"Jesus, you girls," Dean muttered as they got into the Impala.
"Need help! Tch!" Reneey mumbled while Lyn said darkly, "Cotton-picking idiot know-it-alls..."
Sam looked back from the front seat and asked, "Hey, are you two all right?" He was actually pretty shocked that Lyn would reveal herself so.. openly.
Dean grinned. "Well, I don't think that doc in there will ever midjudge you again."
Reneey hissed; she was in a pissy pissy mood, and apparently so was Lyn, who growled, "Shut up, Dean. It's not funny, and I'm sick of it."
"They're stupid idiots who think teenagers can't take care of themselves!" Reneey exploded. "I did fine for thirteen years before my mom, like.. dropped me off at Lyn's place!"
"And if I haven't proved a thousand times over that I'm as responsible as any adult, then you're Shirley Temple," Lyn hissed at him.
"I know, I know," Dean said; he too had a responsibility of taking care of his baby brother. "So, when we get to the motel, you two are grounded."
"WHAT!?" both girls objected at once.
"You can't do that!" Lyn added, that same fire creeping back into her green eyes again after it had just so recently gone out.
"Yes, I can," Dean said firmly. He pointed at Reneey and said, "You, girl, have VERY rude behavior. And you," he pointed to Lyn, "can be pretty rude yourself when you want to be, and there's also the fact that I can't trust Reneey alone."
"You can't ground us!" Reneey snapped.
"Oh, would you like a spanking instead?"
"Can you hit hard?"
Lyn smacked Reneey upside the head.
"That won't hurt us, you know," Lyn said, crossing her arms and looking at him with something halfway between annoyance and amusement in her eyes. "And you realize that we WOULD end up hurting you for being a perv?"
"No, spanking is for bad little girls."
"And BDSM," Reneey pointed out. Everyone looked at her.
"WHAT!?"
Lyn smacked her upside the head. "I can't decide who's a bigger perv, you or him."
"Do you even know what BDSM is, Lyn?" Reneey asked.
"How does a thriteen-year-old know what BDSM is?"
"Um, hi, I'm Reneey, who are you?"
Then suddenly -- "Hey, I just realized something!" Reneey screamed.
"What?" Sam asked.
"In TWO DAYS I'll be fourteen!"
"Huh?" Dean asked.
"Two days and I'll be fourteen!" Reneey grinned. "Oh, did I mention I was born on Friday the thirteenth!? Anyway, this means.. SHOPPING! Deani, I want a laptop and a car and..."
"DEANI? Don't call me Deani!"
"Consider yourself lucky," Lyn said, shaking her head. "It's really one of her better nicknames, to be honest. She called my cousins Justy, Joeney, and Jakers."
"And am MP3 player and a new cell phone and eyeliner," Reneey continued on until Lyn smacked her upside the head.
"JAKEY!" Reneey yelled. "He was fun to squish and hold ad looks horrible with eyeliner..."
Lyn fought a strong desire to pound her head against something hard. "He about killed you for that, you know," she said with a sigh. "He might've if he hadn't known I would've killed HIM for it."
Suddenly she looked at Sam and Dean and said seriously, "Beware falling asleep with Reneey in the room. You might wake up wearing eyeliner."
"Ooh, I always wanted to know how you'd look in eyeliner!" Reneey yelled as she pulled eyeliner out of her pocket.
"Red? No, green! Nah.. pink? Eh.. Black?"
"How about NO EYELINER," Sam said.
"B-b-but --"
"NO EYELINER!"
"B-b-b-but --"
"Would you quit it with the eyeliner already?" Lyn groaned, shoving Reneey in the shoulder. "You know how many guys I've had to keep from killing you because of that stuff?"
"But they would look HOT in them! Besides you get a good kick workout that way."
The Impala stopped in front of a motel. They went in and got the rooms.
"Now give me your cell phones, music, whatever," Dean said.
"What?" Reneey demanded.
"You're grounded, remember?"
