Hey so this is my first attempt at a story for this little fandom, though I have been around a while, usually commenting under the name Jane. This is set five years in the future back once again in Arundel. I am apologizing now in case my characters should be too OOC. While it is difficult to write these girls in general (and I applaud all of you wonderful writers here that do so much better at it than I am sure to do) I found it especially hard to write it in the future and to depict the girl's maturation and changes. Anyway, message me and tell me what you think. Constructive criticism and pointers are welcomed for sure (especially for my characterization!). Sorry the beginning chapter is so unoriginal, it gets better from here. Also it is a Christmas story, and there is no chance I will be done by Christmas but I hope this doesn't make it hard to relate to. This first chapter (maybe I'll post two?) is just to see what kind of response I can get, so whether or not I continue depends completely on you guys. It will eventually be Skye/Jeffrey because I cannot help myself.

Disclaimer: No copy right is intended with any of the material you see here, my thoughts alone are my own. The Penderwicks belongs solely to the lovely Mrs. Birdsall.

The Start of Something New

It started as every Penderwick adventure did, in the too full jeep, everyone squished and simultaneously irritable and excited. On this trip though, the emotions in the car were all especially heightened, because the Penderwicks were on their way to their favorite place in the entire world, Arundel. It was also Christmas vacation, and this, of course, is the greatest holiday of them all. While it is hard to get all of the Penderwicks to agree on something, they never had trouble agreeing on this.

Because of the holiday though, the old jeep was especially packed. Besides the usual things, clothes, soccer balls, jackets, fifty pounds of dog food, at least ten of Jane's favorite books, Batty's keyboard that she insisted on bringing (though Arundel was home to three pianos total) and eight people plus Hound, the car was stuffed with presents and decorations. The poor Jeep sagged miserably under the load and whimpered every time Rosalind stepped on the accelerator too quickly.

Like the jeep, Hound was also whimpering, mostly likely suffering with a stomach ache. Skye too, was whimpering, or perhaps grumbling is a better word, about Batty's elbow in her side and Hound sitting on her foot, looking like he might puke on her new boots.

"Scooch Batty, your elbow is in my spleen," she moaned.

Batty, now nine and all awkward angles and limbs that she had yet figured out what to do with, paid her no mind though, as she was bent forward carefully accessing the state of her poor dog. "Can a dog turn green?" she asked, her voice a little muffled as her head was basically between her knobby knees.

"No," Skye said.

"Are you sure…?" Batty asked.

Rosalind, who was eighteen and driving to get some "practice" in bad weather, looked like she might just be a pale shade of green herself. It was her first time ever having to drive in the snow, all be it just a few inches. "What is going on back there?" she asked. There was a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead, where it crinkled in worry.

"Dolor, my Rosy," said Mr. Penderwick. Focus.

Just then, there was a great hacking noise, and Hound puked… all over Skye's new L.L. Bean trekking boots. Batty sat up straight, her nose crinkled.

"Hound barfed," she said, stating the obvious; something that everyone was already painfully aware of.

Skye closed her eyes and set her jaw, counting down from a thousand, certain she would lose it before she got to 950.

Jane snorted, "Déjà vu," she said, looking up briefly from her blue notebook to grin at a scowling Skye, who looked as though she was going to attempt to burn though her with her crystal blue eyes.

"Easy," said Iantha gently. "We are almost there."

979…978…977…976… Skye paused in her angry counting to think of Jeffrey. It was hard to be mad at anything when she was thinking about him. Skye was seventeen now, and hadn't seen Jeffrey since he surprised her for a visit on her sixteenth birthday party. He had been so much taller than her, and had become very impressive at soccer, which she had found completely terrifying. So she had doubled her training in preparation for this visit that she had looked forward to for so long, in hoping of kicking his butt and wiping that stupid, goofy smile of his freckled face. Unfortunately there was nothing she could do about her height, so she just had to hope that he had hit his growth spurt early and hadn't gotten any taller since last time. His long legs were an unfortunate advantage when it came to all out sprints for the soccer ball.

"You are doing great, Rosy," said Tommy from the third row of seats. Rosalind smiled and turned around to look at him.

"Eyes on the road!" everyone shouted at once. Rosy turned around again, hastily, her face now while as her knuckles.

Tommy's parents were traveling to England for Christmas to visit Tommy's brother, Nick, where he was stationed there. Because Tommy gets violently sick on planes, he opted out of the trip, and the Penderwicks brought him along on their vacation, unable to stand the thought of him alone for Christmas. Skye noticed him take half a peanut butter sandwich from a paper bag, then she looked down at her foot which was cover in a brownish goo that smells suspiciously like peanut putter.

