From: juliettt@aol.com (Juliettt)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: NEW: "The Broken Heart" (1/2) by Juliettt
Date: 15 Feb 1996 04:50:04 -0500


"The Broken Heart" (1?)
by Juliettt@aol.com (Completed December 14, 1995)

Here's one of those "when they were kids" stories.  It's about Scully
and so  there's no Mulder in it.  There might be more, depending
on reader reaction and my Muse's sendings.

As always, the Scullys belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen
Productions, FOX Broadcasting, and Gillian Anderson and the other
actors that bring them to life on Friday nights.  I mean absolutely no
offense; to the contrary, I've endowed the Scullys with some of the
qualities I admire in a family (including some of my own).  This story,
however, as well as all the other characters who appear, are mine.
If, for some odd reason, you feel compelled to borrow any of them, 
please ask first.  I'll be easier to contact than Mr. Carter and 
probably a whole lot more accommodating.

A quick note: I named the younger Scully brother "Brian" in an
earlier story.  Recently the official X-Files guide gave his name as
"Charles," but I'm remaining consistent with my own canon.


*******************************
"The Broken Heart" (1/2)
by Juliettt@aol.com
*******************************

	Dana Scully was ten years old the first time a man broke
her heart.

	Well, it wasn't a man, actually -- it was a boy.  Bobby
Fenstermaker.  Five feet, four inches of the meanest fourteen-year-old
she had ever seen.  And she didn't like him.  In fact, she *hated*
Bobby Fenstermaker of the sandy blond hair and brown eyes.
Because Bobby's house was where the Clubhouse was.  The
neighborhood Clubhouse.  The all-*boys* Clubhouse.  It was just an
old shed that Bobby's father hadn't bothered to tear down and, when
Bobby approached him, had approved for his son's and his friends'
use.  It was made of wood and had a door with a real padlock.
Bobby kept the key -- she had seen it hanging around his neck on
a chain.  And inside that Clubhouse were wonders of which she
could only dream.  She knew because Bill and Brian had told her.

	Bill was one of the older kids in the neighborhood, fifteen
and very proud of his years.  He wasn't as tall as Daniel or even Mike,
but he was stocky, muscular.  And his head of glossy brown hair with
the reddish highlights and his mother's gray-blue eyes already had the
girls staring.  He was just beginning to think that that wasn't such a
bad thing.  The Scully men had always been precocious where girls
were concerned.

	Brian, at nine, was one of the youngest boys allowed in the
Club.  He was short and much more wiry than Bill and he would
probably never be as big.  It looked like he might take after his petite
mother.  But he was already tough although, like Bill, he was what
the neighborhood oldladies called "a nice boy."  By this they meant
that, while he might egg a garage on Hallowe'en, he would never
break windows by throwing stones.  The Scully kids weren't angels,
but they weren't precisely demons, either.  They were -- well, they
were "pretty good kids."

	Dana, however, was another matter.  The neighborhood
oldladies had a much harder time with her.  There had been that
stunt two years ago when she had cut her hair off -- short, like a
boy's.  And it was such pretty hair, too -- a shade deeper red than her
sister's and younger brother's auburn locks, with gold highlights and
a natural tendency to curl.  The hair had grown back, but she was
still as much of a tomboy as ever -- wearing jeans and overalls and
going barefoot all summer, fishing and climbing trees.  Her sister
Melissa was quite the young lady at thirteen -- quiet and demure
and feminine.  Dana was feminine, too, as to her inherent looks, if
not her behavior.  Her femininity, though, had a wild streak at its heart.
At ten years old she revelled in physical activity.  Why, as one
oldlady had told her shocked friend, she had even seen Dana out
having target practice with her brothers and father late one afternoon a
few months ago!  It was only a BB-gun, to be sure, but Dana had
proudly told her that she was already a better shot than either of her
brothers and her father had promised her that he would teach her
how to use his rifle when she got big enough to handle the kick.

	And this summer Dana had decided that she wanted to join
the neighborhood Club.  To be sure, no other girl ever had before,
but then no other girl had ever *wanted* to, either.

	"You can't, Dana," Bill told her, almost patiently.

