it's still sunday in central time!
Title: no other way
Author: outsidemydoor
Rating: G
Pairing: Jessi/Mallory
Disclaimer: Everyone belongs to AMM and Scholastic, except for the quote from Daphne's Book, which belongs to Mary Downing Hahn. I'm just borrowing them.
Author's notes: For velvetandlace, who wanted old photographs and Mallory's drawings. Jessi is really hard for me to write, apparently, but I hope there's a little good in it for you.
When you're eleven, and the promised land of thirteen seems centuries away, it's easy to believe that everything will always be the same. Not just the bad stuff--not just the braces and the glasses and the parents who treat you like a baby. But the good stuff, too--like the dance classes and the Baby-Sitters Club and the sleepovers and the pizza parties...and your very best friend in the whole world.
Sometimes you lie awake at night, long after Mama and Daddy have gone to bed, and you try to puzzle out how it will all work. Maybe the BSC will keep going, even when you're in high school, maybe even after the senior members have graduated. Maybe you and Mallory will be the leaders then, and you'll be training kids like Becca and Vanessa and Charlotte, kids who used to be sitting charges. Maybe you'll even come back for meetings during college vacations. Maybe you'll all still have slumber parties with pizza toasts, and you'll talk about the good old days, but you'll never really have to leave the good old days behind.
And when you grow up, you and Mal have already decided that you'll have a beautiful house together, with lots of light and plants and cats, just like the girls in Daphne's Book, the Mary Downing Hahn book that made you both cry.
"And we'll never get married and live boring lives. We'll just have men friends. Lots of them. And they'll all smoke pipes and talk about philosophy and be desperately in love with us."
But life has other plans, and it wastes no time in carrying them out. First Mal runs away to boarding school, leaving you stranded in Stoneybrook. You have other friends, of course, but none of them are Mallory, because there's no one like Mallory. So you throw yourself into dance, the only thing in your life that still makes sense, and before you even really realize it, you've quit the BSC and you're drowning in a world of school and dance, school and dance, school and dance; and every so often you find your way back up to the surface to grab a few deep breaths and check the mail, because more often than not, there's a letter from Mallory. She still writes real letters--she's the only person you know who still writes letters. They're full of people you'll never meet and places you'll never see, but Mallory's letters make them feel as real and immediate to you as the people and places in your own life. She even illustrates them with the same kind of funny, awkward drawings that accompany her children's stories.
And you write back, at first. Religiously. Mallory's the real writer, of course, and you communicate best through long legs and outstretched arms, but you try to match her tone, try to make Stoneybrook as real to her now as it was when she lived here. You even try drawing pictures, but your pictures look even worse than Mallory's, and so you give up.
And then, out of nowhere, puberty hits. It's as if you wake up one morning with a completely different body; an awkward, heavy one that you can't keep under control anymore. You want to be proud of your curves, want to be proud that you're finally growing up, but instead, you're confused and sluggish and clumsy, and no one can help you make sense of it all. Mallory is too far away, and you're sure she wouldn't understand, anyway. She's probably still praying each night that she'll be able to fill up a training bra. You don't have to be skinny and graceful to write children's books. You don't have to be perfect.
So you stop writing. When Mallory comes home to visit, you find reasons to avoid her. you're trying out for the swim team, hoping that will bring some sense back to your life, and you've got to be at the pool day after school. You're taking care of Becca and Squirt. You have Spanish Club meetings, math tutoring, volunteering at the library, anything that will keep Mallory from seeing what a failure you've become. No doubt she tries to get in touch with you through the other BSC girls, too, but you aren't talking to them, either--how could you go back to them, after you'd quit the club, and admit that you weren't even dancing anymore?
With the other BSC members, it's a question of pride. There's no way to explain yourself or to ask them to take you back without losing face. But with Mallory...with Mallory, it's got nothing to do with pride. It's the fear of letting her down. Of being less in her eyes somehow. You don't want to lose the way she'd look at you after a ballet performance, eyes shining behind her glasses, one arm full of flowers, one arm outstretched to squeeze you tight.
There's a picture on your bedside table, still, of you and Mallory backstage after The Nutcracker. It's a candid shot that Daddy must have taken without either of you noticing. Your arms are spilling over with colorful bouquets, your hair is pulled into a bun so tight it makes you wince to remember it. Your face is unnatural with stage makeup, but your smile is real, relaxed, and beautiful--because you're in the embrace of a girl who adores you, a girl whose entire body is glowing with love for her best friend, the ballerina. A girl who's so much prettier than anyone ever gives her credit for, so much smarter, so much funnier, so much more.
And at that moment, it hits you. It's something you should have known by now--it's something you probably knew already in your body, but since your body and your brain haven't been on speaking terms in ages, it's maybe not so surprising that it's taken you so long to realize...
You're in love with Mallory Pike.
There's just no other way to say it.
And you stretch your legs up to the sky, take a deep breath, and reach for the phone.
