AUTHOR"S NOTE: My apologies for a shorter than usual chapter and if it seems disjointed. Charlie wants her story to be told but my muse is not being that cooperative! Hopefully the next chapter will get things back on track! Thanks for reading and reviewing!

I had woken up in the morning, tucked under the covers. Someone must have unlocked the door and then come in and put me to bed. The door had been left open slightly. I had gotten out of bed and gone downstairs.

Uncle Sam was at the kitchen table, his laptop open, drinking coffee.

He set the mug down and looked at me.

"Sit," he said.

I sat down next to him and looked at him, curious. He didn't seem angry, but I hoped he wasn't going to yell at me.

"New rule, no more locking doors," he told me. "If you lock the door again, it' ll come off for a week. Is that clear?"

I swallowed. "Yes, Uncle Sam." I said. "Sorry."

"I understand you were upset, but locking the door is not a safe thing for you to do. You need to talk about things if you're upset, not yell, or be nasty, or lock doors."

"O-okay."

He looked at me. "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

"Uh- no," I said, feeling confused.

"All right. Well, I want you to seriously think about how you've been acting. Do I snap at you and sass you? Do any of us?"

I felt myself blushing. "No," I said quietly.

"Then it needs to stop. You need to think about your attitude and how you're talking, before you say something. I'm not going to put up with any more sassiness, and I'm not going to keep letting the attitude go. Now, your Dad and I talked about this, and this is what we came up with, to make you more aware of how often you're being sassy. Each time you mouth off or give me attitude, you'll get a warning. I'll decide when you've earned a consequence. Do you understand?" He gave me a stern look.

"That's not f-"

"Do you understand?" he repeated, in a stronger voice.

"Uh- yes, Uncle Sam," Warnings and consequences! That didn't seem fair! "What's the consequence gonna be?"

"That will depend on you," he said. "Three or four warnings will get you a time out. More warnings will mean a more serious consequence."

He took a drink of his coffee. "Let's try to have a good day today, all right? I thought we could go to a zoo. I found one about two hours away from here."

"Yay!" I said happily.

"After you eat breakfast, we can go." he told me.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

"Hi Daddy," I said into the phone.

"Hi Charlie, I heard you went out today," he said.

"Yeah, Uncle Sam took me to a zoo!" I told him.

"Yeah? Did you enjoy it?"

"It was lots of fun! I got to feed some goats and sheeps, and then guess what?"

"What?"

"I held a snake! It was a kind of snake called a ball python!"

"You did?" Daddy laughed and sounded surprised. "You weren't scared?"

"No, it was cool! It wrapped itself around my arm!"

"What did it feel like?" Daddy asked.

"It was warm, and it looked wet and shiny, but it was dry, and the scales were soft."

"You're very brave. What else did you do?"

"We watched a show with some seals and they dived into the water and splashed everyone! It was funny."

Daddy laughed again. "We'll have to go to the zoo and you can show me everything that you did."

"When are you coming back?" I asked.

"In a couple of days," he said.

"Did you find any relatives?"

"Yes...a distant cousin of your mother's. I'll tell you about it when you get back. Anything else happen?"

"Uh- Uncle Sam says that if I lock the door again, the door will come off for a whole week."

"I see," Daddy sounded serious. "Did you get any warnings today?"

"Uh, just one, Daddy."

"Well, good. Keep behaving, all right? I love you, sweetheart."

"I love you too Daddy. Good night."

I handed the phone to Uncle Sam and went to brush my teeth. He came into the bedroom as I was getting into bed.

"Tomorrow, we'll go to the library in the morning. There's a week-long reading and crafts program that I signed you up for," he told me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A librarian reads a book to you, and then you make a craft based on the book, I think," Uncle Sam explained. "I thought it sounded like a fun thing for you to do, it will get us out of the house, and you can be with some kids your age."

"Okay."

He leaned down and hugged me, then kissed my forehead.

"Thanks for taking me to the Zoo today, Uncle Sam."

"You're welcome, honey. I had fun with you. And you did a good job not being sassy," He smiled down at me and brushed my hair back from my forehead. "Get some sleep."

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

"My name is Abby," said the girl next to me. She was younger than me.

"I'm Charlie," I told her.

We had listened to a book about a zoo with lots of weird make-belive animals in it, and now we were making animals out of clay.

I told her that I had just gone to the zoo, and about some of the animals I had seen.

"My mommy and I wented last summer," she said. "After Daddy lefted us." She looked at me. "Did you go with your mommy and daddy?"

"Uh, no, my Uncle."