	"Why not?" she asked stubbornly.  "You told me you guys
all go hiking and fishing and swimming and stuff.  I *like* all that
stuff."

	"I know, Dane," he sighed.  "But -- it's just not the *same*."

	"Yeah, 'cause you're a *girl*," Brian said scornfully.

	"So what?  Girls are just as good as boys," she retorted, her
arms crossed over her chest.  And they were, too -- her parents had
told her so.

	"Oh, forget about them," Melissa soothed.  She didn't
particularly relish the thought of having her little sister tag along
after her
all the time, but then Dana *didn't*.  And Melissa was beginning to worry.
Her best friend Sharon was always complaining about *her* younger
sister's bugging *her* -- constantly barging into her room, playing with
her makeup, reading her diary.  Clara, however, was nearly a year older
than Dana.  Dana did none of those things.  She tagged along after Bill
instead.  Sometimes Melissa was tempted to introduce her to her friends
as "my third brother, Dana."  Dana probably would have liked it, too.
And so, when she saw that this time Bill was not encouraging his little
sister's antics, she tried to step in.  "You can come with me to the mall.
Sharon's going."

	"I don't *care*," Dana said forcefully.  "And I *don't* like
Sharon.
She's all -- prissy and stuff.  All she thinks about are boys -- she even
thinks Bill's cute.  Ick."

	"*Dana*," Melissa said, then sighed.  Sharon *was* boycrazy.
Already, at barely fourteen.  And she *did* like Bill, although Melissa
had no idea how Dana knew that.  She certainly never spent enough time
with the girls to know what they talked about; the minute the fingernail
polish came out she was out the door.  And the one time when she had
been interested in playing with them, six months ago, they had been
playing nurse.  Dana had insisted that *she* was a doctor and had, quite
seriously and without rancor, proceeded to point out everything that
Sharon did wrong.  Sharon didn't like that one bit and Dana had never
been invited again.  Melissa had gone along with it since Sharon was
her best friend, but secretly she had wondered how in the world Dana
had known some of the things she had seemed to know.  She and
Sharon, for the most part, made everything up, using words and
phrases they had picked up watching "Emergency One," which they
both watched because they thought the dark-haired EMT, Johnny Gage,
was cute.  Dana watched it, too, although she was too young to be
interested in boys, and now Melissa was beginning to wonder whether
she had picked up on more than they thought.  Of course, she had been
insisting for years that she wanted to be a doctor, especially since she
had killed that snake on her birthday on her first outing with the BB-gun
earlier that winter.  But that was probably just a phase like everything
else.

	But Margaret just watched her children and sighed.  Melissa
had never been anything like Dana, and Dana was the one of their
children she had the hardest time figuring out.  You would say something
to her and she wouldn't even seem to hear, but then later, when asked,
she could cite chapter and verse.  She would stand stock-still, staring,
and then come out with the oddest questions.  If she were unhappy with
the answers she was given she would find her own or, barring that, make
something up.  She was very good at making things up -- a very good liar,
except that she didn't have the moral constitution for lying.  She would
try
to lie but would then burst out laughing.

	Bill had been conceived with little difficulty, as had Melissa. 
But
then Margaret and Bill had wanted a third child, and they had tried for
nearly two years before they had gotten Dana.  And she was such a
wonder-child; happy, intelligent, infinitely capable of occupying herself.
Even in her infancy she would seldom cry except when she was sick,
and on more than one occasion Margaret had climbed out of bed after
a full night's sleep and wandered into the girls' bedroom to find Melissa
still asleep and Dana awake, playing with her own fingers or toes.
When she got old enough she sometimes sang to herself in the
mornings.  A child of joy.

	But today she was anything *but* joyful.  She begged and
wheedled until finally Bill caved in.

	"All right, Dane.  You can come with us and *if* -- *IF* the guys
agree you can come into the Club, you can.  I won't even vote.  But if
they say 'no,' then the answer is 'no,' okay?"

