FEVER DREAM OF HAPPY
PEOPLE
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
✧
"IS THERE A reason that you're still here?" Jess asked as Willow closed the door behind them.
Shooting him a glare that could kill, Willow pulled her book out of her back pocket. "I'm not doing anything to upset Luke. In this case that means not spending the day with you."
"Well that's stupid logic, considering how everything you've done today has upset Luke." Jess pointed out, grabbing Willow's book out of her hands.
The more time spent with him, the more Willow's urge to kill him grew. Spending time with Jess had made her actually come to realize what Shawny felt like during her murderous points.
Instead of killing him, Willow put on an overly sweet smile, placing her hands on her hips. "Is it your goal to be as annoying as possible?"
Skimming through her copy of The Catcher in the Rye, Jess shot a glance at the girl. "Says the one who looks like she's practically bubbling over with happiness."
"In New York, is bubbling over with happiness threatening people with knives?" Willow held her cheerful tone. "Because if so, I will never understand how you could leave a place so wonderful."
"How did you know I'm from New York?"
"Guessed." The lie went straight through her teeth.
Willow's face hurt from holding an over-exaggerated smile. Dropping it, she continued, "Okay I'm done, smiling that hard hurts. Don't know how everyone here does it all the time."
"Hm." Jess glanced up at Willow from her book, raising an eyebrow. "Are you not from here?"
"Oh, no," Willow grabbed The Catcher in the Rye, glaring at Jess. "Trust me, I am."
At her bitter tone, Jess knew the easier thing to do was to drop the whole backstory conversation. Looking at the book now returned to Willow's hands, a question flew to his brain.
"What did you think of it?"
Willow shrugged in response, tucking the book back into her pocket. "I don't know. For the hell of me, I can't get through it."
Jess's shock was so clear on his face Willow could laugh.
"You-" He was cut off as he almost walked into a family crossing the street, returning the glare the mother gave him before walking around them and scowling.
"You haven't read it all the way through?"
"Nope." Willow shook her head. "It's actually my sister's copy, I stole it years ago."
Jess was staring at Willow intensely, almost offended by this confession.
"I always have it on me in hopes I'll randomly finish it, but I never do." Willow shrugged at Jess when she saw the expression he held, his eyebrows drawn together.
"God, you're so uncultured." Jess shook his head in disappointment as Willow let out a chuckle. "My friends think I continue to read it for fun, and for some reason I let them believe it."
"That's weird, Willow." He shook his head again. "You're really weird."
"Thank you." Willow's tone was absolutely genuine, pointing her index finger at Jess as the made their way to the river. "Did you know that almost every serial killer caught had a copy of the Catcher in the Rye on their bookshelf?"
Catching sight of the ring that was now lopsided on the finger she had pointed at him, Willow pulled her hand back and fixed it.
"Are you telling me you're a serial killer?" Willow shook her head as she continued to fiddle with the ring. "Because, as much as I hate to burst your bubble, that was quite obvious based on your unnatural obsession with knives."
"Hey!" Willow's expression was now the one holding offense. "You can blame my best-friend for that one."
"Uh huh." Jess nodded in disbelief.
"Really!" Jess glanced at Willow through the side of his eye, laughing to himself when he noticed her now reddened cheeks. "I woke up this morning and she told me she'd stab a knife through my heart."
"I feel like you're leaving parts of the story out." Jess replied, leaning down and picking up a stone from the ground, tossing it in the air and catching it.
Willow punched him in the shoulder, yet she didn't deny the accusation, and the two of them both knew Jess was right.
"Oh, so Shawny's the best-friend." Jess pointedly said, catching Willow's confused gaze. "You mentioned her this morning."
"Yup." Willow nodded. "Anyways, I am not telling you I am a serial killer because I don't even have a shelf to put it on in the first place."
"You don't own a bookshelf?"
"No, stacking books is easier." Willow laughed at Jess' horrended expression. "And cheaper."
"Of course you're a book stacker!" Jess threw Willow the stone he had been tossing to himself. "Explains the doggy ear on your pages." He pointed at her as she caught the rock.
"I hate you." Willow's tone wasn't malicious and Jess knew that she wasn't serious, at least not 100 percent.
"Look, I may not be able to finish the serial killer book, but you can't finish The Secret Garden." She bargained.
"How did you know that?" Jess was slowly finding that Willow knew things about him that he had never told anyone. "Are you a mind reader, or some shit?"
