Title: Black Diamonds

Summary: Ryan makes friends with an African-American student at Harbor.

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to The O.C..

Author's Notes: This chapter contains a bit of a shout-out to Thursday Afternoon by muchtvs.

Chapter 12

It was Thursday afternoon and Ryan was at Sam's. And he was staying over for dinner, too. Ryan was at Sam's because Seth was home, sick. Some people panicked a little when Seth got sick right away after The Nana left. Some people failed to realize that there was no way that Seth had cancer -- he just had a fever. But Kirsten insisted upon taking Seth to the doctor anyway. The doctor confirmed what the more reasonable members of the family suspected: Seth had the flu.

But it was an infectious disease, and Seth was contagious, at least for the next few days. They all agreed that Ryan should stay as far away from Seth as possible for those few days. At least as much as he could, given that they lived in the same house. Kirsten and Sandy didn't want to deal with two sick teenagers in the house.

So Ryan came over to the Reeses' right after school. This time it was just him and Sam and Maggie. Sam was babysitting. Ryan and Sam had spent most of the last couple hours at the kitchen table, trying to keep Maggie busy and out of their way so they could get their homework done.

Sam had gone upstairs to his bedroom to look for some class notes that he needed, leaving Ryan looking after Maggie. The doorbell rang. Maggie jumped up from where she was playing on the floor in the den and ran towards the front door. She loved to answer the door. It was her new thing. She'd get sick of it soon and move on to something else, but for now, she ran to answer the door every time.

Ryan sighed, put down his pen, and followed her. She wasn't allowed to answer the door by herself, so whoever was in charge of her always had to go too.

On Ryan's way to the door, he heard her open it and heard a man's voice say, "Why, hello, little girl. Is your Mommy or Daddy home?"

As Ryan turned the corner into the foyer, he saw a white man outside. Maggie was hanging onto the doorknob and looking up at him.

She told him, "My brothers are here!"

"Maggie, you know you're not supposed to answer the door by yourself."

The man looked up when he heard that and saw Ryan. Ryan almost burst out laughing at the look of surprise on his face. Ryan reached over and picked Maggie up. She snuggled into him. The guy practically had his jaw hanging open.

"Can I help you?"

The guy was dumbstruck or something because he didn't say anything for a few moments. He just kept staring at the sight of a white teenage boy holding a black 3-year-old girl. And Ryan was staring back, enjoying the guy's dumbfoundedness with amusement. Then Sam came down from upstairs and joined Ryan and Maggie at the front door.

"What's going on?"

The guy relaxed visibly and smiled when he saw Sam. He addressed Maggie. "This must be your brother."

But Maggie was very adamant about this. "They're both my brothers!"

The guy looked confused again. Even more confused, if that was possible. He looked back and forth between Ryan, Maggie, and Sam.

Finally, Ryan got sick of this. "What did you want, again?"

"Um... I'll... I'll come back." And with that he turned and went out to his car and got in, with one look back at the three standing inside the doorway.

After he left, Ryan shut the door and put Maggie down. He and Sam exchanged a look and burst out laughing. The look on the guy's face was just so funny. At this point, Ryan was glad that Angela made that joke to Maggie back in September about him being her brother, and glad that Maggie had hung on to it this whole time.

Henry and the rest of the family got a laugh about it too when Ryan and Sam relayed the story at dinner.

Henry said to Gwen, "We should tell your brother that story. He'll get a kick out of it." Henry turned to Ryan to explain. "Gwen's brother and his wife are coming on Saturday to be with us over Easter."

Ryan nodded. "Sam told me."

Henry's brother-in-law Nathan had a couple of sons who were a little older than Sam and Angela. Nathan and Beverly's kids weren't coming this year because they were both in college. Their youngest was a freshman now, so this was the first year that were coming alone, without the kids. Henry was glad. Things could get a little crowded, and hectic, with the two extra teenage boys in the house.

Henry was surprised when Angela quickly spoke up.

"You know what would be good? If we tell Uncle Nathan that Ryan lives here. You know, like really our brother!"

