This is dedicated to my sister, who, while she generally thinks fanfiction is insane and scary, suggested this idea to me. So, blame her if you don't like it.

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They Met in New York

Part One:

Chapter 1

New York, September 1999

The library was definitely not the most popular spot in the school. Most kids only bothered to go there when it was absolutely necessary and they couldn't avoid it, but he came here all the time. It was a great spot to escape the soap opera that was high school. All of the posturing and posing people did was enough to make him gag.

High school was already getting on his nerves and he was only a freshman. His friends, however few, from junior high had gotten sucked into the whirlpool of promised popularity, leaving him behind. Not that he really minded that much, especially since the alternative was to try and be popular along with them. Since that usually involved sucking up to people, he outright refused to try.

He'd just as soon keep his friends in the pages of books, thanks anyway. Less messy that way.

He moved into the stacks, going for his favorite author's section. The books were usually in the same order he'd last left them, which made it easier for him to remember which book he'd read last. To his surprise, there was someone else browsing through the shelves. A girl, to be specific. She had long brown hair, with several red streaks dyed into it at what appeared to be random intervals. She was looking at the bookshelves without expression. Since she hadn't seemed to notice his presence, he decided not to say anything.

She finally bent down to take a look at the lower shelves and he studied her. She was definitely a looker; slim, tall, and very well built. Her clothes weren't overly odd: jeans that looked just a bit too tight, staying with current fashion, and a tank top. However, to comply with school rules she had a man's white dress shirt over the tank top.

"Ah-ha!" The triumphant noise startled him, and he jumped back slightly. She looked up, suddenly aware of his proximity, and he nearly felt it physically when her eyes met his. They were bright warm blue, but there was a slight chill deep within. "I'm sorry!" she said, standing quickly. "I didn't know anyone else was here. I thought this place was dead."

"So did I," he said. There was a pause. "I don't know you, do I?"

"No." She shook her head. "I just moved here. This is my first day, and I wasn't up to trying to find a place to sit in the cafeteria."

He shrugged. "I don't blame you. It can be pretty daunting. So where'd you move from?"

"Maryland," she said. "I was raised there. I like New York, though. I just haven't gotten used to it yet." He nodded. "What about you?"

"Born here," he said. "I think I'm one of the only native New Yorkers I know."

"Cool," she said in response. Then he noticed the book in her hand.

"What'd you pick out?" he asked, turning his head to try and get a look at the title.

"Oh. Uh…The Fountainhead."

He visibly winced. "Ouch. What class are you reading that for?"

She smiled very slightly at his expression. "No class. I love Ayn Rand. No one can write a forty page political monologue like she can."

"Who would want to?" he demanded, making a face. "I don't know how you can like that crazy lady. She's a nut."

"Oh, really?" she asked, the slight smile being replaced with a small frown. She cocked her hip and propped her hand on it. "And have you even read any of her books, smart-ass?"

"I read that book when I was twelve," he said, more amused than offended, and pointed at the volume in her hands.

"Oh," she said.

He moved down the aisle, nudging her out of the way and reached down to grab a book. "Now this," he said, holding up the copy for her to see, "is a book worth reading."

"The Sun Also Rises?" It was her turn to make a face. "Blech. His writing is so…painful for me to stagger through."

"And have you ever tried?"

"Yes, I have. I tried to read it just last year, and I still couldn't slog my way through the mush. So there." She actually stuck her tongue out at him, and he began to smile.

"So, you're a big reader?"

She shrugged. "I guess so. I'm also a writer."

"Novels?"

"I stopped trying about two years ago, after failing miserably every time to actually write something good. No, I'd rather be a reporter. Reporting on the late-breaking and hard-hitting news stories. Fast-paced."

"Huh," he said, studying her up and down.

"What about you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at his survey.

"What about me?"

"What do you do besides read?"

"As little as possible." He blew out a breath. "Avoid the insipid masses, for one. But for recreation, I tend to just read." No way was he going to confide that he wanted to be a novelist to someone he'd just met. "What's your name?"

"What's yours?" she countered, sounding suspicious.

"Jess," he said.

