Chapter Text
*
From: [email protected]
Object: CRISIS ALERT!!!!! CRISIS ALERT!!!!
Annie Dear,
We are under a vicious attack!
Just came out of my meeting with the board and I am going to be the last Dean of Greendale, as the city wants to transform our fine institution into a MALL! A MALL without even a single Victoria’s Secret in it!!! That's a tragedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tonight I’ll cry over myself and cope ON MY OWN! But tomorrow I want you and all the Student Body ready to fight back!
I hope this email finds you well. (Still on the first lesson of my online class on how to write formal emails, so I should have put that at the beginning)
Lots of love,
Dean Craig Pelton.
*
This email doesn’t find her well.
Not at all.
The news she just got is possibly the worst news she could ever get. News that should have been given in person, at a godly hour of the morning and not at 6 PM, when she is already gone from school and she cannot start strategizing already.
She is the President of the Study Body, chair of the Improve Greendale committee, soon to be renamed the Save Greendale committee.
Greendale is a place that cannot be defined or categorized. It’s technically a community college, but which community college offers lessons to its own Dean? How many colleges are in the FBI’s blacklist or have a serial bandit that sticks coins in people’s butts? None, one can answer, gladly, another may add.
But Greendale is home.
Greendale is home to all the people that don’t and can’t feel at home anywhere else.
Greendale is her home.
Greendale believed in her when she was at her worst.
She still remembers when the Dean came to talk to her rehab, saying that everyone was accepted, talking with such passion that she enrolled in no time (even though the mention in his speech of the enrollment of a promising football star from Riverside High aka her huge crush Troy Bolton may have helped a bit).
She didn't find Greendale to accommodate all her standards, they were particularly high and Greendale's ones were particularly low.
It was true that everyone was accepted. Very true. But in the midst of crazy adventures, more blow off classes than serious ones and questionable school mates, she had found a family, the family she never had.
For her family meant an absent father, a father that left her when she was ten to ride into the sunset with another woman and who built an whole new family for himself and a mother that made her waltz with the devil (aka Adderall) for the sake of better grades and a better physical shape, a mother that wanted her to be great and successful rather than happy, a mother that never even pat her on the head.
She arrived at the age of 18 years old completely deprived and starved of love. She only knew through books and movies that family means that no one is left out, unconditional support.
Well, this didn't apply to the Edison family.
She stopped being part of her family when she screwed up. Her mum made it clear. If she wanted to get help with her addiction, covering the good name of her family in shame and ridicule, then she would have stopped being her daughter and this is how she had found herself with a plastic bag full of her stuff outside the front door, learning the hard way how to live in a cruel world after being the miserable Princess locked up in the tower and guarded by an evil dragon.
She went through rehab all by herself, she went from staying in a semi detached house in the suburbs in fancy Riverside, to a small studio apartment in the worst neighborhood of Greendale, right above a marital aid store.
But she doesn't regret it.
Because if her seemingly perfect life hadn't gone off the rails she wouldn't have never met her true family.
She'd never experienced with her own hands the unmatched love and support that family can give you, how they can infuriate you and five seconds later make you feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
She now has a mother figure that bakes the greatest brownies in the world, who can sometimes be a bit passive-aggressive, but who loves her children with burning passion and has so much love in her that she extends the same warmth to her friends as well.
She has two boys that are like brothers, the Troy Barnes she dreamt about in high school, filling pages of her diary with hearts and "Mrs. Annie Barnes", is now her biggest source of laughter and the best shoulder to cry on, and Abed, the most complex, yet special person she has ever known. They welcomed her into their home, saving her from her crappy apartment and with the two of them she discovered what it is like to have a home instead of a house.
Then there's Britta, the big sister she always dreamed of having, an idealistic contrarian that infuriates her a lot of the time, but still is the coolest girl she has ever met.
She has a long life debt with Greendale for giving her these people, people who she'd take a bullet for, people who are always going to be a part of her.
So she has to save Greendale.
Because she is still finishing her second degree, because her family still needs that crazy school even more than she does and because they have just started making it a better place, they have to finish it, now the City Council can't come and make something stupid like a mall.
She is going to fight, she is a fighter.
When she puts something in her mind she doesn't go down easily, she is going to be like a reverse anti-government Leslie Knope, draining her adversaries with stubbornness, homemade cookies and bright coloured binders graphics.
