The dim light illuminated pieces of the room unevenly, the game screen providing light at the right angle to make it look like the shadows were creeping closer. The dark, gritty picture on the cheap TV spread reddish light over a teenage boy, his tongue sticking out in concentration, his green hair dyed brown by the black-red glow. Behind him sat an older girl, in her late teens or early twenties, sprawled on the couch he leaned against. Her brown hair splayed out on the cushions, her wrinkled white shirt and grey pants a choice made for comfort, not looks. The elder stared at the screen in rapt fascination along with the boy, glancing down at the controller once in a while.

The controller in question was currently being abused, the younger boy button-mashing with a stubborn set to his jaw. On the screen, a female character was wading knee-deep in blood, the mirror on one wall reflecting her predicament. Yet as frantically as he tapped the colored buttons, the player character could not seem to turn herself around, apparently caught in a glitch. He tapped around the arrow pad, X, Y, A, B, trying to jump, duck, kick... Anything. The sea of blood rose, the shadows merging together as the screen darkened even more, becoming mostly black with a few red streaks wherever the light from a single flickering fluorescent bulb was enough to shine on the advancing ocean of bodily fluid.

There was a noise from the speakers. The blood had risen up to the player's chin, she had drowned. Game over; back to last save point. The screen a bright grey again, the shadows in the small apartment room ran from the light, and the teen's hair transformed back to his natural green. He groaned, his head falling backwards. Another failure.

The older girl rolled her eyes. "How about next time you don't stick around in the room after it starts oozing blood everywhere, hmmm?"

The boy raised his head, cracking a grin, and a joke. "But it was so shiny."

She reached over, patting his matted green hair like a dog's. "Yes, I know it was shiny." She gestured to the plastic in his hands. "Now give me the controller. I'll do better."

He just stuck his tongue out at her, folding his arms. Partly in a fake pout, partly because Vanessa's apartment was cold. She still hadn't quite gotten the hang of adjusting her own thermostat, and until she did it would stay at 65. Fahrenheit. He had tried to tinker with it, change it to read in Celsius, which Vanessa was clueless about, for April Fool's day last month. His adopted sister had caught him halfway into it, smacked him upside the head, and stolen the screwdriver. He tightened his grip on his upper arms. Marcy had been his favourite, too. She had amazing grip, and the handle was a really cool shade of blue.

Vanessa took the controller, hitting a few buttons that did nothing to get the feel of it in her hands. She grinned to herself, a shaky, self-reassuring smile that her friend couldn't see from his position on the floor. This game was beginning to effect her, a little. She could see the shadows moving. She shook off the paranoia, tapping the arrows until she got to the previous save point. Time to start again.

"Aah!"

Two identical screeches sounded off, as a large, awkwardly jerking, bloodsoaked monster appeared behind the ladder the character was climbing, thrashing about in apparrent rage- right after minutes on end of endless, terrifying silence as they walked through bloodstained hallways, no less. Ferb took the controller in hand to wield as a weapon out of pure instinct, providence allowing him the brilliant idea of throwing it straight at the glowing green circle on the Xbox.

It hit, with a clatter and a crash. The screen went dark, and all that could be heard was the buzz of the still-running television screen, and the two teenagers' frightened, gasping breaths. Vanessa put a hand over her chest, making sure her heartbeat was low enough not to kill her. It had certainly felt like it was, but she seemed to be fine.

Before she let the fear paralyze her once again, she forced her shaking legs off of the long, cheap black couch, hauling herself to her feet and stumbling to the kitchen. She plugged in the electric kettle by feel alone; that thing was a blessing. You could never quite boil water fast enough, in her opinion. The goth girl felt along the wall next to the sink for the light switch, flicking it upwards and allowing warm yellow light to filter through. Ferb grunted and shielded his eyes; too used to a single pinpoint of light staring him directly in the face for the last few hours.

"Just so you know, I'm not driving you home tonight."

The British boy shot her a look of absolute betrayal from his position on the floor.

