Disclaimer: I didn't originally write this. It's based on a book "This lullaby" by Sarah Dessen.

Reviews plz.

Chapter 1

The name of this song is "This Lullaby." At this point, I've probably heard it, oh, about a million times. Approximately.

All my life I've been told about how my father wrote it the day I was born. He was on the road somewhere in Texas, already split from my mom. The story goes that he got word of my birth, sat down with his guitar, and just came up with it, right there in a room at Motel 6. An hour of his time, just a few chords, two verses and a chorus. He'd been writing music all his life, but in the end it would be the only song he was known for. Even in death, my father was a one-hit wonder. Or two, I guess, if you count me.

Now the song was playing overhead as I sat in a plastic chair at a car dealership, in the first week of June. It was warm, everything was blooming, and summer was practically here. Which meant, of course, that it was time for my mother to get married again.

This was her fourth time, fifth if you include my father. I chose not to. But they were, in her eyes, married – if being united in the middle of the desert by someone they'd met at a rest stop only moments before counts as married. It does to my mother. But then, she takes on husbands the way people change their hair colour: our of boredom, listlessness, or just feeling that this next one will fix everything, once and for all. Back when I was younger, when I asked about my dad and how they'd met, when I was actually still curious, she'd just sigh, waving her hand, and say, "Oh, Draco, it was the seventies. You know."

My mother always thinks I know everything. But she's wrong. All I knew about the seventies was what I'd learned in school and from the History Channel: Vietnam, President Carter, disco. All I knew about my father, really, was "This lullaby." Through my life I'd heard it in the backgrounds of commercials and movies, at weddings, dedicated long-distance on the radio countdowns. My father may be gone, but the song – schmaltzy, stupid, and insipid – goes on. Eventually it will even outlive me.

It was in the middle of the second chorus that Severus Snape of Severus Snape's Vehicles stuck his head out of his office and saw me. "Draco, son, sorry you had to wait. Come on in."

I got up and followed him. In eight days, Severus would become my stepfather, joining a not-so-exclusive group. He was the first car salesman, the second Gemini, the only one with money of his own. He and my mother met right there in his office, when we came in to buy her a new Camry. I'd come along because I know my mother: she'd pay the list price right off the bat, assuming it was set, like she was buying oranges or toilet paper at the grocery store, and of course they'd let her, because my mother is somewhat well known and everyone thinks she is rich.

Our first salesman looked right out of college and almost collapsed when my mother waltzed up to a fully loaded new-year model, then poked her head inside to get a whiff of that new-car smell. She took a deep gulp, smiled, and announced, "I'll take it!" with characteristic flourish.

"Mum," I said, trying not to grit my teeth. But she knew better. The entire ride over I'd been prepping her, with specific instructions on what to say, how to act, everything we needed to do to get a good deal. She kept telling me she was listening, even as she kept fiddling with the air-conditioning vents and playing with my automatic windows. I swear that was what had really led to this new-car fever: the fact that I had just gotten one.

So after she'd blown it, it was up to me to take over. I started asking the salesman direct questions, which made him nervous. He kept glancing past me, at her, as if I was some kind of trained attack dog she could easily put into a sit. I'm used to this. But just as he really started to squirm we were interrupted by Severus Snape himself, who made quick work of sweeping us into his office and falling hard for my mother in a matter of about fifteen minutes. They sat there making googly eyes at each other while I haggled him down three thousand bucks and got him to throw in a maintenance plan, a sealant coat, and a changer for the CD player. It had to be the best bargain in Toyota history, not that anyone noticed. It is just expected that I will handle it, whatever it is, because I am my mother's business manager, therapist, handyman, and now wedding coordinator. Lucky, lucky, me.

"So, Draco," Severus said as we sat down, him in the big swiveling leather throne behind the desk, me in the just-uncomfortable-enough-to-hurry-the-sale-chair opposite. Everything at the dealership was manufactured to brainwash customers. Like memos to salesman encouraging great deals just casually "strewn" where you could read them, and the way the offices were set up so you could easily "overhear" your salesman pleading for a good deal with his manager. Plus the fact that the window I was now facing opened up to the part of the lot where people picked up their brand-new cars. Every few minutes, one of the salesmen would walk someone right to the center of the window, hand them their shiny new keys, and then smile benevolently as they drove off into the sunset, just like in the commercials. What a bunch of shit.