"Tommy! Did you feed Hound the other half of your sandwich?" Tommy shrunk away, and it was almost comical watching such a big guy shrink away from the fierce little blonde headed girl. "He was hungry…"

Skye was building up quite the storm to bring down on Tommy. "Skye," he father said sternly.

975…974…973…972…

Jane giggled almost against her will, and she tore her eyes away from her notebook to give Tommy a sympathetic look. "Sleep with one eye open tonight," she said, before diving back into her writing. Tommy's face was now green to match Rosalind's. They made quite a pair.

Jane, now sixteen, was busy writing a Sabrina Star. She didn't write them often anymore, because she had moved onto bigger and better things, but she decided to write one last story for old times' sake and in celebration of their grand return to Arundel after all these years.

971…970… 969… 968…967…

"Harry the Tomato Man!" cried Batty, as they passed his cart. It was covered in Poinsettias though, not tomatoes.

966…965…964…953…952…

Rosalind pulled into the long driveway as she breathed out a sigh of relief.

951…

A certain green-eyed, freckled boy came flying out of the mansion toward the car.

950! Skye leapt out of the jeep first, partly because she wanted desperately to get out of the tiny, cramped space, partly because she wanted to get away from the smell of puke, and mostly because she wanted to get to Jeffrey first.

She flung her arms around him in a hug that could easily be confused as a tackle. And Jeffrey, having forgotten Skye's sheer amount of enthusiasm, found himself vastly unprepared and lying on his back in the snow. Skye was beside him and he rolled over to grin at her widely before three other sisters and a dog descended upon him. It was Tommy that saved him, reaching down amongst the sisters and pulling Jeffrey out of the snow to his feet.

Drat. Skye thought. He was even taller than last time.

Jeffrey exchanged hugs with everyone then, along with "hellos" and "heys" and "it has been too longs."

Then, in a more personalized welcome for Skye, he turned to her and put his lips next to her ear. "You reek," he whispered.

Skye jerked away, scowling but laughing at the same time. "You can blame Tommy and Hound for that," she said.

"And you don't smell too great yourself. You smell like sweat," she added indignantly, but with a goofy grin that matched his.

Jeffrey flexed. "I have been working out."

Skye was about to counter this, when his mother called from the front step of the huge stone mansion, her face hard. She was yelling things about cold and frost bite and time for dinner in her usual clipped tone.

Jeffrey sighed. "It is so good to see you all," he said as he stooped to hug Batty for a second time. "Perhaps I will be able to slip away tonight and we can get a good game of snow soccer in, yes?"

"Like a secret mission," said Jane excitedly.

Jeffrey laughed and nodded. "Exactly," he said before turning around and running back for the house towards his mother, whose calls had climbed an octave and had become something more like threats.

"See you soon, Agent Jeffrey," Jane called after him.

Skye jabbed her in the ribs.

The cottage was just as they remembered, cozy and just as charming in the snow as it had been in the summer. It was however, a bit smaller, or so it felt like to the girls, either because there were three extra people here or because they had all grown much bigger themselves. Either way, there was much bumping into one another and squishing in to fit everyone and everyone's stuff into the little living room.

There would have to be some shift in sleeping arrangements as well. Batty and Ben offered to share immediately, and Iantha would sleep with Mr. Penderwick in the modified office as he did before, but finding a place for Tommy was more difficult. For obvious reasons he couldn't share with any of the girls, and though he offered to sleep on the couch, the ever polite Penderwicks would not allow this. Skye's previous room was the most obvious choice for sharing, as it was so big and had two beds, but Jane had no interest in relenting her attic hideaway to share with Skye and Skye certainly had no interest in relenting her perfectly clean room to share with Jane. It was Rosalind who saved the day offering to share with Skye as she was much neater and promised not to mess up the room and make her bed every morning. Skye still didn't see anything wrong with having Tommy sleep on the couch (he did offer after all). This also meant that Rosalind would not be as close to Batty, but Batty assured her that she would be ok when she was rooming with Ben. "Besides," Batty said, "I am nine now."

All the girls rushed upstairs then, eager to stash there things away. Jane was first up, running to her perfect little room to start stacking books in corners and set about writing, which she did immediately. Skye reached her room before Rosalind and picked the best bed as quickly as she could, throwing down her stuff to claim it. Only she felt guilty, as soon as she did so, so she gathered up her stuff again to wait for Rosy, who was no doubt showing Tommy his room and making sure Batty and Ben were all settled in.

