First off, let me apologize for the wait, because reality decided to lay a bitch slap on me and writing sort of took the back seat for a while there. Hopefully it won't happen again. Second, some of you may have noticed that I have not made it clear what the final pairing in this story will be, (if there even is one at all, who knows? Me, not you. It's a secret.), and hopefully none of you have started guessing yet. However, I AM curious to see who you lot are interested in seeing Missy end up with, (or just who you'd like to see her spend time with next, platonically or otherwise) and possibly, if you feel like sharing, why you feel that way. It doesn't have to be for any particularly good reason, it could just be because you like this boy over that boy. I'd just like a little feedback…and, also, to see which readers I managed to lose during my hiatus and who of you are still with me. To the ones who have stuck with me, this one is for you. Enjoy, and as an extra treat, see my profile for the banner I made for this story.

"Life begins on the other side of despair."

Chapter Ten

"You seem nice, and that's why I'm saying these things to you, and why I haven't been very friendly towards you. I'm trying to help you." Star was saying, and Missy sort of nodded at her. "The boys aren't what they seem, but by the time you find that out for yourself, it'll be too late. Just, please, take my word for it, and stay as far from them as you can."

Missy thought about what she said, and she didn't think that Star sounded like a jealous girlfriend, if she had been, she would have just told her to stay away from David. No, she was telling her to stay away from all of them, and the little red flag that had appeared the first time she met the boys reared its head again. "Star…are they…dangerous?"

Star nodded at once, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Yes."Missy's problems were lining up faster than people waiting to ride the Giant Dipper and falling into place like dominoes and generally building up quicker than she had the time to deal with them. She was, in a single word, torn. Star's warning rang loud and clear in her mind, and as much as what the sad brown-eyed girl had said bothered her, she wasn't sure what she wanted to do about it just yet. Then there was Laddie, and the promise she had been hoodwinked into making. He was, after all, only a little boy, and it didn't seem fair to him to turn her back on him without explanation. Still, if the boys really were as dangerous as Star had implied, did she really want to wait for them to give her a reason to run from them?

Santa Carla was turning out to be a lot more trouble than she had anticipated, and between trying to keep the Frog brothers, Star, and Laddie all happy; there wasn't much time left over for the happy new life she had promised herself. Her father had told her once that if you try to make everybody happy, all you'll end up doing is making yourself miserable.

That sounded about right to her. She certainly felt miserable, and her shower didn't help at all. She would have thought that with as long as she stayed in there, it would have made her feel better. She stayed under the spray long after she was clean, watching the water swirl down the drain and wishing her problems could be so easily rinsed away.

She didn't want to have to face Edgar and Alan again so soon, and she didn't want to go out, no matter what she had promised Laddie; but she knew that she couldn't stay in the bathroom forever, either. Her gut told her that Star hadn't lied to her, but what troubled her was how she was supposed to distance herself from the boys without them wanting to know why she was suddenly so cold toward them. And what if she didn't want to distance herself from them at all? They were a strange group certainly, and intimidating, but none of them had tried or expressed any intent to harm her, and excluding David and Star, they were the most welcoming residents that Santa Carla had to offer her thus far.

She wanted to tell her gut and Star to leave her alone and let her think for herself, and she wished more than ever that her mother were still alive. Her mother had always had good advice, when she wasn't screaming, clawing, out of her mind crazy, that is.

She wondered what her mother would say if she could see her now. "So long as you keep avoiding your problems, Missy, they're not going to go away. They're going to get bigger, until they aren't so little anymore, till they're big enough to swallow you whole." She felt like if she closed her eyes, and listened hard enough, she could almost hear her mother's voice in the room with her. "You've got to face your problems head on, honey, no matter how scared you are." What was it that William S. Hasley said? "Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you. But grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble."

Missy wanted to face her problems, really, but it was so much easier to hide up in her room than it was to go downstairs and face the Frogs. She thought about Laddie's grubby, happy little face, and how disappointed he would be if she stayed in. She let her mind conjure images of the boys, but then she started thinking about Dwayne's bare chest instead and realizing that that was entirely a road of thought she didn't need to go down just then, focused herself instead on her current issue. Stay in, go out, whatever she decided, she couldn't spend the rest of the night in just a towel.

