My brother-in-law actually gave me that coin. I think I still have it in my coin purse. Kind of a disjointed chapter. I feel kind of sick today.

Dear Diary,

You know you run with a tough crowd when you watch "Ganglands" and one of them goes, "He wasn't that tough. I broke his leg." And then you look up to see the leader of the toughest New York street gang on the screen with a gun in his hand and his face blacked out.

Dear Diary,

Tried to trick Don into doing my taxes. I know it's only late August, but I thought I'd have to work on him early to get him to do it.

"This is like when you try to get me to do your homework," he said.

We were sitting in the lab. I like it there. It's full of broken electronics, moldy coffee cups and old plates of half eaten food stacked all over the place. Plus, he has a lot of really cool books. There was a new little furnace in the corner of the room.

"Would you shut the door?" he asked, as I sat down.

I got back up and shut the door. He was picking at a circuit board with a pair of tweezers.

"Where'd you get the furnace?"

He looked over at the furnace and said, "Raph found it someplace. It's propane. He scored the propane and the tank from one of his La Cosa Nostra people. It gets cold down here, even though it's summer and I want to keep this stuff from getting too damp."

"Want to do my taxes?" I said, swinging my legs under my chair like a little kid. Normally, I would flirt to get my way, but it only works on Leo sometimes, when he's feeling really generous and takes pity on me.

"Want? What will you give me?"

I didn't want to give him anything, so changed the subject. "So when are we going to use your JATO?"

His eyes lit up with that maniacal me-like-explosions look that I usually try to avoid. "I'm just trying to work out a remote control to break it and drive it. But it's kind of hard to get the parts I need."

"Well, we'll wait as long as needed. Hey, where's everybody else?"

He threw the circuit board aside and leaned on the center island. There's a big shipping crate in the middle of the room and I think he has it turned on its side because I know his valuables are inside, but he has the top covered in junk like a table and he has some stools around it. I got up and sat on the stool next to him. It felt silly to sit all the way across the room. "Splinter took Mikey out to the dump to scrounge for a new bathroom sink. I think Leo and Raph are with them, but I'm not sure."

"Do you like being here alone, having time to yourself?" I yawned, feeling a little sleepy.

"Yeah, but it's not exactly much different from being here normally. I don't like to sit in here all day long alone, you know. They might be gone till dinner time. So I'm glad you showed up."

We talked for a while about stupid stuff and I laid my head down on my arms, pretending like I was going to take a nap. He copied me and made a face. I giggled and made a face at him. We did that back and forth for a while and I'm glad nobody else was there to see it, although we were both probably unbearably cute.

After a while I did sort of drift off to sleep.

Next thing I knew, I could hear male voices talking. It sounded like Raph was mad. But I was really cold and couldn't figure out why.

Still kind of tired. Think I'll take a break.

Dear Diary,

I woke up to find myself in the strangest situation. Raph was holding me up in the shower. I didn't have any particular reaction except that I wished he would shut up and quit yelling at me and then I realized that I was fully clothed. And the water was freezing cold.

I batted him away, but my arms wouldn't work.

I think I was asleep or passed out for a while because I woke up with Mikey looking down in my face and I was lying on somebody's bed. There was a loud roaring sound outside. Mikey yelled, "Hey, she's awake!"

"What are you guys doing? Why was I in the shower with Raph?"

"Must have been a real nightmare, huh?" Mikey said. "Don't worry. They took the furnace apart and we're trying to get all the smell out of there. Don didn't have the air purifier on because he thinks it's too noisy. So we hooked that up now and have some fans blowing it out into the tunnels."

I must have looked confused because he added, "Oh, that furnace had something wrong with it and it was giving off carbon monoxide. We came home and Leo said you were both laying on the floor and it was, like, 90 degrees in there because he had the door shut."

"Is he okay?"

"Leo's steamed, but he's okay."

I tried to push myself up, but failed. "No, Don."

"Yeah, he came around a while ago. He's… uh…"

Mikey looked shifty like he was keeping something from me.

"Is he okay?" I don't know how I scared him when I was lying immobilized on his bed, but I did somehow.

"Hear that?" I listened and then I could hear loud weeping from the next room. "He's been doing that since he woke up. Raph told him that he almost killed you and then Don blamed him for getting a defective furnace. So, you hungry?"

My stomach flipped awkwardly at the idea of eating. Mike left because he can eat no matter what.

Then Raph came in the room, smirking an evil smirk.

"What are you so happy about?"

He sat on the edge of the bed and said, "It's not every day that I shower with beautiful women. And definitely not every day that they throw that many f-bombs at me."

"What?" I didn't remember saying anything to him. "I'm sorry, but you're not my type. What did I say? Is it filed in your blackmail folder?"

"You called me a green pervert. You told me you were off your birth control. You kept asking for your purse for some reason. You made a lot of threats that involved my 'nads. You were being quite a trouble maker."

I stared at him, embarrassed and wondered what other gold he was saving for later. I was sure it was worse than that. "What did Don say?"

He looked bitterly in the direction of the wailing. "Didn't hear. Don't really care."

I slept for a while and when I woke up, I snuck into Don's room. It looked like everybody else was eating dinner in front of the television and I could hear the Little House on the Prairie theme playing. Raph said, "Why doesn't Charles Ingalls just tell those stupid people who pass through town every episode to get lost and solve their own problems?"

Splinter said, "Because he believes in altruism, unlike some that I know."

