Chapter Text
San Diego High School
September, 1978
The screech of scraping chairs and clatter of plastic trays surrounded Dana Scully as a hair benetted cafeteria lady scooped a spoonful of tepid looking corn onto her tray.
Dana had been shielded up until this point from what her mother anachronistically called “school dinner” by the fact that Maggie Scully packed her and each of her siblings a brown bag lunch to take with them every morning. Dana’s brown bag had actually been a plastic lunchbox with a picture of David Cassidy on it.
That was, until Captain William Scully had received permanent change-of-station orders to Naval Station North Island. The Scully family had moved to San Diego just after the Fourth of July weekend and she had relegated the lunchbox to the back of her closet in fear of her new classmates finding it childish.
By 1978 the Women’s Lib movement was more than just a passing fad and Maggie Scully had grown weary of the stay-at-home-mother role. The youngest Scully children were now old enough to look after themselves for a few hours in the afternoon after getting off of the school bus.
At Naval Station Norfolk Maggie had been quite involved in various activities for the wives of Naval Officers but once they had arrived in San Diego she had eschewed the coffee klatches and phone tree exercises and gotten a full time job as a secretary at a local drafting firm. Her father wasn’t especially happy about it but her mother had held firm and he eventually acquiesced. And thus, here Dana was.
The juice from the corn had begun to leak onto an equally tepid looking piece of pizza that she had been given. It was growing soggier by the second as she continued to the end of the line. Blech. How was anyone supposed to eat this?
The lunch attendant was sitting at an ancient looking cash register and flipping through a large ledger notebook, presumably to keep track of each student’s lunch balance.
As she waited to pay, Dana ran a tongue over her new braces, still trying to get used to the feeling. Knowing their time in Norfolk was coming to a close, Maggie Scully had been putting off Dana’s orthodontic needs until they had finished moving to wherever the Navy was going to send them next. Almost as soon as the moving boxes were off of the truck Dana was in a dentist’s chair getting banded and wired up. Dana was still reeling internally from the changes of the past few months.
“Name?” The lunch attendant asked the girl in front of Dana. She was wearing bellbottoms and a rather bohemian looking Ship ’n Shore blouse with a ruffled neckline. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and almost went down to her mid-back.
The girl flashed a smile and broke out into what Dana could only describe as a used car salesman voice. Or maybe it was Bob Barker on the Price is Right. “It’s a lovely morning to see you again on this first day of school, I hope you had a bee-u-tiful summer, I’m not sure if you remember me but my name is Ellen Byers, it’s spelled B-Y-”
“I remember you.” The lunch attendant said gruffly, cutting her off as she ran her finger down a column on the ledger. “You still owe seventeen dollars and twenty seven cents from last year. No food until you’re paid up.”
Ellen sputtered, her inner game show host voice abandoning her. “Seventeen dollars…and twenty seven cents!?”
“Plus a dollar for today,” the attendant said.
Ellen recovered quickly, squaring her shoulders. “I do not know what you’re talking about. I’d like to see that ledger of yours. My father is an accountant and I’ve learned quite a thing or two from take-your-daughter-to-work-day. I guarantee your numbers don’t add up- I- I… .”
The lunch attendant was unperturbed by Ellen’s protests. “It’ll be eighteen dollars and twenty seven cents. You’re holding up the line, miss.”
Dana watched this exchange with raised eyebrows until she was suddenly struck with an idea.
“Um, excuse me?” Dana said, screwing up her courage and giving a little wave. Ellen and the lunch lady both turned their attention to her, confused. “Hi there…Miss…” Dana squinted at the lunch attendant’s name tag. She’d been too self conscious to wear her glasses on the first day like her mother had told her to.
“Dry,” both Ellen and the lunch attendant said simultaneously.
“Please, Miss Dry, I’ve got an extra dollar. What if I just pay for her today and she promises to come by and square up tomorrow. She’s already got her tray, it would be just a shame to waste it, wouldn’t it?”
She then stared at Ellen, hoping she could pick up what Dana was putting down. “You promise…” she paused, “to pay tomorrow, right?”
