him off with a smile and walked around to her seat across from Dawn.
Jeremy stood behind Dawn’s chair, putting his hands on her shoulders, “The one at your house that Eli is hosting.”
“That’s not a party exactly.”
Jeremy looked at his watch, “I’ll be late for practice. Do whatever you can to get this girl to come out.” And then he was gone.
Celeste fought back a smile, “So you and Jeremy?”
Dawn groaned and slumped back in her chair, “Is he always like a newborn puppy on caffeine?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” Celeste eyed her, “Look, you don’t have to come as his date. But you should come.”
“I should?”
“Definitely,” Celeste took out her editing like the matter was already settled. “You can meet Eli and everyone. And I promise Jeremy will be on his best behavior.”
A few minutes later, Dawn said softly, “He just… deserves a girlfriend. Someone better.”
Celeste smacked her hand with a ruler, “Shut up. You’re way out of St. Claire’s league. No one could do better than you.”
“That’s just what girls say to each other. I know about Girl Code, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“I’m not the right girl for him.”
Celeste wiggled her eyebrows, “You know who is the right girl for him?” Dawn shook her head, so Celeste leaned forward and whispered, “AudreyDebois. She’s had a crush on him for years. I’ll invite her and she’ll distract him for you.”
“So I’m not going to get out of this, is what you’re saying?”
Celeste grinned, “Nope.”
She was sitting in the living room just beginning to read the loose pages Sania had tucked into her History textbook earlier that day, when Buffy walked through the front door and collapsed on the couch beside her.
“Studying?”
“Not… really. Just reading something Sania wrote for me.”
“Like a poem?”
“More like… a short story.”
“Sania is the disgustingly beautiful one with a twin sister, right? Their mom thinks we’re starving and is always sending over food?”
“Pretty sure their mom thinks everyone needs her to cook for them, she’s just that type.”
“Mom wasn’t really that type,” Buffy’s eyes closed. “I liked that about her.”
“Me too.”
“Can you read it to me?”
“Read you Sania’s story?”
“Yeah… unless you think I won’t like it?” Buffy’s eyes stayed closed.
Dawn looked down at the page in her hand, BEING THREE STORIES OF A SWEATER. She cleared her throat and began,
Being Three Stories of a … Clock
The first time, the clock was loved. So loved and so desired that a little girl begged for hours just to look at it. She wore took it with her on all her grand adventures. It grew old and worn, but was still loved.
The second time, the clock was a consolation prize. Brought home by a father too tired to care, unseen by the girl, and mocked by the wife. In this story, it was nothing more than a trinket.
The third time, the clock was loved by another - purchased on a whim and given away. It was always meant to be a gift and never for herself. She begged for the sake of another and it was loved well enough. It was a token.
Selfish love, tired love, selfless love.
And now it is up to you, which is the truth? Which story will stand the tests of time? What truth will the teller choose - that of the coveted, that of the abandoned, or that of the gift?
Dawn looked up and saw Buffy wiping away tears.
“Buffy? Everything okay?”
“You know, we never really talked about … you. Like, the Key-you or whatever. It all happened so fast, you weren’t there and then you were and… I’m sorry.”
“What made you think of that?”
Buffy stood up and stretched, “I can get Giles and the gang in research mode if you want.”
“What I want, Buffy Anne Summers, is for you to tell me what - no, I can do my own… that is… no research necessary.”
“The story made me think of you. Or the Key. Glory wanted you so bad, she killed so many people. And the monks kinda just dropped you off without a manual or anything.”
Dawn swallowed, “So I’m a clock now?”
“Better than me. I’m just a Chosen One. And death is my gift, right?”
Tears stung Dawn’s eyes, she laughed hollowly, “Yeah, that’s what they say.”
Buffy was already halfway up the stairs, “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Of course not,” her voice echoed through the house, soft and low.
“AND TAKE OUT THE TRASH BEFORE YOU GO TO BED!” Buffy shouted from her room.
Dawn looked up and smiled, “YEAH OKAY, GOT IT!”
characters: dawn summers; buffy, janice, tara, spike, willow, originals
word count: 14,000/31,000
setting: season six character-study; after her sister's death and resurrection, Dawn grapples with her own humanity and tenuous relationship with reality; as her depression swings her from reckless to numb, she reaches out to friends for help and a new perspective.
a/n: I am really proud of this little story and so excited to be able to share it with you!
Part One
Part Two
“Oh my god, what the hell is wrong with you today?” Dawn slammed one of her books shut and leaned back in her chair, leveling her gaze at Celeste.
“What is this in regards to?” Generally Dawn wasn’t very chatty and most weeks Celeste had to pull at her just to get a ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ that sounded halfway civil. Discussing genre, editing, the English language, anything in their books, that was one thing. Having an actual conversation about themselves was quite another.
Dawn shook her head, “You’ve just been off today, I can’t explain it.”
Celeste looked up from her stack of papers, three of her many multi-colored pens and highlighters she used for editing clutched in each hand, hair a bit askew, “We’ve been sitting here for all of ten minutes.”
“Yeah and you are acting weird.”
“I’m EDITING!”
Somewhere behind them, a librarian tsked disapprovingly and Dawn grinned, “I don’t think a librarian has ever tut-tutted in your direction in the whole of your entire life.”
Celeste blushed.
“Come on, I see you every week, don’t you think I can tell if something is wrong?”
“Dawn, I have literally cried sitting six inches away from you before and your response was to ask me for a synonym for celebration.”
“You were reading the end of Sloppy Firsts, that wasn’t personal that was literature.” When Celeste just widened her eyes, Dawn huffed, “Of course I’ve read it, don’t look at me like that.”
“No… I mean… well…”
“I’m OBSERVANT,” Dawn bristled.
“You really aren’t.”
“Stop changing the subject,” Dawn took a bite of brownie and chewed thoughtfully, “I know when something is weird and you have a weird vibe.”
Celeste took a drink from her thermos of tea and sighed, “It’s nothing.”
“Ah… it’s a relationship something,” Dawn reached over and snatched the pile of papers in front of her and held them over her head, “You could probably kick my ass, but I have the librarians to back me up - you won’t get these until you tell me.”
“What are you doing, Dawn? You’ve never showed any interest in my personal life before.”
“Either I’m tired of you mooning and disturbing my vibe so I’m forcing you to tell me what’s going on so I can fix it for you and go back to my work,” she waved at the piles of books and scraps of paper in front of her, “or - and I know this is a stretch - or I’m actually not an automaton and may give two shits about the people around me.”
