Chapter Text
6:30am
Jane wasn’t happy to hear her alarm clock ring. She hated waking up early and she especially hated waking up early for school. If it was a game day it would be a very different situation. Game days were Janes favorite days. no matter if it was football or baseball. She could be on the field and do what she did best. She could do what she loved the most. She could be active. She could be a star.
Jane wasn’t the best academically speaking but on the field she was the best, she was the best of the best. Years and years and years of having to prove herself against the boys have made her into the best. All those years of proving herself, challenging herself to be better have made her into the best possible version of herself, sportswise. Her grades were a different thing, she wasn’t horrible in school but definitely not a straight A student. Jane was more of a constant C type of student. Good enough not to have any problems but not good enough to ever be considered academically smart or outstanding. Her father was very proud of her for her achievements in football and baseball, he had taught her how to throw a ball, he had gone to the batting cages with her and most importantly he had convinced her Ma that she should let Jane play, try out and work for it. They had spent a good amount of money on Janes athletic career. Her Ma always looked a bit disappointed when Jane came home with another C. She was happy that Jane wasn’t failing any classes but she had always hoped that Janes future wasn’t resting on her athleticism alone. She wanted Jane to have good grades to have better options in her future. Angela only wanted Jane to have better chances in life than she herself had but Jane just felt like her Ma could never truly be proud of her. It was even worse considering that after an accident at work that had left her father in constant pain, he had begun drinking. He was drinking every day. He never stopped drinking. He wasn’t the dad that went to the batting cages with her. He wasn’t the dad that threw balls with her in the yard for hours and hours on end.
Janes homelife was a mess, she spent most of her time helping her brothers out with stuff, doing what her father did for her for them and all in all making sure that they never got the full force of Frank Rizzolis anger.
So when it came to school Jane happily played into her role as the top player of the school. People looked up to her. Some hated her for being a girl and being better at sports than them but all in all Jane was happy to be someone people admired. She enjoyed the attention, the attention she wasn’t getting at home. Tommy was still in middle school but Frankie was also at her highschool so she could keep an eye on him and make sure nobody gave him a hard time. Well, nobody had ever tried since they knew whose brother he was but Jane liked to be sure. Frankie was a nice guy and sometimes a little dumb when it came to peoples intentions. He was a good looking guy with a good amount of muscle, he would try out for the team soon and as long as he kept up his training sessions with Jane she saw no problem for him landing a spot. Her best friend was a guy who they all just called Frost. His first name is Barry, well that is also a nickname but even Barry was a bit too uncool and Frost was a way better name anyway and he liked it, so he was Frost. Generally speaking a lot of the players went by their last names, the name that was on the jersey. Janes friend group was bigger than Frost, Frankie and her though. Her friend group was made up of some of the top football and baseball players, Eric, Dave, Josh and Pablo. They were relatively nice guys. Some had a bit more jockey characters than the others but all in all they were respectable guys that didn’t have a problem with Jane being the star of the show.
Getting ready for school was always the same. Groaning when the alarm went off, slowly getting up, grabbing some random jeans (possibly dirty ones but who cares), a shirt from the clean shirts pile and her letterman jacket. The jacket was one of her most valued possessions, aside from her uniforms and football and bats and mitts. Jane was most proud of her sports items. The most prized possession had to be an old red sox crewneck sweater which she had gotten from her dad when he was still a good dad. Everytime she thought about it Jane was sad that her brothers didn’t have that many happy memories with him. The only time they all could hang out with their dad was when the game was on TV and they were all allowed to shout and swear at the tv. Once Jane was dressed she grabbed her bag, quickly checked that she had everything she needed before carefully packing her sports bag (today was football practice so she didn’t have to carry around that much, their uniforms and equipment were safely stored in the schools locker rooms) and taking both of her bags downstairs just to drop them to the floor at the end of the stairs. Her Ma always made an annoyed comment about Jane dropping her stuff everywhere, Jane ignored it and made her way over to the table to eat a bowl of cereal before going back up to brush her teeth and finally throw on some old chucks and go outside just when Frost was there to pick her up. Once she was in the seat beside him they made their way over to Pablos house and picked him up before meeting the rest of the gang in the school's parking lot.
They arrived at school rather early and spent some time in the parking lot talking about the games they had seen, what they thought they would do in practice and Eric always talked about his girl. Jane secretly really enjoyed hearing about his relationship because it just sounded so secure and happy but of course as a group they had to make friendly fun of him for being such a softie. In the end they always made sure to tell him that if he ever hurt her they would ruin him. The group loved Lola, she was a cute girl, very pretty and smart. She was that type of girl everyone would change their life for.
