Chapter 3

Author's Note: I've never been an orphan and I've never been shot at, so I kinda-sorta tried to imagine what it'd be like for this chapter.

I woke up in the hospital to see my dad and my mom hovering over my bed. There were three more people in the room, sitting in chairs—two kids that looked really similar to each other, and Max, my criminal grandfather. I tried to sit up, but my head hurt too much.

"Uh, can you give me some space?" I asked, trying not to sound rude, but it kind of came out wrong. They didn't move.

My dad—I hadn't seen him for about 4 months now—shook his head. "I'm not allowed to let you out of my sight, Keight."

"You did for the past thirteen years of my life," I replied.

Max shook his head and smiled. "Told you it would scar her for life, Tempe." Oh. So my mom, forensic anthropology genius, didn't know that leaving someone in an orphanage would make them pretty pissed off?

"Who are you?" I inquired, pointing at the two unknown figures.

One of them was a girl—she had long dirty-blond hair and really pretty blue eyes, and she was dressed in an Abercrombie shirt, jeans, and white flip-flops. She was scrolling through her text messages on her BlackBerry Storm. Wow. She looked like she really wanted to be here, you know?

The second was a boy—same dirty-blond hair but darker blue eyes. He wore a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey and jeans. He looked like he should've been at a football game, not waiting for someone he didn't know in a hospital to wake up.

"Keightley," Max said. "These are your siblings. Cameron and Ryan."

I gaped at the two in shock, and then turned, pretty pissed off, to my parents, who appeared to be nervous. "M-my siblings?" I repeated. "And you didn't tell me? Let me guess, you've had them for thirteen years, living at your house and you just decided to ditch me? Does Parker know about them? Oh yeah, he does because he's been living with them for thirteen years, but the only time he's seen me is my eleventh birthday!"

"Keightley…" my dad put his hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off. "You don't understand."

"I understand enough to be disgusted," I replied coolly.

Max grinned. "I think it's time for you two to do a bit of explaining to your daughter," he said to my mom and dad. He ushered my siblings out of the room and said as he closed the door, "Remember—what would Sweets do?"

"Who the heck is Sweets?" I asked when Max, Cameron, and Ryan had left.

"A shrink," my dad answered.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, until my mom broke the silence. "So…"

"Talk," I ordered. "Go on ahead, start explaining. You have a whole thirteen years of explaining to do."

My dad sat beside me on the small white hospital bed. "Okay. So you, Cami, and Ryan were born January 7th, 1996."

"I know when my birthday is."

"Okay, well, when you were four months old, your mom was taking you to her work, because Angela was going to take care of you that day while your mom worked. On the way to work, somebody started shooting at your mom and you, but thank God, nobody got hurt."

"So why wasn't Mom put in an asylum or something if I was put in an orphanage?" I asked, cutting to the chase.

"I'm getting there," my dad said, holding up a finger. "We decided it was best if I never left your side, because you were smaller, more fragile than Bones, and since I'm the former sniper, I could make sure you wouldn't be harmed. Bones was followed around everywhere by two FBI agents and we put stronger security at the Jeffersonian. But at my office, I went to go get my coffee, and left you on a chair, and during that one minute, someone tried to shoot you outside of the FBI building. So we decided to you know, leave you at an orphanage where they wouldn't be able to find you. It was for your safety."

"And so what happened?" I asked.

"They found you. Ever since you got that Nobel Peace Prize nomination when you were nine, orphanages around the country have been attacked by some random sociopaths and murderers. I guess they found you last week."

I looked up at my father. "Last week?"

"You've been out for a week, Keight," my dad said.

"So…" I began. "What's going to happen now?"

My mom, speaking for the first time ever, said, "We're taking you home. And you're going to be a normal kid. You're going to go to Robert Frost Secondary School—we arranged it so that you only have to take PE, History, and Math, since you have a PhD in English Literature and in Anthropology. You're going to be a regular seventh grader, except for math class you're going to take Calculus. And then Booth's going to pick you up, drive you to the Jeffersonian, and you'll be with me and you'll be helping us at the lab. And then we heard you like to swim, so Booth has arranged for you to be on a competitive swim team, and he's going to take you there. Okay?"

"Okay…" I answered. "What about my friends? McKenna and Claudia?"

My mom smiled. "You'll make new friends. It's for their safety, Keightley. If you were still talking and playing with them, they could get seriously hurt."

I nodded. "How badly hurt am I?"

"Pretty bad. You had two broken ribs, you have pretty nasty scratches on your head and stitches on your legs. You'll be able to go back home in a month."

"Great," I smiled. "And Booth?"

My dad turned around, grinning. "Yeah?"

"I wanna meet Sweets."