They had to be driving backwards.
Fiona glanced past the divider, trying to see out the front windshield. All of the buildings ahead of them looked achingly familiar, but she didn’t know whether it was because they’d passed them before or because they were all the same dull shade of gray. Fiona shook her head. It was 2030 and somehow architecture still wasn’t any more colorful.
“Are we almost there?” her daughter Elora whined from the seat behind her. “I have to pee.”
“Yeah, and I’m starting to feel icky,” Fiona’s wife Imogen added from her right. “I really shouldn’t have had that third breakfast burrito.”
“My legs are falling asleep!” this complaint came from their older daughter, Carmella. “When are we gonna get there?”
With a sigh, Fiona pushed the button beside her seat and watched as the glass divider in front of her slid down. The music that their driver Francis was playing flooded into the backseat, and Fiona heard Carmella groan. Carma hated music that “old people” listened to, such as Call Me Maybe and Rolling in the Deep.
“Hey, Francis,” Fiona called over the music. Without taking his eyes off the road, he quickly turned down the volume. “How much longer do we have to go?”
There was a pause as Francis presumably checked the ETA on the vehicle’s built-in GPS. “We should be there in about 20 minutes, Mrs. Coyne,” he replied.
She had to resist the urge to groan as she put the divider back up and leaned back against her seat. Fiona already wasn’t a big fan of car rides; they were pretty boring and—as someone who practically grew up in first class—definitely not the most comfortable mode of travel. But a somewhat lengthy car ride with her nauseated wife and two restless kids in the backseat…
It was her own personal bad place. Fiona loved her family with her heart and soul, but she could not wait to get to Eli’s house.
She reached under her seat for her purse and fished through the contents—wallet, keys, lipsticks from Marisol’s makeup line—until she found her phone. As she pulled it out, she slid open her messages and typed out a new one to Eli. The sound of her freshly manicured nails clacking against the screen was satisfying.
Fiona: we’re 20 minutes away. Save me some gelato?
Eli: you got it.
Eli: you have the cake?
Fiona: Affirmative.
Eli: awesome. And you guys didn’t bake it, right?
Fiona rolled her eyes. She and Imogen had wanted to contribute to the gathering meal-wise, but neither of them were good cooks and their chef, Ronaldo, had taken a couple days off to visit his family for the holiday. They’d settled on a store-bought cake, which was currently being guarded by Carmella in the backseat (she had to protect it both from the bumpy roads and her sweet-toothed 6-year-old sister). The goal was to avoid poisoning all of the guests…again. Fiona shuddered at the memory of her and Imogen’s lasagna ruining Eli’s 30th birthday party.
Fiona: We didn’t. Your intestines are safe.
She was about to slide her phone back into her bag when it buzzed once again.
Eli: so how’s Imogen?
Fiona looked over at her wife, who had her eyes closed as she clutched her baby bump. Imogen looked exhausted. She had dark circles under her eyes and her hair was tied into a loose, messy updo. She hadn’t slept well the previous night and she didn’t feel well right now, but to Fiona, she still looked absolutely beautiful.
Fiona: She’s alright. The second trimester’s been a little rough, though.
Eli: I feel that. Mare’s pregnancies have been rough too.
Fiona cracked a small smile. She remembered when Marisol was pregnant with Alex and Eli spammed Fiona and Imogen’s phones all day with confused, anxious texts. Or when Marisol was pregnant with Dawn and Dawn was apparently a major kicker. It hadn’t taken Fiona and Imogen long to learn that Marisol was intense when she was pregnant. They had found it both scary and amusing (more-so amusing when the normally composed Eli scrambled to meet her every need).
It wasn’t until they started having kids of their own that they began to understand. Although Imogen didn’t mind being pregnant, the whole process came with a lot of added stress. Doctor’s appointments, morning sickness, preparing to bring a whole new life into the world…it was overwhelming. Exciting (especially when it came to designing the nursery) but overwhelming.
This one was going to be their third baby, and they were definitely feeling the pressure. Not only was this Imogen’s toughest pregnancy so far, but they already had two other girls to look after. Fiona related to Eli on a deeper level now. Keeping track of two kids and trying to tend to her wife’s every need had left Fiona pretty scatterbrained. She’d almost locked her keys in the house before they left for Eli’s that day.
Eli: don’t worry though, you’ll feel better when the baby comes and you see she has my beautiful eyes.
This time, Fiona couldn’t help chuckling. Eli being their donor had actually started off as a joke suggestion, but the more the three of them plus Marisol discussed it, the more sense it made. Eli was their best friend, a consistent support system for the two of them since high school. He’d been a friend to Fiona when all of her other friends graduated before her and when her mother was put on house arrest. He’d been there for Imogen throughout her dad’s battle with dementia and when Mr. Moreno passed away, Eli was on Fiona and Imogen’s doorstep as soon as possible. He was always there, no matter the circumstances. And he had been happy to do this favor for them.