"You can give me the stink eye as much as you damn well please, Fletcher. I am not getting into my piece of shit car at two in the morning just so that I can be seeing things all down the road and probably get us both killed." She turned to the cupboards, rifling through stacks of small cardboard boxes to get to what she needed at this hour.

She pulled out the box and her mug, setting them both down next to the kettle that was beginning to steam. Settling the teabag in the mug and gently pouring water across the paper-wrapped herbs, she turned to her friend. "Tea?"

His scowl deepened, and he made a distinct sound of "Eugh" in his throat, turning his back to the kitchen and sticking his nose in the air.

Vanessa rolled her eyes. Typical. English kid who didn't like tea. He always was contradictory. "Fine. More for me." The steaming confection hot enough to make her tongue feel like sandpaper (she knew from experience), she grabbed a few ice cubes from the freezer, and inhaled the aroma of peppermint and cranberry on her way back to the couch. That's better.

She sat on the couch, placing her weight on the edge of the cushions as she leaned forward with the still half-boiling water, and plopped the ice cubes into the mix of rapidly-darkening water and teabag. Glancing down at her younger friend, wrapped in his arms and eyeing dark corners, she couldn't resist a smile.

She had been having him over to her apartment ever since she had moved in last fall, to show him decent movies and video games; she didn't want her adopted brother to grow up a total square, after all. She had started with Psychonauts and Repo! The Genetic Opera, beginner's crap that had made him jump, and then laugh at himself for being scared. Next was stuff like Portal and Poltergeist, a little harder games, creepier movies, that kept him with half an eye on the trees on the way home. Just in case. Two weeks ago they had watched Perfect Blue,an animated, mind-bendingly freaky slasher-thriller type movie that had the fourteen-year-old curling against her side and flinching at loud noises. These past few weeks, they had been on Silent Hill; they had started the game last weekend, leaving off just as they actually entered the titular town. The week before he had been somewhat unimpressed, but after having gone through the abandoned hospital, he was definitely unsettled; there was barely a trace of his standard stoic composure left in his body, and he was filled with a twitchy, nervous energy.

As a matter of fact, Vanessa herself was less than calm. She hadn't played this game since her junior year in high school, four years ago, when- just her luck- she got the strictest teachers in school. She used to play Silent Hill 3 during breaks from homework- to make herself too scared to go to sleep before finishing the work. She shook her head. Now she had upped her caffeine tolerance enough that she wouldn't have trouble breathing after a single Mountain Dew, she rarely had to resort to such drastic measures to stay awake.

She sipped at her tea, hoping to make the visions of rotting walls and bloodstained floors flee from her mind. No such luck. The angles of the room may have had something to do with it; this wasn't an apartment in a complex, but rather the third floor of an old house, and the couple had been generous enough to allow her, their old babysitter, to room there in her third year of college. Being basically an attic, the ceiling had the same angles as the roof, with what felt like precious little protection from the elements. There were cool skylights, though, and the sounds of the rain pattering on the roof were beautiful. When you weren't quaking in fear, that is.

"Hah." Ferb seemed to be laughing under his breath.

She raised a single eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Your hands." He declared with an air of triumph. "Shaking."

"Yeah? What of it? Would you deny that if I were to turn on that radio and it went to static, you'd jump about fifteen feet in the air?"

He shrugged, looking uncomfortable with the reminder of how the game tracked the proximity of monsters. No radar screen, no detectors; just a pocket flashlight that only lit up ten feet at a time, and a radio that hissed violent static whenever a blood-soaked abomination was near enough to find you.

The older girl gave a grin at his discomfort, glad to have brought the cocky teenager off his pedestal. "Sooo..." She leaned back, careful not to spill her tea, crossing her legs in an attempt to look nonchalant. "What do you think was the creepiest thing?"

Ferb thought for a moment, coming up with a hard-to-kill enemy from the hospital level. "Those undead nurses..." He shuddered. "I can't get the sound they made out of my head."