“I don’t know… that second one is a bit of a stretch.”
Dawn gave Celeste her best version of an angry glare, which only made the older girl burst into a spasm of giggles. A couple of heads turned in their direction and Dawn turned her glare on them until they went back to studying.
“Okay… you’re right. It’s a relationship thing, kinda.”
Dawn thought of the football player that somehow made Celeste look like a magical fairy princess instead of the giant Amazon that she really was and nodded, “Cheating? Different college on the horizon? Wore their socks during sex?” Celeste raised her eyebrows at the last one and Dawn leaned forward to whisper, “I hear that’s a huge turn-off.”
Celeste chuckled softly, “No… it’s nothing like that. It’s not even about them. We’ve been together… oh since we were babies. I think they fell for me the year I had a growth spurt and was a good foot and a half taller than everyone… still thought I was magnificent.”
“You are.”
Celeste shook her head, “Anyway, it’s been forever. And yet, you know? Their mom still acts like I was plucked out of the gutter yesterday. No matter what I do, no matter how nice I am or how much I help or how invisible I make myself. We just do not get along.” Celeste looked out the window, “My mom, she died when I was eight years old. And I guess, I’ve been trying to get her to… like me, love me, fill the void or something; but we can hardly even be civil. I’ve tried everything.”
Dawn chewed on her third brownie silently.
“At this point, I’d just like to get through a dinner without feeling like a leper.”
“Do you feel better, saying it out loud?”
Celeste put the lid back on the brownies, “No more chocolate until we’ve been halfway productive.”
Dawn hedged, “You know, maybe she knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Maybe she knew you were looking for a replacement or something. Maybe she… maybe she didn’t want to get too close unless you guys broke up because then you’d have lost someone else. Or maybe she was worried that you just wanted a family and don’t care about Eli the way you should. Maybe it wasn’t about you at all, maybe she was protecting … everyone.”
Celeste’s eyes glistened.
Dawn shrugged, “That’s what I’d do… I mean, in the unfortunate event that I ever have a teenage son dating someone as amazing as you I’d maybe… keep my distance out of a sense of helping rather than harming.”
The older girl stared at her for a long time without saying anything.
At the end of the hour, when Celeste stood up to head to softball practice, she looked down and said, “Maybe you are observant.”
“It comes and goes,” Dawn said sullenly, not looking up from her books.
Someone bumped her table and Dawn swore under her breath, looking down at the huge line of black ink that now spread across her careful notes. She looked up to see who had interrupted her and found Janice smiling across the table from her, sitting in the seat that Celeste had only moments ago vacated.
“Janice?”
“You forgot my name already, so much for loyalty and friendship,” Janice snapped her gum loudly with a smile.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m busting you out,” Janice took on a ridiculous stage-whisper. “We haven’t done anything fun in like weeks.”
Dawn wracked her brain, it felt like she had just made pancakes with Janice at her house a few days ago, but lately time was passing in strange clumps without her noticing, “I’m busy?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Janice raised her eyebrows. And then suddenly she slammed her hands on the desk loudly and stood up, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DAWN SUMMERS!!!!!”
Every head in the library whipped towards them.
“Janice,” Dawn hissed, “What are you doing?”
“OH THAT’S RICH! AS IF YOU DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID!”
Dawn looked down at her books, mentally planning how to get out of the library as quickly as possible. Janice had started picking fights with her in PE class a couple of years ago. Turns out, in order to end an altercation, teachers would send them to the office and never ask them to make up their running times. It only worked once a semester, too much drama and they’d start to notice it was a performance. It’s just that Janice had never used this technique against her before, as a means to propel Dawn into an action she didn’t necessarily want to do. It wasn’t worth fighting.
Dawn stood up with a great clash, her chair falling down behind her. “As if it’s any worse than what you did!” she hissed, her hands busily putting away all of her things as orderly as she could without it appearing as though she was preparing to leave.
Janice winked at her, “I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS! NEVER!!!”
Dawn’s chin started to wobble, she was always better at faking sadness and Janice always took lead on being the loud, angry one. Maybe that said something about the two of them, maybe it said nothing whatsoever.
During their façade, Dawn’s eyes flickered between her busy hands and Janice’s loud protestations. She didn’t notice the dark circles under Janice’s eyes, or the slight wobble in her step.
Janice was always the one that screamed into the void, when maybe it should have been the other way around. Maybe she was the one that needed to cry and sit still, to bury herself in pain instead of running from it.
By the time they had been personally escorted out of the library, Dawn handed a tissue by a concerned security guard while Janice wailed and professed promise we’ll always be friends!, Janice had her emotions under control once again. They were also sure to have a strong reconciliation at the end of any such show - Janice said that it gave the audience closure and made everyone feel better afterwards. Dawn took Janice at her word.
Standing outside the library, Janice put her hands on her hips and grinned, “So. What do you want to do?”
They dropped Dawn’s books in her locker and walked to the mall, ate oversized pretzels and ice cream, and made up stories about the people they saw. Dawn grabbed a knick-knack here and there, Janice sometimes pointing out something that she particularly wanted. It felt normal, just like being a real girl.
Spike’s crypt was always ten degrees too cold in the winter and thirty degrees too hot in the summer. Which is why she loved being there so much. And he stopped being surprised to see her long ago.
Long had such a strange sense of unbalance. She was an immortal Key from long ago, which probably made her few months of interrupting Spike’s life rather paltry and recent. On the other hand, she’d only really been alive for a handful of months in the grand scheme of things, so long felt pretty apt in that context.
Sometimes she’d spend full afternoons there - when she probably should have been somewhere else - sitting in a patch of sunlight and thinking of absolutely nothing. She never took her research there, never thought about it, never let it cross her mind. It was private.
“SPIKE!!” she liked to enter while creating as much noise as possible. “Spike where are you?!”
He appeared from below with a shirt still in the act of being tossed over his head, “Stop that bloody racket, I’m here!”
“Spike I need to ask you an important question.”
He rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette, “I’m sure the universe waits on bated breath.”
“It might.”
“Just ask it already.”
“Who do you think assassinated Kennedy?”
Spike stared at her, “Seriously?”
She sat down on the ground and picked at her sleeve, “No. You probably know the right answer and that takes all the fun out of it.” She drew a heart in the dirt on the step next to her.