	"Okay," she agreed happily, seeing no bar to her admittance.
After all, she could bait her own hooks, right?  She never had to be
"boosted" to get up into a tree.  She knew where the best and the
biggest blackberries grew and had even learned how to clean a fish.
No problem.  So she ran along behind her brothers through the thick
weeds toward the Fenstermaker place, ignoring Brian, who teased
her the whole way.  Bill was uncharacteristically quiet.

	It was when they arrived in Bobby's backyard that the trouble
started.

	"What is *she* doing here?" Bobby asked.

	"Yeah -- she's a *girl*," a smaller boy named Sam Thomas
added.  He typically followed Bobby's lead and echoed practically
everything he said.  Dana glared at him until he looked away, and
then she smiled.  Sam would be no trouble.

	"She wanted to join the Club," Bill explained apologetically.

	"Oh yeah -- *right*" Bobby sneered.  "A girl?  You've got to
be kidding, man."

	Bill shot his sister an apologetic look but said nothing.  Dana
tilted her chin and put her hands on her hips.

	"And just *why* does it matter that I'm a girl?" she asked.

	"Well, you're -- you're just -- a *girl*," Bobby responded,
almost bewilderedly.  The argument that a girl was a *girl* had always
seemed clear to him, just as the fact that his father was the smartest
man in the neighborhood had.  Dana, however, was unconvinced.
 Had she known Bobby's opinion of his father she would have scorned
that as well.

	"So what?"

	"So -- you can't do everything we can do," he said hastily,
falling back on his best logic.

	"Oh?  Prove it."

	Bobby was stunned.  He had never met anyone like this
flamehaired Scully girl.  She was tough.  Had she been a boy she
would have been all right -- a welcome addition to the Club.  But she
wasn't, and so, she wasn't.  "Can you fish?"

	"Yes."

	"Bait your own *hooks*?" he added knowingly.

	She shrugged.  "Of course.  I dig for my own worms, too.
Nightcrawlers -- they're best in Crowley's Field."

	Bobby scowled but filed that information away for further use.
She *could* bait her own hooks, too -- he could see it in her eyes.
"Climb trees?"

	"All the time.  Even the one over at McAllister's place."

	"Carve your initials in it?"

	"At the end of the Rock Bough," she said proudly.  This was a
limb as thick as a man's waist that curved up over the top of the
McAllister shed.  It was not only high, it was crooked, making it all the
more difficult to climb, and so the neighborhood boys had taken to
carving their initials in it to prove they had made it that far, before
dropping onto the roof of the shed and shinnying down the drainpipe.
The Rock Bough was difficult enough to climb out onto, but it was
impossible to climb back down.  Dana's own foray had taken place a
scant few weeks before.  Her parents, of course, had not known about
it.  Margaret in particular would have blown a gasket had she known.
Bill turned and looked at her in some awe.  He hadn't known, either --
but then that was typical of Dana.  For her the achievement was the
main thing, not the recognition she could garner from it.  But he
believed her.  The truth was there, shining in her deep blue eyes.  And
suddenly he remembered her running into the house and up the stairs
and shutting herself into the bathroom for a long time.  When she had
come out she had worn a large bandage on her hand and a serene
look in her eyes.  At dinner her father had asked what she had done to
her hand and she had confessed that she had cut herself with the Swiss
Army knife he had given her for her birthday when the boys had given
her the BB-gun.  Margaret had given her _The Chronicles of Narnia_ and
Melissa had given her a bracelet.  The BB-gun had seen much use and
the knife was in her pocket.  The _Chronicles_ had had the covers quite
literally read off of them, but the bracelet sat in the bottom of her
jewelry
box, never worn since her birthday dinner.

	"I don't believe you!" Bobby cried.  *No* girl had ever climbed
out to the end of the Rock Bough.  It simply wasn't done.  It had gone by
that name for so long opinion was divided as to how it had come to be so
called.  Some said that when the tree had been much, much younger the
limb had been low enough to serve as a sort of horse on which to ride.
That would, of course, have been back in their grandfathers' time if the
story were true.  The Rocking-Horse Bough.  Others said it was because
it was such a good target at which to throw rocks, and the broken and
 peeling bark along the limb suggested that that might be true.  Other
said
it was because the peculiar vantage point of the limb allowed a climber to
see the odd rock formation on the river that looked like an Indian brave's
face.  It was the only angle from which the formation looked that way;
from every other place it was just a pile of rocks.

