Bookends
By Shotzetteand Missy

1946
By Shotzette

SERIES: Bookends
AUTHORS: Missy and Shotzette
EMAIL: Missy and Shotzette
PARTS Total: Six, plus an Epilogue
YEARS COVERED: 1946, 1956, 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, Present Day
CREDITS: 1946, 1966, 1986 and half of epilogue written by Shotzette; 1956, 1976 and half of epilogue written by Missy.
RATING: 1946 G, 1956 PG, all other chapters PG-13
PAIRING(s): L/L; W/S; S/OC
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!

CATEGORY: Romance, Drama, Pure L/L
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SETTING IN TIMELINE: Pre-Show calendar and somewhat Non-canonical.
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: A series that tracks the development of Lenny and Laverne's relationship over the space of ten years.

NOTES: This Valentine's Day Fic has transformed itself into its own little universe for Kath and I. Expect more from this universe in various one-shots from the two of us.

****

1946
By Kath
Rated G



Laverne kicked the brown cardboard carton angrily.

Stupid box, she thought. Stupid box bringing all of our stupid stuff to stupid Milwaukee. Laverne kicked the carton again, to let it know for sure that it had ruined her young life.

If it hadn't been for the stupid men loading their stupid stuff into stupid boxes and putting them in a stupid truck, she'd probably be playing stick ball with her cousin Anthony, or eating fudge in her grandma's apartment in Brooklyn.

Laverne was pulling back for another kick when she felt a firm hand on her shoulder spin her around.

"Laverne!" Her mother exclaimed angrily. "What are you doing? Don't you have anything better to do than ruin things? her mother said, hands on her hips, with her normally beautiful features contorted by an uncharacteristic scowl.

"I-I," Laverne stammered as tears started to fill her green eyes. She hated it when Mama got upset, especially since it made Mama's headaches worse.

"Well..." Josephine DeFazio prodded.

"I hate it here," Laverne managed as a sob escaped
her.

"What are you talking about?" Josephine's anger forgotten, she threw her arms around the trembling child and pressed an ever present handkerchief to Laverne's nose. "You haven't been here long enough to hate it. You haven't even left the apartment since we arrived two days ago."

"I miss Anthony and Grandma!"

"I know you miss them, and they miss you too. It's natural to miss the people you love. But you can't sit inside forever feeling sorry for yourself. You need to go out and make some new friends, Bambina."

"They won't be like Anthony and Grandma," Laverne whined.

"No," Josephine said, "they won't. They will be different, but you will meet many different people in
life, Bambina. Things would be awfully dull if the world was filled with nothing but Anthonys and Grandmas, wouldn't it?"

Laverne tried to envision it, but was distracted by her Mama's silly expression and started to giggle. "No," she admitted, "we need more people than Anthony and Grandma!"

"I know it's hard, Bambina," said Josephine soothingly, "but it won't get any easier if you keep putting it off.. "Now", she said firmly as she cupped Laverne's face in her hand, "I want you to march out that front door, and introduce yourself to the first kid you see on the sidewalk."


*****

The sun hung low in the sky and glowed red like a lollipop. It was a surprisingly cool begining to Labor Day weekend. Yet another reminder that she would have to start first grade, all by herself, on Monday. Laverne was once again reminded of what Cousin Anthony had promised her last spring. "I can't wait until you're in school with me, Laverne!" he said excitedly. "I can't wait to introduce you to all my friends! They won't beleive how good of a stick ball player you are, being a girl and everything. And," he said menacingly, "if anyone gives you any trouble at all, you let them know your Cousin Anthony has got your back!"

Shoving the memory to the back of her mind, Laverne sighed as she sat on the stoop, her eyes scanning the street for other children. Wouldn't you know it, she thought to herself, I heard kid's playing all day. Now that I'm outside, everyone's gone home.

Sighing heavily again, she looked towards her left. Way down the block, she saw something move. Squinting her eyes, Laverne was able to see a person. Wait, it wasn't a person--it was a girl! A girl just like her! As the other girl drew nearer, the hope that swelled in Laverne's chest began to fade. The other girl was nothing like herself. She was smaller, with perfectly parted pigtails and a pink cardigan. Laverne drew back into the shadows of the building's vestibule, as she self consiously tugged at her haphazard braids. She was just learning how to braid, for heaven's sake, and was suddenly very aware of her scuffed loafers and hand-me-down jumper. There's no way she and that other little girl, who clutched some sort of black stuffed animal, could ever be friends. They were nothing alike.