Reneey had given him her cell phone and music player, but then Dean looked at Reneey suspiciously. She groaned and took out her other cell phone. Then Sam looked at Reneey suspiciously, and she took out the stuf she had stolen from the earlier motel. Then both of them looked at her, and Dean said, "Reneey, don't make me check you from head to toe."
Reneey looked annoyed and finally pulled out a knife. "Happy?" she asked darkly.
Lyn just shrugged and reached into her pockets. "I'm keeping my flashlight and wallet, sorry," she said as she did so. Then she realized something. "I don't have my cell," she said slowly. "I must have dropped it.. earlier..."
A thought struck her. "Hey," she said suddenly. "You wouldn't happen to know if.. I don't know.. people from where WE'RE from are, you know, HERE?"
"No, I don't think so," Dean said slowly.
Lyn frowned. "I don't get it, then," she murmured.
"What don't you get?" Sam asked slowly.
Lyn jumped; she had quite forgotten that he was there. For a split second she didn't know how to answer that, but then she said, "Kelly called. My aunt. She called Reneey's cell phone, when we were back in the hospital, you remember? I said it was Keith..."
"Keith," Reneey mumbled. "I always said I scared him. Hot ass guy.. jackass, though," Reneey mumbled.
"Who's Keith?" Dean asked, and Sam nudged him, saying, "Anyway..."
"She just told you," Lyn said impatiently, glaring at Dean. "And I've told you before! The jerk of the year, who happens to be Kyle's brother. But that's not the point! My aunt was calling Reneey on her cell phone! Just a few minutes ago! What does that even MEAN?"
"I don't know," Sam said, "but anyway, here is your room. You are to STAY HERE."
They left, and Reneey grinned and said, "He doesn't know about my mini iPod."
She took it out, but just then the door opened, and Sam returned. He took the iPod and left again as if this were a perfectly normal occurrence.
"Jackass," Reneey yelled after him.
"Lyn," she added after a moment, "please tell me you didn't give him your MP3 player."
"Why wouldn't I?" Lyn answered with a shrug. "I'm not you, Rea, I can live without music." Then she sighed and added, "Anyway, I've kind of been a jerk myself lately. I've got to stop letting my temper get the best of me just because somebody says something that -- well, hits close to home."
"NOOO! SO WE'LL JUST BE BORED!?" Reneey fell to her knees. "NOOOO! Well, at least we have TV.. wait, there's no TV! NOOOO!"
"You won't be bored, you'll just be a drama queen. But you'd better do it quietly, because I'm going to sleep. It must be two or three in the morning."
Dean knocked on the door. "Keep it down in there!"
"Reneey be quiet?" Lyn answered dryly. "That's a laugh."
Reneey wrinkled her nose as she got the puppy face ready. "Come on, let's sneak out!"
"No, Reneey," Lyn said, beginning to sound exasperated now. "Look, I don't know about you, but for me it's been a really, REALLY long day. Stay up if you want to -- actually, it's probably better if you do, to make sure I don't start sleepwalking since I'm stressed -- but I don't feel well and I want to go to sleep."
"Okay, good night!" She hugged Lyn and sat on her bed in the fetal position. She would wait till around four AM. Till everyone was asleep.
Lyn practically fell down on her bed, heaving a sigh, and flicked off the lights. "'Night, Rea," she murmured faintly, fingering Kyle's ring as it hung around her neck.
Soon it was 4 AM. Reneey's grin shined in the darkness as she quickly got up, went to the door, opened it, and -- tripped over a shoe. "HOLY --" she whispered.
What the fuck? Wait, a shoe.. a motion -- FUCK!
She quickly returned to her room and leaped under the covers as Dean walked in sleepily.
Shit shit shit, kept running through her mind.
"'Lo?" Lyn murmured, sitting up, as she heard someone stumble in.
"I think --" yawn -- "Reneey tried to sneak out."
Reneey pretended to be asleep.
Lyn groaned. "Remind me -- to kill her -- in the morning," she yawned.
"Right..."
The sleepy Dean walked out of their bedroom and back into his. Reneey, clearly annoyed, tried to fall asleep.