She yanked on a pair of jeans, wincing when the denim snagged on the still damp skin of her legs and buttoning them around the same time she heard the rumble and roar of a motorbike pulling up outside. Just one? She thought, and the different parts of her brain started taking bets on which one of the four it would be. Considering her luck, it would probably be David.

...or worse, Paul.

Acting quickly before Edgar or Alan came up the stairs to ask her why there was a biker (slash potential vampire, she was sure) out in front of the store and caught her in her bra, she slipped her arms into a deep, navy blue boyfriend cardigan and buttoned it up.

"Missy!" Edgar's voice came from what Missy approximated to be the foot of the stairs, and she rolled her eyes. Right on cue.

"Naked!" She called back, sitting on her bed and separating her hair into two sections. A couple of seconds later and she had her hair in two, low pigtails and Edgar was kicking her door open.

They stared at each other for a couple of long seconds and then Edgar grunted. "You are not."

"Mm, good eye." Missy slipped her feet into her sneakers and laced them up, standing up and brushing her hands down her body to smooth her clothes out.

"You're going out again?" Edgar frowned. "You just got back."

"I made a promise." Missy shrugged, but he caught her arm as she went to pass by him.

"Missy, those guys are-"

"Save it, Edgar." Missy interrupted him, reaching out and tugging on the hanging ends of his headband. "I know what you're going to say. Trouble, right? Bad? Evil? Vampires? Am I close or what?"

Edgar batted her hand away and glared. "I was going to say assholes."

Missy started, shocked. "Um…alright."

"But you're right about them being trouble." She knew it. "They're on the boardwalk every night, making trouble, picking fights, getting themselves kicked off the boardwalk, going off with a different girl every night." Missy was quiet, not because she wanted to disagree but couldn't, but because what Edgar was saying sounded exactly like the boys. "A lot of the girls they go off with, well, they just sort of disappear." Her head shot up, and she gasped. "Maybe they leave town, but in Santa Carla, no one really bothers to ask."

Missy paled. "What are you trying to say, Edgar?"

"You already know." Edgar said, and Missy flinched. It was becoming hard for her to convince herself that what Star had said about the boys was false. "You've hung out with them, you must have gotten a vibe from them." She had, but that didn't mean she was going to tell Edgar that. "If you keeping hanging out with them-"

"Stop." Missy stared down at her sneakers, wiggling her toes and avoiding Edgar's eyes. "I get it."

"You don't." Edgar said, and Missy thought he sounded sad. "If you keep hanging out with them, you're gonna end up like the other girls." He let go of her elbow and left her doorway, and a couple of seconds later she heard his and Alan's bedroom door shut. Missy stood in her doorway after he was gone, staring at the cross on the wall above her bed and listening to her heart thump in the quiet left over. It was stupid, she realized, to let Edgar's inane paranoia get to her, but it was hard not to when he was the second person to confirm the alarming suspicions she had had when she first met the boys.

"Missy!" It was Alan's voice this time, and she started out of her daze and called back.

"Coming!" She hesitated for almost a minute, tiptoeing down the hall and pausing at the top of the stairs. Alan was standing at the bottom, and the expression on his face echoed what Edgar had shared in the bedroom with her. She took the stairs too fast and stumbled on the last one, grabbing for Alan to steady herself and only succeeding in ending up on the floor on her knees. "Oh, gravity hates me." She moaned, rubbing her sore knees through her jeans.

"Jesus." Edgar snapped from behind the counter. "We won't have to worry about anyone killing her, she'll trip and fall off a cliff first." He rolled his eyes and Missy puffed out an angry breath.

"You know, if I wasn't such a forgiving person, you'd be dead meat by now." She pointed a finger at him as she got to her feet again, glaring.

"Can't leave you alone at all, can we?" The voice caught her by surprise, and she turned, spotting a familiar, curly-haired blonde lounging against the counter. Her face turned a brilliant shade of scarlet and she mentally cursed the heavens for giving her such rotten luck. Why couldn't she have been born graceful?

"What are you doing here?" She asked, shuffling closer to the counter and trying to calm the heat in her cheeks. She glanced at Alan, who had joined his brother behind the register and saw him glaring at the back of Marko's head, one corner of his lip curled up.

Marko was staring at her, leaning back against the counter and grinning like the devil. "Making sure you keep your promise." Missy didn't say anything, the way Marko was looking at her made sure of that. His smile took the words right out of her mouth, and when he reached out and curled the end of one of her pigtails around his index finger, her heart all but stopped. "Cute."