Spike swept the floor a bit with his boot and then sat down next to her, “Why so blue, Niblet?”
“Buffy hates it when you call me that.”
“Your big sis hates a lot of things about me.”
“Do you think she would have liked you when you were a ponce of a human?”
Spike took a long, hard look at her, “I wasn’t fit to kiss her shoe when I was a human.”
Dawn leaned her head on his shoulder.
They sat together for a while, not saying anything. Spike was always good for a round of stubborn silence. Or comforting silence. Or something. He was good for something.
She felt like there was something she should be asking, something she should be saying, but she couldn’t wrap her head around what it was. She had wandered over as if by instinct.
“Spike?”
“Hm?”
“When’s the last time I came down here?”
“About a week ago.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t remember?”
Dawn sat up straight, running her hand through her hair in exasperation, “I don’t know.”
“You gave me a lecture on the perils of trusting ancient scribes to do their jobs correctly and then tore off.”
“Sounds like me.”
He looked over at her and then kicked her with his boot gently, “Now piss off. Its poker night and I can’t have you here where you might get eaten.”
“Save me a kitten, Spike,” she called on the way out the door.
It was just about dusk outside and she walked home, not even noticing the chill.
“So that’s the whole story. The … short version of the long version anyway.”
Sania sipped her espresso and raised her eyebrow, “If I didn’t know what I know I’d say you were full of shit.”
“If I didn’t know what I know I’d say the same thing. Sometimes it seems totally… not possible.”
“So these monks?”
“Never met them. Or… I don’t really get it. But Dawn - me Dawn - has never met them.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
“So the … the spell?”
“I wanted to see the original memory of something. From before the monks meddled.”
“And it worked?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Dawn shifted forward in her chair, leaning over the table. “Buffy’s memory matches what I saw, sort of… I mean, it’s more plausible in a way… but nothing matches what I remember.”
“So… wait what does that mean?”
“It means… there’s like three different versions.”
“Maybe your sister is just remembering it wrong? Maybe she doesn’t remember the details the way that you do.”
“But she’s so sure.”
“Hon, I’m sorry but why is this important?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Sania sighed. “Why does it matter what she remembers and what you remember? Everyone remembers things differently, monks or no monks. That’s just human.”
“Except Buffy and I aren’t exactly human.” Dawn picked up her salted caramel latte with raspberry sauce and took a large gulp. It was too hot. She’d have a burn on the back of her throat for days.
Good.
“You want to know if something else is wrong?”
“What if I’m wandering around with this memory that … doesn’t mean anything?” Dawn stiffened and fixed her gaze at a group of guys a couple years older than them at a table across the coffee shop. She heard the word terrorist float through the air and then a huge burst of laughter when she looked over at them.
“Don’t listen, just focus.”
Dawn looked down at her coffee, face turning red, “I should give them a piece of my mind.”
“Let it go. Focus on our conversation?”
“Focus on my whining while those guys say-”
“I invited you out for coffee and I wanted to talk to you about this. I really, really don’t want to talk about them.”
“What if they come over here?”
Sania shrugged and smiled, “So then they come over and I pretend not to speak English while you get the manager.”
Dawn grinned.
“Why does this matter, Dawn? What is it that’s really bothering you?”
“I just… I feel like I can’t trust my own mind. All these memories swirling around, making up me as I know myself and they aren’t real. What if everything I think is different? What if… what if I’m not who I think I am?”
“What if the world isn’t what you grew up to believe it is?”
Dawn slumped back, “I know. It’s ridiculous.”
Sania picked at Dawn’s bagel, “Those guys over there. They think they are right about me - about you. They’ve watched the news and they think they know. They think I really could be carrying a bomb in my skirt.” A sneer crossed Sania’s face, “They think my hijab makes me a terrorist instead of just a supportive sister and … dubiously devout Muslim. They have memories and facts and information swirling around in their head that’s wrong about me. That’s wrong about you. It’s shitty and it sucks and most days I …” Sania paused, biting her lip. “You can’t change their minds.”
“Sania…”
“Are they any less real than you and me?”
Dawn fell silent. The group of guys stood up and walked out the shop. They didn’t pass any insults Sania’s way, their gazes full of curiosity and not a little prejudice. When the door shut behind them, some tension left Dawn’s shoulders.
“You’re still going to keep looking for answers, aren’t you?”
Dawn sipped her salted caramel latte.
Jeremy St. Clair has long fingers which his father always claimed would make him a champion quarterback and which his mother swore would make him a concert pianist, facts which they both still despair they could make true if they only pressure him in the right way. Jeremy St. Clair has long fingers with stubby nails because he chews them down to the quick, a habit no one really notices unless they look at him very closely. Jeremy St. Clair has long fingers and right now they are tapping a directionless sort of beat on his leg as he pretends to listen to his friends trade insults and dirty jokes back and forth across the table in the little coffee shop he goes to in order to avoid conversations like these. He knows how to keep up, how to play the star quarterback for his dad, the concert pianist for his mom, a limited 17 year old bro for his friends.
But all he really wants to do is watch that girl.
Of course they notice.
“She’s way out of your league, J.”
Antoine squints over his chair - that he’s sitting in it backwards, legs spread out and elbows on the back, “Hey isn’t that Buffy Summers’ little sister?”
Caleb, a skinny kid that Jeremy wishes he could like, but is actually one of those annoying sort of hangers-on that pretends to be a nice guy and will probably be singing that same song when he’s a twenty-three year old internet millionaire, bursts out, “Buffy? My cousin went to school with her, said she’s a real head case.”
Eli cuffs Caleb on the back of the head, “Shut up, idiot. Everyone knows who Buffy Summers is.”
Jeremy blinks at them, “Is this chick famous or something.”
Miguel steals the espresso from in front of him and takes a swallow, grimacing, “How do you drink this shit?”
“Seriously, what are you guys talking about?”
Caleb sniffs and leans back in his chair, “She’s nobody.”
“Abbie was in her graduating class, said Buffy single-handedly saved the whole town from a giant snake,” Dylan doesn’t look up from the sketchpad he has out in front of him. Jeremy’s never really understood why he is always with Miguel, Eli, and Antoine - probably a story that goes back to monkey bars or something like that.
“A giant snake?” Jeremy looks back over at the girl. She uncrosses her legs and leans forward. Her friend laughs at her and she tosses her long brown hair over one shoulder.
Eli shakes his head, “Bro I keep forgetting you just moved here.”
