you'd rather find the lock than find the key (1/1)
TITLE: you'd rather find the lock than find the key
RATING: PG-13
CHARACTER(S): Jenny
DISCLAIMER: Nothing in the Gossip Girl world is mine.
SUMMARY: Post 3x15. It's a little girl's dream of finding love gone wrong.
you’d rather find the lock than find the key
“don’t tell me if I’m dying,
cause I don’t want to know,
if I can’t see the sun,
maybe I should go”
-Angels On The Moon, Thriving Ivory
Damien is an idiot. He’s shallow, self-centred and everything everyone told her he was. She should have expected it, his reaction.
She still feels crushed, humiliated.
Inside. She makes sure she walks funny in the morning, in case Serena’s watching, keeping with the charade.
But Damien is a notch in her belt. He was fun-she had fun-but they weren’t good together anyway.
She still cries herself to sleep every night that week.
.
The betrayal of a friend hurts, she knows. She still isn’t sure who betrayed who first: Agnes, by fuelling her dreams but participating in the action, or she, by going behind her back to get something done. In the end, they betrayed each other.
And Agnes was a good friend, even if she was scatterbrained, uncaring of her actions, devious . . . Not that it mattered now. Agnes was no longer her friend, though one good thing did come out of that night.
Racing through the crowd, anxious and nervous, she murmurs ‘oh my god, oh my god’ under her breath, but his smiling, bright eyes, and ‘you were great!’ makes her forget the fear. And that kiss!
She remembers his arms around her. Maybe it’s not too late to find love.
.
She-doesn’t call her by her name, she’s the enemy-comes and goes with him. Touch and go. It’s unfair, the way he’s always taken for granted. She vows to change that. Kisses him, squeals inside when he doesn’t stop her, and runs.
It’s not the shock. It’s not.
.
It’s a mean plan, a cruel plan-a Chuck Bass plan-but she goes along with it anyway, and for a second she thinks she’s won. She’s so close to victory, to feeling true, uncontested love between two people and she’s so excited.
But then she’s there and he’s telling her to get out and choosing another girl and every little dream she had is unravelling, falling to pieces, crashing down.
She lets one tear in the elevator then fixes her make-up.
Tells him that they deserve each other, not meaning a word of it, because who’s worthy enough to deserve him.
.
She hates that he can make her feel this way. Give her butterflies and blushes and a deep sense of shyness with just a quick, easy smile.
Hates that he has the power to crush her, to hurt her. Hates that he makes her weak.
She’s out of the apartment, imagines them both smiling, talking, kissing and hates it-hates him. But she plasters on a cold smile like she’s supposed to and pretends not to hear her heart shatter, even as she wonders why. He wasn’t hers-he was always hers-but she likes to pretend she has a chance.
It gives her power around him. Makes her feel less weak.
She swears an oath off men she knows that’s bound to fail.
.
When she opens the door to Chuck she says, ‘you’re plan was crap, Bass,’ but it doesn’t sound as harsh as it should.
He looks sad, lost, a mirror image of the insides that she tries so hard to cover up. Staring at the floor he murmurs, ‘she’s moving on’.
He never had to.
They have something in common, both heartbroken and hurt. She tugs him inside and presses her lips to his.
.
They don’t love each other, and it’s not for the sex, so she stops for a moment to consider why they meet in secret. She thinks through her day: quick breakfast, school with the minions, work with Eleanor, occasional family dinner or watching TV with Eric . . .
This is all she looks forward to.
She asks him why he comes. He says it’s for the sex, tells her she’s good, but she knows better.
They don’t want to be alone.
She asks him why she does. Tells him there’s nothing in it for her. Tells him he should make it worth her while.
When she wakes up, there’s a Tiffany’s box on the bedside table. He makes her feel like a common whore.
She wears the necklace to school the next day.
.
It sits between the many other necklaces, bracelets, earrings etc. that he’s bought her. She keeps them in a lockable music box, also from him. It’s old-fashioned, with a burlesque dancer spinning inside.
He tells her it reminded him of her. He doesn’t mean it.
She wishes someone would say those words honestly to her.
.
There comes a time when she loses his interest. Ceases to matter. He doesn’t tell her, just doesn’t show up to the hotel room he booked.
She leaves, sips martinis at a bar like another broken girl she knows.
She doesn’t care.
The girl’s fixed now.
She will not care.
Blair and Chuck are re-announced the next day. She sees the picture tagged in the post. He looks happy, like he never did with her. But they were nothing.