	"Check it for yourself," she shrugged.  Bobby backed off.  No-one
else would have carved her initials there; it was the height of dishonor
to
do so.  And he himself had never made it that far; every single time he
had chickened out.  And this made him angry.  To be shown up by this --
this *girl*. . . .

	He played his trump card.  "Can you shoot?" he asked with a
knowing smile on his face.  Bill closed his eyes and shook his head.
Big mistake -- *big*.  Dana had *not* been boasting when she said she
was a better shot than he was.  In fact, their father had once said that,
given enough practice, his younger daughter might be able to beat *him*
at target practice.  It was an achievement of which Dana was very proud.
She would beat Bobby with no trouble.  But in doing so she might just
make things worse.  He tried to catch her eye but she was ignoring him,
angry, no doubt, that he would not jump in and back her up.  He groaned
silently.  This did not look good.

	"Can I shoot?" she asked, then smiled.  "Unfortunately, I didn't
bring my gun. . . ."

	"Oh, that's no problem at all," Bobby smirked, thinking she was
bluffing.  "You just wait right here."  He stepped up to the Clubhouse
and pulled the key from around his neck.  Dana waited, almost holding
her breath.  Perhaps now she could get a glimpse of what was inside
that mysterious building.  She was certain it must be something
wonderful.  But to her disappointment Bobby went in and quickly closed
the door behind him.  Within seconds he was back outside, a Red Ryder
in each hand and his front left pocket bulging with a tube of BB's.  She
noticed immediately that he was carrying the guns wrong.  From where
she stood she couldn't see whether the safeties were on, but even if they
were, and if the guns were uncocked and unloaded, that was the first
thing the Captain had taught her.  She made the mistake of pointing this
out to Bobby.

	"Bobby, you should point the barrels at the *ground*, not in front
of you like that," she said automatically.  It was just something she and
her brothers said constantly to remind one another.  Had one of them
done it and Ahab seen it, they would have lost their BB-gun privileges
for a week.  He was very strict about gun safety.  They were only small
metal pellets, he had told them, but they could still blind someone.
And someday they might have to handle a real gun, and real guns could
kill.  It was better to be safe than sorry.

	But Bobby didn't see things that way.  He knew the rules of
gun safety, of course -- his father had recited the same rules.  But
Dana's reminder only served to make him mad.  Stupid know-it-all girl.
She had probably overheard her father telling her brothers that while
she was *eavesdropping* on them or something.  Well, he would
show her!

	"Don't tell me what to do," he hissed, thrusting the gun at
her.  "Here."  He opened the slot in the side of the barrel and poured
some BB's in, then shut it.  "Do you even know how to handle this?"
he sneered.

	Dana nodded mutely.  She could smell the faint scent of the
oil that had been used to grease the simple firing mechanism, and
the worn wood was smooth in her palm, the metal cool against her
fingers.  Bobby had given her the older gun, the one with the split
stock that had been glued, then taped, back together.  His new
BB-gun was his pride and joy; he simply kept the old one for the use
of his less fortunate friends and out of pride of ownership.  Two guns.
And someday he would talk his daddy into buying him a shotgun as
well and taking him hunting.

	But Dana knew that despite its looks this was the better gun.
It was well broken-in and the action would be smoother.  So long as
the sights had not been knocked out of plumb she would shoot
straighter with this gun.

	When Bobby walked in front of her to set up a row of cans
on the fence they used for target practice she automatically lowered
the barrel of her gun to the ground.  He walked with his swinging in
his palm against his hip, carelessly and cockily.  She waited in silence
for him to finish, then waited again as he rejoined her.

	"All right," he said.  "Rules.  You hit as many as you can, and
 when you miss it's the other person's turn.  We'll all keep count.  Oh,
and," he grinned meanly, "*ladies* first."

	She bit her lip and took a deep breath.  They really *should*
get a practice shot, since she was unfamiliar with this gun.  But she
would do her best.  She raised the gun, eased off the safety, sighted,
and shot.  And missed.

