TROUVAILLE ... l.danes (REWRITE)

chapter twenty-four; the present

DEAD FLIES FALLING TO SWEAT-SLICKED SUMMER CEMENT 

two-thousand-and-two

THE STARS Hollow Twenty-Four Hour Dance Marathon. Better known, of course, as the bane of Shelley's existence.

As a child, her Mom would force her to be her dance partner, swinging her around to the swing band playing – badly, mind you – while her eyes drooped with tiredness and her body grew heavier and heavier with lethargy. They never won, no matter how hard her Mom tried to keep them both upright. As the numbers started dwindling and more couples started dropping on the dancefloor, dead flies falling to sweat-slicked summer cement, Shelley's legs would fail slowly and she would pull her Mom down with her.

Yet, here she is again, being pulled through Stars Hollow at five in the damn morning. Olive, chipper as always, bounces on the toes of her short white heels. She talks as if five o'clock means nothing to her. As if the darkness of the early morning sky is anything compared to the beauty of the afternoon, when the high sun kisses your skin through the glass of Luke's long row of windows and heats the blood curling in your toes. Olive grins up at the clock tower above them. Shelley glowers as the clock strikes five past.

"I hate mornings."

Olive laughs and tugs her friend towards the queue lining up outside Miss Patty's. She'd woken her up an hour earlier so that they could get ready together. Shelley had inhaled coffee like air as Olive had swiped makeup onto her face. She'd groaned, and muttered, and yawned as she slipped into a yellow swing dress that had reminded her a lot of Waitress when she'd first rented it.

She doesn't feel too Waitress-y right now, anyway, when every muscle in her body is begging her to slip right back into the warmth of her bed where she can sleep and sleep and sleep.

"Over here!" Shelley is jolted back into awakeness by Babette at the welcome table. Her shaggy blonde hair is piled on the top of her head in neon pink curlers and sleep tugs at her eyes. There are three empty coffee cups on the sign-up table she sits behind. The fourth is on its way, currently being carried high above the crowd by Morey.

"Hiya Babs," greets Olive. She is sunshine in all of its forms. Liquid gold dripping onto concrete. Dapples of light at the bottom of the swimming pool. Heat kissing freckled skin. And, yet, they are all still stuck in the night, unable to open their eyes enough to see her beautiful shine.

Shelley yawns, loudly.

"You both look so pretty," Babette coos. "Don't they look gorgeous, Morey?" Even in her sleep-dappled state, Babette is still the loudest woman in Stars Hollow. She inhales half the coffee before Morey even has a chance to sit beside her. Shelley almost laughs. She would, if she was awake enough.

She needs to get her hands on some of that coffee.

Olive signs them up, chattering away to Babette. Shelley, on the other hand, starts to sink against the table. Morey's chuckles drift into her ears. But, her eyes are starting to slowly blink shut and she's struggling to keep herself upright. Morey pushes his coffee cup under her nose and it rouses her enough to get her to jump.

"Alright, girls, you go get your physicals and then take your forms inside, and they'll give you a number."

Olive takes Shelley by the elbow and drags her away again, not trusting her for a moment to walk by herself. She's never been a morning person. Of course, she had to wake up early for school, and still she would inhale two coffees before she even got to her first class, needing any sort of pick me up before she slunk down the drain. She misses the days of sleeping in past ten.