Ellen’s eyes lit up with recognition. “Yeah, uh…that would be rad.”
Before Dana could say anything else Ellen turned to Miss Dry, resuming her customer service persona. “I’ll just have my father move some money around and I guarantee my account will be right as rain tomorrow.”
Miss Dry sighed heavily. “Fine. But this is the last time, young lady. No excuses.”
Dana fished into her pocket for two dollars and handed them over, grateful for the exchange to be over. By the time she finished paying Ellen had disappeared into the mass of tables and chairs and she realized she had absolutely no idea where to sit.
In her old school she hadn’t exactly been a social butterfly seeing as she’d only been there for seventh and eighth grade, seemingly too late to break into the social hierarchies that began solidifying as soon as everyone started hitting puberty. She had joined her junior high school’s Math League, more out of boredom than any real challenge academically, and had settled for eating with a few of the other girls from the team. They were friendly but not really friends. Even now their names and faces were fading.
Before she could resign herself to eating in the bathroom or the library, a fate she had been consigned to more than once in the past, she heard her name being called.
“Hey! Hey you! Red!”
Dana then saw Ellen motioning for her from a table in the far corner. Figuring she had no other prospects, let alone better ones, she hurried over to the table. Ellen was sitting next to a boy who looked strikingly similar to her. His tray sat untouched and he had his nose buried in a softback copy of A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. He would’ve been dressed formally for an upscale restaurant, let alone the ninth grade, wearing what appeared to be a suit coat, freshly starched Oxford button down, pressed khakis and a tie. Dana thought he honestly looked like he’d look more at home on the floor of the New York stock exchange.
Across the table was a waifish girl with dirty blond hair in faded jeans and a shabby cardigan, alternately taking bites of food and scribbling in a notebook. It seemed like for the most part the writing was taking precedence over eating.
The space was open next to the blonde girl so Dana tentatively set her tray down but didn’t immediately take a seat. It wasn’t beyond her imagination that this was a trick in order to humiliate the unsuspecting new kid in school.
“Sit down,” Ellen motioned. “We’re friendly, aren’t we?” She elbowed the boy sitting next to her and placed her hand over the page where the blond girl was writing. They both stopped to look up as Dana finally sat. The blonde girl remained silent but the boy cleared his throat. “Ahem, yeah, sure…” There was an awkward pause while they waited for him to continue. Sensing that that was all they were going to get out of him, Ellen intervened and looked at Dana.
“So, my deep-pocketed lunchtime benefactor. Who do I have the pleasure of thanking for saving me from the clutches of none other than ol’ ‘Make-You-Cry’ Dry?”
Before Dana could respond the boy set his book down and gave an annoyed glance at Ellen. “Ellie, did you not have enough money to eat again?”
Ellen avoided his gaze. “I may or may not have but as long as I come up with eighteen dollars and twenty seven cents by tomorrow then I’m out of dutch with the creature from the black lagoon. And I can pay this very generous girl back her hard-earned dollar.”
Dana felt the beginning of the first smile she’d had all day forming at Ellen’s use of nicknames for Miss Dry. “I’m Dana. Dana Scully.”
“Dana, huh…” Ellen said, pondering it for a moment. “Day-na,” she smiled, sounding out the syllables. “I like it. Very chic.” Dana wasn’t sure what chic meant but it seemed like something positive. Chic. She’d have to file that one away for further research.
“As I’m sure you heard earlier, I’m Ellen Byers. My favorite supermodel is Jerry Hall. I love fashion and my life’s dream is to be on The Dating Game so I can get famous just like Farrah Fawcett.”
“This,” she said, clapping a hand on the shoulder of the boy next to her, “Is my oh-so-wonderful twin brother John Fitzgerald Byers, Jr. Yes, after the deceased president of yore. They actually share a birthday…or, uh, I guess a death day? Either way, he’s a tough nut to crack but once you get past the exterior he’s just a little teddy bear, aren’t you, Johnny?”
