Chapter Twenty-Three

I stood nervously in the door of my Daddy's office, waiting for him to turn around in his chair and face me. He was mad about something, but he hadn't yet told me what. It was torturing me-he'd called me down because he wanted to talk. Never a good sign.

"Callie, why is your phone bill three times as much as it ever has been?" he asked quietly. He showed me the bill, and I gasped. It was a lot, many long distance calls.

"They're not mine," I said defensively.

"But on your phone?"

"No, Jenny shares the same bill with me because of the freaky family plan thing. Maybe it was her?" I said innocently. My stomach plummeted. The biggest rule among my sisters was that you put your neck on the line before theirs. Ratting out a sibling was practically a sin. And I'd just done it.

"Who would Jenny be calling?" he wondered aloud.

"Who would I be calling?" I asked.

"Well, you spend more time on your phone than she does. I just assumed. Sorry Squirt," he said apologetically.

"Yeah, no problem," I said weakly, running back upstairs.

Our relationship was fragile. It was still recovering from the many bumps in the road-the discovery of Nikki, her and Sawyer, us withholding so much information. We weren't as close as we had been a month ago, we were on eggshells around one another. I wished I could take back what I'd said to Daddy.

Lauren got home before Jenny. She walked past my room before she noticed me, her backpack slung over one shoulder. She doubled back.

"Hey," she said, entering the room. I smiled weakly at my little sister.

"I just messed up," I confessed. She bounced onto the bed opposite.

"Ooh, with Sawyer?" she asked excitedly. I ignored her comment.

"Daddy thought I'd spent too much time on my phone and I said that Jenny had, and we're weird enough around each other without this," I admitted.

"You ratted her out?" she said immediately.

"Unintentionally. Hey, was it you spending all that time?" I asked curiously. She looked thoughtful for a moment before shaking her head.

"Nope, still spend less time than you. The everyone does," she said, giggling again.

"Must have been Jenny. Calling Rhys, maybe? If she used the main line Mom or Daddy could accidentally pick up?" I theorized.

"Maybe. But he lives within area."

"Yeah, that just doesn't make sense. Who else does she know who's out of area?"

"No one. None of us do, our world is fairly small," said Lauren.

"Yeah. Maybe the phone company made a mistake," I said.

"Yeah," she responded, looking at me oddly. The matter didn't bother her as much as it bothered me.

Jenny descended upon us then, and hugged the pair of us, chatting animatedly about her day and the cheerleading practice I'd forgotten to go to. Cough, cough.

"Um Jenny," I said, when a gap came in her flow of words.

"What?"

"well. Daddy thought I'd used all these minutes on my phone and then I accidentally said you had, made all these long distance calls. And I'm sorry," I said. She stared.

"Shit."

"What? I'm sorry," I said hastily.

"Oh, I know. It's not your fault. It's just that…" she stopped speaking abruptly as a call echoed through the house. Daddy's voice was raised in anger.

"JENNIFER ANNA JAGIELSKI!" he yelled. We heard his running footsteps, and he appeared, livid, in our door. She appeared to shrink guiltily before him.

"Daddy," she said weakly.

"All these calls. The area code's to Charlotte. You called Charlotte? You're in contact with her, right?" he demanded. I spun around to face her, my ponytail smacking my face as I did so.

"Um."

"Nikki Turner! You've been in contact with her! Do you even know what she's like?" he asked.

"She's a victim, Daddy!" cried Jenny.

"She isn't! She's just a damn good liar. She abandoned me. She abandoned you! She tried to kidnap you in a mall!" he said in frustration.

"Nikki says that's because you let Mom take care of me and she shouldn't be trusted! Besides, when she actually got custody of me you let me hide away with some decrepit old man," she insisted.

"Whitey and I did what we had to do to keep you away from a monster. And if you're m… if Nikki wasn't such a backstabbing bitch, it wouldn't matter that your mother looked away for a second," he said. I reached for Lauren's hand and she gripped it as we watched she horrifying act.

"Peyton Sawyer is not my mother!" cried Jenny. My knuckles turned white as Lauren gripped my hand again, but I hardly noticed. I felt myself pale, my eyes grow wide.

"While one can argue that Peyton did not give birth to you, she has taken care of you, risked herself for you, sacrificed for you, for seventeen years. And Peyton Jagielski. While everything else can be denied, she has been my wife for sixteen years. And for that, she deserves respect, if nothing else," he said, leaving the room in an creepy silence.

"She's your mother," I said softly.

"Shut up, Callie Scott," she bit back. It hit me like a slap in the face.

"Even if Lucas had been my father, I would never, ever regard him as that," I said coolly.

"It's not that easy!"

"Po! Yes it is!" I argued. She stared at me as I dropped her baby name. When Lauren had been young, she'd become obsessed with the most popular children's show of the year-Teletubbies. Her own nickname, Lala (from me, when I hadn't been able to say her name) had fit in perfectly with the show. Jenny treated the whole thing with scorn-her, a mature six year old, watch such a degrading show? It had landed her with the name, Po. It had stuck, though not as well as Squirt had. And I'd only started calling Sawyer BJ when we'd hit adolescence.

"I lost my virginity," said Lauren suddenly, breaking the tension of the moment. Jenny and I stared at her.

"You're fourteen. With who?" demanded Jenny.

"Oh, Jason. He broke up with Tess. It was kind of uncomfortable," she admitted. I groaned.

"How is it possible that my little sister lost it before me?" I asked, rolling my eyes heavenward.

"Like you haven't had opportunities. And you're not really one, are you?" asked Lauren in surprise.

"Uh, yeah I am," I said defensively.

"Huh. Just thought John and you were getting pretty cozy…" said Jenny suggestively.

"Well, we're not. We're broken up anyway, and I'm never going to sleep with someone like him," I said, trying to forget the time on his bed the day before.

"So, someone taller, with darker hair, blue eyes, hot body?" asked Jenny.

"Maybe I'll just become a nun," I said. They giggled, and I joined them.

"Why did you call Nikki?" asked Lauren bluntly. Jenny shrugged.

"I don't know. I've just been so confused, and she did give birth to me. She has my eyes, you know?" said Jenny, as hers began to tear up.

"I noticed. But she's such a terrible person," I said gently.

"Is anyone really good or bad?"

"Yes, two people. Dan Scott and Nicole Turner," I answered.

"She's my mother. I can't never speak to her again," said Jenny.

"Too bad."

"Yeah."