Title: the words you picked so carefully keep coming out all wrong
Info: Ann/Lucy. Several things that could have happened, and one that does.
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The Perkins drive to Pawnee for a week during the summer of Ann’s fifteenth year. Her little brother alternates kicking her seat with reaching for her just-brushed hair for the duration of the drive aside from fifteen minutes when he either falls asleep or forgets that his purpose is to make Ann want to jump out of moving vehicles. Once they get there, her dad in full tour guide mode, her mom amused and playing along, there is — big surprise — nothing to do, like, at all, and despite Ann’s mom’s best efforts, she spends most of the week watching MTV in the hotel room.
They tour the city hall (Ann’s mom gasping and covering Matt’s eyes) and play in the park and it gets really hot and muggy out so the local government closes the pool. It’s basically the worst vacation ever (they stare at her here, at her mom and dad holding hands, at her brother who has inexplicably darker skin than she does, at her hair, in a way that the people in Indianapolis don’t ever quite dare to do) — aside from maybe the brunch they have at JJ’s — and Ann willfully doesn’t think about Pawnee until years later when she graduates from college and casts the job net all over South Central Indiana, and sure enough.
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