Instead of answering, Willow gave him a small smile, pulling Jess in the direction of the river. "Well, I'm right, aren't I?"
"You keep just knowing these random things." Jess replied rhetorically, weirded out by the half normal conversation they were having.
He always stuck to one rule, one he had made years previously, when he was just a young boy. When Jess decided he didn't like someone, it had to stay that way, Jess couldn't afford surprises. And having normal, or at least as normal as Willow got, conversations with someone you didn't like?
Well, it just wasn't right.
"It's my favorite book." Willow broke his thoughts after a couple of moments walking on the dirt path. She found the look Jess gave her amusing.
"What, The Secret Garden?" Willow nodded.
"You're crazy." Jess scoffed. "Where are we going?"
"To the one place in this whole town that doesn't look like a fever dream full of happy people." The girl answered, walking out of the clearing to the view of the boardwalk.
"You say that as if you're not one of them." Jess retorted, said as if it were a question.
Willow sat down on the boardwalk, crossed legged. "Am I?" She answered, sarcasm evident in her voice.
"Yeah...?" Jess internally slapped himself for the unsureness in his tone as her answered her, rolling his eyes as he caught a smirk on Willow's face.
"You say I'm the crazy one, yes?" Willow's tone sounded like a teacher explaining something to a bunch of kindergartners, Jess decided as he sat down besides her.
"You are, Willow."
She nodded.
"At least I'm not delusional." Came her soft reply several minutes later, the two teenagers staring at the water in front of them.
Willow's voice was almost sad, and Jess wanted to ask her a million questions. As he opened his mouth, the sound of his mother's voice rang an alarm in his head, reminding him of his rule.
Jess closed his mouth slowly.
Listening to the water below his feet, Jess caught another sound besides him.
The turning of book pages.
Taking out his own, Jess saw Willow unbending the corner of her page. He scoffed to himself, smirking when Willow held up her middle finger at him.
It took the pair a total of three minutes before they each silently gave up on their own books.
"Switch?" Both of their expressions one of shame, neither even bothered to look the other one in the eye as they handed over their books.
"Do not write in my margins, Jess."
"Don't doggy ear my pages, Willow."
✧
JESS HAD DECIDED he wanted to go back to the diner. It was the third time his stomach had grumbled since the two had gotten there, he had counted.
He was starving.
Nudging a sleeping Willow with the tip of his shoe, Jess stood waiting until the girl picked her head up from where it was resting on her elbow, her body still curled into a ball.
"When did I fall asleep?" Her voice was tired, Willow's whole composure different.
Jess knew the answer.
"Two hours ago." He wanted to say. "You had a nightmare, and you were shaking like a baby." He wanted to say.
But the small part of him that had known not to touch on it grew when he saw the fear in her eyes. Willow had remembered this nightmare, and it changed her whole personality in seconds.
So he shrugged, "I didn't even notice that you had passed out until now."
"I got bored when I finished." Willow's voice held no emotion as she sat up, stretching.
"You finished it that fast?" Jess was surprised at the small talk, even more surprised that he was the one initiating it. He hated small talk, he always had, yet Jess found himself hating the quiet and emotionless Willow even more.
She was acting too normal.
"Mhm." Willow pushed herself up by her hand, brushing her clothes off when she was fully standing. "Didn't I tell you it was my favorite book?"
The girl standing in front of Jess now was a different person than the girl he knew from hours before.
"I thought you were just saying that to piss me off." Jess replied as they started walking back to the diner.
Willow shook her head, yawning.
"I only lie when I need to." She barely looked at Jess when they started walking, pausing when Jess looked to her for directions.
Willow pointed to the right, rubbing one eye with the back of her hand. "Or when I'm trying to steal something."
Jess stuck his hands into the pockets of his vest, scoffing.
"Besides, I have so many better things I could say to piss you off." Jess watched as Willow slowly became her weird self again. He found himself questioning if the Willow before him now was even the real her.
Or was she really Willow from the river? Was it all a facade? Jess' mind filled with questions, one's that he ignored quickly.
I don't care which Willow is the real Willow, he found himself thinking. I don't like either of them.
Yet, even though those words were true to Jess, there was a small part of him that wanted to know the answers to the countless questions the girl before him had brought to his mind.
"Uh huh." Jess rolled his eyes. "You are confusing me."
The smaller part of him won.
Willow was confused at his blunt sentence, looking towards Jess and cocking her head to the side in force of habit.