It sounded like Leo and Mikey were laughing at him.

I felt really stiff and my head hurt really badly, but I was okay. I shut the bedroom door really quietly.

Don was lying facing the wall and I could hear him hiccupping, still crying. I got really worried then because I was sure that it had been hours and hours since we'd woken up.

"Don, how are you doing?" He stopped hiccupping, but didn't answer. I sat next to him on the bed and rubbed his arm for a while. I couldn't really think of anything to say. "It was an accident."

"I… I… I know… that." It was hard for him to talk.

"Well, then what's up?"

"You m… m… must think I'm stupid," he choked out. "I shouldn't have shut the door… or used that without checking it… or turned off the air thing…"

"Turn over and look at me."

He hesitated but slowly turned over so that I could see. I made a pitying girl face at him. He looked awful. "I could never think that you were stupid. Maybe absentminded, but never stupid. You make your own rocket fuel for crying out loud. Now enough of this." I wiped at his face, which was really disgustingly wet.

"We're such a burden to you."

So I hugged him and then forced him to watch Little House on the Prairie with everybody else. His brothers all gave him a nervous glance and then ignored him. Splinter said, "How are you feeling, son?"

He hiccupped really pathetically and said, "Fine."

I stayed there till really late, talking to Splinter. I really hate school and wondered what his advice would be. He thinks that I should look for work instead of living off of loans and I see his point. But boy, do I hate working. He excused himself and went to bed and I noticed that all of the boys were gone, probably to bed. I thought I would tell one of them that I was leaving and peaked into Mike and Raph's room. Nobody was there and one of the beds was missing. Then I looked in Leo and Don's room. Leo's bed was pushed against Don's and the missing bed from the other room was pushed long-ways against the end of the other two beds. They were all sleeping squashed together with Mikey all spread out in the middle. Raph was on the bed at the end with an arm and both legs hanging in space. I didn't wake any of them up and left.

Dear Diary,

Afraid of what Raph has on me. He keeps grinning at me like the Cheshire Cat.

Dear Diary,

Now the others know too. I'm sure of it. They keep giggling together when I leave the room.

Dear Diary,

Holy shit.

Dear Diary,

The humiliation has waned off enough to relate what happened. I'm blushing now as I write this, so I guess it's fresher than I thought.

I had Raph and Leo in my van because we were casing the streets looking for Purple Dragons and Leo was whining at me because it was raining a lot and he has a cold.

Looking for gang members is more fun than it sounds. Raph sang Christmas carols in funny voices while we ate cookies that Mike had baked and watched guys buying crack on street corners.

"I wonder what it would be like to date a gang member," I said, idly.

"Probably like dating Raph," Leo muttered as he squinted though the wet windshield to see what they were doing.

Raph was drinking a juice box and gave me a thumbs up.

"Can I have a juice box?" Leo asked.

I played the mom and stuck the straw in his box before handing it to him.

"Well, you already blew your chance to try it and find out when you said that you couldn't have sex with me because condoms don't work in showers," Raph said, throwing his juice box away.

Leo spat out his juice through his nose and laughed.

"What? I don't remember saying that. I don't remember even remotely thinking that."

He was smiling like his face would get stuck that way. One of those malevolent smiles when somebody knows they've just scored the ultimate chance to tease. "That's what you said when I was trying to save your life the other day by putting you in the cold shower when you were unconscious. And what thanks did I get? You said to get my hands off because we couldn't do it because condoms don't work in showers."

Condoms don't work in showers? That didn't make any sense. I belatedly felt embarrassed for hinting that I'd thought he was a suitable partner, but blew it off really quickly because I was more curious as to where I would get such a stupid idea. Then it hit me.

"Robyn told me that when I first got my period!" I said. They both flinched at the words. "She said that condoms don't work in the shower and she said that if you go swimming when you have your period you'll attract sharks."

Leo had been drinking his juice box again and sprayed all over the windshield. "Ow, my nose," he said, laughing hysterically.

"And my mother gave me a coin that said The best kind of birth control on one side and on the other it said Keep me pressed between your knees," I said, remembering that fateful discussion.

Leo was choking by then. We stopped my silly sex joke reminisces so that they could jump out and attack the gang members. I had an equally evil thought as I watched them in the headlights of the van, leaping about, looking really cool, and fighting bad guys in the rain.

As soon as they got in the van, they both grabbed more snacks. I said, "At least it wasn't as bad as some of the stuff you guys have said when you were unconscious."

They both paused their eating and gave each other worried glances. "I don't talk when I'm unconscious," Leo said, half heartedly.

Raph didn't even try to deny it. He knows he says embarrassing things when he's unconscious.

"Yeah, you do too," I said, turning to look him in the eye. "When you were hit in the head two weeks ago, you called me mom."

Raph pointed and laughed at his respectable leader.

"And you," I said, turning to Raph. He stopped laughing, but kept absently pointing at Leo. "You declared that you were going to move to England and then asked if masturbating really makes you go blind."

Now it was Leo's turn to laugh and point.

Leo said, "It's no fun when Mikey's knocked out. He just keeps saying he loves everybody. And Don always asks for his shoes."

"He doesn't wear shoes," I said.

"Yeah, I know. So when you were unconscious he was saying to me, 'Leo where are my shoes? What did you do with my shoes? Have you seen my shoes?'"

We laughed until the gang members all came to and they had to get out and knock them all out again.