Laverne bit her lower lip, and turned away from the little girl. Why bother? she thought.

Just as she was about to start crying again, Laverne noticed a boy on the other end of the street. A boy about her age. He was a little taller than she was, with blond hair. Their eyes met, and he turned away abruptly. And stumbled over a trash can in the process, knocking himself and the trash every which
way.

Laverne had her first smile of the day as she ran down the steps and up the street to help the unknown boy.

The boy was on his feet, and removing a bananna peel from his hair by the time she caught up to him.

Their eyes met again, and Laverne froze.

"Hello!", the strange boy said abruptly.

"Hi," she mumbled in return, her eyes downcast. Suddenly, she could hear her Mama's words in her head. Forcing herself to meet his eyes, Laverne drew herself up to her full height--and still had to look up at the strange boy. "You're so--tall," she remarked.

The boy guffawed loudly, and blushed. "My name is Lenny," he said.

"I'm Laverne. We just moved in."

"Hi, Laverne."

"Hi, Lenny."

"I was just going to go look at the dead rat in the alley. Wanna go?"

Laverne's eyes bugged out. "Would I?", she exclaimed with glee.

They had turned towards the alley, when a small, meek voice said, "Hi,"

Laverne turned around and came face to face with the girl in the pink cardigan.

Laverne smiled at the girl in return, while Lenny merely rolled his eyes and said, "Hello, Shirley Feeney."

"Hello, Leonard," the little girl replied icily. "As you can see," she said as she held out what turned out to be a stuffed black cat, "my mother sewed Boo Boo Kitty's tail back on after you and Andrew tore it off."

"Shirley", Lenny exclaimed as he rolled his eyes again, "that was an accident! We just wanted to see if I could pull Squiggy off the stoop with a stuffed animal, in case of an emergency. We didn't mean to break your cat!"

"What's a squiggy?" Laverne asked.

"Hello!" said a nasal voice behind her, making her jump.

The person belonging to the voice was a boy smaller than Shirley, who had a mean look in his eyes and a head of black curls.

"Geez, Lenny", the smaller boy said in a mocking voice, "I leave you on your own for one day to go to the cockfights with my dad, and you start playing with girls. Am I interrupting your tea party?"

"I wasn't playing with girls!"

"Was too!"

"Was not!'

"Too!"

"Not!"

Squiggy then proceeded to kick Lenny's shin, causing Lenny to fall forward and knocking both boys to the sidewalk where the fisticuffs continued.

Laverne was prepared to sit on the stoop and watch the outcome, when she saw Shirley turn and walk slowly away.

"Hey, Shirley," Laverne yelled as she ran up behind her. "Don't you want to see who wins?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "They just wrestle for a while until someone breaks them up. Or Lenny starts to cry."

"Oh. Well, where are you going?'

"I was just going to go home and watch my brothers lay stickball. They let me retrieve the ball when goes down the gutter."

"You don't play?"

"Of course not. I'm a girl. Girls can't play stickball."

"Whaddaya mean they can't? I used to play all the time in Brooklyn!"

"You're making that up," Shirley replied primly.

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Not!"

"Too!"

"I'll tell you what. Let's go find a stick and a ball, and I'll teach you."

"Really?" Shirley asked, as her disbelief gave way to enthusiasm.

"Really. And," Laverne added, "If your brothers give you any trouble, let them know that your friend, Laverne, has your back."

Shirley giggled and started skipping down the sidewalk. Laverne grinned, and started behind her, but paused.

The boys were still wrestling on the sidewalk, and it didn't look like Lenny was going to cry anytime soon. Laverne thought briefly of her grandma, then walked over and grabbed them both by the earlobes, twisting and pinching till they yelped in pain and separated.

"I'll see you later, Lenny", she said with a smile as she turned and skipped down the sidewalk.

Had Laverne looked back, she would have seen Lenny staring at her all the way down the block.

FIN




To 1956











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