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Chapter 4

Of.

I Smile Real Hard

A chapter entitled.

An Invitation to Dinner



"SPARROW WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Kristy Thomas screamed while she lunged out of bed with murder written on her face. Sparrow, who had just taken a picture of the sleeping Kristy with the camera that was around her neck, held up a tray with her friend's breakfast on it.

"You told me to take pictures so you could remember this time forever. I was quite touched and determined to do you proud." Kristy grabbed her still warm pillow and chucked it at her friend who ducked it easily. "Oh calm it Kristy, I have come bearing your coffee and bagel.

"You didn't make it did you?"

"No, I'm not that mean. Your mother did." Kristy fell back into bed and dragged the covers over her head.

"What time is it?"

"7:00am and it's going to be a beautiful summer day."

"Wake me up in an hour."

"Nope, it's not my problem you stayed up to 4 something in the morning gabbing with friends."

"Mean."

"Ain't I just," said Sparrow putting the breakfast tray down on Kristy's night table so the dowsing girl could get it when she wanted to. Kristy not being able to resist the smell of coffee this early in the morning- especially when she was this tired- slowly came out of her cocoon. Smiling into the warm steaming mug, she took a sip. The bride-to-be began to think over what she and co had to do that day. Battle with the caterer, buy flowers, go for fittings. She couldn't believe that this was happening to her. She, Kristin Amanda Thomas was getting married. She nervously started to tap her coffee cup.

Sparrow O'Conelly in the mean time was in the kitchen dancing idly around with a plate of food in each hand to the golden oldie Sugar, Sugar, which was blaring on the radio. Elizabeth, Kristy's mother was at the stove making bacon and eggs for breakfast. The two woman were making breakfast trays up for the rest of the BSC who had all been up till 4 something in the morning talking about the good old times and had ended up staying over for the night. They decided instead of going back to their folk's place, they would just stay over.

Sparrow was heading over to a tray with Claudia's breakfast plate in her hand when she suddenly stumbled while attempting to do some spectacular dance move. She watched in horror as the plate went flying across half the kitchen and landed in the face of Charlie Thomas, who was just coming in the door from the backyard. Elizabeth turned at the sound of the plate hitting her son's face and tried to suppress a laugh at the sight that beheld her. Charlie with a very surprised look on his face was starring at the yolk that trickled off him and onto the floor. A pool of yellow yolk was starting to form at his feet. Sparrow on the other hand didn't even try to suppress her laughter and added insult to injury.

"Breakfast is served." Charlie just sot of snorted. Then he picked up a piece of bacon off his shoulder, looked at it and ate it.

"It's delicious." The room erupted with laughter.

Later that afternoon.

"Flowers?"

"Check."

"Caterer's"

"Nope."

Sigh.

"My sanity?"

"Nope."

"The bridesmaids dresses?"

"Check."

"Seating plan?"

"Done."

"Nick's Great Aunt isn't sitting anywhere near Nick's grandmother?"

"Check."

"Well that's it for the day everyone. Good job. Stace, what happened with the caterers?"

"Something about fish not being appropriate for a wedding."

Sigh.

"I'll talk to them tomorrow."

Kristy put her checklist down and flopped on the couch. The other members of the BSC already were or had headed back home to get some rest. The only ones remaining were Mary Anne and Stacey.

"Well, Kristy I think I'm going to head back to Mom's to get some rest. Mary Anne do you want me to drop you off?"

"That would be great as long as Kristy doesn't need help with anything else."

"Go get some sleep Mary Anne." The two woman left. Kristy after a lot of encouragement from Sparrow saying she could entertain herself for a couple hours went to bed as well.

Sparrow walked the mansion wondering what to do. Unlike the BSC, she had gone to bed at around 11 and was still wide-awake. It was 5:30pm and there was only the sleeping Kristy, the various pets and her in the house. She decided something to eat sounded good. Just as Sparrow started to shuffle through the kitchen cupboards hoping to find something to eat that wouldn't require her to actually cook, the back door opened and a very cautious Charlie stuck his head in. When he saw Sparrow looking at him weirdly he smiled. It appeared he had forgiven her for the morning.

"Who's around?"

"No one really. Kristy is dead to the world, your folks are at an auction, Karen is somewhere, Emily Michelle is at a sitting job and Hello Mac." The girl of 8 years smiled at Sparrow. She had just walked in as her father had declared it save from flying breakfast plates.

