Disclaimer: All concepts and characters belong to Kevin Willimas and the WB network. They are borrow here, no money was made.

Rating: R (Sex, language)

Spoiler: Basic series concepts

"What other option is there when I live in this passionless, disingenuine world full of lack-luster sentiment and agnostic pain?" she moaned, startled by how easily the description came. Her open palms gathered sweat and sand, a grimy concoction that she couldn't bare to wipe on the beautiful dress.

"Oh, Dawson," she moaned, and blinked away tears. No, not tears, more sand. Something had kicked up quite a little storm, and when she looked up, she found that the mountains, which had loomed so large and presenceful in the distance a moment before, had fallen neatly at her feet.

Or rather, the huge cardboard cut-out that appeared to be mountains when cleverly lit from behind had flipped forward and fallen at her feet. She could see the wooden support posts running along the back of it sticking straight up in the air.

Just as abruptly, the two or three inches of cloud that had been allowing her to float over the desert floor vanished, and she plopped hard onto the sand. This dress wasn't much, either, some kind of cheap polyester. Her back was sweaty and itchy, and the sleeves had been stitched too tightly where they met the bodice.

"What the hell is going on here?" she asked, getting to her feet.

Ow, that sand was hot. Jen glanced up and saw that the sun had been replaced by a cluster of halogen lamps, the kind used to keep food warm in cafeterias. The tumble-weeds were just molested coat-hangers bent and strung with twine. All those little armadillos and dessert snakes were cement and rubber, respectively. The cacti appeared to be faded and dusty paper-mache.

Jen wiped the sweat off her forehead and trudged forward until she was standing on the back of the mountains. Now she could see the back-drop hanging all around her, the long bed-sheets spray-painted to look like endless desert.

"Jesus, my third-grade play had better sets than this," she muttered.

The "mountains" were about twenty feet long, and behind them was a wall. A big cement-cinder block wall like the kind in the gym. A bucket of tinsel and a barrel of fabric scraps had been placed underneath a ladder. Built into the wall was a light-switch box full of levers and dials.

"Hello?" Jen called. "Anybody here?"

No answer, but she was now able to spot the holes in the back-drop where painted fans had been placed, which accounted for the "hot desert wind."

She got off the mountain prop and found her feet on clean, cool tile. She shut off the main desert lights and left just enough going so that she could make her way carefully around the set until she found a door.

Somehow, walking out into the mundane business hallway with its occasional vased coffee table and bland watercolor landscape was even weirder than reaching the end of the world had been. Strange enough that she had been dreaming of the desert, even odder that now she was in an office building.

It was possible that she was still dreaming, but she felt very, very awake. And she'd never actually asked herself if she was dreaming while asleep before.

She walked down one hallway and then turned onto another. Doors were closed in either wall, some with tasteful doormats and each sporting its own brass nameplate. Some of the names had letters after them indicating degrees, but Jen didn't recognize any of the abbreviations. What did D.O.A mean?

Finally she reached a reception desk. A pert if somewhat fluffy woman glanced up and smiled. "Welcome to Nocturnal Emissions. Would you sign in, please?" she asked, sliding a clipboard across the high, curved desk.

"Sure." Jen picked up the pen, which was attached to a small beaded chain, and glanced at the sheet. At the top was written, "2 a.m.," and below that were several boxes. Below the headings, several people had scrawled their names. "Gillian: Cassidy Burke," said one, and "Georgia: Dan Harpack, Lucy Pollar."

The one at the bottom caught Jen's attention.

"Ryan: Dawson Leery, Joey Potter, Pacey Witter."

Jen coughed really hard as she managed to narrowly avoid swallowing her tongue.

"Are you all right?" the receptionist asked.

"Fine," Jen told her. "Excuse me."

She signed her name in the box with her friends' names it in and pushed the clipboard away.

The receptionist picked it up, glanced over it, and said, "Okay, they're down the hall in room 88. They're scheduled to start in ten minutes, so you should probably get a move-on." She smiled wide. "Merry dream-making."