She’ll never care.
The music box goes into the back of her wardrobe. She doesn’t open it again.
.
She accepts that with being Queen comes prejudice. There are so many boys who want her, for her looks or her power or her fame. She turns her nose up at them, is picky about who she’s seen with, just because she can. They’re not good enough for her.
None of them are good enough for her.
She’s the former Queen of Constance, nineteen and in her prime, a fashion label in the process of becoming reality. Everyone should want her.
She sees a guy across the room. They talk. Yale graduate, comes from money, handsome. He winks at her.
She lets him take her in a hotel room in the same building. He doesn’t wait once he’s done. She sits up, asks him where he’s going.
‘Home,’ he says, ‘to my fiancée in the Hamptons.’
He gives her a look she’s given many times. Makes her feel like she’s inferior, like she’s nothing.
She realises that being former Queen of Constance and a Humphrey means nothing.
She doesn’t stop him walking away.
.
She makes a red dress that night, and throws herself into her work, designs dress after dress after dress. People call her a workaholic.
It was never supposed to be like this.
She asks herself if he broke her. Wants to put the blame somewhere, wants to be angry. She murmurs ‘yes’ out loud.
She lies. Her downward spiral started long before him.
.
She wears purple to the gala, can’t wear red, it’s shows to much of her inside. She dances a little, sips glasses of champagne, thanks all those who wish her luck with her label.
Knows they’d rather crush her dreams.
She gets a dance with him. It’s awkward though graceful-looking and she apologises, tells him that she was stupid and sixteen and realised she was wrong minutes later.
He chuckles and forgives her. Embraces her like a sister, tells her she’ll be ‘awesome’, and walks off to the blonde on the other side of the room.
She makes herself feel anger at the second set of forgiving eyes across the floor.
Hates that she feels nothing for him now.
.
She hits on him in a satin slip in her family suite. She walks in.
In one swift move, she loses their respect, isn’t welcome anymore.
Can’t look at her father’s eyes.
She can’t remember why she kissed him in the first place.
She calls ‘him’ Nate from now on.
.
At twenty-two, she runs away to Ibiza, Spain, sits in the hot sun and contemplates. She’s left behind an engaged sister and her first love, her predecessor and lover married, two brothers who can’t look at her, and a family who no longer wants her.
Dan writes for a magazine and calls her once a month. He’s the only one who cares.
A shadow covers her for a moment and she looks up, sees Carter Baizen staring at her with a wicked smile on his face.
She shares it with him.
Maybe doing things wrong will be fun this time.
.
Ethan is everything she ever wanted as a little girl. Charming, hot, with enough to money to afford a white horse and a castle. He treats her like a princess, delicate and fragile.
She wants to scream that she’s not some breakable doll, but she likes the way he looks at her-like she’s worth looking at-so she stays quiet.
He buys her diamonds and Valentino and loves her. Tells her. She repeats it back.
Feeling like a parrot, admitting to herself she doesn’t love him at all.
But he makes her feel safe and secure and honestly, what in the Upper East Side is real anymore?
.
Her career propels as the months pass by. She makes the dresses for a modern adaptation of a classic, a mix of vintage costume and modern design. It’s an instant hit and she feels the rush of pleasure at the praise.
It’s the only pleasure she feels these days.
On the red carpet, a reporter asks her what inspired her to be a fashion designer.
The longing looks between her father and another woman. The pining of her lonely brother, who relied on her not to break down. The stunning girls in town who ignored her in limos and designer clothes and made her want to be like them. The fuzzy feeling of acceptance, and then the sudden thrill of power.
‘Catwalks,’ she answers, ‘the ones on the TV that I used to watch as a little girl and think “wouldn’t it be cool if one of those dresses was mine?”’
Really, she would wish it was her on the catwalk, her everyone admiring. But she faced quickly that she wasn’t pretty enough for that.
A poster of her step-sister is on the wall in front of her.
.
A photo of her and Ethan ends up in the latest gossip magazine. They’re smiling, looking utterly in love.
Her father calls her and she reads between the words that he approves.
She carries on pretending.
.
It’s been three years since the incident when she goes home, this time wearing a pretty diamond ring on her fourth finger. She sees her father and her brother first and the pride in their eyes.
Pretends not to see the relief. She’s always been good at it.
Everyone loves Ethan, makes him part of the family, thanks him for bringing her off of the dark road she was headed to.
For a moment, she sees a flash of the rest of her life, and shudders.
.