When they finally went inside and put their stuff in the lockers and grabbed the books they needed for their classes the popular girls walked in. Jane couldn’t understand how people could be so stuck up. Why would someone only wear designer clothes? Like girl, we’re in highschool, stuff gets dirty and we’re still growing like that’s such a waste of money. Jane just didn’t understand how you could use your family's money so stupidly. Like if she had that type of money she would help people, she would help the people, she would donate money, make sure nobody had to worry about living from paycheck to paycheck. But those girls rather wore designer dresses and drove fancy cars. They spent their money on all this stuff that nobody could possibly ever need and they used that stuff to make them feel better than the rest of the students. They made themself stand on a podium while the rest of us could only look up to them and the opportunities we could never have in life. They didn’t have to do shit to get into the most expensive and best colleges in the country, while students like Jane herself had to work their asses off and hope that they got an athletic scholarship. Janes whole academic life was about being good enough to stay on the team and not be absolutely horrible in school, while working hard to get a scholarship because her parents would never be able to afford college and definitely not for three kids. Jane wore the same few things in rotation and wore her clothes till they literally fell apart or her Ma had enough of seeing tiny holes and all that in them and threw them away. Jane was growing up in a home in which it was hard to feed three kids and make sure that they got the best possible education, while those entitled girls grew up in homes that never even taught them the worth of money. They were entitled little brats and only cared about themselves and how they looked. Jane knew that one of them was insanely smart, the one with the perfectly wavy honey blonde hair and beautiful hazel eyes. Jane only knew that because she had biology with her and a few years ago they had ended up sitting next to each other for a year. Back then Jane was amazed how smart the new girl was and how pretty but soon enough Maura found the popular rich and pretty girls and only talked with them. That’s when Jane realized that she could never ever again think that one of those rich girls was capable of being a decent human being. they were all the same no matter if one of them was actually smart or not. The rest of the year they had sat together was rather awkward, Maura wasn’t making much of an effort to talk to Jane anymore (Jane could only imagine what the other snobs had told her about her pathetic life) and Jane ignored Maura for the most time or only gave her one word answers. Soon enough they didn’t talk at all anymore and the next year they made sure to sit anywhere but next to each other again. From that day on out Jane was sure that Maura was one of those girls and therefore she was one of those girls, she wasn’t Maura anymore, she just was one of those girls.
6am
Maura was wide awake before her alarm even had the chance to go off. Her internal alarm clock always made sure she was wide awake at around 6am, it gave her the time to do a few yoga poses before getting ready for the day. At 6.10am sharp Maura got up, made her bed and stretched a bit before wandering into her ensuite bathroom. She knew that she was living a luxurious life and that it was absolutely something that wasn’t the norm but she wasn’t born into it, she had been adopted by her parents and then grew up with the life of someone who was jet setting around the world and lived all over the globe. For highschool though she had told her mother that she wanted to go to a normal public school to get some more social interactions before going off to college. Her mother wanted to talk her into going to a boarding school or maybe a private school but Maura knew what she wanted, she had researched a lot of studies and for someone who was as socially awkward and incompetent as her (only when it came to regular human interactions) it was best to go to a regular public school. She would be confronted with the most amount of social clues and normal interactions. If she was to go to a private school or even boarding school she would be among kids whose parents were disgustingly rich as well, they would treat her very differently and Maura wanted to get that normal teenager experience. Well she was aware of the fact that she would never have the regular teen experience because of her upbringing but she didn’t want to be one of those people that had lost all touch with reality due to their money. She wanted to become a doctor and help people and she couldn’t do that if she wasn’t in touch with people.
After brushing her teeth and going through a skin care routine with way too many steps Maura was ready to do some yoga positions before walking over to her huge closet and picking something out to wear. The weather was very nice and warm at the moment so she went with a beautiful green dress. Her mother had bought it for her when they were in Milan on vacation. Maura had fallen in love with that dress the very second she had seen it and her mother who had a very good eye for beautiful things immediately went in for her to try it on. they were lucky and it fit not that her mother would have left the store without getting the dress her daughter had fallen in love with. Maura knew that her parents loved her a lot and that they had adopted her because they wanted to have a child and have someone to love and show the world to but they were rather cold, emotionless parents. The kind of parents that were rarely even there or made the effort to do things for Maura, tell her the love her and show her they love her. They showed their love by buying things for her, teaching her everything, taking her with her to the most exclusive locations, getting her tutors for all the languages she wanted to learn and all that. Maura was aware of her privilege and that her life was nothing short of amazing but in the end she just wanted her parents to hug her and tell her that they love her. She was pretty sure that she was so socially awkward because of them but she couldn’t be mad they didn’t seem too casually sociable as well.