He kicks Dylan under the table, “You’re joking?”
Dylan fixes him with a steady gaze, his pencil poised in mid-air, “Giant. Snake. Look it up.”
“It was a joke. A practical joke,” Caleb crosses his arms over his chest.
Antoine rests his chin on the back of his chair, “My cousin Leticia died. Her boyfriend was in Buffy’s graduating class. I see him sometimes, he won’t talk about it.”
“Terrorist attack? Crazy gun nuts? Tell me it’s something that isn’t a giant snake?” Jeremy feels a little queasy.
“Believe it or don’t believe it. Just know that Buffy Summers is the most bad ass female in this one-Starbucks town,” Miguel says.
Antoine has a haunted expression on his face, which is kinda weird, since he’s the most cheerful person Jeremy knows, he’s also the biggest linebacker Jeremy’s ever seen. He somehow makes even Eli and Miguel seem small, which is a fucking accomplishment. Rumor is he already has a scholarship lined up for Texas State next year. They’ll all be watching him in pro-games within the next few years. Which doesn’t mean he’s dumb. He’d probably rather go into Electrical Engineering like his sister. But a scholarship is a scholarship.
“So… giant snake?”
“I heard she broke some guy’s nose on the swim team because he tried to ask her out,” Caleb says darkly.
“My brother knew that asshole. He probably tried to feel her up or something,” Dylan is bored. He’s always bored. Especially if Caleb is talking.
Jeremy smiles over at Antoine, “Would you ask out Buffy Summers’ little sister?”
Antoine slides his gaze over to where the leggy brunette is sitting with her friend, “A bit too skinny for my taste.”
Miguel laughs, “I bet you ten bucks you don’t have the balls.”
Dylan is chewing on a smile, “How long have you been staring at her, anyway?”
Jeremy considers, “About a week.” It’s the biggest lie he’s ever told his friends and most of them will see through it in an instant. There are better coffee shops. Quieter ones. There’s even one with a fireplace a bit closer to his house. But about two months ago he was sitting at this very table and she came in, hair tucked up in a stupid knitted cap, with a pile of books that looked older than dirt. She got a cup of something with three extra shots and settled in for what became a four-hour study session. She looked like she was curing cancer or something over there with her half-a-dozen books and paper flying everywhere. Sometimes she wasn’t here when he came, but that was fine. It was a nice enough place. And he wasn’t stalking - not really… just enjoying the view.
Eli sticks out his hand, “I’m on team-Jeremy. Ten bucks that he asks her out.” Two meaty hands meet in the middle of the table and shake.
Dylan purses his lips, “But that’s not the interesting part.”
Antoine’s eyes glint with mischief, “Ten bucks says she turns him down.”
Miguel hoots with laughter and Jeremy catches the girl shooting them a dirty look. He blushes and it makes them all join in, even Dylan cracks a smile.
“Ten bucks says she breaks his arm, or her sister does,” Eli puts in.
“A hundred bucks she says yes,” Jeremy says, feeling rather bold.
“So go do it,” Caleb says coldly. His interest is gone now that his opinion has been so wildly neglected.
Eli pats Jeremy on the back, “Go get her, bro.”
Jeremy settles back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, “Not today. You’re all making asses of yourselves. I gotta play this my way.”
“Carry a copy of the Bell Jar,” Caleb sneers. “It’ll make you look sensitive.”
“I am sensitive,” Jeremy’s face molds into false alarm. “Miguel thinks I’m sensitive, don’t you Miguel?”
Dylan is looking over at her, “She’s too smart for something that asinine anyway. If you try to lie to her even a little, she’ll probably break your arm.”
“Sure you’re sensitive, buddy. Cried watching The Notebook and everything,” Miguel slings his beefy arm over Jeremy’s slight shoulders.
Antoine looks up from his phone, “Who doesn’t cry while watching The Notebook?”
“Oh you have got to be shitting me,” Caleb shifts in his chair uncomfortably.
Eli grabs his arm, “Celeste made me watch that movie, man. It’s fucking amazing.”
“No-” Caleb has been around for long enough to know what’s coming next.
Dylan smirks, “Ten bucks Caleb cries.”
Antoine is already on his phone, “Hey babe. Caleb hasn’t seen The Notebook! … I know, I know… Trust me, I know …”
Miguel squints down at his phone, “Gabby? … Wait, Victoria told you what? … Well of course we’ll remedy the situation…”
Eli hauls Caleb to his feet with one arm and puts his phone to his ear with the other, “Hey mom, is Celeste there? … already making popcorn? … yeah I’ll pick up Papa Murphy’s on the way home,” he angles the speaker away from his mouth and turns to Jeremy, “bro, get three large pizzas on your way to my house.”
They tromp out the door, Caleb complaining loudly as they go, Dylan bringing up the rear with a snicker. Jeremy sneaks a glance at the girl on their way out, brushing her chair with his leg “accidentally” and is greeted with a look of pure, unfiltered malice.
Maybe he shouldn’t have bet so much money on this.
Good news is, if it works out he’ll be doing his best to piss her off whenever possible. She’s even hotter when she’s pissed off.
Dawn was sitting in her favorite coffee shop, waiting for Sania with a stack of old tombs she snatched from the Magic Box. Three of them are going to need to be translated before they can make heads or tails of the bizarre narrative poetry - which is what the other two are there for. Honestly, Sania is just coming to keep her company and stop her from going insane.
Which, you know, she might already be.
She was on her third cup of black coffee (with cinnamon) when she felt someone sit down in the chair across from her.
“Just a second, Sania,” she muttered into her pages, scribbling fiercely. “I’m almost done with this.” Translating an ancient demon text would be a hellava lot easier if the Watcher’s Council hadn’t had parts of it translated into Latin back during the Renaissance, and badly it turned out. It looked like they had been using a previous translation in Akkadian as their guide for years, and some nitwit had translated that into Latin as his senior project, which gave her two conflicting texts in Latin. It took a lot of emails to get copies of the original sent to her, but now that it was here it turned out it was all an even bigger mess than she thought. Several passages in the Latin translation had no corresponding section in the original and vice versa, due to some fire or theft around the 600’s, if the scribe’s notes were anything to go on. It was a bit like running a three-legged race, with Akkadian and Latin versions all contradicting each other. She pulled out a post-it from her backpack and scrawled on it NOTE: ALWAYS JUST GET THE ORIGINAL and then slapped it on the open page in her planner. There were several little notes like that sprinkled throughout. She liked post-its, made her feel like she could actually tackle the million or so projects that passed through her head at any given time.