Now, Severus shifted in his seat, adjusting his tie. He was a pale guy, with greasy hair, and a hooknose: the word vampire came to mind. But he adored my mother, God help him. "What do you need from me today?"

"Okay," I said, reaching into my back pocket for the list I'd brought. "I double-checked with the tux place and they're expecting us this week for the final fitting. The rehearsal diner list is pretty much set at seventy-five, and the caterer will need a check for the rest of the deposit by Monday."

"Fine." He opened a drawer and pulled out the leather binder where he kept his checkbook, then reached into his jacket pocket for a pen. "How much for the caterer."

I glanced down at my paper, swallowed, and said "Five thousand."

He nodded and started writing. To Severus, five thousand bucks was hardly any money at all. This wedding itself was setting him back a good twenty, and that didn't seem to faze him either. Add to the renovation that had been done on our house so we could all live together like one happy family, the debt Severus was forgiving on my brother's truck, and just the day-to-day maintenance of living with my mother, and he was making quite an investment. But then again, this was his first wedding, first marriage. He was a rookie. My family, however, had long been prostatus.

He ripped out the check, slid it across the desk, and smiled. "What else?" he asked me.

I consulted my list again. "Okay, just the band, I think. The people at the reception hall were asking –"

"It's under control," he said, waving his hand. "They'll be there. Tell your mother not to worry."

I smiled at this, because he expected me to, but we both knew she wasn't worrying at all about this wedding. She picked out her dress, decided on flowers, and then pushed the rest off to me, claiming she needed absolutely every free second to work on her latest book. But the truth was, my mother hated details. She loved to plunge into projects, tackle them for about then minutes, and then lose all interest. All around our house were little piles of things that had once held her attention: aromatherapy kits, family tree software, stacks of Japanese cookbooks, and aquarium with four sides covered in algae and one sole survivor, a fat white fish who had eaten all the others.

Most people put off my mother's erratic behaviour to the fact that she was a writer, as if that explained everything. To me that was just an excuse. I mean, brain surgeons can be crazy too, but no one say's its all right. Fortunately for my mother, I am alone in this opinion.

"…Is so soon!" Severus said, tapping his finger on the calendar. "Can you believe it?"

"No," I said, wondering what the first part of his sentence had been. I added, "It's just amazing."

He smiled at me, then glanced back at the calendar, where I now saw the wedding day, June 10, was circled several times in different colours of pen. I guess you couldn't blame him for being excited. Before he met my mother, Severus was at the age where most of his friends had given up on him ever getting married. For the last fifteen year's he'd lived alone in a condo right off the highway, spending most of his waking hours selling more Toyotas than anyone else in the state. Now, in nine days, he would get not only Narcissa Malfoy, romance novelist extraordinaire, but also, in a package deal, my mother Chris and I. And he was happy about it. It was amazing.

Just then the intercom on his desk buzzed, loudly, and a woman's voice came on. "Severus, Jason has an eight-fifty-seven on deck, needs your input. Should I send them in?"

Severus glanced at me, then pushed down the button and said, "Sure. Give me five seconds."

"Eight fifty-seven?" I asked.

"Just dealership lingo," he said easily, standing up. He smoothed down his hair, smearing the grease. Behind him, on the other side of the window, a ruddy-faced salesman was handing a woman with a toddler the keys to her new car: she look them as the kid tugged on her skirt, trying to get her attention. She didn't seem to notice. "Hate to push you out, but –"

"I'm done," I told him, tucking the list back in my pocket.

"I really appreciate all you're doing for us, Draco," he said as he came around the desk. He put one hand on my shoulder, Dad style and I tried not to remember all the stepfathers before him that had done the same thing, that same weight, carrying the meaning. They all thought they were permanent too.