Vanessa nodded sagely. "The heavy breathing, the squelching, the creepy music. It's like having lesbian sex with an asthmatic in a haunted house."

Ferb's expression after this calm statement was something to behold; something midway between horrified, confused, and bursting out laughing. The only thing he could get out of his mouth was, "How...?"

His sister turned to him, with a perverted grin, and her left eyebrow disappearing underneath her bangs, daring him to ask the rest of the question.

He changed his mind. "I don't want to know, 'Nessa."

"Smart boy."

"What do you think was the creepiest thing?" Her cocky smirk disappeared. She would never get used to him initiating conversations himself. Even if he lived to be a hundred and became one of the best public speakers on the planet, to his big sister he'd always be that quietly badass kid who somehow knew exactly what he was doing- and was at the same time completely clueless. Even if it was part of what she was helping him work out, she had a secret, half-thought hope that he wouldn't grow out of or learn from his awkward, wide-eyed naivete. (Less so than his stepbrother, but it was enough.) Some things were just too endearing to let go of quickly.

Her mind meandered back to the given topic, reflecting on the many, many creepy things in Silent Hill 3. How to choose?

Finally, she squinted to herself. "Stanley Coleman. That would be so freaky. I swear to God I'd go into fucking Witness Protection if I kept finding sinister love notes from some crazy obsessive stalker planted right where I was going every day." She rolled her shoulders around, trying to make the goosebumps disappear. "Oh, and did you notice? Every time you went back to where the notes were? They were gone. It's like he's following you around..." Vanessa gripped the mug tight, with both hands.

He shrugged. "It could have been someone else taking them."

"Oh, yes, having another random person that I don't know following me around taking shit I've looked at makes me feel so much safer." As always, her tone was coated in a scathing sarcasm. "Besides, if it's just some other person, why would they be taking the note in particular? They'd have to have a reason, and the fact that you don't know that reason really just makes it worse."

He tilted his head to the side; he hadn't thought of that. Silence as usual reigned in the small apartment, until Vanessa, for whatever reason, started picking through his hair.

"Why are you doing that?"

Her fingers continued searching through the tangles as she spoke. "Your hair is really weird."

Ferb sighed. Here it came; everyone asked him why he had green hair at one point or another. "Why is it weird?"

"Well, for one, you need a haircut." He rolled his eyes; she could be such a mother. "And, I don't know if you've noticed it, kid, but..."

"It's green." They said it together, although their colliding inflections made it a little out-of-sync.

"Yeah..." Vanessa blew the bangs out of her face. "Why is it green?"

Shrugging, he replied, "Genetic mutation."

"Sweet."

"My maternal grandmother thought I was a demon."

"Yeah, I can imagine... Wait, what?"

His head swung downwards, away from her now-stilled fingers. "She took care of me for a few days after I was born, after my birth mother went back to her prick of a husband and before my dad came to get me. She thought that the green hair had marked me as some demon child, born of an 'unholy, adulterous union.'" He made air quotes on the last statement, his contempt for the religious speech clear in his voice.

Vanessa knew she really shouldn't laugh at something like that, but... Oh, man. Crazy bitch. "Seriously? That's fucked up."

"...Yeah." His voice was soft, reminded of just one more person that had not wanted him.

"Hey." She reached out to shove his shoulder lightly. "She missed out. That's just more female mentoring that I get to do."

"You? Female? Are you sure? I hadn't noticed." His cocky teenager grin was back, and she sensed that she would have to do some more pedestal-kicking in just a minute.

"I will shoot you in the face." Vanessa's voice was completely deadpan, the delivery making him able to laugh at the hyperbolic threat, at least.

They sat in silence for a second. Deciding to change the subject, Vanessa continued with their previous conversation. "Oh, and about Stanley, you remember that creepy birthday call? From the pay phone in the locker?"

He tilted his head backwards, laying it on the cushion so he could see her face- which had a very unsettling expression on it. He raised an eyebrow, wary of what that expression might entail.

"Well, he said that Stanley's new name was number seven, right?"