She’s-Serena’s-staying the night to help Lily with the latest chemo treatments for the returning cancer. She plucks up the courage to talk to her, ask for advice, tell her the truth.
But she’s glared at and ignored, and when she asks, ‘don’t I get a second chance?’ she receives a shaken head. Watches her murmur, ‘I trusted you’ a hundred times.
Eric asks if she’s okay. She tells him she’s perfect.
She will be.
.
The week before her wedding she sees Chuck, walking a bulldog with Blair at his side, six months pregnant. She’s glowing with happiness, has everything she wanted.
I wanted to be you.
Remembers the times when Blair’s compliments were everything she asked for, made her day, because she was new and Blair was Queen.
Remembers the look on Chuck’s face that night she kissed him, how broken he was, how she had the power to fix him and she did so.
Remembers how much they loved-love-each other.
I still want to be you.
.
The wedding is beautiful. She makes her own dress in the style she’s wanted since she began to sew, puts the bridesmaids in fuchsia, organises the reception with Lily’s help, checks over every little detail. She wants it all to be perfect.
Maybe then it’ll feel like it.
She finishes dancing with Ethan and he passes her onto her brother, and Dan looks her in the eye and asks her if she’s happy.
No, of course I’m not, I’m being that girl, the one I thought I never consented to be but ended up being anyway. The one who marries for status and money, or just to have a husband on her arm. I’m not in love with him, but I’ll try to be and everything will be okay. It has to be.
She nods and giggles and punches him lightly in the shoulders, sighs blissfully and murmurs, ‘more than anything!’
.
They spend their honeymoon in Thailand. People take photographs and ask questions because he’s a businessman from money, she’s a famous fashion designer, and together they’re the newest couple in the gossip magazines.
She sees herself at ten, looking at posters on the wall and wishing, ‘that will be me.’
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
.
Her mother visits them three months into her marriage, says that she looks radiant.
Doesn’t think otherwise.
Either their relationship has all but disappeared since her freshman year, or she never knew her as she well as she thought she did. Or her mask has becoming her true face.
She doesn’t call her again. Her mother isn’t welcome anymore.
.
The catwalk show the year she reaches twenty-six pulls her back, back to a time when she was young and innocent and still Little Jenny Humphrey.
She misses it. Wants it back.
Models strut down in her designs, like they did in Eleanor Waldorf’s, and she feels the years blend by, wonders how it’s been ten years since she once stood behind these walls. Wonders how things changed.
Wonders who to blame.
She plasters on a grin and walks happily onto the stage to receive her award, hears her partner gush about her-her work, her designs, her bright, bright future.
It’s all that seems to matter to her. No longer a part of her life, but all of it. There’s nothing else she cares about.
Ethan calls her an hour in the after-party. She chooses ignore.
.
She walks home instead of a cab, passes a drugstore and steps inside to buy some aspirin. The lights have made her head hurt.
On the side of the road, a girl lies half-laughing, half-sobbing by a pile of rubbish. There’s a woollen jacket on the floor beside her.
Most would see a lunatic. She sees a girl with crazy ideas, her own bright dreams, a false friend-her history.
She sees her dresses burning in a trash can when she’s sixteen. Knows her shock at the reception to the betrayal, faces the fact that she’s done worse.
Gives her a fifty-dollar bill.
Knows that in the end, she got the better end of the deal.
.
Carter Baizen moves back into town with a trophy wife on his arm. She looks for the similarities; both blonde, nineteen, wanting a true in (more than a second marriage) into the UES. She wonders why he never asked her.
Wonders if she’d have been happier.
He joins her at a bar one night, asks if she remembers their time in Ibiza.
Dancing on beaches, walking home soaked in the baking hot sun, full-on making out in the centre of a children’s park. Drinking at a different bar each time, ever night a party. Drunken stumbling and sex and ‘I never quite think I got over her.’
Knows why.
Still thinks she’d have been happier.
.
She meets Dan for coffee in their favourite café in Brooklyn every fortnight from the wedding. She wears her own, latest designs, does her hair up, puts on the attention-grabbing make-up that she can still get away with. Smiles brightly, says hey, and the routine begins.
He goes first, telling her about his new job in the New Yorker, the long hours and that he hates writing fact not fiction. He shares the ideas of his new book, his sixth attempt at a novel, this one based on something he’s dreamed up, not something in his past. And then there’s Lexy, his girlfriend of four years, who he is obviously in love with.
She refuses to be jealous.