"No problem," I sad as he moved his hand and opened the door for me. Waiting for us out in the hallway was a salesman, standing with what had to be that eight fifty-seven – code for an on-the-fence customer, I assumed – a short woman who was clutching her handbag and wearing a sweatshirt with an appliquéd kitten on it.

"Severus," the salesman said smoothly, "this is Ruth, and we're trying our hardest to get her into a new Corolla today."

Ruth looked nervously from Severus to me, and then back to Severus. "I just –" she sputtered.

"Ruth, Ruth," Severus said soothingly. "Let's just all sit down for a minute and talk about what we can do for you. Okay?"

"That's right," the salesman echoed, gently prodding her foreword. "We'll just talk."

"Okay," Ruth said, somewhat uncertainly, and started into Severus' office. As she passed she glanced at me, as if I were part of this, and it was all I could do not to tell her to run, fast and not look back.

I was halfway across the showroom when I remembered that my mother had asked me to please, please remind Severus about cocktails tonight. Her new editor was in town for the evening, ostensibly just passing through from Atlanta and wanting to stop in and be social. Her true motivation, however, was that my mother owed her publisher a novel, and everyone was starting to get a little ansy about it.

I turned around and walked back down the hallway to Severus' office. The door was still closed, and I could hear voices murming behind it.

The clock on the opposite wall was the school kind, with big black numbers and a wobbly second hand. It was already one-fifteen. The day after my high school graduation and here I was, not beach bound, or sleeping off a hangover like everyone else. I was running wedding errands, like a plaid employee, while my mother lay in her king-size Sealy Posturepedic, with the shades drawn tight, getting the sleep she claimed was crucial to her creative process.

And that was all it took to feel it. That slow, simmering burn in my stomach that I always felt when I let myself see how far the scale had tipped in her favour. It was either It was either resentment or what was left of my ulcer, or maybe both. The Muzak overhead was growing louder, as if someone was fiddling with the volume, so that now I was getting blasted with a rendition of some Barbara Streisand song. I crossed one leg over the other and closed my eyes, pressing my fingers into the arms of the chair. Just a few weeks of this, I told myself, and I'm gone.

Just then, someone plopped down hard into the chair on left, knocking me sideways into the wall; it was jarring, and I hit my elbow onto the molding there, right in the funny bone, which sent a tingly zap all the way up to my fingers. And suddenly, just like that, I was pissed. Really pissed. It's amazing how all it takes is one shove to make you curious.

"What the hell," I said, pushing off the wall, ready to take off the head of whatever stupid salesperson had decided to get cozy with me. My elbow was still buzzing, and I could feel a hot flush creeping up my neck: bad signs. I knew my temper.

I turned my head and saw it wasn't a salesman at all. It was a guy with unruly black hair, emerald green eyes, around my age, wearing a bright orange T-shirt. And for some reason he was smiling.

"Hey there," he said cheerfully. "How's it going?"

"What is your problem?" I snapped, rubbing my elbow.

"Problem?"

"You just slammed me into the wall, asshole."

He blinked. "Goodness," he said finally. "Such language."

I just looked at him. Wrong day, buddy, I thought. You caught me on the wrong day.

'"The thing is," he said, as if we'd been discussing the weather or world politics, "I saw you out in the showroom. I was over by the tire display?"

I was sure I was glaring at him. But he kept talking.

"I just thought to myself, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together."

"You got all this," I said, clarifying, "at the tire display?"

"You didn't feel it?" he asked.

"No. I did, however, feel you slamming me into the wall," I said evenly.

"That," he said, lowering his voice and leaning closer to me, "was an accident. An oversight. Just an unfortunate result of the enthusiasm I felt knowing I was just about to talk to you."

I just looked at him. Overhead, The Muzak was now playing a spirited version of the Severus Snape's Vehicles theme song, all plinking and plunking.

"Go away," I told him.

"He smiled again, running a hand through his hair. The Muzak was now building a crescendo over us, the speaker popping, as if close to short-circuiting. We both glanced up, then at each other.