Both Carmella and Elora had taken after him in the looks department, and Imogen was hoping this next one would look more like her. Their two girls, plus a couple of Eli and Marisol’s daughters, made for an illegal amount of people with Eli smirks.
Fiona: Yeah yeah, whatever :P. See you in a bit.
She discarded her phone and leaned back against her own seat with a deep breath. Soon they would be at the mansion. They just needed to get through the rest of this car ride first. Fiona closed her eyes, anticipating several minutes of peace and quiet.
“Mamaaaa,” Elora whined a split second later. “Will I have anyone to play with today?”
Without opening her eyes, Fiona replied, “Yes, Lori. Evie will be there.”
“What about Rosie?” Carmella threw in. She, Dawn, and Drew and Bianca’s daughter Rosanna were an inseparable trio at these gatherings.
“Yep, she’ll be there too,” Imogen piped up, also without opening her eyes. “It’s gonna be one big party.”
Despite their current lack of enthusiasm, Fiona and Imogen were really excited. Their daughters were going to get to have fun with their friends while they caught up with several people they hadn’t seen in a while. This would also be their first time seeing the new mansion. Fiona had requested pictures from Eli, but she’d received minimal as Marisol wanted to save the big reveal for a Canada Day house tour.
Fiona couldn’t help shaking her head. It had been years, but she still sometimes found it hard to believe that Eli Goldsworthy and Marisol Lewis had ended up together. Eli, the troubled goth kid who used to write plays demonizing his ex-girlfriend (which Fiona herself had directed), and Marisol, glamorous captain of the Power Squad and later school president to Fiona’s vice, had a family and a giant house together.
Degrassi really was a strange place.
<><><><>
Back at the mansion, the two present couples were busy catching up.
“You remember that Dead Hand concert?” Bianca asked Eli in amusement. The two of them were leaning up against the kitchen island.
“You mean the one where you got hammered?” Eli teased.
“Shhh!” Bianca snapped, jerking her head to where Adrianna lay happily in her baby carriage.
“What?” Eli asked innocently. “It’s not like she knows what that means.”
Bianca just rolled her eyes jokingly and shook her head. “Remember when Sav got pulled over?”
“Oh yeah, for stealing his parents’ car.” Eli glanced up at the chandelier above their heads, nostalgia in his emerald eyes.
“Oh, is that why it was? I couldn’t remember.” That end of that night was fuzzy for Bianca. All she remembered was hitching a ride from Sav Bhandari, them getting pulled over, and her aunt picking her up from the police station and yelling at her all the way home. She also remembered her aunt still lecturing her while she had a pounding headache and wasn’t very receptive. But the actual details and specifics of the events after the concert were a blur.
The concert itself, however…that was a vivid memory. It was easily the most fun High School Bianca had had in a really long time. She’d been out with people different from her usual crowd--Sav, the school president who wouldn’t hurt a fly, Adam, the innocent jokester, and Eli, the weird new kid who drove a hearse—and they’d all clicked surprisingly well. It felt good to be away from her judgey aunt and the skeevy guys at the ravine for one night, and it felt even better to just kick back and get lost in the music. It was the first time she’d ever felt like a normal sixteen-year-old.
She smiled at the image. It used to make her sad, thinking about the hurt and lonely girl she once was, but now it was all a thing of the past. She’d dropped her wild side, beat the odds, and was now living a beautiful, happy, and successful life with Drew and their two daughters. Even better, two of the people she’d gone to that concert with were now very important people in her life. Eli was one of her best friends and Adam was her brother-in-law.
“Whatever happened to Sav, anyway?” she questioned. She hadn’t heard much from or about him since he graduated, a year before she did. He never posted on Facerange anymore; not that anyone else did.
“Didn’t he date Ms. Oh?” Eli recalled.
“I thought that was just a rumor.”
Eli just shrugged. “Alli’s coming today,” he pointed out. “We can just ask her about him.”
Bianca nodded in agreement.
The two of them continued chatting away, reminiscing about their Degrassi days. It was always strange to remember that, despite being in the same grade, the two hadn’t had many significant interactions beyond that night until way after high school. The resident bad-girl-turned-good-girl and the outsider-goth-kid-turned-aspiring-director hadn’t crossed paths much, even with several friends in common. It wasn’t until Fiona and Imogen’s wedding several years ago that they’d really connected. As adults, they’d come to find that they had both been going through shit junior year, and that it took falling in love for both of them to soften their hearts and turn things around.
Several feet over, Drew and Marisol were having a conversation of their own. “So, did you just, like, teach her everything you know?” Drew asked, referring to Dawn.