"Hi."

"How yah been?"

"Good."

"So your on your own?" asked Charlie.

"Well, Kristy's physical body is here, but not so much Kristy. And Kristy's body isn't much fun, it only snores when you ask it something."

" I see, well you can come have supper at our place tonight," said Charlie over his daughter's giggle.

"No, that's alright. I'll scare me up some grub here."

"No you won't. I remember what happened last time, you almost burnt the house down." "You just can't let that go can you?"

"Come on."

(Convenient how Charlie keeps popping up, no?)

AT CHARLIE'S HOUSE

Charlie Thomas's house was small, but a cozy one. It had a big pine tree in the front yard that hid the front of the house a bit. It resided on a little street called Clover Avenue just 10 minutes away from the mansion.

Upon opening the door a Great Dane made a beeline for Sparrow. The girl use to the sight of a huge dog crusading toward her simply stepped out of the way.

"STOP, YOU NUTTY MUTT." The dog stopped in his tracks and looked sheepishly at the glaring Mac.

"Well hello, who is this?" said Sparrow patting the head of the great dog.

"This is Danny. Sorry if he startled you a bit, he's a little too excitable,"

"No problem, I'm use to it. I have a Great Dane myself with the same problem, his names Robin." The three headed into the house discussing their respectable Great Danes. Danny followed them waving his tail sluggishly. It was decided that a pizza dinner would be best and they went about making it.

In the middle of seeing who could put the most pepperonis on a pizza in 10 seconds Sparrow asked what Mac's real name was. She hoped that it would distract the girl from putting the pepperoni down as fast as she was and thus give her enough of an edge to win. Besides she was curious. She had never heard the girl's real name and she had known her for 4 years.

"Micheala and only my enemies call me that," the girl said without even slowing down a notch. At that moment Mac put her last piece of pepperoni down and proclaimed herself winner.

"I'll remember that," said Sparrow looking at the pepperoni.

"Since we're on the topic of names, why' re you called Sparrow?"

"My father had this strange obsession with birds. He named all of my older siblings after them. But when I came along there were no more normal or even slightly normal names that were also bird names left. So instead of just admitting defeat he called me Sparrow, dooming me to a life of teasing by immature public school kids and being asked, "were your parents hippies?"

"Ouch. What are your siblings names?"

" Jay, Raven, Lark, Robin, Crane, Oriole and Kea."

"Is Kea a bird?"

"It's a parrot from New Zealand or something."

"Oh."

"Do they all live in New York, your siblings I mean, not the parrots."

"Yup, Jay, Raven, Lark, Robin and Crane are lawyers. Oriole owns a little café and Kea's a carpenter.

"Must be nice to have them so close," said Charlie as he put the pizzas in the oven.

"Well most of the time, sometimes I wouldn't mind if they all moved to Siberia though."

The eating of the pizza was filled with much laughter as Mac had put to much cheese on hers. The rest of the evening was spent in front of the TV playing some Playstation racing game. Mac had challenged Sparrow and had promptly kicked her butt. Sparrow being Sparrow demanded rematch after rematch. By the time Mac had to go to bed they must have played 50 races with Mac winning every single one of them.

"I pity you when she begins to learn to drive," said Sparrow looking at the TV and shaking her head in amazement.

"I pity me too."

"Well come on Charlie, perhaps I'll have a chance against you." She handed him Mac's control.

"No thank you."

"What? Scared small man?"

"No, I just don't want to be up till the wee small hours of the morning trying to beat you is all."

"No such luck Chuck. Flattery is not getting you out of this."

"Shouldn't you be going? It's quite late you know."

"How rude. I'll only forgive you if you have one race with me."

"Your not going to drop this are you?"

"Nope. I just got beat by an 8 year old and must make myself feel better by creaming somebody at this. As you are the only one around, you have just been designated the honor."

"Mother will be so proud. Fine, but one race only." He took the controller from Sparrow.

A couple hours later Sparrow dropped her controller in disgust.

"I give up. I can see were Mac gets it from."

"Or you could just be that bad."