"You know what?" he said, pointing up at the speaker, which popped again, louder this time, then hissed before resuming the theme song at full blast. "From now on, forever" he pointed up again, jabbing with his finger, "this will be our song."

"Oh, Jesus," I said, and right then I was saved, hallelujah, as Severus' office door swung open and Ruth, led by her salesman, came out. She was holding a sheaf of papers and wore that stunned, recently depleted of thousands looks on her tired face. But she did have the complimentary fake-gold-plated key chain, all hers.

I stood up, and the guy beside me leapt to his feet. "Wait, I only want…"

"Severus?" I called out, ignoring him.

"Just take this," the guy said, grabbing my hand. He turned it palm up before I could even react, and pulled a pen out of his back pocket, then proceeded, I am not joking, to write a name and phone number in the space between my thumb and forefinger.

"You are insane," I said, jerking my hand back, which caused the last digits to get smeared and knocked the pen out of his hand. It clattered to the floor, rolling under a nearby gumball machine.

"Yo, Romeo!" someone yelled from the showroom and there was a burst of laughter. "Come on man, Lets go!"

I looked up at him, still incredulous. Talk about not respecting a person's boundaries. I'd dumped drinks on guys for even brushing against me at a club, much less yanking my hand and actually writing on it.

He glanced behind him, then back at me. "I'll see you soon," he said, and grinned at me.

"Like hell," I replied, but then he was already going, dodging the truth and minivan in the showroom and out the front glass door, where a beat up white van was idling by the curb. The back door flung open and he moved to climb in, but the van jerked forward, making him stumble, before stopping again. He sighed, put his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky, then grabbed the door by the handle again, this time accompanied by someone beeping the horn.

I looked down at my hand, where the black ink was scrawled 933-54somethingsomething, with one word beneath it. God, his handwriting was sloppy. A big H, a smear on the last letter. And what a stupid name. Harry.

When I got home, the first thing I noticed was the music. Classical , soaring, filling the house with wailing oboes and flowing violins. Then, the smell of candles, vanilla, just tangy sweet enough to make you wince. And finally, the dead giveaway, a trail of crumpled papers strewn like breadcrumbs from the foyer, through the kitchen, and leading to the sun porch.

Thank god, I thought. She's writing again.

I dropped my keys on the table by the door and bent down, picking up one-balled up piece of paper by my feet, then uncrumpled it as I walked toward the kitchen. My mother was very superstitious about her work, and only wrote on the beat up old typewriter she'd once dragged around the country when she did freelance music articles for a newspaper in San Francisco. It was loud, had a clanging bell that sounded whenever she reached the end of a line, and looked like some remnant from the days of the Pony Express. She had a brand new top of the line computer too, but she only used that to play solitaire.

I continued picking up discarded papers as I walked, balling them into my hand. They didn't vary much. In one, the setting was in L.A., not New York, and in another Brock Dobbin became Dock Brobbin, only to be switched back again. Small details, but it always took a little while for my mother to hit her stride. Once she did, though, watch out. She'd finished her last book in three and half weeks, and it was big enough to function effectively as a doorstop.

The music, and the clanging of the typewriter, both got louder and I walked into the kitchen, where my brother, Chris, was ironing a shirt on the kitchen table, the salt and pepper shakers and napkin holder all pushed to one side.

"Hey," he said, brushing his hair out of his face. The iron hissed as he picked it up, then smoothed it over the edge of the collar of the shirt, pressing down hard.

"How long's she been at it?" I asked, pulling the trash can out from under the sink and dumping the papers into it.

He shrugged, letting some steam hiss out and stretching his fingers. "A couple hours now, I guess."

I glanced past him, through the dining room to the sun porch, where I could see my mother hunched over the typewriter, a candle beside her, pounding away. It was always weird to watch her. She really slammed the keys, throwing her whole body into it, as if she couldn't get the words out fast enough. She'd keep it up for hours at a time, finally emerging with her fingers cramped, back aching, and a good fifty pages, which would be enough to keep her editor in New York satisfied for the time being.

