This story is based pretty closely on something that happened to my sister and me in real life. It's set immediately after the show's very first episode, "The Room." I hope you enjoy it!

They were both long-overdue for their own rooms, yet when Casey began packing up her stuff to movie into Mom and George's old room, Lizzie seemed sad. She sat on the edge of her bed and watched her sister gather up all her boxes. Casey paused as she lifted her bulletin board off the wall. There was a snapshot tacked to the center of it, of her and Lizzie on the observation deck of the CN Tower last summer. Casey looked at it and felt a pang of sadness. Home, she thought. How she missed her old life in Toronto – even the little things, like looking out at the city and seeing that tower pierce the skyline.

She turned and saw Lizzie sitting on her bed, and the sad look on her sister's face concerned her. "Hey," she said quickly, "you know me moving out of this room has nothing to do with you, right, Lizzie?"

But Lizzie made an oh-please gesture and rolled her eyes. "Well, yeah," she answered, as if it were obvious. "It's not like I'm a little kid anymore. I get it."

Casey smiled. "Well, get this – you can come into my room and hang out with me anytime you want, okay? You don't even have to knock."

Lizzie smiled back; she understood that this was a huge privilege. Casey had made it very clear to Derek, Edwin, and Marti that they were not allowed in her room without her express permission; they all had to knock and wait until she said, "Come in." With so many recent changes, she was clinging to any privacy that she could get. The only good thing that had come out of moving into George's house was that it had brought Casey and Lizzie closer. They had to stick together against their bratty new stepsiblings.

Casey enjoyed unpacking and setting up all her stuff in her new room, but it was hard work, too. She was so tired that she should've fallen asleep right away that night, but instead, she lay awake in bed. She couldn't help it. She was thrilled to have her own room, but she'd never spent the night in it before, and falling asleep in a new place was always hard. George's house – she still thought of it as George's house, not as their house – was so different from their old apartment in Toronto. It made weird noises at night, and it was lonely not having Lizzie there to talk to before they fell asleep. Even when they didn't talk, it was comforting just to listen to her breathe.

They didn't know until the next morning what had made the sudden, scary noise in the night. Marti had stacked all her toys up in a pyramid in the hall and left them there – how like one of George's undisciplined kids – and in the middle of the night, it suddenly toppled over. But they didn't know that at the time. They only heard a crash sound, and from Lizzie's room, where she was lying awake in bed, having trouble falling asleep without her sister there, the noise seemed to come from Casey's room.

Lizzie went rigid in her bed, as every scene from every scary movie that she'd ever seen ran through her mind. Monsters, ghosts, men with masks and guns... She knew it was babyish to be still be so scared at her age, but she couldn't help it. Her imagination went into overdrive, until she was convinced that something terrible was happening to her big sister. Mom and George would discover her mangled, bloody body tomorrow morning. Or maybe her face would've rotted away, like the girl's in The Ring. She and Casey had stayed up late watching it one weekend, and it was still the scariest movie that Lizzie had ever seen. Casey had let her sleep in her bed that night.

But as scared as she was for her sister, Lizzie could not make herself get out of bed. It was too late and too dark. Her imagination was too graphic. She was too scared.

Down the hall, in Casey's room, she heard the same crash sound of Marti's toys tumbling over, and from there, the noise seemed to come from Lizzie's room. She also feared that something was happening to her sister, but rather than making her go rigid in bed, her fear propelled her into action. She threw her blankets off, lept out of bed, and ran out of her room and down the hall to Lizzie's room.

"Lizzie?" she asked loudly, flipping on the light switch in her sister's room. She let out a huge breath as her sister sat up in bed. "Oh, good, you're okay. I heard this noise and I thought maybe... well, never mind. It was probably nothing. Sorry I woke you up."

Lizzie didn't say that she had already been awake. Instead, she just said softly, "That's okay," as relief and guilt washed over her – relief that Casey was okay, and guilt that when Casey thought she was in trouble, she'd gotten up and checked on her. Lizzie had done nothing but stay in bed. What kind of a sister was she?

Casey must've known that something was bugging her – she could always tell – because she plopped down on the edge of her bed and threw an arm around Lizzie. "It must be weird having the whole room to yourself now, huh? But you'll get used to it."

Lizzie smiled. "I know. You'll get used to it too, Case." She didn't specify what she meant by it, but she didn't need to. There had been so many changes lately that they both pretty much had whole new lives to get used to.

As Casey was returning to her own room, she passed by Derek, who was standing bleary-eyed in the doorway of his room. She tried not to curl her lip, but her stepbrother had never looked more repugnant, even by his standards – disheveled hair, sleep in his eyes, and was that drool in the corner of his mouth? Gross. She rolled her eyes and went back to her own room.

Derek didn't say anything either, but he watched her go. He had been woken up by Casey running down the hall, but rather than pissed at her, he was impressed. He had seen the whole thing; it was sort of thing that he would do for Marti. After all, if Marti ever woke up in the middle of the night, scared by something, she probably wouldn't call for her dad, who was sleeping on the basement level now, anyway. She probably call for her Smerek.

Derek watched Casey return to her room, and for the first time, it occurred to him that perhaps there was more to his annoying, perfectionist, bossy new stepsister than met the eye.

FIN

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