Chapter Text
JD never thought he'd have a chance to meet another dawn. Of course, he would’ve preferred to meet it with Veronica while Westerburg High School went up in flames. Anyway, 7-Eleven was better than nothing.
Much better than nothing.
“Hurry your ass up,” dad snarled to him, walking past with a plastic bag in one hand and an open can of beer in another. JD took the last sip of the slush, crumpled the cup and tossed it in the trash. He took deep breaths of the damp autumn air and tucked hands into the pockets of his trench coat.
It was a very chilly September morning.
“So,“ JD squinted, looking through the fog at the billboard of the city entrance: “Sherwood, Ohio?”
“Yep. Another shitty little town, son. Don't dawdle,” Bud tossed the empty can at his feet and slammed the car door. JD grimaced irritably and joined him. Dad slid the bag of food over to him.
“Is there only turkey left?”
“Hmm,” Bud nodded with mouth full.
“I fucking hate turkey,” JD pulled out a sandwich and stared at it in disgust. The morning dose of sugar had left him no chance of staying hungry. But he forced himself to take a large bite, and chewed without appetite: the next meal was still a long way off. If it could even be called a meal... No matter what school, no matter what state he was in, one thing remained the same: it was better to eat the sole of a shoe than to eat lunch in the school cafeteria.
JD chugged down dry sandwich with a soda and returned to the thought that he probably should have started writing a diary. There was too much information in his head to rely entirely on his own memory.
Still, he shouldn't have discounted the fact that it might have all been just a play on his sick imagination. That meant he had to do a little checking first...
Just six hours ago, JD hadn't expected anything new out of life: another crappy little town, one more school and a bunch more jerkish schoolmates. But then he woke up to a pain splitting his skull. With his head exploding with new memories, with the smell of burning meat in his nose and a phantom pain in the chest. With the feeling that there was a huge chunk of it missing, and his body and mind were torn into a thousand little pieces.
And each piece hurt.
So, it had been a hell of a morning. The fact that he was still breathing seemed like someone's stupid joke. He should have been dead, finally calmed down, and truly empty. But instead, JD was sitting in the car, eating a crappy sandwich from 7-Eleven and trying to scrape his brain from the inside of the skull.
And yet... he certainly couldn't have just made it all up. JD never complained of a lack of imagination, but his fantasy was pretty special. He himself called it "dark", but the school counselor in Kansas used a different word. "Psychopathic". To be fair, he wasn't very good at his job...
He could certainly have imagined the murders and the explosion of the school. He wouldn't even have had any trouble bringing it to life if he'd been motivated enough. But JD was damn sure his brain couldn't come up with something really bright. Couldn't come up with Veronica.
So it was either just a weirdly realistic dream, or someone with a really shitty sense of humor had given him a chance to fix all the shit he'd done... or rather, will do in six weeks.
If JD were asked to describe everything he "remembered" in a few words, it would be: "royally fucked up."
“What are you thinking about, Jason?” Dad was probably finally awake and wanted to have a little chat.
“Just tired,” JD rubbed his face with one hand, and then asked with feigned indifference. “Any chance we'll be here long enough for me to finish school?”
“Well, we'll see, son,“ Bud instantly lost interest and started the car. “If we don't catch anything big after this business, we can put down roots here for a year. You know it's not up to me.”
And that was the most JD could get. He leaned back in his seat, watching the silhouettes of vaguely familiar houses slowly loom in the fog. Suburbs... It was the same everywhere.
Dad's eagerness to talk had waned.
It was for the best.
***
Well, events were really repeating themselves. The problem was that they had been repeated many times before: they arrived, dad drove JD to school, gave him the address of the new house crookedly written on some check, then pressed on the gas and left by evening. Sometimes until the evening of the next day.
JD stretched, warming his tired muscles from the long drive. He crunched his neck, stretching the interlocked fingers and snapping each joint in turn with pleasure. The school parking lot was empty: not even the nerds made it to school this early, and there was still about an hour before the first bus arrived. JD threw his backpack and trench coat on the damp bench and jogged a couple of laps around the field, getting the stagnant blood flowing. His tense body needed more, so he slumped on the ground and did a few push-ups. He needed to keep himself in good shape to be able to kick jerks' asses.
Finally, putting his mind and body in relative order, he collapsed on the bench and picked up the backpack. Lazily rummaging through it, he found nothing useful but a stubby pencil and a volume of French poetry with rather wide margins. Perhaps his mother would not approve of this attitude toward books. But despite his love of reading, JD had never had much reverence for them: it wasn't an irreplaceable loss. But the memory... the memory was.
Tapping irritably with the tip of the pencil on the paper, he tried to get all the scraps of memory out of his head. He shouldn't be distracted by training: some events had already been erased, the sequence of others had broken down, and it all merged into one bittersweet lump.
JD dotted it and reread what he'd written. What an idiot he'd been...
Well, he could certainly do better this time.
