Kassidy grinned as she and the rest of the team pulled up at her Aunt Meg's house. She loved that woman more than anything else in the world.
"Billy!" she exclaimed when she saw the driver of the truck.
"Meg!" he called excitedly. He helped Melissa get out of the car. "Come on, honey!"
Kassidy got out of the truck as well and looked at Meg.
"Kassidy, is that you?"
Kassidy ran over to her great-aunt and hugged her tightly. "Hey, Aunt Meg!"
"Oh, I haven't seen you in ages."
"Yeah, you can thank Dad on that one."
As if on cue, Bill came up behind her and hugged Meg. "Oh, it is so good to see you!" she said as he hugged him.
"Good to see you too."
"Day before yesterday, I was telling Jo how much I miss you! You haven't seen any of my new work!" She looked over at Jo and hugged and kissed her. "Jo! Oh honey! Seen some action?"
"You should have seen it," Jo said with a smile and a wink to Kassidy.
Meg turned to the rest of the team. "My boys!"
The rest of the members of the team all hugged Meg before heading inside for some of Meg's famous meals.
"Hey, Kass, why don't you help us in the kitchen?" Jo asked.
"Sure, Mom."
Jo, Kassidy, and Meg all went into the kitchen and started cooking up some beef, eggs, mashed potatoes and gravy. Melissa kind of awkwardly stood to the side.
"So be straight with me, hon," Jo said to her daughter as they cooked. "What's really been going on with you?"
"It's nothing really," Kassidy answered, trying to be careful about what she said with Melissa in the same vicinity.
"I don't believe you. Come on, I'm your mom. I know when you're lying."
"Well, I really miss all of this. You know, getting to hang out with these guys, chasing storms, the whole deal."
"Life with Dad isn't terrible though, is it?"
"No, I just wish I had gotten to stay here with you."
"You wanted to stay with me?"
"Of course. Everything is way more interesting and fun here. I've spent nearly every day since the split wishing I was back here."
"Why didn't you say something then?"
"I did. To Dad. I guess he never passed the message. You really didn't know I wanted to stay with you?"
"No, I thought you wanted to go with your dad."
Kassidy furrowed her brow. So maybe she shouldn't be so mad at her mom when she didn't know that Kassidy wanted to be with her. Besides, she was probably too upset about Bill leaving in the first place that she was still too much in shock to do anything.
Jo grabbed a tray of beef and led Melissa to the dining room. "You guys, look out, make a space." The guys moved to make room for Melissa and she awkwardly sat down while Kassidy grabbed a seat next to Rabbit. Jo put a huge chunk of beef onto her plate for her.
"Geez, Meg, you've got a lot of beef," Rabbit remarked. "Where'd you get all this beef?"
"Did you see my cows out front?" she asked him.
"No."
Meg gasped playfully for him.
"You slaughter your own cows, Meg! Nice," Dusty laughed. He slapped a huge helping of mashed potatoes onto Melissa's plate.
Jo then put some gravy out on the table. "Better grab some while you can," she told Melissa.
"Meg's gravy is famous," Dusty said to her. "It's practically a food group."
"Shower's free!" Bill called as he came down the stairs, buttoning up his shirt.
"I'm next!" Jo called.
Bill came into the dining room and held a plate full of food up at Bill. "Oh, I want that," he said longingly.
Jo looked over at the TV where Jonas was being interviewed. "How can you watch this garbage?"
"Oh, pardon me, gentlemen. You guys gotta see this," Bill said, turning up the volume on the TV.
Everyone, including Kassidy, began booing at the TV with the stuck-up jerk on the screen. They all watched him get interviewed, really milking it up. Kassidy really hated him.
"Oh, turn him off!" Haynes yelled.
"Aw, shut up!" Rabbit added. "Turn him off."
"He really is in love with himself," Jo said. "I thought it was just a summer thing."
"He's gonna rue the day," Dusty remarked. "Dude, he's gonna rue the day he came against The Extreme, baby. I'm talking imminent 'rueage'. Imminent 'rueage'."
Melissa looked at Dusty as Bill and Kassidy sat down at the table with a plate full of food. "I was just wondering why do you call Billy 'The Extreme'?"
"'Cause Billy is the extreme."