"Will you stop that? You look like a dog." Jess shoved her face, putting his other hand up to mockingly shield his eyes. "A dog, Willow."
"Do you have a dog fetish, Jess?"
"What the actual fuck-"
"Why do I confuse you?" Willow suddenly asked, putting a quick end to their bickering. "Did I do something to confuse you?"
"No, I- Nevermind." Jess found himself stumbling over his words, angry at himself for letting his curiosity get the best of him.
His internal battle was quickly dissolved, however, when Jess met Willow's eyes, realizing her intention had been to rattle him up.
"I actually hate you."
"What?" Willow cocked her head to the side, her eyes gleaming mischievously. "I only asked a question."
"You little-"
"Oh, look! A diner!" Willow was overjoyed when she turned away from Jess and came into the sight of Luke's. She sprinted away from the angry boy, laughing when his footsteps were heard behind her.
The moment of happiness stopped the second Willow reached the diner, her face dropping. Jess slowed to a stop near the curb, peering down at Willow, who was now crouched down near the side of the diner.
"Shit." Willow was repeating the curse to herself, standing up a tiny bit to glance through the window, immediately dropping back down when she confirmed that a certain woman was sitting with Luke.
"What, you know her?" Jess practically shouted, Willow grabbing his hand in panic and pulling him down next to her, shutting him up.
If she were watching this on TV, Willow would be laughing at herself and the extremely clueless moron now crouched beside her.
But she wasn't watching this on TV, this was real life, and that woman was Lorelei.
"Uh, no." Jess bit his inner cheek, expecting the girl to be a better liar.
Glancing at him, Willow read him like a book, "Shut up Jess! I don't, okay? I- don- no. I don't."
Usually pretty collected with her words (minus the random anger explosions towards Jess), Jess laughed without meaning to.
Sobering up when noticing how seriously Willow was looking at him, Jess held his hands up. "Okay, okay. You don't know her."
"Yeah, I don't." Willow whisper shouted.
"Why are we crouching then?" Jess whispered back. "And whisp-"
"I need a favor." Willow's voice was still quiet. Jess raised his eyebrows as a tell for her to continue speaking.
"Tell Luke that I'll see him tomorrow."
"That's the favor?" Jess' voice was dry.
"Yeah, um. Just don't- don't call me Willow." She was frantic. "Call me like... like-"
"Will. I'll call you that." Jess interrupted, knowing if he didn't, she would've never stopped yammering on. "That good enough?"
Willow nodded slowly. "Yeah." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Only this one time."
"No."
"Yes! I will kill you if you ever call me Will again."
"Why?"
"Because." Willow shot back. "My name is Willow."
She realized how stupid the pair looked to the random people walking by, and it was obvious that Jess had just come to the same conclusion.
"Can I stand up now?" He asked, deciding that he'd tease Willow about the fact that she didn't want anyone else to call her by Luke's nickname for her later.
Besides, Willow didn't have to know he knew that about her just yet.
"Oh." She realized she was still holding a death grip on Jess' hand. "Yes."
Jess nodded and stood up.
"You have a real problem with saying please and thank you." He said while stretching, reminding Willow that she hadn't said either during the length of their whole conversation.
"Oh, well that's just because I don't like you." Willow smirked, backing up while managing to stay crouched down.
"Likewise." Jess said, glancing through the window.
"Wait for me to go." The previously frantic girl whispered, watching Jess nod in response.
Jess watched the girl leave in his peripheral vision, stiffening when he noticed her drop something.
Jogging over to the edge of the diner, he bent down to pick up what she had dropped. "Willow! You dropped someth-"
She had dropped his book.
Sighing as he realized that he would have to survive days on end working with this exhausting girl, Jess flipped through the book.
Luke was laughing at something stupid Lorelei had said when he noticed Jess through the glass of his diner. Luke's brain immediately went to Willow and what would happen if Lorelei saw her, but he soon determined that the teenage girl was nowhere in sight.
Then suddenly, Luke's thoughts were interrupted as he watched Jess chucked a book that was in his hand onto the ground.
"She doggy eared my book!" Jess scowled. "The audacity."
He stood there for another two minutes with his arms crossed at the inanimate object in front of him before sighing and picking the book back up again in defeat.
Flipping to the page Willow had folded, Jess noticed writing in the margins. Writing that wasn't his.
"The audacity!"
Luke attempted to keep his eyes on Lorelei, but was forced to hold back laughter as he watched Jess throw something on the ground again. Jess' eyes met Luke's as Luke pointed for him to crouch down seconds before Lorelei looked to see what Luke was looking at.