When she finally looked up, there was a boy with broad shoulders and sandy hair and light freckles sprinkled across his tan face and long fingers gripping the smallest cup of coffee she’d ever seen sitting in the chair that Sania should have been in.
“You aren’t Sania,” she blurted out.
“Sania… that’s your friend, right? The girl who comes in here with you sometimes?”
Dawn’s eyes narrowed, which caused him to smile tiny crinkles appearing in the corner of his eyes, “What are you stalking me?”
“It’s hard not to notice you,” he took a sip of his drink and then it hit her.
“You were in here the other day, with a bunch of your buddies.”
He sighed deeply, “My friends are idiots. I’m sorry if they bothered you.”
Dawn leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest, “What was so funny?”
“What?”
“That day, you were all looking over here and laughing. What was so funny?”
“They were just being assholes.”
“What. Was so. Funny,” her voice took on a hard edge and for some reason that made his smile widen. A fact that only made her more angry.
“They were daring me to come over and talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you are totally drop-dead hot and they could tell I was into you.”
Something clanged in her chest. That was one hundred percent not what she was expecting. He saw her defenses soften and charged forward.
“It’s hard not to… I mean, I’ve noticed you in here. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to talk to you for a … while…” he faltered. “Your sister isn’t going to kill me, is she?”
Dawn blinked, “My sister?”
“Caleb thinks she’s like a wack job or something but Antoine and Eli think she’s an FBI agent undercover and like… whatever…” he waved his hand as if to erase their words, “if I ask you out, what are the chances that I wind up dead in a ditch somewhere?”
“Pretty high, actually,” her voice came out strangled.
“Like seventy percent, ninety percent, what are we talking here? I’m willing to go as high as eighty percent, but my mom really likes having me around and I’d hate to deprive her of my presence just for one date.”
“Mortality rates for teens in Sunnydale are already pretty high, so I mean your chances of survival don’t really go that far up or down just by asking me a question,” the corner of her mouth lifted slightly.
His cheeks hurt from smiling so much, “So, I’ll pick you up around seven tomorrow?”
“You haven’t asked me yet,” she pointed out calmly.
“I’m worried the odds are stacked against me.”
“What … do you think your odds are?”
His gaze skittered down to his hands for a second, picking at the fingernail on one thumb, before fixing his gaze back on her face, “Maybe, fifty-fifty?”
She whistled, “Mighty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’m quite a catch.”
“Really?” she laughed then, surprising herself.
“Star quarterback, know my way around a piano, not too bad of a reader, great conversationalist, sexy,” he listed them off on his fingers. “I’m the full package.”
“Okay, full package. Sounds like you could have any girl you bat your boy band lashes at, what does that have to do with me?”
“You’re mysterious.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She slaps a book closed and reaches for her messenger bag on the floor at her feet, “I’ll get more work done at the library.”
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, “Just… wait. I said that wrong.” She stared at his hand, fingers wrapped around her small bone. Maybe that cup of coffee in his hands wasn’t small. Maybe he just made everything look small by comparison. She eyed the cup warily, refusing to meet his gaze again. “You’re totally hot.”
“You said that,” at this point in the conversation, Janice would already have a promise ring or something. Hell, Janice would have dragged him off to the co-ed bathroom in the back and his pants would be around his ankles by now.
“It’s not just that, it’s… what are those books?!”
“You want to go out with me because I like weird books?”
“Weird doesn’t cover it, these are. Are these ancient?” he pointed to an illuminated dragon on the corner of one page. “That looks like it belongs in a museum.”
“I got it at the Magic Box, it’s a shop in downtown. You can go there yourself at looks at all the books you want. Can you let go of my arm now?”
“It’s not the books!”
“Look, whole package. This is the first conversation we’ve ever had. What could you possibly know about me?”
“Isn’t that the whole point of a date, to get to know each other?”
“Generally people don’t start out cold turkey.”
“On blind dates they do.”
“I’m not a riddle for you to untangle, whole package.”
“So then tell me something, because all I know is that you love books, you always drink coffee with more sugar than caffeine, you could probably kill a man with your eyes under the right circumstances, and you hate shoes.”
Dawn blinked.
“Also your sister is scary as fuck and probably killed either a giant snake or some domestic terrorists, I can’t really figure it out. Neither really makes sense.”
Dawn thought back to the conversation that she thought she had heard a few days ago, about Sania. That they all were sitting around talking about her and her sister was either more embarrassing or less, but it was definitely nearly as infuriating. How many more demons did Buffy have to kill before the world woke up?
He was staring at her, she scrambled around for the perilous thread that would lead her back into the conversation. “I love shoes,” she insisted lamely.
“You kick them off the second you sit down and tuck your feet under you as soon as possible.”
“You really are a stalker, whole package.”
“My name is Jeremy and you don’t have shoes on right now. Even if this was the first time seeing you, I could extrapolate from there.”
Dawn relaxed slightly, “So what do you want to know?”
Jeremy smiled, “Tell me three truths and one lie and see if I can guess which one is the lie?”
“My name is Joan, I am translating these books into English for fun, I am fifteen but have only been alive for about a year, my best friend’s name is Janice, and your first guess doesn’t count.”
A barista that Dawn was on friendly terms with came over and topped up their cups with a smile, “I got a cheese Danish with your name on it, Dawnie. Should I heat it up?”
“That would be great, Zoe, thanks.”
“Your name is Dawn, you are freakishly good at translation, you had a religious experience last year,” he chuckled at her raised eyebrows, “and your best friend’s name is Janice.”
“You’re turn.”
“My name is Jeremy-“
“Doesn’t count, you already told me that.”
“I am an only child, I love sky-diving, I hate playing football, and even if you were the most boring person in the history of Sunnydale, I’d still want to take you out.”
“You have three older brothers.”
“Wrong.”
“Really?”
“I have two older brothers and a younger sister, Emma.”
“What if I was the ugliest person in the history of Sunnydale?”
“I’d still want to take you out this Friday.”
“Why?”
“Three truths, one lie:: My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird, I have ADHD, my mother still thinks I might be a concert pianist someday, and I take my Chemistry notes in a Lisa Frank notebook my sister bought me for Christmas.”
“You take your notes in a standard notebook, just like any other jock.”