Ferb nodded, tensing a little.

"Remember going into the morgue, and that stretcher number puzzle? Number seven was back in the corner... And it had a body on it. That noise when you stood right next to it was Stanley, whispering, "Heather."" Her last word was spoken in a creepy hiss, trying to scare him.

Watching her friend's eyes widen in alarm with this revalation, she nodded, patting the couch seat next to her. Ferb took the hint, scampering up and leaning against her. He may have been an official teenager by now, but by God, when something scared the crap out of him in that apartment, he was going to cling to his big sister like a freaking koala and he didn't care what anyone thought about it. He felt her arm come to rest on his shoulder, and he allowed himelf to relax a little.

He was still surprised at how rapidly the transition had been made, between Vanessa being an intimidating, fascinating figure to fawn over when no one was watching, to his beloved older sister that could smack him around when he was being a dick, without blame or accusation. Maybe it was him being much closer to her age when they met; maybe it was her having taught him kickboxing and martial arts (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to have a crush on someone who's hitting and shouting at you like a drill sergeant). Or maybe it was just a natural progression of relationships, like how Stacy's hero-worshipping schoolgirl crush on Candace had faded by the fourth grade, leading to them being steadfast friends. Whatever it was, she kept him safe, sane, and in line. He wasn't complaining.

Even if it did look a little weird, a fourteen-year-old boy spending his free time (what was left of it, after his brother's crazy "projects") with a twenty-something year old (she always hedged or estimated when she told him her age; he supposed it was a female thing) woman, and now, spending the night in her apartment. To an outsider, it probably looked vaguely pedophilic.

But hey- since when had either of them cared what other people thought?

"By the way, on the note of stalking crushes, how're you doing with that crush on the cute little..."

He stiffened, interjecting, "Shut up, Vanessa."

"I'm your sister. I'm supposed to embarrass you. Consider yourself lucky I'm not asking this at the top of my voice, in the middle of the day, right in front of her and everyone else you know. Which I will do if you ever piss me off. So be wary."

He made an exaggeratedly terrified face at her turned back. She shifted to see him, and laughed. "Be careful, young man, if you keep making those horrible faces your face might freeze that way!" Her authoritarian, maternal manner left much to be desired; she was better as a drill sergeant.

"Oh, is that what happened to you?"

She glared at him; he gazed back with eyes frosted with innocence, a bland smile on his face that was cracked into laughter when one of her pillows hit him in the nose.

Shifting in his seat on the couch, leaning on the opposite arm, Ferb tried to find a spot where something wasn't jabbing into his side. It wasn't really working. "What does that save-point symbol thing mean?"

Vanessa shrugged from the other side of the couch, presenting a mysterious smile. "You'll find out. Heather figures it out eventually."

"Oh, does she? I wouldn't have guessed." Vanessa rolled her eyes. She had known she would regret teaching him sarcasm.

"Yeah, well, she half remembers it already. You're just at a disadvantage, cause you haven't played the first game."

"Half-remembered memories are some of the most frustrating things..." He sighed. "I should know."

"You should?"

"Yeah." Hesitating a little, he went on. "When I was younger- I used to try and remember my birth mother. All I'd get was a blurry outline, though, and I'd never quite know... Whether they were real, or something I made up to make myself feel better."

"If it helps, which it probably won't," Vanessa began, staring at the ceiling and speaking in an oddly offhand way, "it's clinically impossible to remember anything from your first three years of life." She rolled her eyes. "It's actually supposed to be four, but I remember shit from when I was four, so fuck that. But one, two... No go. And your mom was killed when you were, what, three months old?"

The green-haired boy shook his head, his next words beginning to run together with the way his English accent intensified whenever he talked about his mother. "No, I was four months. 'N I appreciate the way you say she was killed, not that she died."

She gave him a strange look. "Well, she was, wasn't she? Domestic abuse case?"

