Author's Note: Hey! This is my first story on here so please R&R and show me some love! I loved the Boy/Girl Battle series as a kid, so here I am chronicling the adventures of teenage Hatfords and Malloys.

This is mainly a Josh/Beth focused fic, but some other things might pop up throughout. I hope this plot is a bit more original than the usual, "The Malloys are moving back!" type fic. (Not that I don't love those.)

The whole story is in Beth's POV. Beth is seventeen (junior), Eddie eighteen (senior), and Caroline fifteen (sophomore: she's precocious). Also, I know this chapter is Hatfordless, but it's needed to get the plot moving. On with the story!

1: Flames

Birds were singing, leaves were dancing in the autumn wind, and everything on our quaint little street seemed completely mundane that morning.

Except, you know, our house was on fire.

I took in the whole scene with quiet, disbelieving horror, hands shoved into my sweatshirt pockets as I stood on the sidewalk. Smoke curled up in spirals, marring the perfect blue. My jaw was dropped in surprise, eyes widened. I knew my expression would be comical in any other situation. I risked a glance over at my older sister Eddie who, apart from one blond eyebrow raised to her hairline, was unreadable. And then there was Caroline.

Oh, Caroline.

My younger sister had always been a drama queen, but this was pushing the boundaries a bit. She was wailing. Actually wailing at a pitch that was so high it shouldn't be legal. Her chocolate curls flew behind her in the wind as she suddenly pitched herself into my arms, crying on my shoulder and moaning about her great loss.

...And now I have snot on my shirt. Great.

While I was concerned for my sisters, I was also a bit miffed at the situation. Were Eddie and Caroline's stuff reduced to a pile of ashes? Nooo, of course not. All of their stuff was unharmed in suitcases, sitting on the backseat of the car behind us. They, along with our parents, had just gotten back from a month at our grandparents' house in Florida, while I had been away at a summer college program at Ohio State. And joy of joys, I had come back a day earlier than everyone else which gave me time to unpack all my stuff this morning before driving to the airport and picking everyone up.

All I had now was the clothes on my back and a seriously pissed-off attitude.

"Shut up, Caroline," I snapped, pushing my fourteen-year-old bratty sister off. "At least you still have most of your stuff."

Caroline sniffed. Eddie didn't move. I stared helplessly at our home once again.

All of a sudden, I felt sick. My stomach flipped over, and I choked on the words I was about to fling at my sister to get her to shut up. I just watched the fire in a sort of daze, as everything dipped and turned around me. I sank to the ground shakily, hugging my knees to my chest. The orange flames tumbled and twisted in the breeze. The colors flickered from orange to red to hot white-blue. The white shutters were slowly crumbling to a black burning mess, and instead of leaves fluttering by, it was ash.

I felt a sharp pain in my arm, and looked up to see Eddie poking me to break me out of my reverie. She gave me a look like, "Dude, now is so not the time for a mental breakdown." I shook my head to clear my thoughts, but it was to no avail.

A whining siren rounded the corner, and a fire truck screeched to a halt in front of the house, spraying gravel everywhere. We watched as the firemen worked, still rooted into place on the sidewalk. My parents were standing a little ways away, my mother sobbing into my father's shirt.

I still felt unwell. Time and movement became a hazy blur as voices shouted and people brushed past me, and suddenly I was gasping for breath and was that Caroline crying? All I could hear were my own breaths, dictated in my mind. In. Out. In. Out. There you go. In out in out inoutinoutinout. No, slower. In. Out.

There was only smoke, rising up, up, and away, hiding the brilliant blue of the sky.

I listened to the variety of sounds filling the room. Dishes clanked together, adding to the general din. People laughed and talked and ate, all loudly and happily without a care. Nobody noticed the family huddled together in the corner booth. Nobody realized we were homeless.

We were homeless. I sucked in a sharp breath.

I stabbed my rubbery eggs with a fork and shoved them into my mouth. They tasted okay, but I hardly noticed.

"Beth?" I looked up. My family and I were eating dinner at some tiny diner down the street from where we (used to) lived, their concerned gazes resting on me. I fidgeted uncomfortably.

"Beth, were you listening?" Dad asked. "I just said we have some news."

"You found a house?" Eddie asked. Her chocolate irises filled with hope. It was childish hope, though. It hadn't even been two hours since the fire. But there was a secret part of me that hoped we had found one too.

"Well... kind of," he replied. I raised an eyebrow at this. I hated the elusive "kind of." A question required a yes or no answer, and anything in between was evading the real thing, usually meaning they meant the answer you didn't want to hear. I was very well acquainted with "kind of."

"You wanna explain? Because that doesn't make any sense," I snarled. Well. Wasn't I just Miss America today?

"We found a temporary place to stay," Mom explained. See, Mom understands the inadequacy of a "kind of." After all, she did give birth to me seventeen years ago. God bless that woman, really.

I asked the golden question that I knew my sisters had on the tips of their tongues. "Where?"

Mom and Dad exchanged a Glance. Not just a Glance, but an Uneasy Glance. This was bad. This was very bad. Eddie and I shared an Uneasy Glance of our own. God, what if we had to stay with our crazy Uncle Jimmy? The guy was totally insane. He talks to imaginary people and always smells faintly of wet dog. I could not handle that kind of living.

"Well, you guys remember Buckman, right?"

Oh. Buckman. It was a little town in West Virginia where we had rented a house six years ago. Our neighbors turned out to be the Hatfords, a family of four boys who enjoyed sports, baked goods, and filling rivers with dead animals (looooong story). After twelve months of a feud, pranks, cookies, and even a short-lived romance between Josh Hatford and me, we had moved back to Ohio with a grudging acceptance for the boys, though some things were left rocky. I smiled despite myself at the memories.

"Buckman? But there's no hotels in Buckman," Eddie pointed out, confused. I tilted my head. She was right.

Another Uneasy Glance was exchanged. Dear Lord.

"We won't be in a hotel."

Wait for it…

"The Hatfords have invited us to stay with them for a while."

Speak of the devil. This wasn't bad. No, it was worse. This was utterly catastrophic.