	Bobby sneered.  "Aww, too bad!"  He sighted quickly and shot,
hitting the first two and then missing.  "Your turn again," he said with
mock gallantry.

	She was shaking slightly, afraid of being shown up in front of
what she hoped would become her close friends.  But she sighted
anyway, then paused, remembering what Ahab had told her.

	  She breathed evenly and imagined the groove,
dropped the gun slightly, relaxed, and squeezed the trigger.

	*Ping!*  The can flipped off the fence.  She cocked the gun and
sighted again.  *Ping!*  Another can sailed off into the grass.

	*Ping!*

	*Ping!*

	*Ping!*  This time she had hit it so hard the can wobbled but
remained upright.  As she cocked the gun to continue Bobby's voice
interrupted her.

	"Hey, you missed!"

	"No I didn't!" she said indignantly.  "I hit it.  I just hit it
dead
center so it didn't fall over."  She was too young to understand about
centers of gravity, but she was right.

	"I was watching and I say you *missed*," Bobby insisted.

	"Yeah!" Sam backed him up.

	"I didn't!" she protested.  "Go check!  The BB's probably still
in the can!"

	"No way," he said.  "You missed.  My turn.  Right, guys?"

	Sam opened his mouth to agree once more, but Bill's quiet voice
stopped him.  "She hit it, Bobby."  The other boy spun to stare at him in
shock.  "She hit it."

	"Are you kidding me, Bill?"

	"No," he said calmly, "I'm serious.  She hit it.  And," he
continued after a pause, "you *know* she did."

	"Are you calling me a liar?"

	"No," Bill said confidently, "not if you admit what you saw."

	"That's *it*!" the other boy screeched, throwing his gun to the
ground and launching himself at Bill.  "*Nobody* calls me a liar and
gets away with it!"  Bill dropped back and raised his fists.  His mother
had always warned him never to start a fight, and his father had
concurred but later pulled him aside and tempered his warning.

	"If you ever *do* start a fight, Bill, you'd better make it good
and it had better be worth it, because you'll get it even worse when
you get home.  But if the *other* guy starts it and won't back off, you
give it to him.  If you can't do anything about it, don't let him take
you.
You can refuse to *start* a fight, but sometimes you can't refuse to
*participate* in one."  He didn't think he had started this one, but even
if he had, this was different.  He didn't really understand why, but it
was.
This was, he would come to recognize, a matter of honor.  And so he
balled up his fists and waited, his quick, cold anger filling every sinew.
Bobby was his friend, but -- this wasn't right.  He believed in fair play.
This wasn't it.

	"No."  A soft voice, higher than those of the two boys squared
off with their nostrils flaring, broke the tense silence.  "No.  He's
right,
Bill.  I must have missed."  There was a lump in her throat but her
voice was steady.  "I give in, Bobby.  I'm going home now."  And she
carefully set the gun on the ground, facing away from the crowd of
boys -- she had put the safety on when Bobby had stopped her from
firing again -- and turned away.  She marched across the backyard,
tears stinging her eyes.  It wasn't fair -- it *wasn't*.  She *had* made
that shot, and they all knew it.  It was just because she was a *girl*
that they didn't want her -- and they didn't want her.  She knew that
now.  She had thought, naively, that if she could prove her worth they
would want her, but she had been wrong.  Therein lay the sting.  For
the first time in her life she had come up against something she could
not beat: prejudice.  A big word she had heard before in other contexts,
but now she really knew what it meant.  It was an opinion you could
not change no matter how wrong it was, no matter how hard you tried.
It made people blind to the truth, and it divided them into friends and
enemies -- it had made her Bobby's enemy, and had she allowed her
brother to fight him it might have made all the boys there Bill's
enemies as well.  And right now she could do nothing about it.  But
someday, *someday*, she vowed, she would.  She would find a way
to show Bobby Fenstermaker and everybody else just how wrong
they were.  She would make him *beg* her to join the Club -- or its
equivalent.  And then she would turn him down.


