Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Thirty-Five Part One

October had dawned on Cape Cod before anyone could even properly know it had come. The occasional days of warmth were virtually gone, replaced by a crispness that tinged the tips of each resident's nose with pink. Some days, Anne missed the feeling of the sun beating on her back, but there was something spectacular about the way little bumps formed on her skin and the air whispered over her hair. It was a freshness that felt purifying.

But despite all the wonderful things that came out of the crisper weather, not even Anne could willingly be relinquished of her warm bed and blankets when Monday morning dawned, the sun filtering through the wind more of a taunt of its coldness than a friendly alarm. But this Monday was bound to different—a weekend had lapsed between the audition, and it only stood to reason that today, perhaps Anne would know.

Being this properly excited about something would have been foreign to Anne just a few months prior, more like a childish dream than a reality. But then Diana came, and with her there were oceanside campfires, sleepovers, and stolen touches that ghosted over Anne's skin and caused every nerve in her body to stand at high alert. Now, the excitement was welcomed, not pushed aside for fear of disappointment.

"You're definitely going to be Belle," Diana said, with such confidence that Anne almost believed it herself—not that any of that mattered when her head was resting in Diana's lips. The trio were perched on the picnic tables just outside the school, Anne and Charlie on the bench, and Diana having seated herself above both of them on the table itself, thus making her knees an excellent height to lie down on. It was, overall, an excellent arrangement.

And because of the contentment that pooled in Anne's belly, there was no resentment when she said, "I can't be Belle. I look nothing like her."

"What is she supposed to look like anyway?" Charlie said, his lips scrunched up in such a way that it gave away any misconceptions about the genuineness of his question.

"Brown hair. Like Diana," Anne said, shutting her eyes with a blissful smile curled across her lips. "I can be the beast though," she said, and even though she didn't open her eyes, it could only be assumed that they were dancing behind her shut lids.

"Don't be silly," Diana said, elbowing Anne even as she was thinking that such an arrangement wouldn't really not be so bad, "You're going to be Anne, and you're going to be the most gorgeous ginger Belle and then you're going to go to Broadway and start the ginger Belle revolution."

Anne laughed, sitting up and instead settling herself into Diana's heart. In the back of her head, she knew that the time was still moving and soon she would have to trudge into classes and attend her dumb B level classes. But not yet.

A car door slammed, and a somewhat mussed Gilbert Blythe darted out from his mother's red Ford. It was enough to make Anne jerk up, curiously following his movement toward the school yard. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and he smiled.

"Anne?" Diana's voice sounded so small, but it was enough to shake Anne out of whatever reverie she had been in. "Is something going on?"

"What do you mean?" Anne asked, her lips pursed and her eyebrows knit together, with genuinely no clue as to what dear Diana could be talking about. But there was something in her eyes—some glint, that made Anne's pulse quicken.

"You and Gilbert. I thought you didn't like each other. Or, you know, you didn't like him," Diana said, stumbling over her words, her chest tightening. She was not, in general, the jealous type, but there was something about the idea that the boy who had called her Anne carrots having a relationship with Anne that made her insides turn green.