I sat down at the table flipped through a stack of mail by the fruit bowl as Chris turned the shirt over, nudging the iron slowly around one cuff. He was a really slow ironer, to the point that more than once I'd just jerk it away, unable to stand how long it took him to do just one the collar. The only thing I can't stand more than seeing something done wrong is seeing it done slowly.

"Big night tonight?" I asked him. He was leaning close to the shirt now, really focusing on the front pocket.

"Jennifer Anne's having a dinner party," he said. "It's smart casual."

"Smart casual?"

"It means," he said slowly, still concentrating, "no jeans, but not quite a sport jacket event either. Ties optional. That kind of thing."

I rolled my eyes. Six moths ago, my brother wouldn't have been able to define smart much less casual. Ten months earlier, on his twenty-first birthday, Chris had gotten busted at a party selling pot. It wasn't his first brush with the law, by any means: during high school he'd racked up a few breaking and entering, one DWI, and one possession of a controlled substance. But the party bust did him in, and he did jail time. Only three months, but it scared him enough to shape up and get a job at the local Jiffy Lube, where he'd met Jennifer Anne when she'd brought her Saturn in for a thirty-thousand-mile checkup.

Jennifer Anne was what my mother called "a piece of work," which meant she wasn't scared of either of us and didn't care if we knew it. She was a small girl with big blond hair, whip smart, though we hated to admit it, and had done more with brother in six months than we'd ever managed in twenty-one years. She had him dressing better, working harder, and using proper grammar, including wacky new terms like "networking" and "multitasking" and "smart casual". She worked as a receptionist for a conglomerate of doctors, but referred to herself as an "office specialist". Jennifer Anne could make anything sound better than it was. I'd recently overhead her describing Chris' job as a "multilevel automotive lubrication expert," which made working at Jiffy Lube sound on a par with heading up NASA.

Now Chris lifted the shirt off the table and held it up, shaking it slightly as the typewriter bell clanged again from the other room. "What do you think?"

"Looks okay," I said. "You missed a big crease on the right sleeve, though."

He glanced down at it, and then sighed. "This is so freaking hard," he said, putting it back on the table. "I don't see why people bother."

"I don't see why you bother," I said. "Since when do you need to be wrinkle free anyway? You used to consider wearing pants dressing up."

"Cute," he said, making a face at me. "You wouldn't understand, anyway."

"Yeah, right. Excuse me, Eggbert, I keep forgetting you're the smart one."

He straightened the shirt, not looking at me. "What I mean," he said slowly, "is that you'd just have to know that it's like to want to do something nice for somebody else. Out of consideration. Out of love."

"Oh, Jesus," I said.

"Exactly." He picked up the shirt again. The wrinkle was still there, not that I was going to point it out now. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. Compassion. Relationships. Two things you are sadly, and sorely, lacking."

"I am the King of relationships," I said indignantly. "And hello, I just spent the entire morning planning our mother's wedding. That is so fucking compassionate of me."

"You," he said, folding the shirt neatly over one arm, waiter style, and "have yet to experience any kind of serious commitment"

"What?"

"… And you have bitched and moaned so much about the wedding I'd hardly call that compassionate."

I just stood there, staring at him. There was no reasoning with him lately. It was like he'd been brainwashed by some religious cult. "Who are you?" I asked him.

"All I'm saying," He replied, quietly," is that I'm really. And I wish you could be happy too. Like this."

"I am happy," I snapped, and I meant it, although it sounded bitter just because I was so pissed off. "I am," I repeated, in a more level voice.

He reached over and patted my shoulder, as if he knew better. "I'll see you later," he said, turning and heading up the kitchen stairs to his room. I watched him go, carrying his still-wrinkled shirt, and realized I was clenching my teeth, something I found myself doing too often lately.

Bing! Went the typewriter bell from the other room, and my mother started another line. Melanie and Brock Dobbin were probably halfway to heartbreak already, by the sound of it. My mother's novels were the gasping romantic type, spreading across several exotic locales and peopled with characters that had everything and yet nothing. Riches yet poverty of the heart and so on.