Of course, when he reveals that he finally popped the question, romantic and sweet with rose-
petals sprinkled on a double bed surrounded by candles, a flowery smell in the air, curtains wide open to show the Parisian night skyline, cheesy grins you can’t hold in, giggles melding with lilting music, squeals and then ‘of course I’ll
-marry you!’ he says she squealed. She lets her mouth drop open, allows the tears and shrieks, grabbing him a tight hug that screams ‘congratulations!’
Soon it’s her turn and it’s slower, the gushing of her new dresses and the secrets of married life and the new deal with Bendels she has coming up but it always ends the same way.
‘Are you happy?’ he asks, searching her face for any doubt.
No. Not yet. Never will be.
Her mask is absolute and her resolve doesn’t crack, but she doesn’t want to lie and answers with a statement. ‘Happiness is the key to everything,’ she grins, her eyes bright and shiny.
I’m trying. I’m still trying.
.
Ethan’s sat at home and when she reaches him, she gives him a kiss that he doesn’t return. He stares at her; she stares back.
He tells her that she was seen in Brooklyn, of all places. Tells her that it doesn’t look good, that Brooklyn isn’t where she should be seen. Tells her she’s his wife, she’s a true Upper East Sider now, and she can’t go back.
‘It’s for the best,’ he says. ‘You’re better than that.’
She always runs. Runs errands for Blair and the other girls, runs away to make something of herself, runs when she’s in the wrong.
She calls Carter. He answers on the third ring and when she asks, ‘what am I doing?’ he sighs.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m trapped, Carter. Can you get away?’
They leave the same night, back to Spain.
She refuses to feel guilt at running again.
.
Ibiza with Carter reminds her of who she is. She’s not a trophy-wife, in a loveless marriage with only her brother caring. She’s the Brooklyn Girl with no prospects but a loving family and fruitless dreams of being famous.
She’s the prettiest girl in the room, the one everyone looks at, whispers about, want to be friends with, wants to spend the night with-she’s Queen.
She spends night after night drinking shot after shot, dancing on tables, making out with every guy she meets. Carter’s the only person she knows who approves, and she’s accepted that they’ll never be more than friends (with benefits, of course).
Every night she spends with another man makes her feel alive.
.
Ethan sends her divorce papers three months after she left. She wakes up two weeks after their first anniversary to the unopened envelope, rips it apart and signs them without stopping.
For the first time since she was fourteen, she feels truly free.
.
A year goes by and the fun fades. She ages. Subtle changes physically, but different in the way she speaks. She’s twenty-eight next year and feeling a need to settle down, even if it won’t last.
The moment she mentions children, Carter leaves.
She misses his presence, but not that much.
.
Pedro’s the bartender at her second-favourite bar. He’s divorced, has two children with his ex-wife in Madrid, and moved out here with his best friend for the sun.
They go out on two dates before they sleep together.
She doesn’t love him, but it’s enough.
.
In her nearest newsagents, she picks up a gossip magazine, one with Blair Bass on the front cover, holding a perfect baby boy-their second, though Blair reveals she really wants a girl to join them.
She’s seen Carter in the papers, newly single and with more than one girl on his arm. Vanessa’s been taking photographs for a gardening magazine, though she only knows that because it was on the bus. The two of them lost touch many years ago.
She flicks through the magazine, laughs at Blair’s gushing and comments about being pregnant, freezes when she sees the words, ‘and S and Nate are so excited about a girl joining the family! As is Mason, he’s the sweetest, most adorable five-year-old I know, almost as cute as my Jake (seven) and Cobar (three months) . . .’
The magazine is put down and she leaves the store.
Remembers the bright blonde hair and younger version of his laugh and quickly leaving the room.
.
She doesn’t scream angrily when she finds out she’s pregnant. It’s a fuzzy feeling, something that sticks throughout her pregnancy, leaving her with it encased in a beautiful, baby, brown-haired, brown-eyed version of her.
For a few weeks, she goes mom crazy, but soon she’s refusing to get married (it didn’t work last time) and he’s leaving (he wanted it to work this time) and she’s jobless, stuck in a flat she can’t pay for with a newborn baby girl.
.
She calls Chuck. Tells him she’s spill all to Nate unless she’s given funds.
‘You really think that after all you’ve done, he’ll listen to you.’
She’s not so naive, says, ‘no, I doubt he will, but the stories will add up and I wasn’t who I am now at sixteen.’
Silence.
‘The question is, Chuck Bass, are you willing to take the chance?’
There’s twenty-thousand Euros in the bank the next morning, the account in her name.