Now back to crouching at the ground, Jess realized that he had just acted the weirdest he had acted in years, and all because of this random girl.
Sat fully down, Jess put his back to the diner's front and stretched his legs out in front of him as he began to read Willow's writing.
Willow was mocking him.
"I have read Sewell, Will. I like Sew-" Jess retorted, stopping himself as he realized that he was most literally talking to a book.
"I am talking to a book right now. A book!" He yelled. The thought of hitting the back of his head against the diner until his skull cracked open was sounding pretty good to Jess in that moment.
"What a fucking weirdo." Jess mumbled. "Read some Sewell, my ass."
He was silently for a moment, Jess was trying to find his composure.
"And I'm not a fucking serial killer!"
"That's good to know." A man replied, seemingly unfazed by Jess' outbursts, walking to the door of the diner. Jess caught his name from a name plate pinned to his chest before the guy made it inside.
Kirk.
Pulling one leg up so that it was partly bent in the knee, Jess continued to read Willow's writing (which looked exactly how he imagined it would).
Jess knew that Willow would've had no other time to written this than at the river. Ironic that she had told him not to write in her margins, Jess found himself laughing at the fact that Willow seemed to know everything about him without knowing absolutely nothing at the same exact time.
"Why does she know everything?!" Jess shouted, this time scaring a nearby kid. "Her weirdness has rubbed off on me in the four hours we spent together!"
"What the fuck?"
"NO ONE LIKES MORRISSEY." Jess heard laughter coming from the right of him, and he soon looked up at an extremely tall guy.
"You must be new." The guy leaned down to shake Jess' hand, which Jess obviously left hanging. "I'm Dean."
"Ok? Hi, Dean." His voice was dry. Jess hated small talk.
"I like Morrissey." Dean chuckled as he walked past the diner.
"Of course you do." Jess muttered. "See, Willow? That is the kind of guy who likes Morrissey."
At this point, he had accepted that he was talking to a book.
"I'd be damned if you thought I looked like that."
"Oh, you would be surprised what I really do know." Jess answered, watching Dean saunter away slowly.
"I am totally going to call you Will, Will." Jess said as he pushed himself to a standing position, finally entering the diner.
"Especially since you drew a fucking knife. Such a weirdo." He muttered to himself as he shut the door behind him, meeting an overly excited Luke.
"Jess! Good." Luke said as Jess raised his eyebrows, a form of telling Luke to never mention what he witnessed Jess do. "I'd like you to meet someone."
Willow's reaction to this woman had told Jess everything he needed to know about her. It was evident that if someone as odd as Willow could hate a person that much, than that person was no good.
"Hey." Jess had an urge to say something that would wipe the forced smile straight off her face. "Hi. I'm Lorelai. I just wanted to meet you before Luke filled your head with lies about me."
"Right, the lies Luke would fill my head with." Jess agreed, his tone filled with sarcasm that no one but Willow would've understood.
"You should meet my daughter. She's about your age. She can show you where all the good wilding goes on." Lorelai skipped over his comment, her smile still stuck on her face.
Jess nodded in clear disinterest, his annoyance immediately melting when Lorelai's smile dropped at this disinterest, excited to finally see someone besides Willow who wasn't a beaming pot of joy. "Okay, uh... well, it's nice to meet you. I hope you like it here."
"A fever dream full of happy people."
"So... class dismissed." Jess turned, walking passed Luke's makeshift curtain before he remembered Willow's favor.
"She said I loved Morrissey." He whisper shouted at himself. "But you told her you would-"
"She told me to go read Sewell!"
After a couple minutes more of Jess fighting with himself, he groaned loudly and made his way back out to the counter.
"Hey, Luke." Jess called. "Will told me to tell you..."
Jess wanted to slap himself when he put up two fingers to make air quotes, soon forgiving himself when he remembered that this action wasn't even close to the weirdest thing he'd done that day.
"'I will see you at work tomorrow.'"
Luke's face dropped at the mention of Willow, glancing over at Lorelai. "You two actually spent the day together?"
Jess continued his air quoted. ""I don't want to do anything that will upset Luke. In this case that means to not spend the day with you.'"
Not allowing a response, Jess walked back past the curtain and up the stairs, grabbing a pencil the second he entered through the door of Luke's apartment.
Pulling out Willow's book and opening to a random page, Jess found himself ignoring his rule as he began writing.