"Where's your Mommy and Daddy?"

"Uh, my Daddy is, he's away right now and my Mommy is, uh, she's, uh, dead."

"Oh. She's in heaven?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said.

"My granny is in heaven too. I met her before, but I don't 'member."

A woman came over to us, and Abby looked up at her. "Hi Mommy! This is my friend Charlie!"

"Hi...Charlie?" she said, looking at me. "Oh!" she said, sounding surprised. I looked up, and Uncle Sam was coming over to the table. I noticed that almost all the adults were staring at him. It was pretty much all moms in the room with their kids. Abby's mom was looking at Uncle Sam with a funny look on her face.

"H...hi," she said. "I'm Raquel," she held her hand out.

"Oh, hi, I'm, uh, Sam," Uncle Sam shook her hand.

"We're going to go over to the McDonald's that's just down the road for lunch, a few of the moms here do that, would you like to join us?" she asked. "There's a big play area, and it's pretty clean. I promise, it doesn't get too loud!"

I looked up at Uncle Sam. "Can we?"

He glanced down at me. "Uh...sure."

We cleaned up the supplies, and I took my clay animal with me, wrapped in paper towels.

Uncle Sam looked funny, he towered over everyone in the play area, and he was the only man in there. There were a few little kids running around too, as well as about 5 kids from the library. Uncle Sam and I sat in the corner and ate our lunch quickly.

Abby came over to me. "Hurry up an' eat so we can go play!" she said.

"Okay." I smiled at her. After I had gotten up to run around with the kids, I saw Abby's mother motion to Uncle Sam to join her at her table. Uncle Sam walked over to the table with a couple other Moms sitting there, and sat down, looking uncertain.

I had been playing for what seemed like a long time, when Uncle Sam's phone rang. He got up and walked into the main part of the restaurant for a minute to talk. When he came back in, he walked over to the tubes where I was crawling around with the other kids.

"Charlie, we need to go," he called to me. "Charlie!"

I looked out of the little window on the side. "Aww, why?"

"Because...we do. Come on."

"But I don't want to!" I protested.

"Let's go," he called, walking over to the table to throw away our trash. He turned around and put his hands on his hips. "Charlie," he called again, and his voice was a little deeper. "I said, let's go."

I came down the slide and got out. "Okayokay!" I said with annoyance.

He looked down at me, and said quietly, "Warning number three."

"Aww, why?" I protested.

"How many times did I just have to call you, and you didn't listen? And then you just gave me attitude? Get your shoes on, now," he said sternly.

I slipped my tennis shoes on. "Bye, Abby! Bye, Sarah!" I called to the girls.

We walked out to the car.

"Time out when we get back," Uncle Sam said.

I folded my arms but didn't say anything, not wanting to get into any more trouble.

"Come with me," he said when we went inside. I followed him into the library, and he pointed to the sofa. "Sit down," he said. "Eight minutes."

He turned on his laptop, and sat down in front of it. I sat quietly, swinging my legs and staring at the floor.

Finally, he called me over to him. "Let's not have any more warnings today, hmm?" he asked, tucking my hair behind my ear. "What are you going to do right now?"

"Can I go swing on the tire swing?" I asked.

"Sure," he said.

It was just me and him for dinner- Uncle Bobby was still out working on a case. I was good, and managed to not get any more strikes.

The next day we went to McDonald's again after we did our craft project. I watched Abby eating lunch with her mom. They laughed and talked together, and it made me miss my mom. I looked around at the people in the play area. Once again, it was all moms. A mom feeding her toddler some applesauce, a mom giving a baby a bottle and telling her four year old to eat, a mom watching her two kids eat their burgers. It wasn't fair that my mom wasn't here any more. I watched Abby's Mom fixing her barette that had started to come out of her hair, and I felt jealous.

"Hey," Uncle Sam said. "What are you thinking about?"

"I dunno," I lied. "Just...stuff."

"Your Dad should be home tonight or tomorrow," he said.

"Did he find out anything about...me?" I asked, feeling uncomfortable.

"I'm not sure," Uncle Sam said. "I'm sure he did. You're not supposed to worry about it, though, are you?"

"I know," I looked down at the table.

After I ate, I went to play with the kids again. This time, I saw Abby's mother get up and walk over to the table and sit down where I had been sitting. She and Uncle Sam talked for a while.

When we got back to Uncle Bobby's house, he was home, and in the kitchen unpacking bags of groceries.

"So, what's been goin' on here?" he asked us.

"Well," Uncle Sam said hesitantly, "I think I was asked on a date."