He winked at her and put a pink and purple notebook on the table in front of them, a unicorn smiled up at her, “My favorite book is Where the Red Fern Grows.”
“I found my sister’s Doogie Houser fanfic when I borrowed her laptop a few months ago, I have a standing date with her ex-girlfriend every other Saturday to eat junk food and pretend she’s still family, I hate pickles, and I haven’t seen my dad in at least three years.”
“Your sister never wrote Doogie Houser fanfic.”
“I love pickles.”
“If you were a troll with a humped back I would still ask you out because the only time I feel calm is when I look up and can see you sitting across the room, I hate tomatoes, my sister’s goldfish is named Skywalker because she lost a bet to me, and I can speak fluent Italian.”
“Your meds work just fine and you are always calm.”
“I can’t speak a word of Italian. I am terrible at languages, I’ll never be able to help you,” he gestured at the books on the table between them.
Dawn takes a bite of her cheese Danish and chews it slowly.
“I’ve been in mortal peril more times in my life than you’d believe, I believe in dragons but not in unicorns, I have a cat named Miss Kitty Fantastico, and if you ask me out I’ll definitely turn you down.”
Jeremy leaned over, putting his elbows on the table with his arms still folded, “Please let me take you out this Friday?”
“Don’t make me regret this, whole package,” she tried to make her voice sound hard and sturdy, tried to channel Tara’s personal strength.
“I won’t,” he looked like he wanted to lean forward or reach forward or something, but she flipped open her book and picked up her pencil, dismissing him.
“Meet you here at seven?”
“Make it five,” she looked up and up and up. Damn, he’s tall. “I have a really strict curfew. And Buffy is pretty scary.”
“What is it? Nine? Ten?”
“Sunset.” He gaped down at her and she smiled, “Which in May is around eight o’clock.”
“Always?”
“Well… if I’m with Spike, I can stay out later,” Dawn kept her voice measured. She liked dropping Spike’s name into conversation nonchalantly. Most people assumed he was her dog - she’d even had the guidance counselor inquire over Spike’s health in a way that definitely sounded like she thought he was a dog. There’s was very little chance that any of these people would ever discover the truth, but she held out hope.
“Do you ever sneak out?”
“Never,” and the expression she gave him was so guileless he had to believe it.
Seconds after he walked out the door, a little bell announcing his departure, Sania and Naila plopped down at her table.
“I knew he’d talk to you today, I just knew it!” Sania crowed happily.
Dawn raised her eyebrows at her friend, “What are you talking about?”
“Please, Dawnie. He’s been watching you for weeks,” Naila wiggled two fingers at the barista behind the counter.
“But-”
“Don’t worry,” Sania pat her hand comfortingly, “sometimes you aren’t one hundred percent unobservant.”
Naila giggled into her coffee cup, “Yeah. Sometimes you actually notice when we’re talking to you!”
“So the other day--?”
“They were talking about you. From what I gathered, there’s a few bets that you’d say no,” Sania’s eyes sparkled.
“Oh my god,” Dawn groaned and face-planted into her books. “Kill me now.”
Naila looked at her sister with a horrified expression, “What is she going to wear?!”
Janice took the news that Dawn had a date with Jeremy St. Clair with a kind of viciousness akin to Anya’s love for money, or … no, there was no other comparison. She apparently knew a lot about him from sitting next to his best friend, Dylan, in homeroom the past two years. Something about their last names being similar.
“I don’t think he’s asked anyone out since Lindsey Morgan dumped him at the Spring Fling last year,” Janice chattered happily.
“I thought Lindsey and Morgan were two different people?”
Janice shook her head. “Lindsey Morgan and Lindsey O’Neill are juniors and either rivals or best friends, kinda depends on the week,” her tone suggested that this kind of behavior was pedestrian, “Morgan Pace is a sophomore … Jesus Dawn do you not pay attention?”
Dawn stared at her friend, wide-eyed.
“Apparently not,” Janice rolled her eyes and pulled a slinky red shirt off a rack and shoved it into Dawn’s arms. “Okay. Dressing room time.”
Dawn looked down at the pile of clothes Janice had piled on top of her like she was a pack mule, “There’s no way I’m wearing any of this.”
Janice ushered her into a dressing room, “Half the fun of a first date is the shopping beforehand.”
Once behind a curtain in her own dressing cubicle, Dawn glared down at her friend and plopped the clothes in her lap, “I thought the fun of dating was the dating.”
“Fifty percent: shopping. Thirty percent: getting dolled up. Ten percent: free dinner. Ten percent: the guy. If you go in thinking that the guy is going to Colin Firth his way through the date, you’ll just be disappointed in the morning.”
“Even the wondrous Jeremy St. Clair?” Dawn put the back of her hand to her forehead in a mock swoon.
“Guys are guys,” Janice shrugged. She pulled a black something that looked like lingerie out of the pile, her eyes glinting, “Try this one on first.”
In the end, Dawn whittled Janice down to a pair of skinny jeans and a new white linen top, with the promise that she’d wear a cute bra underneath and a pair of Buffy’s boots. On the way out the door, bags in hand, Dawn spotted a green cardigan on a discount rack. It was the color of a bright emerald and simple, no flourishes. Seventy percent off. She looked around and then pulled it off the hanger and put it into her bag with a smile.
It was the color of her dreams. It brought out the slight glint of green in her eyes.
When she got home from her ‘date’ with Jeremy, Dawn closed the front door and leaned against it with a sigh, pulling her new sweater tighter around her waist. There were worse experiences, probably. Too bad she was a complete klutz and had no idea how to talk to anyone about something other than demons and ancient Sumerian texts about demon mythology. And no matter how lame or ridiculous her responses became, he still seemed genuinely interested in everything she had to say.
It was exhausting, that level of attention.
Maybe it was better to be invisible.
She had about a half-dozen txts from Janice and Naila, wanting a minute-by-second playback of everything that happened and everything that was said.
It was fun. she sent to Naila.
No, he didn’t feel me up. she sent to Janice.
And then promptly turned off her phone.
There was a pint of ice cream in the freezer that she had been saving for a particularly hard day. She really didn’t think that it would be necessary after a date - that from anyone else’s perspective probably went really well - but she also wasn’t really interested in saving it anymore, either.
Buffy was at the kitchen island, looking at an old family photo album when Dawn walked in.
“You’re home early.”