===========================================================================

From: juliettt@aol.com (Juliettt)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: NEW: "The Broken Heart" (2/2) by Juliettt
Date: 15 Feb 1996 04:57:47 -0500


Please see Part One for disclaimers.  Basically, everyone you
recognize here from _The X-Files_ belongs to somebody else
despite the fact that I'm borrowing them without permission.
Anybody else is mine, and if, for some odd reason, you feel
compelled to borrow any of them (particularly if you want to make
Bobby Fenstermaker suffer), please ask first.  I'll be easier to
contact than Mr. Carter and probably a whole lot more
accommodating.  Onward and upward. . . .


*******************************
"The Broken Heart" (2/2)
by Juliettt@aol.com
*******************************


	Margaret was at the window in the kitchen washing her
hands after mixing up a batch of Number Twelve chocolate chip
cookies -- so called because, as Ahab said, her plain chocolate chip
cookies were a perfect ten, so when she added coconut and walnuts
that had to make them at least a twelve.  Melissa was just pulling two
full pans out of the oven.  Margaret had overheard the discussion on
the back porch earlier and now, with her tender mother-heart, read
correctly her daughter's posture of defeat and defiance.  By the time
Dana had climbed the steps and opened the back door there was a
tall glass of cold milk and a plate with three hot cookies awaiting her
on the table.  She walked into the kitchen, took one look at her
mother's sympathetic face, and burst into tears.

	These weren't tears of sorrow or weakness; these were the
tears of anger and impotence.  She was furious and she was stung
and hurt; she felt almost numb from the rush of feelings that flooded
her mind and body, and she shook in her mother's arms.  When she
tried to tell what had happened she choked and couldn't speak, and
finally she shook her head.  After a few long moments she was silent
and took her cookies and milk and went upstairs.  She locked herself
in the room she now shared with Melissa and didn't come down again
until dinner.  Melissa, for her part, wisely chose to remain in the
kitchen and continued to make cookies.

	About a half hour later Bill and Brian came home.  Brian's
eyes were very big but he didn't say anything -- then.  But it was Bill
who got Margaret's attention.  One of his cheeks was red and his
knuckles were bruised.  But he had a grim, satisfied look on his face.
He, too, was silent, and she didn't press the issue, simply fed the
boys cookies and milk until she thought surely their appetites would
be spoiled for dinner.  And then Bill disappeared into his room.

	By the time Bill, Sr., got home, his wife had coaxed the whole
story out of Brian.  It had not been until after Dana left that Bobby said
the words that made Bill lose the legendary Scully temper.  The fight
had been quick and violent, leaving Bobby with a bloody nose and
swollen eye and split lip.  Bill, then, had come off rather well,
considering.  Margaret closeted herself with her husband in *their*
room for a fifteen-minute conclave and then he came out and called
the family to dinner.  No-one mentioned Bill's rapidly swelling cheek or
sore knuckles or Dana's red eyes, but supper was subdued that night.
And afterwards Ahab took the whole family for a special treat: a movie
in town.  Answering machines were not a common commodity back
then, but shortly after the children had all gone to bed that night there
was a phone call, which Ahab took downstairs.  It was brief, little more
than five minutes, and afterwards he and Margaret went to bed as well.

	Late in the night Dana slipped out of bed and tiptoed across
the room to the door that connected their bedroom to the bathroom.
Once inside she closed the door, then went through the other door into
the den, then out into the hallway and across to Bill's room.  She
knocked very gently.

	"Bill?"

	There was a shuffling and then the door opened.

	"Whaddya want, Squirt?"

	"I'm -- I'm really sorry.  About today, I mean."

	"'Sokay."

	"No.  It's *not* okay.  You were right and I should have
listened to you, I guess." 

	He sighed.  "Come in, Dane."  She came in and sat on the
bed, her eyes downcast.  "I guess I was just as wrong as you were."

	She looked up at him quizzically, the moonlight streaming in
through the window to cast a pale silver nimbus around her head.

	"I knew Bobby wouldn't want you in the Club, and I shouldn't
have let you go."  He shrugged.  "It was silly, really -- the test they
always used for guys to get in didn't really keep girls out but we never
thought of it that way."  He grinned suddenly.  "'Course, no other girl
before *you* has ever wanted in before."

