Skye Says: I was thinking about all of the genres I've written for the other day when I realized that I had yet to write a single thing for my beloved RHPS.

So, without further ado, I present this story.

Disclaimer: I own everyone here except the charries from the movie, whom I love to death and would never claim as my own.

Prologue

At first glance, the world seemed like such a beautiful place. The sky was blue, the air was crisp and refreshing, the water was clear, bubbling, and musical, the sun was a heat lamp that smiled down upon the earth, and the birds gave up their souls in their song to rejoice in each day. Everything was perfect, everything was wonderful, and everything was magical. I was innocent; blissfully ignorant, and in that ignorance- that pure naiveté, if you will, I went along living my life as carefree as could be. I was happy, truly happy-

Then the acrid stench of death ripped my eggshell world to pieces- twice.

First, came the death of my parents when I was twelve. My brother, Jason, left high school every day to pick Coralee and I up from school. Jason was eighteen then; Coralee, fourteen. Mom and Dad were flying back from a business conference in London when their plane suffered from engine failure and ditched in the sea.

Everyone onboard perished.

After that, Jason became our parents. He was our mother and our father and our brother, and he was the most amazing person I had ever known.

On the eve of my eighteenth birthday, my best friend Columbia was kidnapped on her way home from school. The search went on for a year before everyone lost hope. She was either dead by now, or living under an assumed identity.

I grieved a little, and life went on.

It wasn't much longer before death was once again looming over our household like a vast, vindictive villain.

I woke up one morning feeling strangely suffocated, as if I'd gone to sleep with a rock on my chest or something. A quick glance in the bathroom mirror revealed that I had slept more fitfully than I'd thought; the dark circles rimming my eyes were proof that the nightmares continued to get worse.

The police had stopped searching for Columbia over a year ago. Why was her sudden disappearance still bothering me?

"Rhapsody!" my sister's voice floated up from the first floor. Coralee sounded- well, the tremor in her words was hard for me to identify at first because I had never seen my older sister afraid, but with her next words, I came to realize that she must have been terribly frightened.

"Rhapsody, oh God! I-it's Jason! He's… he's-"

"He's what?" I leaned against the doorframe, straining to hear.

There was a long pause. A choked, agonized sob.

"Call a freaking ambulance!"

Later, as Coralee and I sat beside each other in the waiting room of the Thomas Patrick Memorial Hospital in Columbus, we peered anxiously up at the nurse who walked into the room- the nurse that wore a hospital-issue smile to go with her hospital-issue green scrubs.

"We did everything we could," she said flatly. "I'm sorry."

They had not done everything they could, I thought numbly as I held my sister in my nineteen year-old arms. No, they had not done anything at all.

My brother, my guardian, my protector, Jason Lawrence Coleman- the man who had raised Coralee and me since our parents died- was gone.

And I knew that because of his death, my world would never be the same.

Skye Also Says: As this is my first first-person fanfic, I would greatly appreciate it if you would help me keep Rhapsody from the horrors of Mary-Suedom.

Thank you.