Title: Breaking Author: Lala Rating: PG at the most Summary: From the point of view of a 7-year-old Carmen as she tries to understand why her parents are always yelling and why her daddy gets mad and leaves a lot.
Author's notes: This is my first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants fic. I'm sorry if anyone's extremely out of character. This will be updated frequently and won't be that long, probably only 5 chapters. Please leave reviews of any kind, and if anyone were interested in betaing, I'd be eternally grateful.
Disclaimer: The characters within do not belong to me. I'm just borrowing them to make things angsty. I mean interesting. J

Prologue

She's not quite sure what's happening. She woke up because someone was yelling and then her mommy was picking her up and putting her in the car. Her mommy never carries her, so something must be really wrong.

She falls asleep in the car and wakes up when they stop. They're at Lena's, she's pretty sure. They ring the doorbell and Carmen notices sleepily that they're both in their pajamas.

Carmen's too tired to understand what her mom and Lena's mom are saying, but her mommy's crying.

Lena's mom takes Carmen to Lena's room. Lena's asleep and Carmen gets into bed with her, feeling a little scared. She wishes she brought her teddy bear.

Lena's mom gives Lena a kiss on the cheek before she leaves and Carmen wishes her mommy would come kiss her, but she doesn't. Not while Carmen's awake, at least.

---

Carmen wakes up the next morning with Lena staring at her.

"What are you doing here?"

"I don't know." Carmen sits up, struggling to remember. "My mommy brought me here last night."

"How come?" Lena's getting out of bed, looking through her clothes. Carmen wishes her mom would let her dress herself but Carmen's outfits never match.

"Where is your mommy?" Lena's putting on a green sundress now.

"I don't know." Carmen's starting to feel scared again and Lena comes over to her. Carmen gets out of bed, and they walk out of Lena's room hand-in-hand.

"Hi, girls." Lena's mom's drinking coffee and Effy's eating Lucky Charms when Carmen and Lena come in the kitchen.

"Do you know where my mommy is?" Carmen's voice comes out small and she hopes Lena's mom heard her. If she tries to talk again, the tears might sneak up on her.

Lena's mom smiles at Carmen, but it doesn't look happy. It reminds Carmen of her dolls smiles; forced and fake.

"Your mommy's at home," Lena's mom tells her, while Lena goes to make toast. Carmen's not even allowed to play with matches. How come Lena can make toast?

"Can I go see her?" Carmen wonders if Lena's mom will let her try and make toast? It doesn't look that hard. Lena's just standing there, watching it cook. But her mommy's more important than toast.

"You can see her after school," Lena's mom tells her.

"After school?" Carmen doesn't want to wait until after school. She wants her mommy now!

"Mommy, look! I made a picture!" Effy's taken the cereal out of her bowl and put it in weird shapes all over the table. Carmen wants to do that, but she wants her mommy more.

Lena's mom goes to clean up the mess and Effy starts crying. Carmen wants to ask more questions but Lena's mom's not listening and Lena's busy putting butter on her perfect toast, so Carmen doesn't want to talk to her.

---

It's after school, and Carmen still hasn't seen her mommy.

Lena's mom picked them up, and took them here, to Bridget's. Tibby was already here.

Usually, Carmen will complain that Tibby always gets out of school before the rest of them do, but she doesn't care. Right now, all she cares about is seeing her mommy and daddy. Especially her mommy.

"Hey, isn't that Leny's shirt?" Bee's playing with a soccer ball. Bee asked her to play, but she doesn't wanna. She just wants to go home.

"Uh huh." Carmen tugs at her shirt, which is too big and pretty to wear to school.

"Why are you wearing Lena's shirt?" Tibby's sitting on the swing. So is Lena.

"My mommy took me to her house last night."

"Like a sleep over? Why?" Bee kicks the ball and it bounces away.

"Dunno," Carmen says. "There was some yelling though."

"What kind of yelling?" Bee's chasing after her ball and Carmen wishes she'd just stop talking about it.

"I was asleep, stupid. I wasn't listening."

Bee stops chasing the ball and Lena gasps. Tibby just looks at Carmen.

"Carma," she says quietly.

Carmen looks down at the ground and doesn't say anything. Part of her wants to be mad at Bee but most of hers just sad. Besides, if she stays mad Bee might leave and not talk to her for a while, like her daddy sometimes does with her mommy.

"I'm sorry Bridget." Carmen's voice shakes halfway through Bridget's name but she knows she has to say it. They made a rule to never call each other stupid. Ever. Best friends aren't s'posed to call each other names.

"It's just kinda scary, that's all. I don't like it when mommy and daddy fight. Daddy leaves and I don't know where he goes," Carmen says quietly.

Her voice goes up and down as she talks and even though she's not looking at anyone, Carmen knows they know she's crying.

."That's okay," Bee says. She comes and stands by Carmen. "Let's not fight like your mommy and daddy, kay?"

Carmen nods and Bee puts an arm around her. Tibby gets up and hugs Carmen from the other side. Lena comes to stand in front of Carmen, holding her hand like she did this morning.

And they stay like that until Carmen stops crying, even though Perry's come outside and is staring at them.

Best friends don't care 'bout stuff like that.