.
She wishes she could say she was the perfect mother, but she’s far from it. She leaves her daughter at the local nursery most of the time, misses every recital, takes photographs only on special occasions.
Drowns herself in the misery that her one escape has now become sheathed by metal bars.
She forces herself to go to one of the plays, watches her baby girl stumble over her words and bursts into tears.
‘They always miss so much.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Upper East Side Parents. I mean, they give you everything you ever wanted except themselves. In the end, that’s what we’d choose over everything anyway.’
She tells her that she was amazing and she’s so proud and cries again.
Luciana isn’t so pleased with the reaction.
.
Her baby girl’s six when she first leaves. To London, she decides, and spends her nights in Covent Garden, drinking and dancing like she’s still nineteen. She’s not, she’s thirty-four.
As Queen, thirty-four was a number far in the future. By thirty-four, she’d be on her second marriage (false, more like second man), have a large divorce settlement in the bank (false again, just the yearly hundred from Chuck since she didn’t work), with at least two children, a boy (false) and a girl (the first, thankful truth), and most importantly, she’d be happy.
Even then, the last requirement had been sketchy.
She grins when she remembers her baby girl at home, waiting for her, and knows that she’ll go back.
It’s good to have something worth going home for.
.
At eleven, Luciana starts high school. The years in between are a mixture of her face and half-remembered nights out. She and the bottle are all she lives for.
.
At fifteen, Luci, as she demands to be called, gets back at midnight. They have one of their first arguments-the real ones, with screaming and shouting and fits of frustration-until, finally, her girl screams, ‘this is the third time this week!’
It shocks her, makes her shake her head, because she’d remember . . . she’d remember . . .
But the week’s details are hazy and for all she knows, it’s true.
Luci asks, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and ‘why are you never home these days?’ but the one that hurts the most is ‘what kind of mother are you?’
Reveals she’s never there. Makes her face the truth.
She’s worse than an UES mother, and she doesn’t have the money to compensate.
That doesn’t work either.
.
At eighteen, Luci leaves for Manhattan with friends.
She’s in Madrid, taking more than drinks these days, little white tablets often in her purse.
It’s the morning, and she’s hungover, when she answers the phone and hears, ‘I have grandparents in New York?!’
Feels the dead weight in her stomach at the revelation.
.
Nate turns up in Ibiza four months later alone. Asks her all the questions she doesn’t want to answer, doesn’t know how.
He’s older but she knows she’s aged by a decade more. And he hasn’t lost his strength, not even thirty-three years after the night that started it all.
Has to believe it was the night that Damien left, otherwise she’ll go mad.
His hand grasps hers, tries to pull her up, and she freezes, see her life flash before her eyes.
. . . a girl, smiling at the catwalk show on the TV . . .
. . . older now, with her first dress . . .
. . . squealing at a sewing machine . . .
. . . starting high school, recognised by the Queen . . .
. . . crushing on a boy she’s not to allowed to crush on . . .
. . . watching her dreams burn in a trash can . . .
. . . being crowned . . .
. . . the rush of danger with drugs in her pocket . . .
. . . utter humiliation . . .
. . . that one kiss . . .
. . . a music box sitting in the back of her old wardrobe . . .
. . . her white wedding day . . .
. . . summers drinking and dancing with and without Carter . . .
. . . the birth of her baby girl . . .
. . . the smile on her face as her baby screams ‘ciao!’ at the airport . . .
. . . the last tablet she threw down with tequila . . .
And she smiles, because she’s dead now, truly.
Nate tries to pick her up but she resists.
‘Take care of her.’
She’s my life.
‘Keep her safe.’
But she won’t have mine.
He looks at her, reads her eyes, and for a moment she wonders how transparent she really is. But he lets go and leaves, like everyone does, like she wants him to.
The door to the club is still open and she leaves the bathroom, orders another drink.
She’s officially in hell.
Once, she had dreams, thought they might come true. But she learned the hard way that happiness is for fairytales - reality is full of bitter people with missed chances.
Once, she was successful, had a charming man and prospering career and her name on the front page of every gossip magazine.
Once, she thought family was all she needed, even if that family was just a daughter she rarely saw as the years passed by, even if that family was just a fantasy.
Now, as she takes the second shot and the tablet from her bag, she slinks into the shadows, knowing that everything she needs is in her hands.
Escaping means freedom, and freedom . . . means everything.
In the corner of her eye, she sees the familiar face of Carter Baizen tip his glass at her.