Hey there people, how's it going? Enjoying your vacation? I know I am—I spent almost the entire of Patriot's Day (yes, I know I missed that…) watching the Boston Marathon. I've gotta say that I'm sad Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher both placed third, but considering the fact that they were surrounded by Kenyan and Ethiopian runners that's still pretty impressive.

In any case, I was reminded by someone that I'd missed Patriot's Day and then I learned that Earth Day was today. Of course, the person who told me this had to tell me at, like, 4:00. So here you go—short but, I hope, as good as usual.

Standard disclaimers apply.

Chapter 11: Earth Day

"ATTICUS! GET THE HELL OFF OF FACEBOOK ALREADY! I KNEW THAT LETTING YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS WAS A HELL OF A BAD MISTAKE!" Alexis bellowed loudly, growling in anger.

Her big brother looked up from the computer screen in dismay. "C'mon, Alexis, I've only poked like 100 people!"

Alexis blinked, taken aback. "Wait a sec, you've been on Facebook for all of twenty minutes and you already have 100 friends?!"

"Hm, maybe you could send that in to Guinness to try and qualify for a world record," Adrian muttered absently as he walked downstairs, his nose buried in a book called "How to Hack Into Macs".

Blowing out an exasperated breath, the Queen of Obelisk turned back to her brother, who was now impatiently strumming his ukulele as he waited for people to respond to his pokes. It wasn't much of a wait.

"man, wtf?!?! No1 pokes any1 on here anymor!"

"ok, if u keep doin that ill remove u from my friend list dude"

"who the hell told u 2 get a facebk?!?!"

And, the crown jewel of them all, "U CAN SUCK MY CAMEL BALLZ!"

Smiling happily, Atticus turned around in his chair and said, "See sis?! They really love it, they do! I'm gonna do it some more!"

"No!" Alexis slammed her hand down on the power button on the computer after she logged Atticus out. Incredible reflexes…

"What?! Sis, what'd you do that for?!"

"It's EARTH DAY, idiot! We're supposed to be celebrating the wonder of our planet and saving energy today because stupid people waste it so much the rest of the year!"

Atticus thought about that for a few moments, his eyebrows drawn together. For one second, Alexis thought there might be hope. Then:

"The wonder of our planet? Are you talking about sex?"

Zane winced as something howled in agony from upstairs. "I bet you five bucks that was Alexis hitting Atty over the head with a baseball bat."

Bastion grinned. "Five says it was her da's old golf club."

"Done." They continued their game of poker with everybody else.

A couple minutes passed by before, yawning, Syrus got up from the poker table and rubbed his eyes. "Hey, you guys mind if I go to sleep somewhere? Haven't been getting that much sleep lately…"

"Yeah, no problem," Jesse muttered absently as he studied his hand. "Damn, this is bad…I think Alexis put a cot under that humongo sofa behind you, Sy, and there're blankets on the armchair."

"Thanks, buddy." Syrus found what Jesse had described, lay down, and was immediately out like a light.

Zane smiled wistfully to himself, thinking that no matter how much older Syrus got, he still always looked so frickin' cute and vulnerable when he slept. Seriously, he still remembered that time eight years ago—

BLAM! Everyone jumped and Zane was shocked out of his reverie. Syrus sat up in bed and groaned, leaning against the couch.

"OK then, what the heck happened this time?!"

"Hell if I know, but it doesn't sound good," Axel growled, reaching into his military jacket and pulling a knife out of nowhere.

"Everybody go back to whatever the hell you were doing before," came Alexis's angry snarl as she stumped down the stairs, looking for all the world like a chicken with diarrhea.

Jaden opened his mouth to ask what happened, but a smart Chumley elbowed him quite painfully and he actually shut his mouth.

As Alexis left to go into the kitchen, the rest of the gang heard Atticus howling mournfully from upstairs, "MMMFSLKJSDFLSDKSD!"

Zane and Chazz were elected to go upstairs by Nosegame elimination. They weren't that enthusiastic about it…

However, the situation turned out to be almost laughable. Atticus was tied securely against a chair with duct tape on his mouth.

"Psh." Zane shook his head. "Teaches HIM to piss off Alexis."