Title: Abby's Summer Vacation
Character: Abby
Episode(s): None; Pre-show
A/N: This was submitted to the NCIS Last Fiction Writer Standing Contest (It actually won round 3!) in answer to the prompt to write about what the characters did during summer vacation. The beginning of the challenge mentioned that the prompt was inspired by the fact that kids returning to school often have to write a "What I Did During My Summer Vacation" sort of paper, (Round 3 was around Labor Day) so this is my idea of what Abby's might have been like when she was in 10th grade.

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

By Abby Scuito

English 10

I didn't do anything all that unusual during my summer vacation. I did what I normally do…explore the junk yard behind my house. I did find some interesting things this summer, so I'll tell you about those.

They had brought in two cars from a car crash that happened in late spring. I had heard that one of the drivers was killed, and the other was still in the hospital. I went to junkyard and took scrapings of the blood left in each vehicle. Using the microscope and various other pieces of equipment that my uncle had bought me for my birthday once dad had told him I was interested in forensics, I managed to ID the blood types of both drivers. One was O and one was AB negative. Using the facts of the accident that I obtained from one of my neighbors that worked at the police station, I was able to determine that the driver who had died was the one with the type-O blood. Both of my parents, and I have AB negative blood, so we went to the blood bank, donated some blood, and asked that it be used for the survivor of the accident, if at all possible. Try as I might, I couldn't find out if our blood was actually used for him but I'd like to think it was. (I determined gender based on the accident report. I don't have the equipment to extract and examine DNA yet, though I'm working on my dad and uncle to see if I could get access to some. That would be way cool).

Other interesting things I found in the junk yard were a coffin and a hearse. Apparently there was another accident in early spring that involved a hearse. It was run off the road by a tractor-trailer. The hearse rolled down an embankment, totaling the vehicle and the coffin in which resided one Mr. Abernathy. When I heard that, I was really excited and rushed to open the coffin. Alas, though, Mr. Abernathy had already been relocated. The coffin itself was still cool though. It seems that the Abernathy's didn't want to inter their dear daddy in a banged up coffin, so had bought a new one (the junk yard attendant didn't know if the funeral home had to pay for it, if the family had to, or if there was insurance or something that paid for it. When the attendant's ears started turning red and his answers became more clipped and sharp than usual, I decided to stop that line of questioning and just return to the coffin). It was made of mahogany and lined with the finest of silk. It really wasn't that banged up. Two of the handles had been torn off, and the wood around those had been splintered, plus there was some scuff marks here and there.

I decided to take it home and ask my dad to help me refinish it, repair the few scuff marks, and reattach the handles. (My dad is an expert with woodworking. He always tells me that you don't need to hear to be an expert craftsman, and the fact that he has to work with his hands gives him a perfect excuse not to have to 'talk' much. He's a really quiet man.) My dad is really cool about stuff like that… the fact that I like coffins and such, and we just decided to keep it a secret from mom as long as possible. She really doesn't come into the garage much anyway, and she never really asked what we were working on. When we finally finished it, though, and Dad helped me move it into my bedroom (which had long since been painted black) so that I could sleep in it, Mom went absolutely ballistic! (Have you ever seen someone 'yell' in sign language? It's a really intriguing sight…more so if you're not the one being 'yelled' at). Dad took my side, though, like he often does, and now I have a gorgeous coffin in the middle of my black room, right next to my black bedside table with the skull night light that my dad bought for me a couple of years ago.

After we finished the coffin, Dad and I started restoring the hearse. Dad doesn't do body work, but one of his brothers does, so we'll soon have that operational too. I'll get my learner's permit later this year and Dad says I can learn to drive in the hearse, and then have that to drive around so I won't have to use the boring ole family car.

So, you see, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary over the summer. Just your typical teenaged stuff.