TROUVAILLE ... l.danes (REWRITE)

chapter seventeen; the past

HE FINALLY FOUND HIS FAVOURITE COLOUR

nineteen-eighty-two

IT'S BEEN raining non-stop for three days. The banks of the lake, luckily, haven't broken, but the streets are starting to fill with rainwater that isn't circling the drains fast enough. Almost everybody is out in full force trying to soak it up with sponges, but if this rain doesn't stop, they aren't quite sure what they're going to do. Stars Hollow has never had to prepare for a flood before.

Shelley's tears aren't helping.

Lucas yanks down the hood of his rain jacket – it's not cool, but he's ruined all his sweatshirts in the rain and really doesn't want to ruin his letterman – as soon as he reaches the gazebo, forcing her head to swing up towards him. Her autumn eyes are shaded in with red and she wipes the back of her hand against them, worsening the ruined mascara clinging to her eyelids. She's probably used up every available tissue in Stars Hollow so now the snot is sticking to her nose and she's tried wiping it away on the sleeve of her hoodie to no avail. She's soaked. She must have forgotten her jacket and had run here when the rain had grown heavier, deciding to let her tears soak into the wood of the gazebo, where they will sit forever.

Lucas has been watching her cry for three days. And for three days, he has argued with himself about coming to see her. It was only two weeks ago that she had bounced on their study date to go to the cinema with some nerd he keeps seeing in the hallways. He never thought he'd get this angry. No matter how much running he does, nothing will blow it off. Every hurdle he jumps is just another obstacle for him to get pissed at. No amount of vandalism is getting rid of that fire in his chest. All he's felt for the past two weeks is hot, seething rage that has settled in the pit of his stomach and almost made him throw up over and over.

Last night, he sat at the toilet and wretched, and wretched, and wretched expecting flames to fall from his mouth, expecting a waterfall of black blood that explains why he was so nauseous, expecting anything but the clear water that came out. There was nothing there but what churns inside him. Is this what he is made of? A vexing wrath that flares up like an infectious disease.

Shelley plucks at a loose thread on her hoodie. "What are you doing here?" Lucas shrugs. She's basically curled up on one side of the bench, knees pulled up to her chest so she can hide her tears from the rest of the world. But, when the skies are crying with her, is it really so easy to hide? He sits down on the other side of the bench, not close enough to scare her off, not too far to make her think he doesn't want to be seen with her.

When did this divide get so big that even he couldn't jump it?

"Getting out of the rain. Didn't seem to work."

She doesn't laugh at his joke. He doesn't expect her to.

"I want to be alone." She burrows closer to her knees, as if they will be protection enough to the pain tearing apart her bones. If only he knew more about medicine, he might be able to stitch her back together.

"Cool. Me too."

She tries to glare at him over the curve of her knees, but her red-rimmed eyes are too tired to keep up the facade and she lets out a fatigued sigh as she buries her face back into the digging bones. If only he could lean over and offer up the tight space between his arms as protection.

Would it even work?

"So, what happened?"

"I don't wanna talk about it." Her words are muffled by her knees. Once upon a time, Lucas made a promise to his dad to protect her. He can't remember how old he was, but his dad sat him down after he'd come in from spending the day with her, as it rained around them and his knees were still caked in mud, and he'd made him promise that no harm would come to her. Physical, emotional, whatever. Lucas was to protect her from the other boys in town.