Now it was Lyn who couldn't sleep. She hated being woke up in the middle of the night for just this reason: it was so hard to get back to sleep that it drove her nuts. As usual, her mind was reeling. She heard Reneey's breathing even out as the thirteen-year-old dropped off to sleep, but still the same thoughts kept replaying themselves.
Dean had said that people from Lyn's and Reneey's world didn't exist in this one. Neither he nor Sam had seemed concerned about the fact that Kelly had somehow called Reneey's cell. Didn't that prove that Kelly did exist here? And then there was that call Lyn had made in the forest. She had almost convinced herself that she had been mistaken, but now...
Yet, even if it had been him, what did it matter? she asked herself despairingly. If he was from this place, he didn't know her, certainly didn't -- no, she wouldn't let herself think that now.
That was when it struck her: even if there were people she knew here, they wouldn't know her. But then how had a Kelly in this world known to call? Had it perhaps been a coincidence? But yet, that call in the forest...
Lyn sighed, rolled over, and wished that she still had her phone and could check the number she had called.
---
It was ten AM. "Reneey, wake up!"
"RENEEY, WAKE UP!"
Lyn rolled her eyes. "You're never gonna get her up like that, you know." She took in a deep breath and yelled, "SCOTTY VANITY!"
Reneey sat straight up and demanded, "Where is he!?"
"Only in your dreams, unfortunately for you," Lyn said pleasantly, brushing back a strand of hair. Then she frowned; her hair was stiff. What in the world?
She took a couple of steps toward the mirror across the room and suddenly stopped dead and said disbelievingly. Her face was paler than it had been in some time, her lower lip had a cut -- probably from where that idget had backhanded her earlier -- and was swollen, and, in her humble opinion, her hair presently looked like a rat's nest.
"Jeez," she said disbelievingly, "somebody might have mentioned that I look like death warmed over."
"I think you look great," Reneey said with a grin.
"Come on," Dean put in. "We're getting breakfast, and you're still grounded."
"Breakfast at ten o'clock," Lyn repeated, shaking her head. "Y'all are insane. You should've eaten two hours ago, like I did." She held up an empty pop-tart packet that had been crumbled up in her pocket.
"Anyway," she went on, "I'm NOT going anywhere looking like this. Give me five minutes." And she disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
"Reneey," Sam said in the meanwhile, "you're grounded for two months for sneaking out."
"Eh, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, killed someone there."
Dean looked at her and shook his head. "So, like..."
"Er, just so you know," Lyn put in, suddenly sticking her soaking-wet-but-still-extremely-messy head back out of the bathroom, "there's a possibility that might not've been Reneey. I sleepwalk sometimes when I'm stressed, and I'm pretty sure these past couple of days count as stress."
"Er, um, yeah, sure, we'll go with that," Reneey said as she looked for her eyeliner. "Where the hell IS it?"
"Who cares?" Lyn murmured as she tried to rake her fingers through her hair.
"I CARE!"
"Reneey," Dean said with a smirk, "you're not SUPPOSED to have fun while you're grounded."
Reneey growled.
"Hey, Lyn," Sam said suddenly, "where'd you get the pop tart?"
Lyn rolled her eyes in response. "I get up at six o'clock, dingbat," she said impatiently. "All of you were dead to the world until nine-thirty. Very unhealthy, by the way, you miss half the morning. Anyway, I got tired of waiting for you and went to the office to see if they had any food. Your shoe trick's pretty feeble, by the way," she added bemusedly.
"What's a dingbat?" Dean asked suddenly.
"She won't tell," Reneey told him. "I've asked her millions of times. But I'm beginning to think it has nothing to do with bats."
Lyn rolled her eyes, and Reneey mumbled, "I don't like breakfast much..."
"I have a better idea, then," Lyn said with a smile. "We need to find some sort of shopping center or strip mall or SOMETHING and get clothes, because my bloody t-shirt and torn jeans have definitely seen better days. And maybe there'll be a place to eat there so you can get food since you're starving."