"The thought did occur to me, but I figured it impossible," said Sparrow, her voice and face in a deadpan expression. Charlie laughed, turned off the game and stood up. They had been sitting on the floor, as the controllers didn't reach far enough to go to the couch. While they had been playing the couch had been taken over by a snoring, sleeping Danny.

"I think we've been booted," said Charlie looking at the dog.

"Not necessarily." Sparrow picked up the head of the sleeping dog and slid onto the couch. She then laid the dog's head on her lap. "You can have the butt."

" This happens to you a lot?"

"It's just more simple then waking Robin up, cause then you wake Batman up and then you don't get to go to sleep for hours and besides they make very good blankets."

"Batman another dog?"

"Nope, she's a Sparrow with a busted wing that rides around on Robins head."

"Oh," with that Charlie moved the butt and sat down.

They talked a little while longer and then they realized the time. It was 1:00 in the morning.

"I have to go," said Sparrow grabbing for her shoes.

"Ahhh, I can't give you a ride. There's no one to watch Mac."

"Oh. Well I can walk. It's only Stoneybrook. I somehow doubt there all that many gangs roaming around wanting to kill me."

"You could stay here?"

"No, that's okay."

"No, really."

"Bye." Sparrow headed off in the direction of the mansion. Charlie watched her go and shook his head. He then headed upstairs and went to sleep.

(A/N I should stop here, but I just wanted to add this last part.)

Sparrow turned the handle of the front door. Nothing happened. It was locked. Sparrow muttered some choice words and tried to figure out what to do. She didn't want to wake anybody up in the house, so she voted not to ring the bell. Instead Sparrow began looking in such things as flowerpots and the mailbox hoping to find a spare key. She found nothing.

"Curses."

Deciding that breaking a window would not be an ideal thing to do as a guest in the house Sparrow ditched that plan. Instead she circled the house trying to find an open window. Many of the upper story windows were open, but none of the lower. Sparrow solved the problem by getting a ladder from the back. She put it up under Kristy's window figuring Kristy might not ask as many questions as to why Sparrow was breaking into her house at 1:30 in the morning. She climbed the ladder and immediately realized she had a problem. The window was kind of small and would be hard to get into. Kristy was in the room still dead asleep. Sparrow as quietly as she could put her foot and leg in the window when suddenly a voice boomed.

"M'AM JUST WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" The police officer looked up at Sparrow with a mean scold on his face. Sparrow almost fell off her ladder in surprise.

"God, you scared me, officer," said the girl on the ladder as she regaining her balance.

"Funny, you're scaring the neighbors."

" Really. Whoops," said Sparrow as she cringed inside. She laughed out loud though, trying to make light of the situation. It didn't work.

"M'am I repeat what are you doing?"

"I'm not breaking and entering."

"It sure looks that way."

"I'm a guest here and I got back a little late and wouldn't you know it the door was locked!"

"Really."

"Yes, boy this is embarrassing."

"I have no doubt."

"Well I'll just continue climbing in this window and you officer can go assure those neighbors, that I'm not a robber, I'm just insane." Sparrow laughed again and desperately tried to get in the window.

"GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOW." Sparrow put her hands up and looked at the officer.

"I assure you sir this is just one big mistake."

"SPARROW! WHAT THE"

"AHHHH." Sparrow almost fell from the ladder again as Kristy starred at her from across her room.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING."

"Long story, but can you assure the nice police officer that I'm not trying to rob your house?"

"WHAT?"

"You've said that many times already honey." Kristy walked over to the window and looking over Sparrow's leg. The police officer smiled up at her and waved. Kristy smiled back and moved away from the window.

"There's a cop down there," Kristy said to her friend with a forced smile on her face.

"Yup and guess what, he wants to arrest me because he thinks I'm breaking in," replied Sparrow also force smiling.

"Sparrow, you are."

"Kristy, don't do this."

Kristy looked out the window again and smiled even harder at the police officer.

"It's alright. She's a guest not a robber."

"Are you sure ma'am?"

"For the time being yes."

"Very well ma'am."

"Thank you officer." The officer walked away. Kristy turned to her friend and still smiling an insane little smile asked,

"Where were you?"

"Charlie's."

"What?"

"I'll explain later, just help me get in." Krsity sighed in disgust and started pulling Sparrow's leg.

"You know the back door was unlocked."



There you go. Boy, that was a really long chapter. Please review and no flames please.