When she is about to open her laptop to start a little brainstorming session on how to save the school, not even having the full picture clear after the not-so informative mail from the Dean, her phone rings. Britta is calling. She rolls her eyes because she already knows where this phone call is going.
"Hey. Are you busy?"
"Nope. Just starting to brainstorm something for a meeting I have with Dean Pelton tomorrow."
She knows her study group well and if there's one thing they all suck at is handling changes, she doesn't want to worry them before she truly understands how bad it is.
"He must have cried tears of joy when you decided to enroll again in his school to get another degree, he was almost risking to do his own job without you around".
He did and he also did a silly dance all around his office. He also promised her free education for her second degree, which she declined, knowing well Greendale's precarious finances, but a generous offer nonetheless.
"You know I like to help…"
She shouldn't have said that, because now Britta is going to annoy her with the favor she has been asking around to anyone in Greendale and that she really doesn't want to do her, no matter the enormous amount of love she feels for her.
"I know and that's why I am calling you. I know you said it was a bad idea, but I really need you on this. Can you please do it? I am not asking for much."
Britta is fighting her way through a psychology degree, her mentor is a drunkard creepy British guy, probably the only British guy on whom the sexy accent doesn't work his magic. Together they plotted some sort of dating app to show that it is easier to fall in love solely through conversation, with no pictures involved and with a complicated algorithm they designed while high or drunk to match people based on psychological affinity.
"Britta I have a boyfriend, I don't think he'll be very pleased with me entertaining an epistolary relationship with someone only for your college social experiment, and frankly I think that's only something Duncan has made up on the spot to get in your pants."
This has already happened quite a few times, ever since their first year. Another special thing about Greendale is the fact that, while not encouraged, it is way easier to carry on a student-teacher relationship than pretty much everywhere else in the world.
"He is a professional…"
"Like this would be the first time…"
Britta is quite passionate about this project, and while she loves seeing her so passionate about anything else than her lost causes and her pack of sick cats, she has a boyfriend and signing up to help Britta would be like cheating.
Yep, another thing that she found in Greendale is a boyfriend, a boyfriend she is now even living with after three years of relationship, in his house, a house that still feels like a house and not a home.
Rich is great. He is a doctor, he likes to help people even more than she does and has the warmest smile in the world, it's just that sometimes it's too much. Too perfect.
His house is the same, so pretty, tidy and immaculate that she is almost scared to walk in it. She still feel like a stranger and there isn't a day when she doesn't regret leaving her home, the one she shared with Troy and Abed, just because her old five years plan said that after three years of college relationship she was supposed to move in and after five she is supposed to get married, but the mere thought of it makes her have a panic attack.
"Please, you know what day is it right? It's almost October 19th, my birthday and you, being part of this experiment will be the biggest, most amazing present. Rich doesn't have to know, you have been together for three years now, you have a strong relationship, it won't be undermined by some silly social experiment that involves chatting and flirting with someone online."
Mmm…she is not so sure about that.
"I don't know and it's the beginning of September Britta, I have plenty of time to find you an even better gift that won't jeopardize my relationship."
She could give her another sick cat, or that book on feminism she always looks at when they go on their monthly mall trip. She is a bit curious about this algorithm, but she can't. She'd feel dirty chatting with someone else, the whole point of this experiment is to form a relationship over similar psychological profiles, she is already in a relationship. A relationship that to the outside world seems nothing less than perfect.
"You love seeing your friends thriving academically and this is going to give me enough credits to graduate before I hit the forties. You have to sign up to the site " youvegotm@il. gcc", set up the profile and our algorithm will find your perfect match."
"This feels a lot like cheating".
"Like Rich doesn't constantly flirt with the interns at every holiday party you have attended with him…"
This will make her learn the lesson: never complain about anything to Britta, never accept her opinion as unlicensed therapist, because she will use your words against you and twist the knife right where the flesh is still healing.
"It's just his warm personality!"
She doesn't know if this is the truth or it's just the truth she keeps telling herself, because Rich has been with her for three years, she has spent time and energy trying to have the perfect relationship, she can't accept to have wasted time on a boyfriend who flirts with his interns just under her own eyes.