She held out her hand. "I'm Lorelai." He looked skeptical, and didn't reach out his hand to shake. "What?" she demanded.

"Are you going to sing me to a crashing death on the rocks?" he asked. "Come on. What's your real name?"

She studied him for a long moment. "You know what Lorelei are?"

"It's not that difficult to know about fatal mythical creatures."

"Most people don't know. But, anyway, it's not spelled like that. It's L-O-R-E-L-A-I. The creature is E-I."

"I know how to spell it," he grumbled. "Let me see your school ID."

"Okay," she sighed. "But I warn you, the picture's terrible." She handed over the laminated card.

"I'll be damned," he said, and refrained from confirming her opinion of the picture. "That is your name. Well, sorry for the disbelief. It's nice to meet you, Lorelai." He finally held his hand out to shake.

"Nice to meet you, Jess," she said, shaking.

They stood in silence for a long moment. "So…" he said, groping for a topic. "What's your schedule like?"

She shrugged. "So far it's okay. I have PE first thing, then a biology class. Then I've got geography, and American Literature. I have this period off for lunch. And next I have…aw, shoot, I can't remember." She dug into her pocket for a much-folded piece of paper. "This says I've got…Honors English next, then World History, and finally math."

Jess grabbed the paper out of her hands and studied it. Then he chuckled. "You're not going to believe this, Lorelai Collins, but we have the exact same schedule after lunch."

"Really?" she asked, taking the paper and studying it. "Cool. At least I'll know someone in these classes." She smiled up at him, and to his surprise a faint blush began staining her cheeks. "I mean, you know, so I can borrow notes to catch up, and stuff."

He smiled. She was really very cute. Maybe he could ask her out. "Yeah. Of course. Just for the notes." He turned and began walking towards the end of the aisle. "Come on. I want to talk to you some more, maybe explain a little about what's what around here. But let's be comfortable while I do."

"Uh, okay?" Her voice followed him, as he heard her doing a second later. He led her to a circle of couches, still in good condition since no one used the library. "Oh, this is nice," she said, falling onto one of the couches, one of her legs over the arm. "I wish my library back home had something as comfortable as this to sit in."

"Yeah. It's a great reading spot. Very quiet, unless some rude people are talking." He smiled at her. "So. Let's hear more about Lorelai."

She shifted slightly on the couch, and began fiddling with the buttons on her shirt. "Uh…what do you want to know?"

"Well, first of all, how your parents came up with that name."

"I'm named after my mother," she said, looking at the floor.

"Really?" he asked. "What was her name?" She glowered at his bad joke. "I'm kidding!"

"I was hoping. Otherwise any hope for intelligent conversation flew right out the window." She demonstrated, making a "whoosh!" gesture with her hand.

"Difficult when there's no windows in here," he said. He was about to ask her another question when the bell rang. She flew off the couch, checking her watch. "Okay. So the bell goes off three minutes late, by my watch. Good to know."

"I'll walk you to class," he said. "Do you have a locker you need to go to?"

"Nope, not yet," she said. "I'd have nothing to keep in it, even if I had one. I'm supposed to check with the office after school today, and they'll assign me one."

"I don't know if there are any empty," he said as they emerged into the busy hallway. He gestured around at the many kids opening their lockers and chattering to their friends. "If you have to share with someone, I'll volunteer. I'd hate for someone to get stuck with someone like that—" he gestured at a guy in a letter jacket who was currently trying to stuff even more paper into his over-full locker— "for a locker mate. For the record, I only use mine for books, so there's no reason for it to be messy."

"Thanks," she said, watching in horror as the paper stack inside the jock's locker fell out, covering the immediate vicinity and someone kneeling to get into the locker below. "I really appreciate it."

"My pleasure," he said. They walked down a few more corridors until he gestured at a door. "Through there," he said, pointing. "Save me a seat, okay? I need to go get my stuff."

He was back within minutes, and saw Lorelai holding a desk by propping her feet up on the chair next to her. She smiled at Jess and removed her feet. He made a mocking show of inspecting the seat and pretending to brush it off before he sat down.