The parking lot was slowly filling up with cars, but there was still too much time before classes started. JD sighed boredly and turned the page, writing down today's date and the thought that had been going through his head all morning:
"I don't know if I recognize Westerburg High School because I've been here before, or because all the schools have blended into one solid dirt spot. If everything I remember turns out to be true, the only thing that set this school apart from the previous ones was Veronica.
Call me a romantic, but I want Veronica Sawyer to be more than a figment of my imagination. I want... no, I need her to be real, alive, existing with me on the same plane of existence! And then I'll try not to fuck up this time as much as I did last time."
JD rolled his eyes: there was something dramatic in his soul that he indulged in more than should ever have. He closed the book and tossed it back into the backpack. His head was still buzzing. JD rubbed his face forcefully and pressed fingers to the inner corners of eyes, trying to shake off the fatigue. That hadn't worked in a long time.
“Hey, freak, what the fuck are you sitting here?” here came his first greeting at his new school.
JD sure sucked at remembering his first day at Westerburg High, but he didn't seem to have met these jerks. Or had he? Fuck, his memory for faces...
“Just leaving,” he said calmly and got up, grabbing his backpack from the bench. A fight was not in his plans for this morning. At least not until he was sure Veronica was real: it would make sense with her. JD remembered the very moment when the sparks had lit up in her eyes; later, he ignited them into a flame. He knew that a little violence was bound to impress her, the main thing was not to overdo it.
Perhaps the death of three of her friends at their hands was not the best aphrodisiac.
Well, he could think much more clearly now. And if Veronica was real, if she was made of flesh and blood, she would be caught in his mousetrap faster than she could say the word "cheese".
...maybe JD was a little too confident.
***
He sat in the cafeteria, lazily leafing through a book he had stolen from the ninth grade library. He tried to read, but his attention kept shifting to things that hadn't happened yet. JD couldn't stop thinking about the moment when things had gone wrong: after the bitch in red had died? Or after he and Veronica had killed those two jerks? Anger surged through him; he unclenched fists and slowly let his breath out. After all, it was entirely possible that he'd made those jerks up, too...
If so, he'd have big questions for his fucking brain.
But JD was totally unprepared to meet her, even though he had imagined all morning how it would happen. When he heard the familiar voice so close, it completely knocked him out... Was it really true?
He swallowed and stared glassy-eyed at the pretty legs in black and white oxfords. Veronica, balancing on one foot, tapped the toe of her shoe thoughtfully on the floor; she always did that when she was embarrassed or thinking deeply about something. Without a thought, he slid gaze from her ankles to the smooth line of hips hidden by the short skirt, to her breasts, pausing for a second, and then to the upswept, fluffy hair.
Finally, breathless, he stared mesmerized at her face.
And JD understanded why he was willing to kill for her.
He wouldn't hesitate to do it again, if only she would ask.
JD stared at Veronica for too long to go unnoticed. But, God knows, he hadn't expected such an effect! He was supposed to be the player, smoothly leading Veronica into a trap. A safe, comfortable trap. Knowing all the cards in her hands, JD planned to play his own, a few steps ahead. He could have weeded out all her doubts, corrected all the mistakes he'd made; done everything to get his happy ending.
But before he realized it, he became a mouse himself.
Their eyes met, and his heart skipped a beat. Veronica raised her eyebrows curiously, and he had to quickly lower eyes to the book, pretending to read. But he was too late; she was staring at him intently now, distracted from her conversation.
JD felt her attentive gaze; the toes of her black and white oxfords turned in his direction.
He gritted teeth, frantically trying to think of a less creepy-sounding explanation for his behavior. His thoughts kept returning to the warm glance of her brown eyes, the small mole on her cheekbone, to her lips that looked as if they were about to smile. It didn't help his concentration one bit.
His fingers trembled, clutching the book like a shield.
“Veronica, stop drooling over that perv!“ the shrill voice cut through his ears, making JD miss the time when red Heather had been... be... for a while... dead.
“Why the perv?” Veronica asked curiously, finally taking her eyes off him. JD could hardly suppress the urge to groan and hit himself over the head with the book.
“Well, he's wearing a black trench coat! I mean, who but pervs and psychos wear a cape? And yes, he's been staring at your legs for fifteen minutes and looks like he's about to cum,” Chandler laughed, pleased with her joke, and pulled Veronica with her.
JD cautiously lifted his gaze from the book, continuing to watch her.
“My money's on the psycho... He looks like he's got something in his pocket, and that “something” is a gun,” said Heather in green, whatever her name was... Duke?
“Maybe we'd rather talk about outfits for the party?” yellow Heather, whose name he didn't even try to remember, timidly tried to change the subject. “I want to go in that top I bought a week ago. What about you, Veronica?”
“I'm thinking of something that opens up my legs as much as possible,” Veronica quickly turned around and threw him a mocking look.
And he buried the face in the book with a strangled groan.
"Dear diary, I fucked up."