"Strip mall," Reneey muttered. She laughed, and so did Dean.
"You two are pervs," Sam and Lyn said at once. They looked at each other and shook their heads; this was getting creepy.
"And I could seriously do with a hairbrush, too," Lyn added as one finger got stuck in her tangled hair. "I'll look like Medusa soon, without one. WHY does my hair have to go all wavy at the most inopportune times?"
"Medusa was AWESOME!"
Sam looked at Reneey and muttered, "Yeah, sure, awesome getting turned to stone..."
Lyn shook her head at him. "Remember who you're talking to," she said wisely. "This is the same girl who said that being DEAD was awesome."
"It IS! I mean, we'd be like spirits, and torture evil motherfuckers!"
"And we'd have to kill you," Dean muttered.
"Like rituals can destroy a LOCO LOONY!"
"Yeah, they can."
"I'll see that bet," Reneey said, narrowing her eyes at Dean.
"Children," Lyn interrupted, stepping between them. "Three feet distance, and count to ten."
She shook her head and muttered to Dean, "Y'know, it's amazing how much you remind me of Joey sometimes."
"I'M A TEENAGER!" Reneey yelled.
"And I'm older than you," Dean added over Lyn's head.
Sam laughed, Lyn glared, and Reneey murmured, "JOENEY! He didn't really like me..."
"Probably because you called him Joeney," Lyn muttered.
"It's a name," Reneey said, shrugging.
"A GIRL'S name," Lyn said exasperatedly. "HIS name is Joey."
"And Joey would be...?" Dean asked.
"The middle one of my three cousins," Lyn said brightly, shaking back her hair and giving it up as a lost cause. "They're more like brothers, though, really, we grew up together. Justin'll be 23 this month, Joey's 18, and Jay's five months older than me."
"And I'm the youngest," Reneey grumbled, "as always..."
Just then -- "Bang bang, my baby shot me down" came from Dean's pocket.
"Hey, that's my cell!"
Dean took out the phone and looked at the caller ID. "Who's Danny?"
"This guy -- now gimme it!"
Lyn's face paled and her smile vanished. It was happening again, but HOW?
"Reneey, you can't have your cell!" Dean opened it, said, "Sorry, but Reneey's bring grounded," and hanged up.
"Asshole!"
"Idiot!" Lyn breathed, staring at him. "Do you not realize what you just did!? Reneey knows that guy, and not from here!"
"Nope, sorry," Sam said, shrugging.
Just then "One two, Freddy's coming for you, three four lock the door" came again from Dean's pocket.
"My other cell!" Reneey yelled.
"Who's.. Kelley?"
"How's it spelled?" Lyn asked, paling further.
"K-E-L-L-E-Y."
"That's our BFFL!" Reneey yelled.
Dean opened the cell. "Sorry, she's being grounded," then hung up.
"Stop doing that!" Lyn said suddenly, looking at him incredulously. "Are you out of your mind? Some random guy opening Reneey's cell and saying that -- do you have any idea what that would sound like?"
Dean shrugged and said, "Whatever."
I wanna SHOP!" Reneey yelled, forgetting about the cells. "Tomorrow is my BIRTHDAY!"
"No whatever," Lyn said, something between anger and fear in her green eyes. "Are you not even thinking? How are these people calling? If they're from here, they shouldn't know who we are, don't you see that?"
And then suddenly a phone rang again, but it came from Sam's pocket, not Dean's. "'Cause it's midniiiight in Montgomery..."
Lyn's face instantly lost all color, and she was sure that her heart froze. "Is that -- is that my cell?" she asked faintly, sounding halfway between desperate and disbelieving.
She couldn't understand it, but she knew what the answer was before she even asked. It just didn't make sense. It wasn't the fact that she had thought her cell phone was gone and now it turned out that Sam had it -- it was the caller on the other end of the line. That ringtone was set for only one person, even though he had called her only twice in her life.