Jen walked down the hallway in the direction indicated, her red dress trailing along behind her. She was relieved to glance into the waiting room and see several other people in strange costumes, including one man who was dressed as a gorilla while peeling a banana with his toes and reciting Blake poetry.

She reached a door labeled, "Back-Stage 88," and turned the knob. It was locked.

Now what? she wondered, and just as she was about to turn away, a disgruntled looking old man came storming out. "Get your late, blubbery ass into make-up!" someone hollered from within, and the old man threw the door wide.

"I told you, I'm not playing the goddamn priest again!" he screamed, with a lot more force than Jen had expected from his shrunken frame. "I'm not going to spend my retirement getting typecast by an arrogant, two-hundred year old hotshot kid!"

"Bite me, geezer. You either go dress up as Father Thorfinn, or you can forget about ever working at Nocturnal Emmissions again!"

"I haven't worked up a nocturnal emission in years!" the man screamed back, stamping his foot. "So there!"

Jen watched as he stormed down the hall, in the opposite direction as the receptionist's desk. Hesitantly, she stepped inside the studio and found herself back-stage again, in an area similar to the one that had housed her desert dream. Only here there were people running around, carrying boxes and lights and calling to one another. Like the set of a play five minutes before curtain up.

"What do we do now?" Jen heard a familiar voice asked, and she spun to see Dawson standing at the edge of another wooden backdrop. Through the separations in the pieces, she could see what appeared to be a huge white room.

Dawson looked splendid. He really did. He was wearing a beautiful tux, the kind with long coat-tails made of soft, silky fabric. There was a woman crouching at his feet, frantically pinning up the legs, and another brushing his hair.

Jen leaned back against the wall, partially hidden behind a refrigerator prop, and listened.

"Nothing," said the same voice that had yelled at the old man. "He'll do it, he always bitches like this. Ten minutes from now he'll be back."

"Are you sure?" Jen heard another familiar voice ask, and sure enough, when she peered around the freezer, there was Pacey Witter, in all his beach-bum glory. Even wearing an expensive tux he had the appearance of casual indifference and little boy vulnerability swirled into one.

She thought Dawson was a lot better looking. Part brooding poet, part American hero, all blond and straight-chinned, and he was so romantic. Jen had often wondered why he couldn't seem to find the romance in her situation, why it had never occurred to him that she thought so little of herself because he seemed to.

She knew it was pathetic that she self-confidence was built precariously around his opnion. But hey, half the fun of love was that it allowed her to give in to pathetic emotions and find herself endlessly reassured.

Well, except with Dawson.

"I'm sure," the guy said. "Are you two ready?"

"I am," Pacey said.

"Do we really have to go through with this?" Dawson asked.

"It was your idea."

"Not the part where she has to pick between us. That's the brain-child of Mr. Suddenly-obsessed-with-my-best-friend's-girlfriend here."

Jen sucked in a breath. Pacey and Joey?

"She's not your girlfriend," Pacey pointed out. "She broke up with you."

"Not for you. You waited to swoop in until she was asleep and defenseless."

"Hey, that's not fair. She swooped in on me first."

"Cut it out," the other voice snapped. "Regardless of which one of you she chooses, I've got to point out that she might not even remember this in the morning. This wedding could be a complete misfire."

Wedding? Jen gasped mentally. But Dawson can't marry Joey! Not when I'm still here waiting for him!

"Excuse me," a woman said, tapping Jen's arm. "Are you supposed to be here?"

Jen's eyes flittered wildly around. "Uh..." she stammered.

"I'm afraid you'll have to leave," the woman told her. "We're about to begin dreaming."

"Oh, okay." Jen stumbled toward the door. "Sorry."

The woman nodded and closed her into the hallway. "Damn," she muttered. "Damn, damn, damn!"

She needed to stop that wedding. It was a classic dilemma, but how could she do it?

