"I can't believe she's leaving for a whole year," I mumbled to myself. I'm up in my room flipping through my homework, but unable to focus on anything. How could Emma do this to me? Take off like that? I'll have no best friend to talk to and no best friend's brother to crush on. I grumble some more and then jump out of my bed. Something has to be done about this. "Mom! I'm going over to Cassidy's!" I shout. I pull on my shoes and rush out the door. In seconds I'm on my bike and pedaling down the driveway.

Five minutes later I pull up in front of the Sloane's house, excuse me, Sloane-Kinkaid's house, and throw my bike onto the front lawn. I open the door just in time to see Cassidy doing a flying leap over the couch and her stepfather rushing out of the kitchen. It must be game time.

"Your mother would kill you if she saw you do that." I say as I walk inside and shut the door. Cassidy's head whips around and she smiles,

"What she doesn't know won't hurt her." Chloe starts making adorable baby noise from her spot in a big comfy armchair and I rush over to pick her up and dote on her a bit. She is absolutely the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Even more adorable than Sundance when she was young. But, down to business. I turn to Cassidy.

"I need to talk to you in the turret." Cassidy frowns and I can tell that its a combination of wondering what's up and not wanting to miss the game. I raise my eyebrows at her and she gets up to follow me up the stairs, dragging her feet as she did so.

"What's up?" She asked as soon as the door was closed behind us.

"Emma's going away for the year." Cassidy's jaw dropped.

"The whole entire year? Where's she going? Why?" The questions kept coming and I held a hand up to silence her.

"All I know is that they're doing some house swap program and they're moving to England for the year."

"England!" Cassidy shrieks, very uncharacteristically.

"Yep. But I don't want her to go."

"I don't want her to go either." She stomped her foot, much like Chloe. "I'd miss her dad's lemon bars too much." I almost laughed at that, but I held my tongue.

"What are we going to do?" Cassidy feigned a look of deep thinking.

"I have absolutely no clue."

And thus began our hunt for a way to make Emma stay.

A/N: Just a short prologue for now but I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions that you might have, leave a review please!