“It’s almost nine. I’m nearly an hour past curfew. And shouldn’t you be out patrolling?” she didn’t mean to be harsh, but a pint of ice cream didn’t go very far with Buffy in the room. Slayer metabolism or something.
“I was looking for something.”
“In the old album?”
Dawn looked toward the fridge and weighed her options. Buffy should be leaving to patrol any second, does she stand there awkwardly, or does she just get the ice cream out and let the chips fall where they may?
“There was this dress dad bought me once and I just wanted to find…”
Dawn shifted from foot to foot. She’d been too nervous to eat at the Chinese place Jeremy picked out. She could get away with eating ice cream for dinner, right?
“What dress?”
Buffy blinked up at her, “I can’t remember. That’s why I’m looking. I really, really wanted it, but I think I only wore it like once before we moved to Sunnydale.” Dawn shook her head and went to the freezer, Buffy couldn’t eat that much of her ice cream, surely. “It was red and had these really adorable purple flowers on it and I can’t remember why I wanted it so badly.”
Dawn pulled the ice cream out of the freezer, set it on the counter, pulled off the top with a pop! And then grabbed the chocolate syrup from the fridge and dumped it right on top, not even bothering with a bowl. She had a spoonful in her mouth before Buffy looked up.
“Chocolate syrup on sherbet? Seriously.”
“Mow oo won eaa in,” Dawn said through a mouthful of deliciousness.
“Well that’s true.”
“You’re looking for a red dress with purple flowers on it? Are you sure it was a dress?”
“Yup.”
“It couldn’t be the sweater that you are wearing right now that you’ve worn a half a million times so it’s not even red anymore and all the flowers have fallen off?”
Buffy looked down at her arm, stretched it out in front of her and smiled, “Hey! That’s right! It was a sweater.”
Dawn looked down at the sherbet. She suddenly had a loss of appetite. “Why did you want that sweater so bad?”
Buffy shrugged, “I thought it was pretty.”
“It was kinda hideous at the time.”
Buffy considered her sister for a minute and then sighed, closing the photo album, “I found out that I was a Slayer like two weeks before he bought this for me, it seemed… I don’t know … like something that I could grow old in. My Watcher kept telling me I was going to die, like any second, he didn’t have much faith in my ability to live.” She gave Dawn a watery smile, “And this - it was like something an old maid would wear. A middle-aged lady who worked in a library and had a dozen cats and loved Dateline.”
“But you don’t ever want to work in a library and have a dozen cats,” Dawn pointed out.
“I wanted the choice, though.” Buffy looked down at her watch, “I gotta go patrol. Don’t stay up too late. And please eat something with nutritional value.”
“I will,” her voice echoed in the empty kitchen.
“Where are all your old notebooks?”
Janice had decided that a lack of play-by-play of the date from the previous night warranted her attacking Dawn with a pillow the next morning at an ungodly hour. An hour at which - if anyone had asked Dawn before - Janice didn’t know the right side of, at least not on a weekend anyway.
“What?” Dawn looked down at Janice who was lying on her floor, looking up at her bookshelf with a little frown.
“There used to be like ten or something notebooks in here, all Harriet the Spy style.”
“You mean my journals? You read my journals?”
Janice propped herself up on her elbows and snorted, “Not the journals. The spy notebooks. They were my fucking jam.”
“I don’t … you’re talking about my journals.”
She rolled her eyes, “Whatever. I know what a ten year old’s journal looks like and that wasn’t this. They were like all these little stories and stuff about your neighborhood and your parents. Some really hilarious shit about the kids in your class.”
“I didn’t think that you knew what Harriet the Spy is,” Dawn said dubiously, turning her attention back to painting her toenails purple.
“I do read, Dawn Summers,” she sounded a little wounded. Dawn rolled her eyes, confident she couldn’t see. “I can see you! God you are a class-A bitch today, what the hell.”
“I burned them,” Dawn said, blowing on her toes.
“Before or after you cut yourself?”
“I can’t remember. It was all a blur.”
“Too bad, you probably could have published them someday. They were fucking hilarious, Summers.” Janice popped up, “Start a new one!”
“What?”
“Yeah, start a new one. Don’t write anything personal or like poetry or shit like that. Write like you did before, about the people in class and in the neighborhood.”
“Why?”
Janice shrugged, lying back down on her back and lifting her feet in the air, twirling them a little, “To entertain me. I’m bored.”
Dawn laughed and threw a pillow at her.
By Wednesday, she had a collection of Lisa Frank notebooks in her locker to choose from, all with a note on the first page from Janice that said NO EMO SHIT!.
She treated Tara to milkshakes and cheesy-jalapeno fries.
Tara treated her to a movie with lots of explosions and terrible dialogue and guys running around without shirts on.
“Is the cure still worse than the disease?”
Dawn wrinkled her nose, “Maybe there’s no one cure-all, maybe you keep finding new ones when the old ones don’t work anymore.”
That night she wrote about Tara’s mom in her notebook with the panda bears on the cover. Janice stole it from her in third period French class, causing a bit of a riot when she cried right there in front of everyone. After class - or more exactly, after Madame Belgard was sure Janice wasn’t about to go into the ladies to off herself - she thrust the notebook back in Dawn’s hands.
“Write about my parents.”
“Why?”
“I want to see what you get right.”
“What are you writing, Niblet?”
“Nothing. Everything. What do you want me to write?”
“Something for posterity?”
“How about something true?”
“I only tell the truth, love.”
The story she wrote down was vastly different than the words he spoke aloud to the cold cemetery air. The story she read back to him made him laugh and throw her up in the air as if she was a child of three or four and not a fifteen year old girl with limbs too long for her body and a heart that weighed like a stone in her chest. Vampires were good to keep around - they made one feel so much younger and smaller than they really were.
She wrote down the stories of the sweater and gave it to Sania.
“You are terrible at this,” she said helpfully over a cup of coffee while they ignored Jeremy and Dylan sulking in the opposite corner by the window.
“At writing?”
“At telling your own story.”
“It’s not my story - it’s the sweater’s story.”
“Really?” Sania looked down at the page. “All I see is you.”
Dawn pulled out the notebook with a unicorn on it that Elizabeth - Jeremy’s charming little sister - had given her with a slightly sticky grin, “Here, read this one about Jeremy’s aunt Beatrice. I met her over the weekend and she’s a laugh riot.”
Sania studied the page. After a few minutes she giggled, “Okay. You are good. But … it’s weird.”
“What?”
“I feel like I learned more about you than about dear old aunt Beatrice.”