"Yeah, but mostly people like to just say she... Died. Like it was cancer or something, not being beaten to death with a fucking chair..." He somehow sighed, shook his head, and rolled his eyes at the same time, combining the three most common gestures of the teenage population into one fluid movement. "I am grateful, you don't sugarcoat or avoid things like that."

"Well, I don't mince words."

He laughed. "Just garlic?"

"Exactly. And you do not get to make fun of me for that, it was a complete accident."

"What, so you can laugh at me for the sandalwood incident, but I can't mock you for the garlic-inator shenanigans?"

"Precisely, young man. The sandalwood thing was your fault-"

His protests overlapped her dodgy explanation"It was my brother's, not mine-"

"And the garlic thing was my dad's doing." He opened his mouth to speak again. "Shut up."

"But..."

He got another pillow thrown on his face. He shut up.

Vanessa stood from her place on the couch before she got too settled to want to move, hesitating a little before hitting the light switch; this might not be the best decision, but it was two in the morning...

Darkness fell. There was a sudden, distant flash of lightning through the window, that both illuminated the storm taking place more than three miles away, and put the fear of God into the adolescents in the angular apartment. Vanessa scurried over to the couch once more, pulling the large, fluffy DHS blanket off the back and over herself and Ferb as she dove onto the sofa, still keeping a watchful eye on the dark, threatening corners. It was an impressive display of multitasking, and it happened in only a few seconds; Ferb was still blinking from lack of light as she started kicking the blanket into place.

Several seconds of silence went by; well, silence, except for the rustling of the blanket, being pulled back and forth in an attempt to cover them both, and the breathing of both gamers.

There was a loud hissing, growling noise. They both froze.

Heated air began to stir from the ventilation. They slowly began to relax.

As had been expected, the various creaks and shifts that were to be expected of an over one hundred years old, three-story house were all treated as emergencies until they could be rationally explained. This went on for over an hour; the scratch at the door was the cat. The groaning was the house's foundation shifting, weathering the light rain as well as it ever had over the years. The whistling was the crack in the window. That raspy breathing was the downstairs couple's sleep problems acting up. That slow, agonizing creak as the door opened... They sat for about fifteen minutes after that, afraid to move, until the large, fat gray tabby jumped up onto Vanessa's legs.

Eventually, though, the rain slowed, the storm faded, leaving behind an easy silence, and the even breathing of brother and sister on the couch.

Vanessa woke up at seven in the morning. She supposed it was her penance.

The cat, Michelle, laying on her breastbone, getting her short hair up the goth girl's nostrils, was mewling plaintively once she was sure her bed was awake, begging for a scratch. Vanessa did it, rubbing the softer fur behind the tabby's ears to shut her up. Half-worried that the cat's noise had woken Ferb, she raised her head as much as possible and looked.

Although the blanket was too bunched for her to tell, she could see hints of bright green resting atop the black pillow, and assumed he still slept. Gathering Michelle in her arms with a quick movement, Vanessa stood, her bare feet protesting against the cold floor as she walked over to the kitchen area. She glanced back; Ferb was strewn out over the couch like her father after a week without sleep, one leg drooping off the side, the other flopped over the back, right arm tightly pulled against his body like a teddy bear, the other flying away, dropping at a bad angle behind his head. His hair was sweaty, his eyes had circles beneath; she had to wonder why she hadn't noticed his state of exhaustion.

Allowing the cat to fend for herself on the cold, hard tile floor, she strode back to the couch, determined to set her brother right. She tucked his left arm against the blanket, pulling the fluffy throw down a little and folding it over neatly, as she could remember her mother doing a thousand times to her when half-asleep. Push one leg off the back of the sofa, put the other back on, spread the blanket evenly, and adjust the pillow. There.

She stood back, feeling a little proud of herself. He wouldn't lack a good night's (or morning's, as it was) sleep now.

And then she realized how maternal she was becoming. She cursed under her breath. When the hell had this kid become the one thing that could trigger her protective instinct?

She remembered a scene from an anime movie she and Johnny had watched at 3AM once- a father, asking his son if he had "someone to protect". The phrase nagged at her. It was as if protecting someone, being willing to do anything for their welfare, was what kept someone firmly on the side of good.