"Bill is the most out-of-control guy in the game!" Preacher said, coming over to the table.
Bill looked over at Jo. "No, I think I came in second."
"Well, I've seen The Extreme in high gear," Dusty said.
"You guys need to get some new stories," Jo told them. "I'm gonna go clean up." She headed upstairs to go shower.
"So we get this one near Dalton," Dusty began. "We're way too close, and Jo's got the vid on it, she's filming it, right. And all the sudden, out of nowhere, this awful-looking valiant comes pulling up, right in the way."
Beltzer came up behind Melissa. "She starts yelling. And this loser stumbles out of the car, he's got like, a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. He's naked."
"He's butt naked," Rabbit threw in.
"Not naked," Bill insisted. "I was not naked!"
"He was without apparel," Beltzer said.
"Half naked."
"Naked," Dusty finished. "So, Jo is yelling at him to get out of the way, right. He just, he strolls up to the twister, and he says, 'Have a drink.' And he chucks the bottle into the twister, and it never hits the ground!"
"Twister caught it, and sucked it right up," Preacher said.
"Honey, this is a tissue of lies," Bill said to Melissa. "See there was another Bill, an evil Bill, and I killed him!"
Kassidy continued eating her food, but she was growing more and more upset as she listened to all of the chasers talk and laugh with each other, telling Melissa stories about Bill. Stories Kassidy didn't even know herself.
"No, that was a good size twister. What was that, an F3?" Preacher said, going back to the events of today.
"Solid F2," Bill told him.
"See now you've lost me again," Melissa said.
"It's the Fujita scale. It measures the intensity of a tornado by how much it eats.
"Eats?"
"Destroys."
"The little encounter we had back there was a strong F2, F3 maybe," Laurence told her.
"Bet we see some F4's today," Beltzer smiled.
"That'd be sweet!" Haynes agreed.
"4 is good, 4 will re-locate your house fairly officially," Bill said, leaning back in his seat.
"Is there an F5?" Melissa asked. The room grew very silent. "What would that be like?"
"The finger of God," Preacher said.
"None of you have ever seen an F5?"
"Just one of us," Bill said, looking upstairs where Jo was.
Kassidy knew that story just fine. The story of how her mother's dad was ripped away from her by a twister when she was only a little girl.
"Excuse me," Kassidy said, standing up. She headed outside to get some air, all of a sudden feeling very suffocated.
"Kassidy?"
She turned around to find her father walking up behind her, having followed her outside.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said flatly.
"Come on, you can talk to me."
Kassidy furiously turned to him. "Oh, really?"
"Kassidy, what's going on with you? I'm getting a little sick of your attitude."
"My attitude? Dad, do you hear what they're saying in there? They're calling you 'The Extreme' and talking about all these crazy things you did! Did it ever occur to you that maybe I wanted a piece of that? I've loved storms ever since I can remember. I mean, I'm a Harding. It's in my blood."
"I guess I never thought—"
"You never thought about me and about what I wanted."
"Now, wait a second."
"No! I told you I wanted to stay with Mom! But you didn't listen to me and you took me with you. But you didn't really want me, you just wanted to prove your dominance."
"That's not true!" Bill argued.
"Really?! I can't even remember the last time you did something for me. You've been spending all your time with Melissa!"
"I thought you liked Melissa!"
"You're missing the point! You haven't attended a single one of my academic competitions, you never came to any of my award ceremonies, and you missed me getting awarded a very prestigious scholarship for full tuition to my dream school!"
"You…you won a scholarship?" Bill asked, now realizing why Kassidy was so angry with him.
"Yes, and when I tried to tell you about it, you were talking with Melissa and didn't even listen to me at all. You know what, you never even asked me about how I felt about you two getting engaged!"
"Yes, I did!"
"No, you told me about it after you already proposed to her! Let's face it, Dad, ever since the split, you cared more about your stupid job and your new girlfriend than you ever cared about me!"
"Kass…"
"Don't call me that," Kassidy said firmly was she walked away from him.
Bill was taken aback. He had never seen his daughter so angry before. And she had every right to be angry with him too. Looking back on everything, he realized she was completely right. He had been ignoring her ever since he walked out on Jo, even more so once he started dating Melissa. The fact he didn't even know she had won a scholarship for full tuition really said it all right there.