“No,” Marisol insisted. “She just naturally takes after me.” She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows proudly.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Drew remarked. “I keep expecting her to tell me off even when I haven’t said anything.”
Marisol laughed. Unlike Bianca and Eli, Drew and Marisol had been sort-of-friends at one point in high school. When Drew dated Katie, he and Marisol had come to tolerate and even somewhat like each other for her sake. They’d still had their moments of wanting to strangle each other, but they’d also had a lot of fun together. Going to waterparks with Katie and spraying each other with water, pranking each other at Jake’s cabin over the summer, movie nights in Drew’s basement where the three of them huddled up under blankets together.
They’d all grown apart after Drew and Katie split, but Drew and Marisol had reconnected at Fiona and Imogen’s wedding. Now them plus Bianca and Eli were a tight foursome. They talked all the time and even used to go on trips together before their careers blew up. Bianca and Marisol would sit together, sipping wine and gossiping, while Drew and Eli would scramble to keep the girls under control.
It was amazing how quickly people could bond when high school cliques and labels weren’t getting in the way.
“Mom!” Dawn’s voice hollered as footsteps thundered down the stairs. Marisol looked up to see Dawn running into the kitchen, followed closely behind by Rosie. “When is Carma gonna get here?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she replied. “Ask Daddy; he might know.”
Without hesitation, Dawn ran over to Eli and interrupted his conversation with Bianca to pose her question. In the meantime, Rosie stuck with Drew and Marisol.
“Dad, can I get a Megacorn?” she asked Drew.
“A what?” He seemed baffled.
“It’s a stuffed animal,” Marisol threw in. “A giant stuffed unicorn. Dawn has one.”
“Oh.” Drew looked at Rosie, who was flashing a big, hopeful smile. Marisol couldn’t help noticing that she looked exactly like Drew when she did that. “Uh, yeah, I guess. Sure.”
“Yay!” Rosie clapped excitedly.
Dawn bounded back over at that moment with some information. “Carma’s gonna be here in 5 minutes,” she informed Rosie. “You wanna go see the pool?”
“Yeah!”
Rosie and Dawn linked hands and then skipped off toward the back hallway, gone as quickly as they’d come. Drew and Marisol watched after them in amusement.
“Who would’ve thought our kids would be best friends one day?” Drew remarked.
Marisol shook her head. “Forget the kids--who would’ve thought we would be friends one day?” she quipped.
“Yeah, good point.” Drew rubbed his chin thoughtfully as something occurred to him. “Are we ever gonna tell the kids about that date we went on?”
“I don’t plan on it.”
They both took a moment to shudder at the memory. At the beginning of junior year, Drew and Marisol had gone a disastrous date at The Dot, during which they had not connected at all. Marisol cringed thinking about how she tried extra hard to impress Drew; even going as far as to order the exact same (disgusting) meal as him. And Drew cringed thinking about how he had just gone out with her to try and get over Alli Bhandari.
No, that was definitely not a story they needed to be sharing with their kids. Especially since Dawn and Rosie might get the incorrect idea that they could’ve been sisters.
“You know, those Megacorns are expensive,” Marisol informed Drew as a subject-change.
“Really?” He seemed surprised. “How much?”
Marisol hesitated, and then leaned forward to whisper the number into his ear.
“Oh, hell no.”
<><><><>
Up in her bedroom, Alex was sitting in front of her pet bunny Giselle’s cage, relishing the few minutes of peace before the party took over the rest of her day.
People coming to her house always made her anxious. Her home was her safe space, the one place where she felt completely comfortable, and other people coming over felt like an intrusion. She liked everyone who would be visiting today, especially her godmother, Katie, and she appreciated how most of them tried to make conversation with her. But she wasn’t ready for a big gathering at all. There would be too much noise, too much stimulation, too much potential for awkward social situations. Her stomach filled with dread as she thought about it. She was definitely going to be drained and overwhelmed by the end of the night.
She petted Giselle gently, trying to calm her nerves. She really wished she could stay up in her room all night—she’d seen the cute new baby and she was satisfied—but her parents wouldn’t let her. They said she needed to socialize and help watch after the younger ones.
The one silver lining was that a certain someone was coming. A certain someone by the name of Jason Martin. Alex blushed just thinking about him. He was one year older than her, super cute, and easily the only person she’d ever been romantically interested in. They'd spent some time together in the past, and although their interactions could be awkward, they also made her glow. Him coming today somehow made her less nervous and more nervous at the same time.
Butterflies flooded her stomach as she thought about the two of them watching the younger kids together. They could talk, bond, maybe exchange phone numbers at the end of it. They could become best friends and maybe even something more. She could have a real boyfriend.
The idea was enough to motivate Alex to go downstairs. But, of course, Jason needed to get there first.