Suddenly, an Idea popped into her head.

It only took a moment to find the door marked, "Costume and Make-Up." She let herself in and found the old man she'd seen a few minutes before fighting with the direction.

"Sir?" she asked.

He was standing in a long, low room filled wall to wall with racks of clothes. His gnarled old hands were pushing apart identical black priest-robes and twisting the necks so that he could see the size on the tags. "The last time I'm ever gonna play the priest," he was muttering. "I was like him one day, I was the new kind on the block with all the fresh ideas. Thinks he can just shove me aside, the little twerp..."

"Sir?" Jen asked again.

"What?" he demanded. "I'll be there in a minute."

"Actually, sir, I overheard you talking earlier, and I wanted to offer to take over the priest's part. See, one of my friends is in this wedding, and I'd really like to be there, but I don't have a part. So if you don't want to play Father Thorfinn, I'd be glad to."

He glared at her with watery brown eyes, then nodded. A smile began at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah," he said. "We'll show that little punk, won't we?"

"Uh, sure," Jen agreed.

"You head over to make-up and tell them to get a beard onto those pretty little cheeks of yours. I'll grab you a fat suit and a robe."

"Okay."

The make-up girl was happy to stick a fake beard on Jen's face, and quickly smear gray grease along the tiny lines of her face to make them stand out. She was quick with the eye-liner and pale, natural-looking lipstick that gave Jen the appearance of withered age. Then she slapped a bald cap on, rubber-cemented the edges down and hid them with thick concealer, and laced Jen's eyelashes with white paint so that they looked china-frail.

By that time the old man was back, toting a fat suit that weighed almost forty pounds and caused Jen to totter a little as if she really were old and fat. "Weighted it myself," the old guy said proudly as he strapped her in. "Started out in costuming and worked my way to the top."

"Wow," Jen said, because that seemed to be what he wanted to hear.

The fat suit seemed so incredibly lump and misshapen that she wasn't sure it would ever look natural, but once she had the long black robe over it, she actually looked pretty natural. In fact, when she turned to face the mirror, her first thought was, I didn't hear that fat priest come in.

"Did you have to make me quite so fat?" she asked.

The old man leaned close and whispered. "Had to hide the breasts, hon. Pretty substantial, them there."

The make-up girl giggled and Jen nodded nervously. "Oh, okay," she said. "Am I ready?"

"I think you're ready. Even Ryan won't realize you aren't me under all that make-up. Just stand behind the alter in the center, and when this girl finally picks the boy she wants, perform the ceremony. It's all written on cards, tapped to the alter top. And don't forget to lower your voice."

Jen nodded again. "I've got it. Thanks."

They helped her out of her chair and she lumbered into the hallway again. She found the back-stage door locked again, and was about to return to make-up in frustration when she thought to do what the old man might have. With one heavy fist, she banged the door really hard and yelled, "Let me it!"

"See," said Ryan's voice from within, "I told you he'd he back."

The really, really, incredibly attractive guy who had been with Dawson and Pacey opened the door. He smiled smugly. "Back so soon, Andruse?"

Jen just grunted and shoved past him, and Ryan seemed to accept this.

"Okay," he called, clapping his hands. "Places everyone. Let's get this show on the road."

Jen followed a group of bride's maids out onto the stage and took her place behind the alter. The church lights went out, drawing attention to the warm glow of the candles that trimmed the isle. Jen looked to her right and saw Dawson, beautiful Dawson with his proud honest face in the soft light. Playing fairly, giving Joey her chance to betray him.

I would never hurt you, she thought. We'd always play fair, and you'd always win.

The chapel shook as a pipe organ reaching all the way to the ceiling began flooding the hall with "Here Comes the Bride." Jen took a deep breath and crossed her fingers beneath the folds of her robe.

To be continued.....

Will Jen be discovered?

Who will Joey choose?

Will there even be a wedding?

Find out in the final installment of