Dawn looked down at the notebook on the table in front of her. She was writing about the time Tara’s family came in to town. It was a hard memory, but it felt important. “Isn’t that what writing is, exposing the author?” Sania gave her a look and Dawn shrunk back into her seat. “You disapprove.”
“No. I’m thinking.”
“About my genius?”
“About mine.”
Dawn smiled, “Did you just find the answer to world peace in your brain?”
“Let me take this home. I want to write the story of the sweater and see what happens. I want to see what I get wrong.”
“Hey! There’s a party this weekend, come with me?” Jeremy sat on the table next to Dawn with a sudden plunk all excitement and twinkling eyes.
“Jer, you scared the crap out of me,” Dawn brushed at her jeans where she had just spilled her coffee.
“Oh, hey. Sorry. I said your name like three times.”
Dawn sighed, that was probably true. She was actually really enjoying the latest unit in her English class and had asked Ms Kaloyan for some extra reading (Celeste had twinkled a bit, but thankfully didn’t say a word) and had a way of completely disappearing into whatever she was reading. “What’s up, Jer?”
“Party. You and me. Saturday. You game?”
Dawn looked up at him. He was pretty. And funny. And she actually had a good time hanging out with him, to her surprise. She’d even got in the habit of coming over to help him babysit his sister on Fridays. But it didn’t feel magical or heartbreaking or anything. She’d be the first person to admit that she did not want to follow in her sister’s footsteps, nothing soul-crushing. She wanted a steady, simple boyfriend. In the event that she ever wanted a boyfriend. Which, unfortunately for Jeremy, wasn’t what she wanted at the present moment. And it didn’t seem fair to keep dating him when she didn’t want what he wanted. She’d bumped into him talking to some of his friends once, Miguel and his girlfriend Gabby. There was something about Jeremy’s face, looking at them, something wistful. He wanted that, couplehood thing. Where you bicker over what movie to watch on Fridays and eat each other’s French fries.
“Jeremy… I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” she tried to put everything in her face so that she wouldn’t have to say the words aloud.
He grinned down at her, “It’s just some friends getting together. You’re allowed to have friends, right?”
“… right,” she smiled hesitantly.
“Get away from my student, St. Clair. You know I can take you in a fight,” Celeste’s cheerful voice came from behind them.
“Hey!” Jeremy leaped off the desk and swooped Celeste in a hug, “Convince Dawn here to come to your party.”
“What party?” Celeste brushed him off with a smile and walked around to her seat across from Dawn.
Jeremy stood behind Dawn’s chair, putting his hands on her shoulders, “The one at your house that Eli is hosting.”
“That’s not a party exactly.”
Jeremy looked at his watch, “I’ll be late for practice. Do whatever you can to get this girl to come out.” And then he was gone.
Celeste fought back a smile, “So you and Jeremy?”
Dawn groaned and slumped back in her chair, “Is he always like a newborn puppy on caffeine?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” Celeste eyed her, “Look, you don’t have to come as his date. But you should come.”
“I should?”
“Definitely,” Celeste took out her editing like the matter was already settled. “You can meet Eli and everyone. And I promise Jeremy will be on his best behavior.”
A few minutes later, Dawn said softly, “He just… deserves a girlfriend. Someone better.”
Celeste smacked her hand with a ruler, “Shut up. You’re way out of St. Claire’s league. No one could do better than you.”
“That’s just what girls say to each other. I know about Girl Code, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“I’m not the right girl for him.”
Celeste wiggled her eyebrows, “You know who is the right girl for him?” Dawn shook her head, so Celeste leaned forward and whispered, “AudreyDebois. She’s had a crush on him for years. I’ll invite her and she’ll distract him for you.”
“So I’m not going to get out of this, is what you’re saying?”
Celeste grinned, “Nope.”
She was sitting in the living room just beginning to read the loose pages Sania had tucked into her History textbook earlier that day, when Buffy walked through the front door and collapsed on the couch beside her.
“Studying?”
“Not… really. Just reading something Sania wrote for me.”
“Like a poem?”
“More like… a short story.”
“Sania is the disgustingly beautiful one with a twin sister, right? Their mom thinks we’re starving and is always sending over food?”
“Pretty sure their mom thinks everyone needs her to cook for them, she’s just that type.”
“Mom wasn’t really that type,” Buffy’s eyes closed. “I liked that about her.”
“Me too.”
“Can you read it to me?”
“Read you Sania’s story?”
“Yeah… unless you think I won’t like it?” Buffy’s eyes stayed closed.
Dawn looked down at the page in her hand, BEING THREE STORIES OF A SWEATER. She cleared her throat and began,
Being Three Stories of a … Clock
The first time, the clock was loved. So loved and so desired that a little girl begged for hours just to look at it. She wore took it with her on all her grand adventures. It grew old and worn, but was still loved.
The second time, the clock was a consolation prize. Brought home by a father too tired to care, unseen by the girl, and mocked by the wife. In this story, it was nothing more than a trinket.
The third time, the clock was loved by another - purchased on a whim and given away. It was always meant to be a gift and never for herself. She begged for the sake of another and it was loved well enough. It was a token.
Selfish love, tired love, selfless love.
And now it is up to you, which is the truth? Which story will stand the tests of time? What truth will the teller choose - that of the coveted, that of the abandoned, or that of the gift?
Dawn looked up and saw Buffy wiping away tears.
“Buffy? Everything okay?”
“You know, we never really talked about … you. Like, the Key-you or whatever. It all happened so fast, you weren’t there and then you were and… I’m sorry.”
“What made you think of that?”
Buffy stood up and stretched, “I can get Giles and the gang in research mode if you want.”
“What I want, Buffy Anne Summers, is for you to tell me what - no, I can do my own… that is… no research necessary.”
“The story made me think of you. Or the Key. Glory wanted you so bad, she killed so many people. And the monks kinda just dropped you off without a manual or anything.”
Dawn swallowed, “So I’m a clock now?”
“Better than me. I’m just a Chosen One. And death is my gift, right?”
Tears stung Dawn’s eyes, she laughed hollowly, “Yeah, that’s what they say.”
Buffy was already halfway up the stairs, “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Of course not,” her voice echoed through the house, soft and low.
“AND TAKE OUT THE TRASH BEFORE YOU GO TO BED!” Buffy shouted from her room.
Dawn looked up and smiled, “YEAH OKAY, GOT IT!”