AN: Just so everyone knows I will not be watching CR2 for a few weeks yet and so my stories will not be effect at all by the events in that film (though I may use songs from it and Jonas LA)

Chapter 9 – Earliest Memory

The house was empty when they arrived home, with both of Mitchie's parents still at work. Mitchie gathered some food supplies before leading Shane into the living room where they both settled onto the sofa.

"What's the first thing you remember?" Shane asked out of the blue as he munched his way through a packet of crisps.

"I remember waking up in the hospital." Mitchie said, biting into a piece of chocolate.

"Was it weird suddenly not remembering anything?"

"It was scary." Mitchie admitted.

Flashback

"Mitchie? Mitchie can you hear me? Steve, come quick I think she's waking up." A voice said nearby. Mitchie forced her eyes to open, blinded for a second by the sudden brightness. "Oh sweetie, thank God, we were so worried!" The tall brunette stood in front of her sighed in relief before wrapping her in a hug. Mitchie froze, unsure why this stranger was acting this way. Connie pulled back, looking at her daughter in concern. "Mitchie, hun, say something." Connie had missed the sound of her voice.

"Who are you?" Mitchie asked in a barely audible whisper, the woman's face falling instantly.

"I'll go get the doctor." Steve rushed from the room in search of someone who could tell them what was going on.

"Mitchie, it's me, you're mom. Don't you recognise me?" Connie asked desperately. Mitchie felt so confused. If this woman was her mom then why didn't she remember her?

"I'm going to have to ask you a few questions and you need to answer them as best you can, okay?" A doctor asked, taking a seat beside her bed, clipboard in hand. Mitchie nodded slowly, uncertain she'd be able to answer them at all. "What is your name?"

"Michelle Elizabeth Torres." She knew that.

"What is today's date?" Mitchie looked concerned. She tried to think of the last date she could remember, but none came to mind. It was just a dark blankness.

"I... I don't know." She replied, ashamed she couldn't answer something so simple. "What's going on?" She was scared.

"I think you have retrograde amnesia." The doctor explained, turning to her parts to give them more information. "The crash most likely caused some slight brain damage. It's quite common in cases like this that patients will lose some, perhaps all, of their memories of the past. Whilst they can still remember their own name and skills they have learnt, like walking, talking and such, they completely forget people, places and events." Her parents listened intently, trying to make sense of what he was telling them.

"Will she get the memories back?" Steve asked while his wife stood in shocked silence, her excitement at the opening of her daughter's eyes fading fast.

"Possibly. It's hard to say for certain. I'd like to do a scan so we can have a clearer idea of what the situation is, check there isn't something more serious occurring that we didn't pick up on before." Her parent's agreed without even asking Mitchie if she was okay with it. They just wanted her to get better. An hour later Mitchie found herself being wheeled through the hospital to the room where they held the MRI scanner.

End Flashback

"They kept me in hospital for five days after that to keep an eye on me and give my parents time to fill me in on the basic information I needed to know about my life. By the time I was allowed to go home I was sick to death of staring at the white walls." Mitchie explained as she leant against Shane, his arm gently wrapping around her waist. If anyone else saw them they'd be surprised by how quickly they'd become so close, but to Mitchie it just felt natural.

"So you didn't even remember your parents?" Shane asked. The idea of her not knowing her own family hadn't even crossed his mind before. Mitchie shook her head, telling him she'd been more than a little worried about going home with these two people who were practically strangers to her.

"Was it really hard going back to school?" Shane thought that would be the hardest thing, with everyone knowing who you were and what happened whilst you had no idea who anyone was. He had seen how those girls acted earlier and so didn't imagine her return had been easy.

"It wasn't as bad as it could have been." Mitchie shrugged. "Tia, the girl I was at the concert with, she came to see me while I was in hospital, told me we'd been friends since I arrived at the school and explained that she'd been really worried about me." Mitchie said with bitterness in her tone. After today's incident she'd realised it had all been a bunch of lies, very well thought out, but lies none the less. How Tia had kept it up for six months, Mitchie didn't know and she refused to believe that the girl she had spent countless hours with, laughing and joking, felt no sense of real friendship between them. "She told me about Steffi too, how she was the school mean girl and had a little crew of groupies. When I went back to school I had her to hang out with and to help me out when people commented on what happened." She wished she understood why Tia had done it, why she'd kept it up so long. It just didn't make sense to her, there had to be some reason. The Tia she knew didn't fit in with Steffi's group, so why would she waste her time with them?