It made sense, she supposed. Take her own father; he did claim to be "evil", after all, but he would never do anything that killed people (at least she hoped not), and it was likely due to having a daughter, and formerly a wife, that needed to be kept safe. If there was one person you needed in the world, really, it was one who you could take care of, to reassure you of your humanity so you didn't absolutely go off the deep end.

She supposed that, for her, that person was the quiet little kid who used to have a crush on her, who she taught everything she knew, the only person yet to make her feel like a woman in her crowning glory of motherhood, instead of a petulant teenager. She nagged him about combing his hair, gave him rides to and from school, teased and cajoled and insulted him into becoming a stronger, better person.

And she felt like she was actually accomplishing something because of it. She knew that even if none of her planned careers panned out, nothing went according to plan, she'd always have this one conquest: she helped a little boy grow into a man.

At the moment, she felt as if she was making headway.

The first thing that entered Ferb's mind that early Spring morning was light.

It shone from outside his eyelids with a ferocity that he was unused to after the darkness of sleep. Trying to grapple with the blanket, pull it over his protesting eyes, surprised him.

The blanket had been folded down, across his chest, and the edges resembled something symmetrical. The logo of Danville High School was covered, the tops of the orange D, H, and S obscured by blue fluff. His eyes, still adjusting to the brightness of whatever-time-it-was, recognized the symbol of the school he was to attend next year as a freshman. He blinked, stupidly, staring straight ahead as the sunshine coming in from the skylight directly above him glinted off everything in sight.

"Good morning!"

He swung his legs off of the couch before the rest of his body was ready, resulting in heavy vertigo. He sighed. Vanessa was obscenely cheerful. That would need to be rectified.

"Best time of day to go fuck yourself." He croaked out, his throat unaccustomed to activity right after waking up. He pressed down on the armrest, trying to get his legs underneath him to stand.

Vanessa laughed. "You might want to get going a little faster, Princess. You're a bit later than you wanted to be."

Having finally gotten his limbs to obey him, he coughed, trying to get his voice back under control, too. "Time?"

"It's eleven. Thirty."

For a second, he could only gape. And then, he sprang into action. Darting into the back room for his stuff, grabbing his backpack, shoes, hat, coat, all the while glaring at the perfecly serene Vanessa, sipping her morning Rockstar with a single raised eyebrow.

"Sit down. Eat something. You're too skinny."

"Nessa, I told you I wanted back home before eight!"

"Too bad. You need your sleep." She had stood, leaning against the table without a care in the world.

"No, I don't! My brother's probably halfway to killing himself on some giant project that I haven't worked out the safety features for yet!"

"Hey!" She snagged him as he ran by, grabbing him by both shoulders, interrupting his frantic scramble for his things. "Your brother will be fine without you for twelve hours. Relax."

Ferb folded his arms, sitting down at the tiny, circular table. He refused to make eye contact with his big sister.

She sighed, setting down her drink of pure sugar, caffeine, and concentrated awesome.

"Oh, don't you pout at me, you little control freak."

"Am not."

"Are too. You think your brother can't handle this on his own?" Her hold on the can relinquished, she was free to put her hand on her hip. Which she did, with great aplomb.

Ferb only sunk lower in the frail wooden chair.

"Thought so." Vanessa sing-songed, downing the rest of her Rockstar and getting to her feet. "I need to grab some of my own stuff to go to Lacey's, and you-" she paused to ruffle his hair "-take a shower. You might want to let it run for a second before you get in, it takes a minute to get the hot water up from the basement." Walking past the couch-and-tv area, back into the bedroom, she began to sing to herself.

The teenager could only sit at the table, wondering how he had gotten himself into this. He stood, heading for the bathroom. Knowing her, she'd only smack him if she came back without her orders having been followed.