Everytime the dreaded hospital holiday party comes she wants to die a bit, because she can't see these girls, these brilliant girls who have attended the best universities in the country all around him, girls that have the life she had always imagined for herself before the Adderall, girls who makes her feel small, ignorant and inadequate, because those are girls a guy is not ashamed to introduce to his mum.
She has never met Rich's mum. She is a presence between them, constantly calling, constantly putting him in the worst of moods, but he never introduced them and a part of Annie can't stop thinking that it must because he is ashamed of her, of her past, a bright student turned addict, of her present, getting a second degree in a humble community college, of whatever the future may have in hold for her, a forensic scientist, not a field where jobs flourish.
"This is not cheating, probably I have Britta'd the whole algorithm and this will lead to nothing, but please, I need one last person to enroll, so that the numbers will be even."
She has repeated this story of the numbers being even at least a thousand times. She is lying. She wants Annie because she is like a sister and knows her very well. She knows that Annie Edison is intense, that she puts her whole mind and heart into even the smallest thing and loves scientific progress. Enroll Annie Edison in a study, and she'll dedicate to it with body and soul.
"I'll think about it ok? And you have already used the even number excuse with Abed."
For now her brain is split: 99% she won't do it, 1% she will.
"That's all I am asking of you. Think about it. I love you! I have to go to the bar, I'll try to enroll someone else there, but it'll be fun, it's like being in the Dreamatorium, it's all anonymous, you can be whoever you want! You can be Capricious Caroline, she's been out of business for quite a while."
Capricious Caroline, alias Caroline Decker, her old alterego when she wanted to sneak in bars with a fake ID. Whenever she felt directionless she used to go to a bar with her fake ID and self doubting, little miss perfect Annie used to become a wild Texan girl, who only loved fun and living in the moment.
Ever since she has been involved with Rich, Caroline has never come out to play. It'd be fun to uncover her, but the reason why she mustn't do it is gently snoring in their bedroom, after a painful night shift at the hospital.
He is a good man, maybe even too good.
One that makes no mistakes and finds it easy to judge the ones who do. One who wants the best for her, sometimes neglecting that what he thinks is best for her isn't exactly true. Still she clings to this relationship, because he is good and he gives her the stability she never had.
He is a good captain in the storm, but sometimes, deep down, she longs for a bit of tumult, a burst of passion, surprise and danger. Rich isn't surprising, Rich isn't dangerous.
Living with him after years of living by herself first and then with Troy and Abed is hard. So used to being the most responsible one, the adult of the situation, that it feels weird not being in full control anymore. She was used to shenanigans and colors, and now she is in a house where finding a tiny germ is impossible. While cohabitation means to compromise, sometimes living with Rich feels more like a surrender to his aseptic environment, rules and way of life.
But he is a good man. He loves her. And she loves him, she still remembers the wonder in her eyes when she saw him the first time, a real successful doctor walking Greendale's hallways, she still remembers the accelerated beats of her heart when she found him again, the following winter volunteering to make her town a better place, the time she gathered courage to ask him out, the suspense that almost killed her while he was wrapping his head around their age gap, the perfume he had on during their first date, the surprise when she saw the abs hidden by his perfectly ironed cardigans, the pleasure he has given her… now everything seems less colorful, less vibrant, routine casting her beige hands all over what she had thought was the great love story of her life.
But they are kind of happy, way happier than her parents ever were, than a lot of couples she knows. She likes coming, to what she supposes she'll have to start calling home, to him, to sit around the table and listens all about his day, to answer a few question about what she is up to in that wacky school of hers, to lay on the couch, feet on his lap, watching something on tv. It feels familiar, but sometimes, late at night, nights she often spends alone, while he is busy saving people's lives, she dreams about a future family and he never features in those dreams of her. When she thinks about a future together, she struggles to see one where she is happy as she hoped to be when she was a child, she can't see the future Annie with shimmery eyes. But nobody is truly happy, right? And he is a good man.
A good man that deserves pancakes.
She starts making them, she used to make pancakes for Abed and Troy all the time. She misses them. She makes pancakes when she is in love or when she wants to be forgiven for something, probably the fact that deep down she hasn't completely rejected Britta's proposal. The thought of Caroline Decker coming out to play made her pee her pants a little with excitement.
