MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter eight

October 2000

Ms Gilmore's Classroom 

16:00

HIS KNOCK comes an hour after the final bell has rung and all my students have gone home for the day. I'm at my desk, staring down at the tests I've yet to mark staring up at me. The last half of my day has been a blur since Lorelai slammed my door closed, leaving me behind to wallow in tears that bubbled over and have stung the back of my eyes since.

We're not sisters.

I've known it all along. Lorelai has never wanted to be my sister. That's why she always leaves me behind, always walks away. So many times as a child, she'd shake my grubby hands off of her and pretend I never existed. As we grew older, I started to realize she never wanted to be around me. She had friends who would come around, who would sit in her room, and I would sit outside the door, crying as they launched vicious attacks against me. I was thirteen and my sister was just another stranger in this house who picked me apart. And yet, I loved her. And yet, I dared to believe we could still be sisters.

I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes, begging the tears to stay back, just for a moment so that I can focus. So that I can do anything but stare at the sheets in front of me. They can come when I'm at home, when I'm sitting in a bath, listening to classical music, drinking red wine that spills over my chin every so often because I'm too clumsy when I'm crying. They can come when I'm lying in bed, in fresh pajamas, staring at the wall in front of me where there used to be a person to hold me.

Maybe, finally, I'll cave and call Harrison.

The knock comes. Three knocks in quick succession and then his voice through the wood that separates us.

"It's me. Can I come in?"

I thought he'd never want to see me again.

I fix my clothes, making sure my tan trousers haven't creased as I've been sitting. I call out for him to come in. The door swings open and I stand to greet him, but the words get caught in my throat when I see the unamused look on Jethro's face. His eyes glisten with disappointment. I wish I'd left when my students had. I wish I wasn't forced to sit here for another hour and pour over test answers and homework that needs grading. I wish I had a life to go home to. But I've got nothing. Nothing but darkness.

Tomorrow is Saturday. I'll do nothing all day. I might not even go out for coffee. Maybe I'll clean my too-big house. Maybe I'll go outside in the chilly October air and hope that I get hypothermia so I never have to go back to work and face him, and face Rory, and face Lorelai, and face my mother.

"How has your day been?" His accent doesn't drawl out of him like always, stuck behind the indignant bitterness that has followed him since I walked out of his classroom and never went back. He hates me now. Everyone does. I had a chance to be pulled out of the loneliness and that has come crumbling down around me because I suck at holding onto relationships.

"And don't lie–" he cuts in, just as I open my mouth to say the hollowed-out version of it was fine that has been my go-to answer for that question since I learned how to talk in a gilded cage like this. "–I know that it wasn't fine."

My shoulders tense. Do you really know me so well, so soon? How can you stand there and stare at me and know that all I need is someone to tell me that they see me? It's like you're the only person in the entire world who knows me, but I will never know you like that. I'm not allowed to know anyone like that. My mother has always taught me to keep people at arms-length, that way they can't hurt me, that way I can run without having to cut ties.