You guys weren't supposed to take the 14-year-old mother thing seriously, y'know… And Marie, it wouldn't be very fun if they got together with no complications, now would it? Besides, this is my story, and I can do whatever I like and you can't stop me. I can even make Bejita be all over-intelligent and freakishly good at school. Come to think of it, I've already put him in all Buruma's classes and I like smart guys. Yay! Nerds!

--

Juuhachigou smiled sadly, her slender legs curled up to her chest, chin resting on her knees. She hadn't been able to face her own home with the knowledge that her mother would never be returning, and was spending the night with Chichi and Buruma, at the latter's house.

Normally a stay at Buruma's house was a great event for all concerned, but this evening it had been a solemn affair. There were no movies to stay up watching all night, no hysterically modified games to play. There were just three friends with sleeping bags and a tub of cookie dough. Of course, under normal conditions, even this would have been a recipe for hilarity, but this was a grave time.

So they just sat, silently, taking the occasional teaspoon of cookie dough.

"I didn't get to say goodbye. They told us she still had time and we didn't get to say goodbye." There was an awkward silence. Neither of the other two girls knew what to say to something like that. "You don't have to say anything. I just like to know you're listening." Buruma smiled slightly and nodded. If there was on thing they could do, it was listen.

Juu looked around her, at the drawn, unhappy faces of her friends and realised this wasn't what she wanted from coming here. She didn't want to mull over the tragedy that had befallen her family, she came here to lift the weight on her shoulders, to be happy. So she spoke. "Hey, B, guess who I saw at the hospital?"

Both her friends sat up a little straighter at the change in tone. "I don't know, who?"

"Bejita. And that girlfriend of his, she was sick, and they broke up." Buruma's cerulean eyes widened at this statement, and her mouth opened slightly.

"Ami. Her name was Ami and… they… broke up????" Juu nodded and her friend's face split into a wide grin. She giggled lightly. "Juu, that is the best thing! Aaron's just too nice, I suspect he's gay." Both Chichi and Juuhachigou struggled to smother giggles at that statement, which echoed so clearly their own thoughts.

The brief reprieve from Juu's grief, however, was short-lived. As Chichi and Buruma fell to talking about boys once more, trying their best, she knew, to make Juu happy, to keep her mind off her mother's death, she curled up in her sleeping bag, staring blankly at the wall.

Nothing could take her mind off her mother for long, this was silly. She sighed and closed her eyes, trying to block out her friends' attempts to lift her spirits.

--

Ami blinked disbelievingly at the stressed figures before her. Her youngish, suit-clad father was standing with one tanned hand resting on the back of the grey-green chair Ami's mother was sitting in. They had always been disappointed in their children, they weren't the sort of people that one expected to have teenage druggie, pregnant children who failed school and assaulted gas station attendants. No, they were the sort of people you expected to have blonde, well-groomed children getting OP 2's and settling down with a young businessman at the age of 23 to have 2 alienated children who spent all their time in a childcare centre learning to be smart, well-groomed, well-behaved and responsible 3-year-olds. Instead they ended up with Ally and Ami, teenage delinquents.

They weren't rich, they were well-off, but not rich. They liked to appear rich, and sent their children to well-respected schools, bought expensive cars and fancy houses in good neighbourhoods, but then were left with enormous debt and little money for luxuries. Of course, money would have to be put away for an expensive holiday to keep up appearances, but when it came down to things like drugs, they didn't have the money for treatment.

Mrs. Kemp rubbed her neck with one bony hand, bracelets jangling. "Ami dear, we've thought about this long and hard and we just feel that it will be best for you. It's not far, you could visit on weekends or holidays." Her daughter turned her face away. She couldn't believe this. Her parents were sending her to reform school. REFORM SCHOOL. Reform fucking school. Well, that was just great, first her boyfriend, now her home and everyone she knew. This was going to be so much fun.

--

Thud. Bejita looked up from his physics textbook at the bored face of his identical twin. Aaron (A/N: That WAS his name, right?) pointed at a pile of books now sitting on Bejita's desk.

"I'm not doing your work, if that's what you're thinking." Aaron rolled his eyes.

"Contrary to what you consider popular opinion, I do not have a pink and brown striped binder and pictures of male celebrities taped to my exercise books," Bejita raised on eyebrow and his twin glared. The resemblance between them was even more startling when Aaron glared.

"So… why exactly are you giving these to me? I really do hold no affection for Orlando Bloom."

"I was at the hospital, because I was supposed to tell you mother has taken Lori to the doctor leaving father to cook, so you were supposed to get take-out. Of course, you weren't there, but that girl with the strange hair… Buruma, I think she is?" Bejita nodded slowly.

"So, you stole her books to ogle elves?"

"Let me finish. She was there with her friends or something, and she left her books behind and I figured since you're in most of her classes you could give them to her on Monday."

"Actually, you should have left them there. There's a math assignment due on Monday and she won't get it done now." Aaron frowned in thought, then the corner of his mouth lifted slightly in a smirk that had gotten him several dates back when Ami still didn't know Bejita had a twin.

"We-ell, I think she might like it if you took them round to her house… your name is written in all the margins." The younger of the twins (by 3 minutes) blinked owlishly. He hadn't been expecting that. He wasn't sure he was exactly comfortable with the idea of this freaky girl he barely knew having a crush on him right when he'd broken up with his girlfriend. His mind raced to think of something to say that wasn't related to Buruma Briefs.

"So… uh, what's up with Lori?" Lori was the younger sister of Bejita and Aaron, and looked nothing like them. In contrast to their spiky dark hair, Lori sported a more vibrant version of her mother's blonde ringlets. She was a bit of a hypochondriac, but somehow neither her mother nor her father had yet managed to notice.

Aaron rolled his eyes, "Oh I don't know, she probably pretended to have a cardiac arrest, or came down with a sudden case of rubella. Or perhaps it's mad cow disease this time; that would be fitting." He snickered. Despite being the 'nice twin' he had his share of not so flattering tendencies. One of them was picking on the favourite child, Lori.

He always got the feeling that somehow he was the one who got left out, before Lori, Bejita had been the favourite child, in his eyes. He was the one that demanded attention all the time. He was the one that could get away with hitting people by saying 'sorry' and then biting the child when any adults left the room. Actually, Bejita had always been the problem child. Or, as his parents had preferred to put it "just assertive, with a few difficulties channelling that assertiveness affectively" what that basically meant was "he's on medication for ADD, there's no sleep for the endless tantrums". Despite this, he'd always been coddled, and it was decided that he'd grown out of it. So, of course, they decided they could handle another child and Lori came into being. This meant Bejita was no longer the favourite, but Aaron held no sympathy for him. Anyone who could regain a few days of the loving limelight by throwing a brick at a teacher got no sympathy from Aaron.

Gah. He hated his twisted family.

---

Look, it's long… kind of… and no, that doesn't make up for however long it's been since the last chapter. Basically, I lost interest, and then lost the floppy. Oh well, you'll live. It's not a story worth stressing over.