Sam agreed with his sister. "Yeah! That would be great!"

Henry's first thought was that it was a crazy but interesting idea.

Gwen apparently didn't think much of it, though. "Kids --"

But the idea was becoming more appealing to Henry the more he thought about it. "Honey, I don't know. It might be just the thing to teach your brother a lesson."

Ryan gave Sam a confused look. Sam explained.

"My Uncle Nathan is a little... he... he doesn't really like... white people." Ryan raised his eyebrows. Sam quickly added, "He doesn't hate you guys or anything, he just... he told my cousins they couldn't date white girls, and he keeps telling us to move out of here into a black community..."

Henry thought he could clarify things for Ryan. "Nathan just thinks that the black community in America would be better off being more self-sufficient, more separate from the white majority. He doesn't realize that's not really possible in this day and age."

Gwen was nodding, now. "I see where you're going with this, Henry. If we tell him that Ryan's a member of our family, he's going to have to face some of his prejudices."

"Exactly." Henry turned to Ryan. "What do you think, Ryan? Are you up for it? You'd have to stay here for the weekend, like you did last month."

Ryan didn't say anything at first. It looked like he wasn't sure what to think. Henry couldn't blame him. It all happened so quickly. And it was kind of a strange idea.

Sam apparently saw Ryan's reluctance, too. "Come on, man. It'll be fun. And there's some stuff we didn't get to do the last time you were here."

Angela agreed. "Yeah!"

Ryan looked around at all the Reeses. They were all smiling and nodding at him, all excited about this idea. Ryan thought about it. It might be fun, like a practical joke. And besides, he wasn't really looking forward being at home this weekend. With Seth being sick inside the house, he was pretty much going to be confined to the pool house.

"Sure, yeah, OK."

Sam and Angela both thought that was "Great!"

Sam's Dad got practical. "OK. Everyone. We have to work this all out -- the history and everything. First of all, Ryan, why don't you stay here starting tonight, since you're here already? That way you can get settled in and look more like you really live here before Nathan and Beverly get here on Saturday."

It was all going a little fast for Ryan. But there was really no reason not to start it tonight. He didn't have anything he had to do at home. "Um... I guess. I'll have to get my stuff, though."

"Oh, right. Well, Sam can take you home to pack up some of your stuff and bring it back."

Ryan looked at Sam. "Yeah. I guess that would be OK."

Mrs. Reese turned to her husband. "I think this time Ryan should stay in the pool house. He's used to staying there, so he'll feel more at home in a shorter time."

Sam's Dad looked at Ryan. He nodded slowly, as if he really didn't like the idea, but was going along for the reasons Sam's Mom said. "Sure."

But then something seemed to occur to him. "Wait. Ryan, do you have to be home for Easter?"

"Um... No... The Cohens don't celebrate Easter. We just had Passover on Sunday. Sandy's mother was here from New York."

"Oh, right, Cohen, sorry."

"No, it's OK. Actually, they're half-and-half. They celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. But they said that they couldn't celebrate both Passover and Easter. Something about either Christ rose or he didn't. Something like that."

Ryan shrugged. Sandy tried to explain it, but Ryan didn't really get it. Ryan's family was nominally Christian, but they never went to church, and only celebrated the holidays in like a secular way, not a religious way. When they celebrated holidays at all.

Sam's Mom picked up the planning. "OK. Good. So, we'll have to figure out what we're going to tell Nathan and Beverly. Ryan, you were here last month, the first weekend of the month, right? Maybe we can say that's when you got here, and you've been here ever since. Angela, can you get the calendar from the kitchen?"

Angela got up and got the calendar off the wall in the kitchen. When she came back, there really wasn't room on the table to lay it out, since all the dinner dishes were still there.

Mrs. Reese suggested, "Why don't we all finish dinner first, then we can get down to business."

So that's what they did. They finished dinner and cleared the table. They got Maggie settled playing in the den. Then they laid out the calendar, and Mr. Reese got a pad of paper and pen from next to the phone to keep track of everything. And they were all ready to plan their little caper.

To Be Continued