She tried to find her tongue again, stuttering out a response after a few agonizing seconds. "T-Thank you." She said, and she heard Edgar snort.

"Oh, please." He said, and Missy whipped her head around to glare at him.

"Bye, Edgar." She snapped.

"Bye, Missy." Edgar snapped back. His face softened then, and he shifted, foot to foot, almost like he was uncomfortable. "What time will you be home?" He asked, and Missy felt herself smile at the way he said it. She supposed the apartment above the comic shop was her home now, but it was nice to hear that Edgar thought that way too.

"By one." She said, and when he gave her a skeptical look, she made a crossing gesture over her heart. "I promise."

"Don't worry, boys." Marko hid a grin behind his fist, tugging Missy's hand gently as he led her to the door. The Frogs glared. "I'll bring her back in one piece." Edgar and Alan exchanged looks that were equal parts incredulous and gravely concerned, and that was the last thing Missy saw before Marko whisked her out the door and into the buzzing Santa Carla nightlife.

Marko's bike was parked out front, and Missy found that it looked different without the other three beside it. She fingered the piece of fur he had hanging from the handlebar and smiled. Weird.

"You really live with them?" Marko made no effort to remove his hand from hers, and Missy was too busy staring at their entwined fingers in disbelief to pull her hand back.

"Is that so weird?" She asked, tilting her head as Marko led her away from his bike. "Wait, you're just going to leave your bike here?"

"It's a little weird." Marko replied, showing her a half smile. "And trust me, no one's going to steal it." She would have to take his word for it, she supposed, but there were a lot of thugs in Santa Carla, none of them above stealing a motorcycle, she figured. Marko was confident, though, and she supposed if he wasn't concerned, she needn't be either. "So, you're from Seattle, right?"

"Huh? Yeah." Missy said. More and more she was trying not to think about Seattle and Renee, it just made focusing on her new life all the more difficult. "I grew up there."

Marko nodded, making a quiet sound of acknowledgement in his throat. "So why'd you run away?"

"Who said I ran away?" Missy countered. She knew she sounded defensive, but, well, she didn't have any reason not to be.

Marko shrugged one shoulder, looking thoughtful for a moment. "Most of us are runaways, in Santa Carla at least. I assumed."

"Are you a runaway?" She asked, and Marko nodded, a little smile touching his lips again. "Where are you from, originally?"

"London." Marko replied, and Missy started.

"But you don't have an accent or anything." She said, and Marko shrugged.

"It was a long time ago." He replied.

The lights and sounds of the boardwalk swallowed them up and they walked together in silence for a time until they reached the carousel, and Marko stopped, released her hand, and turned to face her. "Why did you leave Seattle?"

There were a lot of reasons she could have given, and it would have been easier to lie, but something about the way Marko looked at her made her want to tell him the truth. "I wasn't happy." She said at last.

"Why weren't you happy?" Marko asked.

"There were a lot of reasons."

"Such as?" He prompted, and Missy wrapped her arms around herself, frowning.

"Why do you want to know?" She asked. Her old life wasn't a topic she wanted to get into.

"Curiosity." He replied.

"Curiosity killed the cat." Missy said, and the look in Marko's eyes made her shiver.

"But satisfaction brought it back." Missy didn't reply, staring determinedly at her sneakers. "Quid pro quo."

"Squid what?" Missy asked, eyes wide.

Marko laughed. "It's Latin, 'something for something'. You answer one of my questions, and I'll answer one of yours."

"I can ask you anything?" There was really only one thing she wanted to know, well, to be honest, there were probably about a thousand, but only one on her mind at the moment. "And you'll answer me straight?"

"If I can." Marko replied, and Missy believed him.

"Okay, what's your question?" She asked, though she had a feeling she knew what it was going to be.

"Why did you leave Seattle, really?"

Missy sighed. "I told you, I was unhappy."

"You're dodging. Why weren't you happy?" He spoke placidly, though his eyes were thick with an emotion that Missy couldn't identify. She stared into those eyes, and five feet from the carousel's flashing lights and music, all she could see was him.

"I lost my parents." She whispered. "My mother when I was ten, and my dad two years ago. My stepmother, Renee, she started treating me really horribly after my dad died, and it all sort of escalated into one big fight a couple of days ago. She hit me with our phone and then I hit her over the head with a vase and left. I hopped on a bus and here I am."