The smell of breakfast food, though it is almost dinner time, awakens Rich. She has many complaints in her head, but he is very handsome and the flesh is weak and seeing him with just his boxers on makes some of her recriminations disappear.
"Honey, I made you breakfast."
His strong arms circle her, she feels protected, when he kisses her neck,she still shivers.
"You are the best, babe."
He sits at their table, eating his breakfast/dinner and though he tries not to show it so much, Annie can see the eye roll when he sees her computer open on the Greendale mail.
"Are we spending time together tonight? There's this new Italian restaurant I've been wanting to go to for a long time!"
They barely go out anymore, he is always busy, working three jobs at once, not because he needs the money, just because he can’t get enough of doing good things, that’s something she can’t complain about. She is not a monster.
"Babe, I have the pro bono clinic tonight, I thought I told you I was busy".
Insert the GIF saying *pretends to be shocked*.
"You had not, but it's not like it's a big surprise, you are always busy."
"Are you blaming me for helping poor people have medical check ups?"
That's the supreme card. The card that you can't answer to. How could anyone blame Rich Stephenson? The person who volunteers in his free time, who always helps old ladies cross the street, who can do anything out of pottery and who firmly believes he is perfect?
"Of course not. I am sorry. We can go another time."
She has said the very same sentence at least five times a week for the past five weeks.
"We will. I know I have been a bit absent, but what I am doing is important and I hope you realize that, if you had kept your job maybe…"
And here it is. She starts seeing red. She doesn't care that he is hot and a good man. He knows that she doesn't want to talk about it, they had their first big fight over that.
She majored in hospital administration only because it was what her mother wanted for her and a tiny part of her still hoped she'd come to her senses one day, if only she kept walking on the path Caroline Edison had chosen for her. Spoiler alert: her mom really meant it when she said to her 18 years old, frightened daughter "you are no longer my daughter" and hospital administration was very boring.
Too bad she realized it too late, when she had almost acquired all the credits she needed. Too bad she realized that what she truly wanted to do was picking up clues, evidence, solving mysteries, feeling adrenaline rushing through her body, being able to let objects and situations tell her their story.
She was a good listener, inquisitive, meticulous, curious and quite reckless. Forensics was her calling.
So she decided to quit the job in a pharmaceutical company that Rich had helped her found with his connections, and re-enrolled in Greendale, to follow her own path this time.
"I thought we had already discussed it. I gave it a try, it wasn't for me. It was what my mother wanted for me."
"And is it such a bad thing? Doing what your mum wants you to? I turned out just fine".
It's so overwhelming to have such a ghost in your life, someone you have never even met, but still so present.
"You'll have to leave that place eventually…"
He is obsessed. Everything that is wrong in the world is Greendale's fault according to him. Greendale is not a crutch to her, like he says, her friends are not just silly people, but a family, she'll leave Greendale when she'll be ready to face a real world that at least looks a tiny bit like the future she dreams about.
"Greendale has nothing to do with me leaving the pharmaceutical company Rich…"
"If you say so. It’s late, I have to get ready, if tomorrow I’m not too tired, we'll go out. I promise."
He doesn't say he is sorry, he never does.
She goes back to her computer, trying to avoid him, still pissed.
She doesn't kiss him back when he kisses her goodbye, she tries to keep her frown on, even though he tries to send shivers down her spine kissing her neck.
She is pissed.
She is pissed because she wanted to do what young couples do, because she wanted to tell him about Greendale being bought, she wanted to hear what he'd do if he was in her shoes, because even though she is really pissed, she values him and his advice.
But not when it comes to working in that despicable company he got her the job in.
That opened a crack in the relationship, the first time she put aside her rose-colored glasses and started seeing mold in their story.
She had spent sleepless night in the beginning of their relationship, sometimes naked, sometimes covered in a hug, under the fuzzy cover he still has on the couch, on their couch, baring her soul to him, all her trauma and all her pain, all her history and all her shame and she always thought he was treasuring her words. Instead he got her a job in a ruthless company, that pushed doctors to give questionable drugs to teens, like Relaxabrex, something to focus and be less anxious, with the tiny side effect of causing the loss of the ability to dream, something so dangerously close to what got her hooked, something so dangerous in general. So if she had to close their argument, she would have add this:
"Greendale has nothing to do with me leaving the pharmaceutical company Rich…"
"…you know I couldn't work for them, pushing doctors to recommend the same shit that hurt me so much. Yes, Rich, that's who I was, an addict, an addict that overcame addiction by herself and I am proud of that and I don't care if you're too ashamed of my past to introduce me to your mum, I am proud of my past and none can take that away from me!"