Sure enough, Rosalind was leaning up against the door jamb of Tommy's room watching with a fond smile as he dumped his stuff there on the floor. He looked up at her to see him watching her, and he stood with a playful smile.

"What?" he asked. Rosy shook her head, still smiling.

He raised his eyebrows and crossed the room in a few short steps to wrap his arms around her. Rosy laughed and he kissed her smile.

"Gross," said a little voice from the closet that was distinctly five year old boy.

"Ben!" it was Batty's voice now. "Don't be rude!"

Rosalind pulled away from Tommy, biting back a laugh at Tommy's red face, before turning her attention to her littlest siblings who were peeking out of the closet door that was cracked open.

"Did I forget to mention that this room is linked via 'secret tunnel' to Batty's room?" she asked playfully.

She went to the closet and swung up Ben into her arms and ruffled Batty's hair. "Come on you two," she said as she disappeared into the closet, already explaining that they must knock on Tommy's closet door before going through, lest he be changing.

When she finally had them both settled, she went to her and Skye's room, to find Skye standing guiltily and awkwardly in the middle of the room, with all of her stuff still in her arms,

"You pick a bed," she said quickly.

Rosalind smiled fondly, carefully decided which one Skye would like the best, and left that one for her. Skye visibly relaxed and looked quite pleased with the arrangement.

"Thanks for not making me share with Jane," she said.

Rosalind looked over at her and nodded. "You deserve a vacation."

"So do you," said Skye, but before Skye could get stuck in a sappy conversation, there was a great clattering noise from outside. She rushed to the window.

"It is Jeffrey!" she cried. And sure enough, he was standing there in the snow, a soccer ball suspiciously in one hand, evidently what he had used to throw against her shudders.

Skye's yelling alerted all of the sisters to Jeffrey's arrival, and it wasn't long before they were all out in the snow, greeting him like they hadn't seen him in years. Jeffrey was laughing and trying desperately to quiet them down.

"My mother doesn't know that I slipped out," he explained. "She seems bent upon keep us apart."

"So it is a secret meeting then," Jane said excitedly, with a longing gaze at the cottage where she had accidently left her notebook in the excitement of his arrival.

Jeffrey nodded and proudly held up his soccer ball. "Who is up for getting their butt kicked in snow soccer?"

The game was ferocious, and the snow added a whole new level of fun. One could only stay on their feet so long before the slipped on a patch of ice and went sliding, often taking out other players as well, like a bowling ball might. The game was Jeffrey and Tommy versus Jane and Skye, and while Jeffrey was quite good, Tommy was never much of a soccer player. The sisters were a dynamic duo though, and with Jane's skill and Skye's effort, they were beating the boys 3-1 when Jeffrey said that he had to get home. He was about the duck back under the snowy garden hedge when Jane stopped him.

"Jeffrey your tracks!" He looked at her, clearly confused. "You footprints in the snow, they will give you away," Jane explained.

It was truly a conundrum (Jane's new favorite word) so Skye and Jane and Jeffrey all grouped up form a plan to get Jeffrey back home.

Skye decided it would be best to start from the beginning. "How exactly did you get out?" she asked.

Jeffrey grinned. "A rope latter hanging out of the tree next to my window." Skye grinned back, remembering their epic meeting there the first year they were here.

Skye broke a stick off from the hedge and used it to quickly draw a map of the cottage, the hedge and Arundel itself, with a big X drawn where Jeffrey's window was.

"What we need is a way to erase our footprints behind us as we walk," Jane said, rubbing her hands together to warm them up. Skye nodded.

"Jeffrey, does this map look about accurate to you?"

"Actually, we added new bushes here," Jeffrey said pointing at the picture in the snow. The new plants messed up Skye's plan for their mission and in frustration, she brushed the whole picture away, using the leafy end of the evergreen drawing stick to do so. Then she froze, her eyes gleaming with her unmistakable I have a plan look.

"Uh oh," mumbled Jeffrey.

The plan went like this: the three friends first broke large branches off the hedge that were especially rich in pine needles, then they walked backward toward the rope latter tree, carefully avoiding the newly planted shrubs and using their branches almost like brooms, sweeping away their footprints as they walked.

It was either madness or genius, or mad genius, as Jane would describe it later. Either way, they made it to the rope later without leaving a single footprint in the yard to incriminate themselves.

Standing at the bottom of the latter, Jeffrey grinned at both of them. "See you tomorrow?" he asked, looking carefully at Skye.

"Do or die."