"I see." Marko's hand came up and his thumb stroked the place on her jaw where the welt Renee had left behind was beginning to lighten and heal. Missy thought he looked at her too long, as though he forgot he was looking. She looked back, and her took heart took its time quieting down.

"Yeah. Now for my question." Missy took a deep breathe to calm herself and waited until Marko pulled his hand away to try and speak again. "And you'll answer it honestly?"

"To the best of my ability." Marko replied.

"Okay." It was now or never, and as much as she was concerned about what Marko's answer would be, she needed to get her worries out there in the open. "Star..." She witnessed the tensing of Marko's entire body at the name, and his face became stony. "She, well...she told me that you and the others...she said you were...dangerous." She saw Marko's jaw clench, and she regretted her next words before they ever left her mouth. "Are you?"

Marko leaned in, and her heart sped up. The curly-haired boy moved in until his mouth was inches from her skin and Missy found herself remembering the dream she had had two nights before. The carousel spinning, Marko and Paul cornering her, and David's laughing, fanged face. "Wish you could stay." She shuddered, and instantly felt stupid for even entertaining the thought. David and the boys weren't vampires. End of story. She tried to tell herself that Marko wasn't about to bite into her neck, but when the boy's lips touched the hollow of her throat, her heart skipped a beat anyway. Marko must have felt her jump, because he pulled back, and there was a wicked smile on his face. A smile that was free of fang, she was glad to note. "What do you think? Am I dangerous?"

Missy's mouth opened and shut, but no sound came out. She thought she must have looked like one of the fish her dad and granddad used to pull up out of the water at the lake house, flopping around and gasping for air until her grandfather tossed them in a bucket. "I-I…I don't know what I think." She said when her voice came back to her, and Marko's grin got wider.

"You'll let me know when you figure it out, right?" He asked, and Missy nodded dumbly. She didn't think she would ever get things figured out, not if the boys kept pitching her curves.

"Long wait." She warned him, and he snickered.

"I've got time."

In front of Missy's eyes, Marko was very still, and his eyes looked almost to her like they had clouded over. "Marko?" She asked, and when he didn't respond or even blink, she reached out and touched his upper arm. "Hey, space cadet!" She said, and gave his arm a light squeeze. His body shook, the fog disappeared from his eyes, and he was smiling again.

"Sorry." He said. "I must have zoned out." Missy bit her lip. She didn't believe him, but what other reason could there have been for him spacing out on her like that? He looked like he was a million miles away, and then, all of a sudden, he was acting like he hadn't just gone into a trance on her?

"Right. So, um, where are the others?" She shifted a little, rubbing her left arm with her right hand and chewing on her lip.

Marko smiled. "Am I boring you?"

"That's not it at all!" Missy's face turned red again. "It's just, you guys are always together." She didn't add that she felt more comfortable in a group than she did one-on-one with any of the boys. A drawback of growing up without a mother, and there were several, was that she had never had another female to talk about boys with. As a result, she was completely clueless when it came to how to act around them.

"We're meeting up later." Marko explained, and when he started walking again, he took her wrist instead of her hand. "Till then, we'll keep each other company, sound good?"

"Okay." Missy said, and she was sure she was scarlet to her hairline. Dwayne hadn't said much of anything to her during their time together, and Paul, well, she didn't think she got nearly as flustered around him as she did Dwayne and Marko. Maybe it was just lingering annoyance she felt for the lanky blonde, but he didn't mess with her head the way the others did.

She learned quickly that Marko was a fast walker, and considering the fact that she was not well-known for her grace, she was stumbling over her feet to keep up with him. He led her down the wooden steps to the beach, and she slipped her arm out of his grasp so she could bend down and untie her shoelaces. "I don't want sand in my shoes." She explained, and he just stared down at her, his head tilted with a half smirk on his face. She held her sneakers in one hand, trudging after Marko, disappointed that he didn't seem to have the slightest bit of trouble maneuvering on the sand. It was like he didn't sink at all, but walked on top of the sand.

She was relieved when he stopped walking, some ways down from the stairs they had come down, and far from the bonfires. They were under the pier, she noted, and the tide was out. They could walk right up to the wood pylons without fear of getting wet. She could see what had to be hundreds of shells half buried in the sand, and she crouched down to pick through them, sitting her shoes beside her. She found a decent sized one, a scallop shell. It was white on the outside and a peachy pink color on the inside, and around the size of her palm.