	She smiled tentatively, then sighed.  "What's wrong with me,
 Bill?"

	"Whaddya mean?"  He came to sit on the bed next to her and
she leaned against him.

	"I mean, I don't like Melissa's friends -- the stuff they do is so
-- *boring*.  And I *do* like *your* friends -- or I did.  They just don't
like
me."

	He slid his arm around her.  "They *do* like you -- well, most
of them.  Hey, you're the best pitcher we've got for baseball."  She
smiled at that.  It was true.  When the neighborhood kids gathered on
the Scully side lot for baseball games they always wanted her to pitch.
When they ran short of players, usually about mid-summer when many
of the families took their annual vacation, they would use the big oak
tree as a catcher.  It always served as home plate, but Dana was so
good that she could keep the pitch in the strike zone most of the time
and the ball would rebound off the tree and roll back to her so no-one
would have to fetch it.  "So, you see, they *know* you can do a lot of
stuff."

	She sighed again.  "I know.  I guess I just feel left out."

	He hugged her, knowing it was bound to get worse before it
got better.  The guys his age were all starting to notice girls -- well,
the more mature of them, anyway.  And Dana was too young to be
of that sort of interest to them.  And soon -- maybe very soon -- she
would start taking an interest in boys as well, and then she wouldn't
want to be with them anymore -- in that way.  Growing up was
complicated.  But then he thought of Susan Carleson and grinned.
Growing up was also very -- interesting.

	"You won't always feel left out.  I promise."

	She nodded and then gave him an unexpected hug.  "Thanks,
Bill."

	"Anytime, Cat."  And then she went to bed and slept soundly
with a small smile on her lips that was still there when her mother came
to wake her the next morning.  Bill remained awake for a long time,
thinking.  He knew that on that day something had changed.  He had
had to make a decision, standing there in the tall sweet grass with the
sun shining on his head, a choice between what was represented by the
scowl on Bobby Fenstermaker's face and what shone in his sister's
clear blue eyes that were so sad and angry and hurt at the same time.
And for just a moment it had been the hardest thing he had ever had to
do.  But the instant he had done it he had known he was right -- *it* was
right.  And although he had his moments of immaturity, as everyone
does from time to time, he never really looked back.

	The next day, instead of taking off to meet the guys at the Club,
as he usually did, Bill casually invited Brian and Dana and Melissa to go
fishing.  After a long, half-surprised look at his face, Dana agreed, and
so did Mel.  And the four children went running across the sweet-smelling
fields to Bill's own especial fishing spot and spent a morning of laughter
there.  That afternoon, however, Dana and Melissa went berrying together
and came back with their mouths rosy and their hair strewn with daisies.
Dana discovered that her sister was quite a satisfying companion in her
own way.

	The previous night's talk marked the very last time Bill called
his
younger sister "Dane" and, if she missed it, she never said so.  She and
her father built the Nest a few weeks later and Bill was the very first
guest to carve his initials in the trunk.  She would continue to be a
tomboy into her teens -- in many ways, throughout the rest of her life --
but as the summers waxed and waned her wildness was tempered by a
softness that had always been a latent part of her personality.  It seemed
that now the gentleness that had previously been directed toward the
unfortunate -- animals, smaller children, and the injured or ill of any
age
or gender -- was turned also onto herself and shone through her strength,
giving it an even rarer quality.

	And many, many years later, when she was a senior in college
and Robert Fenstermaker managed his father's car dealership, he asked
her out for dinner and a movie.  When she turned him down it was with
grace and dignity, but she left absolutely no doubt in his mind that he
had been rejected.  And she smiled all the way home from the store
where she had run into him and made a batch of chocolate chip
cookies for Bill, who was also home for the holidays.

	Some wrongs, trivial as they may seem, can only be set right
by time.


*End*

Dedicated to all the girls who ever played sideyard baseball with "the
guys". . . .


Juliettt@mail.aol.com
Troupe Leader, Dragon Posse, Lone Gunwoman #7, Eden Agent, 
Clan McBride, Wolfpack, DDEB 3, Faultliner, WWtBJLSWWGU, 
SKKS co-founder, BBTG!

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