"This class is actually not that bad, as far as classes go. The text book is huge," he added, showing her the four-inch thick book, "but it's a class for those who want to be here."

"So, can I share your book?" she asked. He smirked back.

"I have no complaints about it. The teacher might, but screw him." She laughed. It was the first time he'd heard her laugh, and he sensed something sad in it. In fact, she seemed sad in general. But she was obviously taking pains to hide it, so he wasn't going to mention it. They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching the other students file in, most of them giving interested looks Lorelai's way. However, most ignored the fact they had a "new kid" as it wasn't too unusual.

The teacher came in, set his briefcase down on the desk, and waited for the bell to ring. "Well, here we all are again," the man said. "But with one new edition to the class. Would Miss Lorelai Collins please come up to the front?"

Lorelai put her head in her hands as everyone looked back towards her. Jess smirked harder at her rueful, but quiet, groan. She sighed as she stood and walked to the front of the room. She stood in front of the class, looking over the heads of her classmates.

The teacher cleared his throat. "Well, Lorelai," he tried prompting her. "That's an unusual name. Please, tell us a little about yourself."

"Well," she began, twisting her hands together in front of her. "Uh, I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland until last week, when I found out I was moving here. I like New York, so far."

She fell silent. "Is that all?" the teacher asked.

"Yeah, pretty much," she said, nodding.

"Oh, come now. There must be something else. Where'd you get your name?"

"It's a family name," she said, her voice almost expressionless.

"Very well," the teacher sighed. "You can sit down. And you will share Mr. Mariano's book for the day. I'm Mr. Gerald. Welcome to Honor's English."

"Thank you," she said politely, and hurried back to her seat. The teacher immediately launched into his lesson. "God, I hate that," she whispered to Jess. "It's so humiliating. I can never think of what to say."

"You did fine," he said comfortingly, and patted her hand. She looked down briefly and blushed, but when she looked up again she was also smiling.

"Thanks," she whispered. They looked at each other for a while before she added reluctantly, "I guess we should pay attention to the class."

Fifty minutes later, they were out of that room and headed for another: their freshman World History course. "Can you say 'overview'?" Jess said sardonically, leading Lorelai through the halls. "I mean, we've already zoomed over Mesopotamia and Sumeria."

"I take it you don't like History," Lorelai said.

"It can be fun, at times," Jess replied. "Hold up," he added, pulling her out of the main path. "This is my locker. Possibly yours, too, if you're lucky." He grinned at her as he spun the dial on his combination lock. He stowed the English text in the locker, and grabbed an oversized book. "This thing is a bitch to carry home," he said. "It's even worse than that monster." He knocked on the cover of the English book.

"I can't wait," Lorelai said dryly.

"Just make sure you buy a good strong backpack, and there won't be anything to worry about."

"Or we could do our homework together at lunch, and never have to worry about lugging the books home."

"Huh," he said, giving her an appraising look.

She tilted her head at him. "What?"

"I'd had you pegged as a goody-two-shoes," he answered. "Hair color not withstanding," he added, reaching up to tug gently on one of the red stripes in her hair.

"I have just as much aversion to homework as does any other student," she said. "Besides, if we did it at lunch, we'd have the perfect excuse for being in the library together." He considered asking why she thought they needed an excuse, but discarded the idea.

"So why did you do that to your hair?" he asked, slamming his locker.

"Whim," she said. "One of the only things I came up with in my fiction days was this girl who had red and black striped hair from a genetic mutation. This is, of course, in the future. And I wanted to see how I'd look with red stripes in my hair. I guess it just kind of stuck."

"It looks good on you," he said, not looking at her, sure that she would be blushing.

"Thanks," she mumbled.

"Oops, warning bell," he said. "Gotta hoof it or we'll be late for your first day of class!" He grabbed her wrist and began pulling her in his wake.

"Wouldn't want that, would we?" He almost laughed at her sarcasm, a chuckle explaining. They sat together again, also at the back of the classroom. And again, Lorelai was treated to the "new student introduction." She plowed through it, using almost the same speech as she had in English. Jess was smirking as she sat down.