When Maura came downstairs with her perfectly packed purse and make up she was greeted by silence, an empty house. her parents were gone on some business trip or something like that. Maura hadn’t asked and they hadn’t told her. They just told her to tell the housekeeper what she wanted to eat and to use her credit card if she needed anything. Now thinking about it they hadn’t even told her when they would be back. Probably because they didn’t even know. Maura was sure that they would be away for a month at least, if they were just gone for a few days they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of telling her to be safe and all that. Maura greeted their housekeeper and happily told her to just take a break, she was more than able to get ready on her own. Maura always tried to tell her that she could just work from midday till the late afternoon since Maura didn’t need someone hovering over her, she was able to take care of herself and it felt weird to have someone be paid to watch over her, to do the things her parents wouldn’t do. Greta always told her no though, she was happy to help and didn’t want Maura to be all alone all the time. Maura felt extremely bad that the only person who wanted to spend time with her was the housekeeper who felt bad for her.
Maura didn’t have any real friends, she had a group of girls she hung out with in school but aside from that she was all alone. She liked being part of a group because she felt accepted but even then she had to be careful what to do and all that. They were rather harsh girls, newly rich and some with family money. They weren’t the ones you would talk to when you had a problem or felt alone. Those were the kind of girls you could sit with and feel like part of the group even though Maura was pretty sure that none of the girls actually liked each other. They all just hung out because they had money and could talk about ridiculously expensive vacations and all that. Maura wasn’t a fan of the character of those girls but they had accepted her into their circle basically the first few days after seeing her and now Maura was scared to lose the only friends she has ever had.
When she was new she was sitting next to a really intriguing girl, probably of Italian background, Maura could tell from her facial features and of course her name ‘Rizzoli’ that wasn’t an American name, that was an Italian name. The girl was always wearing a letterman jacket which made it pretty easy to figure out that she was some sort of sports player. Maura wasn’t really into the world of sports but this girl seemed to be good at it and she had some pretty defined muscles. They talked a bit in biology class, mostly because the girl, Jane, wasn’t very good at it and her focus was drifting away from class rather fast. Maura had felt the need to kind of explain some things to her, to help her and to get her to be so damn jittery, it was driving Maura mad. Jane obviously had way too much energy to be confined in a classroom setting. Even though the girl was nothing like Maura herself she felt like they might be friends, they could be friends. Maura thought that Jane was cool and open to the world and they might be able to bond a little with Maura helping her with school and Jane showing her around a bit. That whole thing only worked for a few days. Jane showed her some parts of the school but was soon enough dragged away by a bunch of guys who were also wearing letterman jackets. Maura did see the apologetic look Jane gave her but Maura felt like she had just been left again, that she again hadn’t been enough and that maybe there was a reason that nerds and jocks never got along in the movies. Jane could’ve come back or at least done anything to show Maura that she wasn’t that unimportant when it came to sports and Janes friends. Maura knew it was unreasonable to expect that someone would put her above a stable long term group of friends but she really thought that Jane might be a nice good person but in the end she was just a typical jock who only really cared about themself. Jane only cared about being the best at sports, she didn’t care about people like Maura, that Maura was sure about.
While she was standing so lost in the hallway a group of girls walked by her and stopped once they noticed the designer dress she had on. They got to talking and since then Maura was happily tagging along wherever those girls were going. They had told her a few things about the people in the school and in the end the verdict was that not every football player was someone worth dating, especially the Rizzoli crowd. They had made it out to be a horrible thing that her friend group was made up of rather poor or lower middle class which Maura couldn’t relate to but what she could relate to was that they had said that this group was obsessed with themselves. They told her how those kids only cared about the ones that were in their little group and that they only really talked to each other and didn’t pay attention to anyone else. They had pinpointed it to the fact that Jane was the star player of the football and baseball team and therefore they all tried to keep her in the group but Maura just thought it was a regular jock thing to be obsessed with one another and just not care for other people who weren’t athletic in the same way they were. From that day on out Maura tried a few times to talk to Jane again but got ignored pretty harshly so she gave up and when the next year came around she kept her distance, they both kept their distance.
Maura drove herself to school, parked next to the cars of the girls she was hanging out with and quickly hugged all of them hello before they all grabbed their purses and went inside. While they were walking through the hallway Maura saw Jane and her group of friends standing around their lockers and she was pretty sure that Jane looked at her with disgust visible in her face, which made Maura keep her head up and smile while acting interested in the conversation the girls were having. They were talking about cheerleading, they had tried to talk Maura into it but she wasn’t a fan of the whole concept and soon enough found an excuse. She had to look after their purses and phones, it was safer to leave those things with her than leaving them in a locker. They quickly agreed and the conversation was over. Now when they were talking about it Maura just told them how amazing they were or just smiled and walked with them or sat with them depending on what they were currently doing. Maura wasn’t essentially happy with her friend group but it was better than being a loner, so she stuck with them. It was only a year till college anyway and none of them would study medicine so Maura would be able to reinvent herself in a year and get new people to hang out with.