"She seemed nice when I met her on Friday." Shane said, trying to be friendly. He hadn't seen Tia in amongst Steffi's group and so was unaware of the situation Mitchie was dealing with.

"Yeah, well, sometimes people aren't what they seem." Mitchie sighed. Shane was about to ask what she meant when they heard the front door opened, quickly followed by Connie's voice.

"Mitchie, are you home?" Connie called. The two teenagers sprung apart, moving to opposite sides of the sofa.

"In here mom." Mitchie yelled back. They heard her footsteps crossing the hall before she poked her head around the door frame.

"How did it go?" She asked, well aware of her daughter's doctor discomfort.

"Fine. We talked about a memory I might be remembering, Shane helped fill in some gaps and Dr Ralph wants me to have another scan in two weeks to see if there have been any changes." Mitchie said, rapidly filling her mom in on all the necessary details.

"You remembered something?" Connie asked hopefully.

"Only the tiniest bit, it's not that big a deal." Mitchie shrugged it off.

"It's better than nothing." Shane pointed out.

"Definitely. Well I better make a start on dinner. Mitchie, I hope you haven't forgotten about your homework." She had to remind her every day. At that moment Shane's phone went off and he chuckled seeing the name on the screen.

"It's almost as if he knew you'd said that." Shane said before excusing himself, heading into the garden to take the call as Mitchie went to her room and Connie the kitchen.

"Hey Nate, what's up?" Shane asked as he answered the call.

"Shane? Can you hear me? It's Caitlyn." A very anxious sounding voice called down the phone.

"Yes I can hear you, what's wrong?" He's barely spoken to Nate's girlfriend since camp ended, feeling jealousy every time he saw them together, wishing it was him and Mitch. "Is Nate okay?"

"He's fine, though grumpy that I stole his phone." Shane could almost picture his friend stood in the background, arms folded, a frown firmly fixed on his face. "He told me what happened with Mitchie and that you're with her. Is she okay? Does she remember me? I wish I'd stayed in contact with her better, I can't believe I lost my phone, I'm such an idiot." She went off on a tangent and eventually Shane had to interrupt.

"Caitlyn, stop." He said, instantly silencing her rambling, "She's fine, but she doesn't remember anyone, not me, not you, not Camp Rock, though I am trying to fix that. I'll tell her about you later, okay?"

"Make sure she knows I miss her and that I'm here for her. Well, there for her cos I guess I'm not much help across the ocean. I can't believe she doesn't remember anything, it's so unfair! Oh, give her my new number too, you have it right?" Shane assured her that he did and would make sure it was in her phone as soon as possible, before asking her to hand the phone to Nate.

"Hey man." The familiar voice of his best friend of nearly four years greeted him.

"She remembers Peggy but not me." Shane said bluntly, getting straight to the point. He may have acted like it was fine earlier but it was only so he wouldn't upset her. In reality he couldn't stop questioning why Peggy had jolted her memory while he just left her looking blank.

"So?" Nate said, not seeing the point, "It doesn't mean anything dude. No one understands how the brain works, it's not necessarily going to be logical." Shane sighed, knowing he was right.

"How's New York?" Shane asked, deciding to change the topic. They were staying with Nate's parents for a week and it was the first time Caitlyn had met them.

"It's good. I've just been showing Caity the sights because she's never been here before. Mom loves her, which is good," Shane was well aware of just how worried Nate had been about his parents accepting Caitlyn as his girlfriend, "though not so much when she keeps hinting that I should ask Caity to marry me. Oh and I spoke to Jason, he told me to tell you that he saw a parrot that looked exactly like you." Shane chuckled, imaging just how excited his older friend would have been about this fact.

"He's enjoying his holiday then?" Shane asked.

"Sounds like it. He's going to be out of contact for the next two days, apparently they're going to live in trees to see what it's like to live as a bird."

"Seriously? Where did he find this place?" As close as he was to Jason, he could not understand his bird obsession.

CR-CR-CR

"Is that your car I saw parked out there Shane?" Steve asked as they all gathered around the dinner table for their evening meal.

