Chapter Six- How do you know?

"Hey Mom, we're home!" Drew called out as they walked into their house.

Jamie came walking toward them, drying off her hands with a blue rag cloth.

"Hello guys. Come sit down, tell me about our day." Alex looked up at her brothers and they couldn't help but role their eyes at each other. Sixteen, and their mother still wanted to know about their day. They followed her into he spacious living room none-the-less and sat down on the couch, sinking into it.

"So…" She wasted no time to start the interrogation. "How was the school?"

"Nice."

"Your teachers?"

"They're okay, just teachers." Brian said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Have you made any friends?"

"Yeah." They stopped waiting for another question.

"Well! Tell me more. Who did you meet, what did you do, how did you like it?"

"School was great mom. They have a nice campus, which is really clean, tennis courts, swimming pool, soccer and football field, and all that good stuff." Drew answered.

"We met lots of people but the two that we got to know the most is Clark and Chloe. We also met Lana, who owns a little coffee shop/hangout place called the Talon. She's really sweat, and she makes a mean Café Latte."

"Well I'll have to go try it then."

"Definitely."

"Clark is the superman of this town. Every place has a hero and here it comes in the form of a farm boy. He and Chloe have a thing for each other, but I think that Lana likes him too. They interviewed us because Clark and Chloe work for the newspaper and so they wanted to do an article on us."

"Really! That's nice of them. Do you have homework?"

"Yes." The three stated.

"Okay, well do your homework and then you can go outside. It's lovely over here. Much nicer that it ever was in Michigan."

"Yeah Mom, we will."

"Alright." The three stood up and marched to their rooms. They were adjoining rooms, with a door that allowed them to enter each others rooms without going through the hall, or being noticed. Jamie watched them enter their rooms, satisfied they would work on what they needed to. As soon as they had set their backpacks down, Drew and Brian dashed over to the door, and charged into Alex's room.

"Hey! What if I were changing! You can't just come in like that."

"How do you know Lana likes Clark?" Brian asked, ignoring her rebuke.

"She didn't say anything."

"She didn't hint it."

"How can you tell?"

Alex couldn't make out on word of her brothers furious psychobabble whispers.

"Will one of you please stop talking for one minute and tell we what's going on?"

"HOW-CAN-YOU-TELL-LANA-LIKES-CLARK?" Brian said slowly.

"Oh! I just can. The way she looks at him, ignores Chloe, shuns out other guys."

"Then why did she leave?"

"Because Clark and Chloe started moving closer together. His answer to your question was spur of the moment."

"Which answer? What question?"

"That he had Chloe had 'a thing'"

"And how do you know THAT?"

"Because Chloe blushed and Clark smiled and stared into her eyes."

"Wait… he smiled?" Drew said. "I don't get it. Should guys not smile at girls?"

"If the two of them had really been going out SHE would have smiled and He would have hugged her, or done something a little more touchy-touchy. They were just friends, and when you asked him the question, he jumped at the opportunity to become something more. He asked her out in front of your noses and you didn't see it!"

"GET OUT OF HER ROOM NOW!" Jamie called from downstairs, hearing her children talking in one room.

"Mom… one min…"

"NOW!" she shouted. She heard the middle door swing open and then shut again. Two minutes later, sure that they weren't sneaking back into Ali's room (she still couldn't call her Alex properly) she went to start preparing dinner.

Alex was sitting in her room with her notebook out, as she had been before her brothers had bombarded her with irrelevant questions. Looking at her Biology book she wished her brothers were questioning her again. She couldn't make heads or tails of these terms and equations.

Peeking out of her door, and not seeing her mother, she went into her brother's bedroom.

"Hey guys. Listen, can you help me… please? Do either of you understand the Phylum Chytridiomycota?" She asked. She knew that Brian would most likely know because he wanted to be a Marine Biologist when he got a scholarship.

"Yeah." Brian answered. "Here, sit down I'll explain it to you. There are about seven-hundred and fifty protest species in the Phylum Chytridiomycota. The chytrids are aquatic protists characterized by gametes and zoospores with a single, posterior flagellum." (A/N- I was doing this while I was studying…)

"Um… could you repeat that in English please?" Alex said, almost laughing.

"Ditto that." Drew said, really laughing. Alex sat down and the three began to study.