"Give it here!" she said suddenly, eyes looking frantically into Sam's. "Give it here, I have to see --"
"No," Sam said instantly. "You're grounded, what don't you get about that?"
"I don't care," Lyn said sharply, her voice rising higher and higher. "I don't want to talk, I can't, I know that, I just -- that's -- please, that's Daddy --"
"Sam, give it to her," Reneey pleaded. "Just do it!"
Sam looked like he thought this was a bad decision against his better judgement, but he gave the phone to Lyn, who took it with a shaking hand.
For a long moment she just stood there, staring down at the display screen. She had taken a picture of one of her father's photos with her cameraphone, and that was the image that she saw: that, and the word "Daddy" with his cell phone number at the bottom of the screen. Then the ringing stopped, and the image was replaced by a legend that said, "One missed call."
There was an echoing silence when the phone stopped ringing; Lyn could feel their eyes on her, but she didn't care. She refused to meet their gaze and let them see the tears in her eyes, so she swallowed hard, pressed the phone back into Sam's hand, and murmured, "I have to -- go -- something --" before turning and disappearing into the bathroom again.
"Lyn!" Reneey ran to the bathroom as the shocked brothers stood there.
"Um, awkward," Dean murmured, scratching his head.
"Lynni?" Reneey asked, knocking on the door.
Lyn didn't answer; she just leaned against the door -- she didn't seem to have the strength to reach up and lock it -- and tried not to make a sound as she drew a shaky breath.
Reneey turned the knob and pushed on the door, but Lyn was too heavy.
"Lynni, everything's okay.. here, let me in."
Lyn shifted her weight and sat down on the floor. Reneey pushed through the door and sat down next to her. "Lynni?" she asked, gently touching Lyn's arm.
"I never even thought about him," Lyn said hoarsely, not bothering to blink away her tears. "I didn't think he would even notice. Kelly, or Mimi or Papaw, maybe, but -- but not him."
Reneey gave a half smile as she hugged Lyn and laid her head on her shoulder. "Fathers ALWAYS notice, honey, even though he may not have raised you. He loves you."
Silently, the door opened again, but neither of the girls noticed until someone wrapped their arms around Lyn.
"Look here," Sam whispered. "Everything's okay, all right?"
"No, it's not," Lyn answered in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper; it was broken, empty, it would have been better if she had yelled. Her eyes stared, blankly, straight ahead, and tears kept pouring down. "This whole blasted thing is not okay," she went on in the same tone. "It just gets worse and worse, and eventually it has to win."
"I know what it feels like," Sam said gently. "It feels like it's all coming down, and you just want it to end. But here's something that always got me through: things will get better, even though it's rough at first. It gets better."
He pulled her to his chest. Somehow, these girls had already managed to make their way into the guys' hearts.
"Oh, it gets better all right," Lyn went on without changing her tone. "Just long enough to make you think that everything will be fine. Then it just starts all over again. I'm not stupid, that's how life works."
Sam knew that no words could make her feel better, so he just held her close against him like she really was his own little sister.
Dean stepped in. "Hey, how are things?"
Reneey laid her head on Lyn's arm and said slowly, "Lynni... We have to go shopping for clothes..."
Sam sent a look at the others, telling them without words that it was too early for that. "Shh, Lyn, it's okay..."
Reneey laid her head on Lyn's arm and said slowly, "Lynni... We have to go shopping for clothes..."
Sam sent a look at the others, telling them without words that it was too early for that. "Shh, Lyn, it's okay..."
"No, it's not.. but what does it matter? If you try to make yourself think it is, it's just worse. And that's what breaks your heart."
Suddenly she stood up, half of her already wet hair stuck to her face. She brushed it back, set her face into a blank expression, and said quietly, "We might as well go, sitting here won't help any. Dean's hungry, anyway."
They nodded and left, but Reneey stayed behind with Lyn. "Hey, chi okay?" She playfully punched her sister in the arm.
Lyn just blinked once, stared at the bathroom wall for a second, and said, "I'll live."
Then she walked out after the brothers, still wearing that emotionless mask.