"Didn't you have to do that for your first classes?"

"I did," she nodded. "Where do you think I came up with that oh-so-very succinct sentence in the first place?"

"Well, then, you'll have that down pat for math," he said.

"Please tell me the math teacher is one of those who just teaches and takes no interest in their student's lives?" she asked desperately.

"Quite the opposite, actually," he answered. "This particular teacher likes to use his students in his lessons. One girl is into horses, and her family owns a ranch, so he did one problem about grain production and storage. It was interesting. If you like math."

"It's not really my thing," she said. "I mean, I can do it okay. I just prefer not to have to. How about you?"

"I do okay." He shrugged. "But mostly I can do without it. As long as I can balance a checkbook, I think I'll do fine." Or calculate the advances on my books, he thought with a private grin. It was a secret fantasy of his. Not that it would ever happen.

"That's pretty much my philosophy," she agreed. Not wanting to push their luck, they turned their attention to the teacher and the class.

Afterwards, Lorelai talked to the teacher about what assignments she had to do to get caught up. The teacher told her to just get someone's notes. "You do take notes, right?" she asked Jess as she followed him to his locker.

"When the mood strikes me," he said. "But don't worry about it too much. You probably know everything anyway. So far we're just reviewing what we've learned in every other history class."

"Don't you just love the repetition that is school?" Lorelai asked. Then her eyes widened as she looked at the book he pulled out. "Do not tell me that's our math book!" she demanded.

"Nope. Complete works of Mark Twain." Jess smiled at her sigh of relief. He grabbed the actual math text and shut the locker. "This way, ma'am," he said.

Their final class of the day was located in an out-of-the-way room with posters covering the walls. Most had something to do with statistics or numbers, but a few were funny.

"Or punny," Lorelai muttered to herself, grimacing at a particularly bad poster.

"Aren't they horrible?" Jess asked. "I guess exposure to them dulls the pain. After a time." They smiled at each other, then were interrupted when a young looking man came up to her.

"Hi," he said. "I'm your teacher, Mr. Lyle. Just so you know, I've been the new kid, and I know you've probably had to do those 'hi I just moved here' speeches in every other one of your classes. So you don't have to do one here. Just…be yourself." He turned and walked away, then spun back a few steps later. Pushing his glasses up his nose he said, "And I'll be testing you to see where you are in math."

"Oh," Lorelai said. "Uh, sure. No problem. Thanks," she added lamely, seeing a few more people in the class trickle in.

"Class, we have a new student," Mr. Lyle said. "Lorelai Collins. Glad you could join us. Now, moving on…"

After class, she could barely think with the pounding in her skull. "My head has never hurt so much," Lorelai said, holding her hand to the body part in question. "I think I'll go over to France just so I can use the guillotine to cut it off."

"Yeah, he does tend to wax enthusiastic over probability," Jess said. "Come on, just a little further and you can go home." He threw the last book into his locker gratefully.

"No, I can't," Lorelai said. "Not just yet, anyway. I've got to get a locker assignment, remember?"

"I'll come with you. Volunteer ahead of time to be your locker partner."

"Thanks," she said for what felt like the millionth time that day.

The process only took about fifteen minutes, but it was enough that most of the student body had disappeared. Lorelai studied the suddenly empty parking lot.

"There's Janet," she said, pointing towards the appropriate car. "My ride," she explained.

"Friend?" Jess asked.

She bit her lip and hesitated a long moment before saying, "Foster parent."

Jess nodded. When he didn't say anything derogatory, or even act the least bit surprised, she smiled at him. "Thanks for showing me around today," she said. "And I guess I'll see you tomorrow in the library for lunch?"

"We'll do our homework," Jess promised, and watched her walk towards a slate blue Saturn.

He turned towards his apartment, musing on this new person in his life. So, she was a foster kid, huh? That sort of explained some things, he thought. But would that also mean that she might be leaving soon if she gets shuttled off to another foster home?

He shrugged. She seemed like a good person and like she could be a good friend. Or, he thought, remembering his look at her in the library stacks, something more than a friend. Only time would tell.