Once having escaped the oddly-operated shower (which he decided would now be termed the Death Trap of Doom), the young engineer emerged, dressed and ready, his green hair reduced to a dark olive by retained water. The table was set with a defrosted breakfast sandwich, and an empty plate on the other side where Vanessa was sitting, trying to get a spoon to balance on her nose. He sat down, raising an eyebrow.

"Microwave food?" There were certain elements of scorn, disdain, and loathing in his voice, topped with a layer of dry humor and dull surprise.

"I'm a college student. This is my diet in my natural habitat." She hadn't even blinked, the spoon continually refusing to stick to the tip of her nose.

Ferb rolled his dark-brown eyes at her idiotic antics and eating habits, chomping the sandwich in half all the same. This time, she did look up, raising an eyebrow of her own.

"Jeez, how long has it been since you've eaten, kid?"

He searched his brain, trying to calculate an answer that would keep elements of the truth, but still keep her from murdering him out of sheer frustration. "Erm... Yesterday? Morning?"

The eyebrow strained higher. She didn't believe him.

"The day before."

The eyebrow fell, and her head tilted to the side, with an expression one would generally have while dealing with mentally handicapped chimpanzees.

"Okay, fine. Two days ago. But it was at midnight, so..." His sentence was cut off by a sharp pain to his cheek; she had flicked a piece of plastic at him with her spoon.

"You're a moron."

"Aware of that."

Vanessa tapped at the table restlessly with her bent plastic spoon, her head resting in her other hand. "Okay. Here's what I'm going to do. I will take you home, once you've eaten. Next time we're supposed to train together, I'm going to quiz you relentlessly about your eating and sleeping habits, and if I'm not happy with them, so help me God, I'll make you run laps and do push-ups until you won't be able to move for a week." Her glare told Ferb that she would not be questioned.

This did not stop him from balking at her suggestion, his mouth open and eyes wide. She wouldn't.

"Would I?" Vanessa could read minds, Ferb would swear that until his dying day.

"Fine."

Her grin was abnormally large- the kind of grin he had begun to fear from the brunette. The insane, shark-like smile that meant she was ready for anything the world could throw at her. It generally meant that if she was going down, anyone within proximity was going down with her. And the English boy knew if she did, he was bound to be the first. She laughed at his wary expression.

"C'mon, kid. Get in the car."

"Ha ha! You get what you get, bitch!" The brunette yelled in wild abandon as she cut off a soccer mom's minivan to the glorious chorus of honks and yells.

Ferb gripped the sides of the seat hard enough to leave marks. Now he remembered the moment he lost his crush on Vanessa. It was the first time he ever got into a car with her- which he'd sworn would be the last, but life had a way of screwing you over like that. She was a terrible, terrible driver, and for some reason, she relished that fact, treating the road as almost a game of bumper cars. And every time, he would stumble out of the car, come close to falling to the ground, and swear on every dead relative he had that, by God, this was the last time.

Which somehow never stopped him the next time he whipped out his cell phone needing a ride. This was how he knew he was one of those "idiot teenagers" that he had always rolled his eyes at when he was younger.

Thankfully, they didn't hit anyone, although there were close calls all over the place. Every time they came near a turn, the boy in the passenger seat tensed, ready for another miniature heart attack. He counted; by the time that they pulled in front of his house, with its brown fence, large tree, and utter nonindication of the absurdity lurking inside, they had nearly crashed eighteen times. They had driven a total of thirty-six blocks.

Shivering a little, Ferb lifted himself from the unstable vehicle- which he had fixed a thousand times, memorizing everything about it, and it was a perfectly capable car, but any vehicle in the hands of Vanessa was unstable- and gave his crazy, dangerous, loving, dependable sister a broad, adrenalin-fueled grin.

"See you next week, 'Ness."

Vanessa smiled to herself as he walked up to the fence, calling out to his brother, whose vibrant orange hair she caught a glimpse of as he opened the gate. This was his real life; this was his real routine.

She was just glad to be a part of it.

And she drove away, slowly coasting down the residential street, then pounding on the gas at the turn, whooping at the sudden rush.