The boy stuck his hand out to Dana, “Please….just call me John.” He visibly blushed as Dana returned his handshake.
“I’m the older twin by four minutes which is naturally why I got the dazzling wit and charming personality of the family,” Ellen boasted, flipping her brown hair over her shoulder. “John got the brains. He keeps talking about these guys in the Bay Area who made this electronic thing, that’s like, small enough to keep in your house. It’s supposed to do math and stuff. I don’t understand it but he says it’s going to be a big deal.”
John looked pleased at this. “The personal home computer is going to change the world and I’m going to be a part of it. I’ll tell you all about it sometime if you want.”
Ellen then turned and pointed at the small blonde girl. “Take it away, Suse!”
The girl gave Dana a shy smile. “I’m Susanne Modeski. You can call me Susie if you want. Hmm…three things about me…I like to write, I have six siblings and I’ve never been out of the state of California.”
“What she means to say,” Ellen continued, “is that someday she’s going to be a famous writer, and she’s going to blow this popsicle stand and see the world.”
Susanne then gave a wider smile. “I write all of my ideas down in my notebook. Sometimes I get in trouble for writing in it during class but I have to get it all down before I forget it.”
“So, Dana,” Ellen said between bites of pizza, “tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?”
Dana thought about how to condense the sum total of her experiences into a short introduction. She thought she’d be better at this considering how many new people she had to introduce herself to year after year of military moves but she still struggled. Being “from” somewhere was a foreign feeling that she couldn’t relate to.
Which duty station had the most influence on the young woman that Dana Scully was becoming? Her mother always said that home was wherever their family was, especially while their father was away for months at a time on sea duty. The Scully’s only had themselves to rely on for the most part.
“Well, my father is in the Navy so I was born in Maryland. But, we moved to Japan when I was three and lived there for a couple of years. I don’t really remember it. Then, we moved to Florida until I was…I think about nine or 10. Then we moved to Virginia and that’s where we were until this summer when we moved here. I’ve got three siblings. Bill is a sophomore at the Naval Academy, my sister Melissa would be a senior but she just got her GED and she’s on a spiritual road-trip with some guy she met in San Francisco, and then there’s my little brother Charlie who’s in junior high. He’s the baby of the family. My favorite subject is math and my dad wants me to be a doctor someday but I’m not sure if that’s really what I want to do. My favorite book is Moby Dick and I have a cat named Pepper. Um, I think that’s about all of it.”
By the time she finished Dana was slightly out of breath. This was the most she had talked to anyone not related to her since they moved to California.
“Another smarty-pants!” Ellen exclaimed. “Thank god, you can help tutor me because if I don’t pass pre-calc this year my mother is going to send me to boarding school.”
“I thought you said your father is an accountant? Can’t he help you with math?” Dana asked.
Ellen looked confused for a moment and then laughed as she recalled what she had said to Miss Dry. “Oh, yeah, about that…I lied. John Byers Senior went out for cigarettes back in ‘67 and never came back. Or maybe it was a gallon of milk….anyways, either way he’s out of the picture. Even if he was here I don’t think I’d be asking him for homework advice. The bastard.”
Susanne looked in awe of the recount of all of the places that the Scully family had lived. “You’ve really been to all of those places? Is it fun? How many times have you been on an airplane? The farthest I’ve ever been is Carlsbad to visit my aunt. We had to take the bus.”
Dana shrugged. “It’s interesting but after a while it’s hard to keep moving around. Especially trying to make new friends.” She looked down, suddenly embarrassed.
The bell suddenly rang, signaling the end of lunch. Dana pulled out her schedule in order to double check what her next class was. She had memorized it by reading it about a thousand times already in the week leading up to school but it was still reassuring to see where she needed to be in black and white.
Ellen stood over her shoulder to read it and squealed. “Oh, perfect! Science with Mr. Eckhard, that’s where I’m going too. We can walk together so I can show you how to get around.”
As they entered the throng of students in the hallway headed to their next period, Ellen unexpectedly reached for Dana’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “You can’t say you don’t have any friends now, future-doctor Dana Scully.”