"Yeah, it wasn't in your way was it?" Shane still wasn't sure Mr Torres was too happy about his presence and so wanted to make sure he did everything he could to get on Steve's good side.

"No it was fine. Good choice in car. I personally prefer the XJ but then I'm not a teenage boy."

"This smells delicious Connie." Shane commented as he took a deep breath, the scent of home cooked spaghetti Bolognese filling his nostrils. He's forgotten what it was like to have a home cooked meal every night. It was the little things like that which he only realised he missed when he got them back again.

"Yeah, this is great mom." Mitchie said, helping herself to a large portion. They all ate in a comfortable silence for a while, enjoying all the different flavours of Connie's cooking.

"Mitchie, is your school doing any end of year activities?" Steve asked, making conversation.

"A few." Mitchie replied, not wanting to go into further detail if she could avoid it.

"Are you taking part in any of them?" Connie asked. Mitchie shrugged as she shoved more food in her mouth, giving herself an excuse not to talk.

"I still think you should do that talent show." Shane spoke up, catching both of the Torres' attention.

"There's a talent show?" Connie said enthusiastically, surprised her daughter hadn't mentioned it. "You should definitely take part in that sweetie, it would be fun."

"You play your music enough around here; you should show others how good you are. You enjoyed doing so last summer." Steve chimed in.

"You could show that girl from earlier how wrong she is Mitchie, like I said before you have one of the best voices I've ever heard." Shane was trying hard to persuade her.

Mitchie sighed in frustration as she swallowed her mouthful. She'd known that if it got mentioned there would be no stopping her parents insisting she took part. She sent an evil glare in Shane's direction, making him slightly regret bringing it up.

"I'll think about it." She said causing smiles to erupt on the others faces.

"When is the show?" Connie asked, hoping she'd get to see the performance if her daughter did decide to partake.

"Two weeks, the last day of term." Mitchie said, twirling some spaghetti onto her fork. A thought hit her and she looked up at the pop star sat opposite her. "Will you still be here then?" She asked. He'd been here an entire weekend and she still had no idea how long he intended to stay.

"If that's okay with you?" He replied, glancing up at Connie and Steve. He wanted to stay as long as she'd put up with him, but he didn't want to out stay her parent's welcome.

"You're free to stay as long as you want. Well, as long as Mitchie wants you to." Shane was surprised that the response came from Steve.

"Thank you." He replied happily. "If you perform, I'll make sure I'm there." He promised the girl who was his muse.

CR-CR-CR

"Night Connie, night Steve." Mitchie heard Shane say as she sat in her room. She was supposed to have been in bed half an hour ago, Shane having been allowed to stay up later as he was older, but instead she'd spent the time sat at her piano thinking. As she heard him knock on the door she made a snap decision.

"Come in." She called, smiling as she saw him clad in green and blue pyjamas.

"I just wanted to say goodnight." He told her, leaning casually against the door post. She went and stood opposite him, learning against the wall, mimicking his position.

"Thanks for being here Shane." She said. He smiled, telling her it wasn't a problem. "So," she said, barely able to keep the smile from her face. She knew that what she was about to say would make him happy, even if it terrified her, "if I'm going to do the talent show, I'm going to need a song." She laughed as a broad smile broke out across his face, before rubbing the back of her neck nervously as she continued, "Maybe you could help me write one?" His suggestion for how to finish 'This Is Me' was so perfect and she was already well aware of how talented a song writer he was from C3's songs. If she had his help, she reasoned, she may not end up looking like a total idiot on stage.

"I'd love to." Shane said happily. He couldn't think of a better way to spend his time. "You should really be in bed you know."

"You sound like my mom." Mitchie groaned.

"I'm okay with that, Connie's cool." Shane joked, wrapping his arms around her to give her a quick hug. "Goodnight Mitch."

"Night Shane." She replied. She loved being in his arms, she felt safer around him than with anyone else, though she couldn't explain why. She watched him walk into the guest room with a dopey smile on her face before shutting her door and sighing happily. The day may have been pretty bad in some ways but things just seemed better when she knew the Shane Grey was down the hall.

AN: All of you who get CR2 tonight, enjoy it. I hope it's the success we are all expecting!