All of the men and women sat around the campfire. No one was really mad at each other anymore, but they were all quiet.

"Well, I know we're all either tired or wired," Joe began, "but I think we should continue with our ritual of story time. Jimmy went last night, so why don't we have Tony go tonight."

"Oh, I don't know if I have anything to say," Tony replied, really not wanting to do it.

"Come on, Tony. We all have something from our past to share," Joe replied. "Serious or funny, it doesn't matter."

"How much you wanna bet it'll be about him with a girl?" Tim asked Abby, who was sitting beside him.

She shook her head. "No, it'll be something to tie in with a movie."

"Twenty bucks?" Tim suggested, raising an eyebrow.

"You're on."

Tony sighed. "Okay, fine. Just let me think for a second."

"Take your time."

Tony thought for a moment, then began. "Okay," He said, "It was my ninth birthday. My first birthday without my mom. I had been really sad all week cause she wouldn't be there and she always liked to do special little things for me on my birthday. Well, the night before my birthday, my dad came into my room and told me that he had a crazy special day planned. He told me there would be surprises from the moment I woke up until I went to bed.

"Obviously that made me really excited. I went to sleep so quickly that I don't even remember lying my head on the pillow.

"The next morning I woke up and ran downstairs to find balloons covering the floor. You seriously couldn't take a step without knocking balloons everywhere," Tony smiled as he remembered that morning. "They were all different bright colors. Purple, red, green, blue, orange, yellow… It was awesome.

"Anyway, our maid made me biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast, which was delicious, then I went to school. Throughout the day, little things were sent to my classroom for me. Cupcakes for everyone in the class, pizza for lunch, more balloons to tie onto the back of my desk… stuff like that. I had a smile on my face all day at school.

"I took the bus home then went right upstairs to get ready for the party my dad said he would be throwing. He told me he had invited all of my friends already so I didn't need to talk to them about it at school. Anyway, I put on the most expensive shirt and pants I had, our maid fixed my hair and put me on some of my dad's cologne and, at six o'clock, when the party was supposed to start, I walked downstairs."

The smile Tony had had on his face was now fading away. "None of my friends were there… No one I knew was there at all. It was mostly all older women… Well, older than me. They were probably all just barely over legal age.

"I turned around and raced back up the stairs. It would have been a perfect movie moment for everyone at the party to stop speaking and everything go silent, but no one even noticed. No one except the maid.

"She came into my room about ten minutes after I had gone up and brought me in a present. She said my dad had gotten it for me and wanted me to open it. I opened it to find a toy airplane that I had wanted so bad." Tony's smile returned. "The thing was, I had only told her that I wanted it, not my dad, so I knew he didn't get it, but I played along. I gave her a big hug even though we were both pretending I didn't know she had gotten me the gift.

"She had to go back downstairs and work, so I sat in my room for the rest of the evening, put together my toy airplane, and played with it in my room while my dad did God-knows-what downstairs. I know now that she was the one that did all the special stuff for my birthday, not my dad."

Everyone sat in silence once Tony's story had ended. No one had been expecting something quite so… sad.

"Wow… Tony, that's… that's really depressing," Tim said, being the first to be able to speak.

Tony shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so… but doesn't everyone feel really tired now?"

Ziva nodded. "I feel like going to bed and not waking up for days."

"Then the story worked. We're all tired and ready for bed. Let's go." Tony got up and walked away, heading back to the cabin. He didn't want to linger and talk about the story anymore.

Slowly everyone else got up and walked to their cabins as well. They didn't really speak to one another, all feeling too sad to say anything at all.

Short, but better than nothing. This actually took me over a week to write. Not because it was difficult, just because I would have time to do like five sentences then I'd have to work on school stuff.

I hope you enjoyed the slightly depressing Tony story! Review and let me know what you think!