But it's always like that, him shutting off the argument, her overthinking what she could've, should've, would've said when it's too late.
She scrolls her phone, eats a sad dinner, some leftovers, some ice cream, she feels sad. For Greendale, for Rich, for her past and future, for how lacking she feels, how passionless, thrill-less her life is. She grabs her laptop and shuts the rational part of the brain that tells her this is wrong and a very bad idea, that she is putting in danger what she has built in the last three years, that she could potentially lose an apparently perfect boyfriend, one her mother would approve in the bat of an eye, but she is kind of sick of seeking approval of someone who clearly doesn’t want to have anything to do with her.
She writes on the search engine: youvegotm@il.gcc. Britta and Abed did a good job in the graphics.
It’s kind of nice to see Britta so invested in something, that’s what she'll tell Rich if he evers finds out she signed in this, she did it for Britta, because she supports the people she loves in their dreams and he should really learn from her.
She opens the form, which is weird, she tries to be honest, for scientific purposes, she is studying to be a scientist, she just loves research, and Rich does too, he does a lot of research for the hospital, there’s no way he is going to be mad for some innocent epistolar back and forth.
On the left top of the page there’s written that more than 100 people have signed, this means Britta has lied to her to force her to join, she didn’t really need her help, but, as she suspected, she really doesn’t think Rich and her are meant to be.
But apparently she won’t find her perfect match on this silly site, because as soon as she sends her form in the ether she sees in black, big capital letters:
NO MATCH FOUND!!!
Maybe someone is protecting her from making something dumb, this is a sign. She goes to bed, ready to spend yet another night alone, feeling uncovered and cold with no one laying next to her, in a house where she still feels like a guest, no photo on the walls, only bright white that almost shines in the dark.
At 2 AM, a noise coming from her telephone wakes her up. She always keeps her phone on during the night, it’s a legacy from her days living in the worst part of town, always ready to call the police or her friends for help even in the middle of the night.
She reads on the screen:
From: [email protected]
Text: Hey, hey, hey, you just matched! Swipe left to read all about your match. Thanks for joining our community, have fun!
She is too curious to let this go until morning, so she swipes left and reads.
Name : MoonShot_78 [if that’s the year of birth, then it’s almost Rich’s age…]
Describe your Facebook profile picture: A landscape
Favorite band: Dave Matthews Band [who?]
Favorite food: Steak from Morty’s Steakhouse [her father used to go there all the time, red flag!]
Favorite movie: I don’t watch many movies, but probably The Godfather [in Abed’s vision this is the most problematic red flag, he’d call this person a psycho]
3 qualities I have: Handsome, Talkative, Ambitious [this algorithm is britta’d if it thinks that someone like that can be a match for her…]
3 things I don’t like about myself: Too competitive, Insecure, Not good at talking about feelings [the first two are also her trademarks…]
3 things I like doing: Working, Training, Drinking [How can she match with someone she has nothing in common with? And what is the other person thinking reading her profile?]
3 things I despise: Know-it-alls, Glee, The Barenaked Ladies [What kind of monster despises the BNLs?]
My biggest trauma: When my favorite skin care product went out of production [this person sounds as deep as a poodle, and since she finds it hard to believe, she knows this must be a lie]
What I look for in a partnership: I honestly don’t know, maybe not feeling so alone at the end of the day, or more hope for the future. I kind of want to stop being envious whenever I see two old people still holding hands, so lame, sorry whoever you are. [Not lame at all].
She is scared/intrigued/curious/almost sure that Britta has Britta’d the algorithm and she’ll either fight or exchange two messages and then be ghosted by this person, but Caroline Decker is now in control, whispering in her ear, making her write to her mysterious interlocutor.
To MoonShot_78:
Hi, nice to meet you. Your profile was definitely an interesting read. Why MoonShot? Any recommended Dave Matthews song, since I’ve never heard of them? Oh, and also, how dare you despise the BNL?