HELLO! It's been too long. Thank you for those of you who reviewed and send me little nudges along the way, reminding me of how much I enjoy doing this. Let me preface this chapter by saying that it should *technically* be a whole new story. It's not for multiple reasons, not least of which is that I'm lazy. Also I suck at summaries, and disclaimers, and then you have to weed out all those people who hate sisfics but then insist on reading them and giving you a bad review or inexplicably informing you that the Winchesters don't have a sister so your story is pointless ... I mean, YOU MUST BE JOKING. I hallucinated a sister? Yeah, no. So this is just going to continue a year from where the last chapter left off. It'll pick up at the time the series began, when Sam comes back on the road with them, but I don't plan to follow along episode by episode. I will get more of the between-times, which I find more fun and more interesting than trying to squish Callie into those already-brilliant stories written by people a helluva lot more talented than I.

Oh, and in case you're new, the Callieverse started with "A Simple Kind of Life." There is also "Buzzwords," which is different and hasn't gotten much love, but I enjoy writing it, so there it is. :)

So here's a new chapter that may as well be a new story. Don't hate me for the cop-out. But do, please, PLEASE review. I can't even tell you what a boost that gives a fanfic writer.

When I was twelve, I stopped taking Sam's calls.

For a long time he kept on calling me anyway, at our usual times, religiously. He left messages. He asked me to call him back, to tell him what was going on. He said he missed me. He said he loved me. He said I could tell him anything. That he was here for me no matter what.

I'd heard it all before.

A year ago, when I was eleven, and had run away to see him at Stanford, he'd assured me of all those things, and I'd believed him. But the year since hadn't been exactly kind, with my relationships with my dad and Dean growing increasingly tense and volatile, and at some point I guess I began to blame Sam. If he hadn't left in the first place. If he would let me come and live with him. If he could at least put aside his crap with Dad and come visit sometimes. But he didn't. He wanted to be my long-distance brother, and that just didn't cut it anymore, not when everything at home was such a mess so much of the time, when I was getting ignored or neglected the fifty percent of the time I wasn't getting yelled at. And so gradually, almost without my noticing it was happening, I began to resent Sam.

I resented Sam more than I resented Dean when he was being especially difficult (which was often). I resented Sam more than I resented Dad, whom I had always suspected resented me more than I could ever resent him, so that what passed as their relationship was really just a fizzing ball of resentment with little threads of maybe-love running through.

It was easy enough to resent Sam, and to push him out of my mind, once he stopped calling. And he did, though like I said, it took longer than I would've liked. It was easy because Sam was kind of a taboo topic around the rest of the family anyway. Dad sure didn't like it when his name was brought up, and Dean pretty much lived to please him, so it's not like he was talking about our brother much either.

But then Dad went on a hunting trip, and he didn't come home for a few days.

And then Dean got the brilliant (not) idea of driving to Stanford—not calling first, mind you, Dean was relying almost entirely on the element of surprise working in our favor, and can I just ask you, has that ever, ever worked for anyone? No, it hasn't, because people like to be prepared before someone turns their lives upside down—and crashing Sam's new family-less life to enlist his help in finding Dad.

I tried to talk him out of it. Many, many times. Many, many ways.

I tried logic: "Dean, if Dad were in trouble he would find a way to get word to someone. Bobby, probably. He knows you're stuck with me so he wouldn't come to you first anyway. He'll probably just be pissed if you go chasing after him." (Dean told me he'd checked with everyone who might know anything, did I think he was stupid, and reminded me that Dad would be pissed if he was in trouble and we didn't go looking for him, too.)

I tried inflicting doubt: "What's your plan, just knock on his door and say 'Hey, Sammy, why don't you leave everything you've been working for here and your girlfriend and your school and your job,'—'cause you know Sam probably has a job on top of everything else—'and come back on the road with us to find the guy who told you to never come back'?" (Dean told me to pack my crap and let him worry about the details.)

I tried sarcasm: "Sure, Dad'll be thrilled that you're bringing Sam back into the fold without any warning. Nope, there won't be any awkwardness there. If we're really lucky maybe they'll actually throw punches this time." (Dean told me to shut it and gave me that look of his that I've never been totally brave enough to defy, so shut it I did.)

I sulked in the passenger seat the whole way to Stanford. Even when he bought me a chocolate shake at the roadside diner where we stopped for dinner. (Sam was my chocolate-shake-buyer and Dean knew that, so I felt manipulated.) Even when he told me I could pick the music as long as I chose something from his tape collection. Even when he cracked jokes that were clearly intended to elicit a laugh or a smile or at least to thaw me out enough to make this road trip a little less horrible. I could tell I was getting under his skin, that his patience was wearing thin. The worry over Dad, combined with the stress and uncertainty of our journey to maybe-kind-of kidnap our brother, mixed with my sullenness was pushing him toward his inevitable snapping point. For once I didn't care. Let him yell. I hated this idea. I wasn't ready to face Sam. I didn't think—not really—that anything could have happened to Dad because he was Dad. So this whole thing? Pointless.

"You tired?" he asked after a silence so long that I jumped at the sound of his voice. "Need to stop, stretch your legs?"

That was just more manipulation; Dean didn't stop to let people stretch their legs. Dean wouldn't care if your legs seized up in an eternal muscle cramp from being in the car for seventy-two hours straight and you were never able to walk upright again, not as long as he was behind the wheel and the road was zipping along underneath the tires and some classic rock was on the radio.

"No, I'm fine, but if you're nervous and need to stop to reconsider this terrible plan, then sure, let's do it."

He sighed and I saw his hands tighten on the wheel, his knuckles whitening.

"We'll be there really late even if we don't stop," I said. "So on top of everything else, you're just gonna drag him out of bed in the middle of the night?"

"Callie."

"You know he lives with his girlfriend, right? Or at least he used to. What if he's busy. What if he's having sex?"

"Callie." A little sterner.

"You're going to barge into his life that he's made it very clear we have no place in, drag him out of bed and away from sex with his hot girlfriend, and tell him you're scared because Daddy's been gone too long? Do you even hear how stupid that sounds?"

Oops, too far.

The Impala swerved to the shoulder of the road, gravel and dust spraying up in a giant cloud outside my window. I yelped when Dean grasped me by the arm and forcibly turned me to face him. "You're going to stop this and you're going to stop it now," he growled. "You're going to ditch the attitude, the snide comments, the disrespect, because let me tell you, little sister, if you don't…"

He didn't finish the sentence, but he didn't have to. I was sufficiently chastised. He can do that to a person, you know, just look at them a certain way and have them shaking in their boots. My wide eyes were glued to his, mirror image green, and he waited to see if I would dare venture another dig. When I didn't, he released my arm, which kind of ached where his fingers had sunk in, and pulled back out onto the empty road.

I leaned my forehead against the window and tried to make my expression neutral so he couldn't accuse me of still having an attitude.

I did, though, you better believe it. I told him he was a domineering jerk and that this was a stupid plan and as soon as Sam told him off, he'd wish he'd listened to me in the first place and that I hoped Dad kicked his ass when he came home from his hunt and found out what Dean had done and how majorly he'd overreacted. I even called him an asshole.

So what if I only said these things in my head; it still counts.

I just hope he can't read my thoughts.

Please click to review! I'll love you forever. No, really.