"David likes you." Marko's voice floated across the void to her, quieter than the surf, and she turned her head from the shell to look up at him.

"It doesn't show." She told him.

"He's curious about you." Marko explained. "David gets fixated on things, even people, that interest him. Obsessed is probably a better word."

Missy's eyes narrowed and she got to her feet again. "Is that why you asked me about Seattle? Because David wanted to know?" Somehow the thought that Marko hadn't wanted to know about her at all stung her, but it infuriated her even more that David had sent Marko to do his interrogating for him.

"He didn't ask me to." Marko whispered, but Missy didn't buy it. Hadn't David asked her about the picture in her locket when they first met? It seemed likely that David was still wondering about it, since she hadn't exactly been in a sharing mood that first night. She was angry and ashamed that Marko had managed to make her spill about her parents and Renee. Him and his stupid caring eyes and sweet smiles.

"Why is David so curious about me, Marko?" Marko frowned at her, but he didn't answer. "I'm not interesting." Marko didn't agree or disagree with her, and Missy's frustration grew. "Go ahead and tell him I'm an orphan or a runaway or whatever you feel like telling him." She threw the shell at him, and it bounced of his chest. He didn't so much as blink to acknowledge it. "And while you're at it, tell him to leave me alone. All of you can just leave me alone." She brushed past him, and Marko didn't follow her or call out to stop her. She sighed. It wasn't how she had thought the night would go, but Star and Edgar's warnings were still fresh in her mind, but at least she wouldn't have to worry about figuring out a way to tell the boys she didn't want to see them anymore.

It wasn't until she got back to the boardwalk that she remembered that she was still barefoot. She had left her shoes down on the beach. "Ugh!" She ran across the boardwalk as fast as she was able, slipping past people and shouting apologies every time she jostled someone. It was still early and the boardwalk was bustling with activity, so it took her longer to maneuver her way back to the comic shop. Edgar and Alan wore twin expressions of surprise to see her back so soon, but it was Edgar who noticed her nude feet.

"What happened to your shoes?" He asked, and Missy ripped the hair bands out of her hair and shook her hair out, hissing under her breath a reply.

"I lost them."

"Want us to help you look for them?" Alan offered at the same time that Edgar snorted.

"How do you lose something that's tied to your feet?"

Missy sighed and walked over to the stairs leading up to the apartment. "No, forget it. I'll buy new ones." She felt their eyes on her back as she walked upstairs, but they didn't say anything else to her. She was grateful. She didn't bother shutting her door behind her, and just laid out flat on her bed, hiding her face in her pillow. Her life was her business, wasn't it? Her life story wasn't a happy one, and she was sick and tired of the look people got in their eyes when they heard about her parents. She didn't want David sending Marko to ask questions about her just to satisfy his obsession. She didn't want to talk about her parents anymore.

She shucked her sweater and jeans and left them on the floor where they dropped, slipping her white cotton nightshirt down over her body and used one of her hair bands from earlier to pull her hair up into a loose ponytail. She plucked Dorian Gray off the shelf, crawled on top of her bedspread, and flipped through the book's pages, trying to find where she'd left off back at the cave.

A couple of chapters passed, and a knock on her doorframe made her lift her eyes. Alan was standing in her open doorway, and in his left hand was a pair of battered mint green sneakers. "My shoes!"

"That guy from before brought them back. Said to tell you he was sorry." Alan set her shoes down on the edge of her bed and backed out of her room, leaving her alone again.

Missy reached out and pulled her shoes to her, spotting something white inside of the left one. She stuck her hand inside and withdrew a small package, something hard folded up in white paper. She unfolded the paper and the scallop shell she had found beneath the pier fell out onto her lap. She held it up in front of her eyes to look at it, smiling softly. She turned back to the paper, and brought it closer to read what had been written on the inside. She didn't recognize the handwriting, but the three words written on the paper brought both a blush and a smile to her face.

"You are interesting."

Thank you for reading.

Okay, so I know not a lot happened in this chapter except for a bit of cuteness on Marko's part, and Missy throwing a semi-tantrum. It'll get better next chapter, I promise. Also, I've noticed that I haven't really taken the time to thank any of you for reviewing, so here goes. ShootKristina, ThexHushxSound, lunamirrior, -lover, ShatteredSister, Santa Carla Sunset, and Morgana: Thank you all for reading and taking the time to tell me what you thought.