SOS by Glory, Girl Writer.pdf - Dawson's Creek Fandom Wiki

"Me, too." She hit the button, dropped the phone in her bag, and walked into class
smiling.
***
When Pacey had moved out of his old apartment, he'd figured he would have trouble
getting used to anything new, but the new place was okay. Leaving Capeside had been
hard -- Doug had become downright tolerable, and he missed Gretchen like crazy -- but
the close proximity to Joey without actually being able to see her had eventually gotten
to be too much. Leaving school had been even worse, but he could start again in
January. So now here he was, with at least his Dumbo clock as a mark of familiarity.
He lay down on the couch, put his feet up, and put his hands over his eyes.
When she had left after Andie's party weekend in August, he'd been sure he and Joey
were doing the right thing, and equally sure that it was going to hurt as much as anything
he'd ever done. At first, it had actually been easier than he thought. He spent a lot of
time working, eating, going to the movies -- anything that would keep him from having
those horrible moments when he stared at the wall, seeing her face grow out of it like a
ghost. When he'd gotten back to his apartment just after she left, he'd collapsed on his
bed exhausted, only to notice that the pillows smelled like her, so much that he
momentarily buried his face in them and inhaled deeply. Almost immediately, though, he
took them from the bed and threw them into a laundry bag, stuffing the sheets in after
them. He propped himself up on his bed with pillows from the couch and lay in the sunlit
room, thinking about her, for long hours until he finally fell asleep.
The biggest surprise of early fall had been a phone call from Dawson. At first, he'd been
inclined to be bitter -- sure, now that I can't have her eiither, we can be friends again --
but to his surprise, Dawson had wanted to talk about everything but Joey. It was the first
time he remembered ever talking to Dawson without there being some reference --
whether explicit or clumsily veiled -- to her. These days, Dawson mostly wanted to talk
about Megan, who had him in such an explosively good mood it had almost lifted him out
of the ostentatious self-importance he'd picked up somewhere around the ninth grade.
Among her charms, she had an exercise she'd put him through three times since the
beginning of the school year. The way Dawson told it, Megan would take him to a party,
and tell him that he was forbidden to speak to anyone in declarative sentences. He
could employ interjections, like "Wow!" and "Sure!" and "Thanks!". He could say hello.
He could ask other people questions. He could nod, he could gesture, he could send
smoke signals if he could figure out a way to do it -- but no declarative sentences. She
called the game "How Long Can You Go Without Talking About Yourself?" It made
Pacey laugh just thinking about it.
He had made it through September, but a week into October, he had hit a wall. Knowing
Joey was still so close, knowing that Bessie was in town, knowing Joey would be home
for holidays and he'd have to see her over and over and over again, it had hit him like a
ton of bricks that it just wasn't going to work. The nauseating irony was not lost on him
that if he had known he wasn't going to be able to take it, he could have saved them
both all the hurt that the goodby had caused, because as it turned out, he'd had to leave
school anyway. He'd left Gretchen, left Doug . . . why hadn't he realized this was going
to happen just a little sooner? Now, lying on the couch staring at the toes of his shoes,