Author: outsidemydoor
Rating: G
Pairing: Jessi/Mallory
Disclaimer: Everyone belongs to AMM and Scholastic, except for the quote from Daphne's Book, which belongs to Mary Downing Hahn. I'm just borrowing them.
Author's notes: For velvetandlace, who wanted old photographs and Mallory's drawings. Jessi is really hard for me to write, apparently, but I hope there's a little good in it for you.
When you're eleven, and the promised land of thirteen seems centuries away, it's easy to believe that everything will always be the same. Not just the bad stuff--not just the braces and the glasses and the parents who treat you like a baby. But the good stuff, too--like the dance classes and the Baby-Sitters Club and the sleepovers and the pizza parties...and your very best friend in the whole world.
Sometimes you lie awake at night, long after Mama and Daddy have gone to bed, and you try to puzzle out how it will all work. Maybe the BSC will keep going, even when you're in high school, maybe even after the senior members have graduated. Maybe you and Mallory will be the leaders then, and you'll be training kids like Becca and Vanessa and Charlotte, kids who used to be sitting charges. Maybe you'll even come back for meetings during college vacations. Maybe you'll all still have slumber parties with pizza toasts, and you'll talk about the good old days, but you'll never really have to leave the good old days behind.
And when you grow up, you and Mal have already decided that you'll have a beautiful house together, with lots of light and plants and cats, just like the girls in Daphne's Book, the Mary Downing Hahn book that made you both cry.
"And we'll never get married and live boring lives. We'll just have men friends. Lots of them. And they'll all smoke pipes and talk about philosophy and be desperately in love with us."
But life has other plans, and it wastes no time in carrying them out. First Mal runs away to boarding school, leaving you stranded in Stoneybrook. You have other friends, of course, but none of them are Mallory, because there's no one like Mallory. So you throw yourself into dance, the only thing in your life that still makes sense, and before you even really realize it, you've quit the BSC and you're drowning in a world of school and dance, school and dance, school and dance; and every so often you find your way back up to the surface to grab a few deep breaths and check the mail, because more often than not, there's a letter from Mallory. She still writes real letters--she's the only person you know who still writes letters. They're full of people you'll never meet and places you'll never see, but Mallory's letters make them feel as real and immediate to you as the people and places in your own life. She even illustrates them with the same kind of funny, awkward drawings that accompany her children's stories.
And you write back, at first. Religiously. Mallory's the real writer, of course, and you communicate best through long legs and outstretched arms, but you try to match her tone, try to make Stoneybrook as real to her now as it was when she lived here. You even try drawing pictures, but your pictures look even worse than Mallory's, and so you give up.
And then, out of nowhere, puberty hits. It's as if you wake up one morning with a completely different body; an awkward, heavy one that you can't keep under control anymore. You want to be proud of your curves, want to be proud that you're finally growing up, but instead, you're confused and sluggish and clumsy, and no one can help you make sense of it all. Mallory is too far away, and you're sure she wouldn't understand, anyway. She's probably still praying each night that she'll be able to fill up a training bra. You don't have to be skinny and graceful to write children's books. You don't have to be perfect.
So you stop writing. When Mallory comes home to visit, you find reasons to avoid her. you're trying out for the swim team, hoping that will bring some sense back to your life, and you've got to be at the pool day after school. You're taking care of Becca and Squirt. You have Spanish Club meetings, math tutoring, volunteering at the library, anything that will keep Mallory from seeing what a failure you've become. No doubt she tries to get in touch with you through the other BSC girls, too, but you aren't talking to them, either--how could you go back to them, after you'd quit the club, and admit that you weren't even dancing anymore?
With the other BSC members, it's a question of pride. There's no way to explain yourself or to ask them to take you back without losing face. But with Mallory...with Mallory, it's got nothing to do with pride. It's the fear of letting her down. Of being less in her eyes somehow. You don't want to lose the way she'd look at you after a ballet performance, eyes shining behind her glasses, one arm full of flowers, one arm outstretched to squeeze you tight.
There's a picture on your bedside table, still, of you and Mallory backstage after The Nutcracker. It's a candid shot that Daddy must have taken without either of you noticing. Your arms are spilling over with colorful bouquets, your hair is pulled into a bun so tight it makes you wince to remember it. Your face is unnatural with stage makeup, but your smile is real, relaxed, and beautiful--because you're in the embrace of a girl who adores you, a girl whose entire body is glowing with love for her best friend, the ballerina. A girl who's so much prettier than anyone ever gives her credit for, so much smarter, so much funnier, so much more.
And at that moment, it hits you. It's something you should have known by now--it's something you probably knew already in your body, but since your body and your brain haven't been on speaking terms in ages, it's maybe not so surprising that it's taken you so long to realize...
You're in love with Mallory Pike.
There's just no other way to say it.
And you stretch your legs up to the sky, take a deep breath, and reach for the phone.