A/N: It's shorter than most, but it's a chapter. I was told this would be preferred to another month's delay on an update.
Anywhoo, as I'm fast running out of excuses for my omnipresent apathy, I'll just skip all that and cut to the chase....

Chapter 21: Don't Think Pink

Saturday, November 15th
3:12 p.m.

"Will you just pick one?" Brittany begged, waving to the thick pile of dresses that hung around the fitting room.

"No- I don't like any of 'em," Lex crossed her arms defiantly.

Five hours and four stores into this excursion and they were still at Square One. Lex had managed to find something ghastly unacceptable with every single one of the dresses Brittany had pointed out, "Ok, what's wrong with this one?" she held up a trendy, black, strapless gown.

"Pink."

Looking down at the dress's hemline, Brittany noticed the millimeter-thick pale pink cord that decorated it, "It's so thin it's barely there!" she argued.

"It's still pink," Lex said as if such a thing made the dress toxic waste.

"Ok, this one?" she moved on to the next gown, a sleek red number.

"It's cut weird." Lex found similar faults for all the rest, "Too bead-y; Too swishy; It has lace; Are you kidding? It's got a ruffle!; Again- pink; Too many layers; It's itchy; The top part is ugly."

"Bodice, the top part is called the bodice," Brittany corrected in a mumble through her hands, which covered her face.

"Fine, then the 'bodice' is ugly," Lex whined, flopping down on the bench beside her and throwing her arm over her eyes. "Guys get to wear pants to this crap, I don't see why I can't!"

"Because, unfortunately, you were born without a Y chromosome," Brittany sat down herself.

"Well that can be changed, phenotypically, at least," Lex raised an eyebrow and grinned.

"As much as you getting a sex change would make my life easier at this moment, my instructions are still to bring you home with a dress, shoes, and a formal coat," Brittany clasped her hands together and stood up. She now realized why Max had used the old process of drawing straws with her, Jondy, and Original Cindy this morning. She'd, of course, drawn the short one.

"I know that look," Lex laughed, making Brittany realize she'd been staring at the girl. "And yes, the straw thing is always rigged. But don't worry too much, it's something people rarely fall for twice."

Mulling over how you completely rig straws, and coming up blank, Brittany opened her mouth to ask, but Lex cut her off with a wave of her hand, already knowing what the question would be, "When it's done with four people, Mom leaves the two straws on the end long and puts them in the middle- the other two people who are in on it pick them, leaving one in each of Mom's hands- one for her, and one for the newbie. However, each of those are cut in the middle. Whichever one the newbie picks, she lets them pull the top half, and the other half she drops into the sleeve of her jacket. That's why she hold her hands like this," Lex posed her hands, palms up, but fingers positioned like she was adding a dash of salt to something, "she hold her straw together so it looks long, and the poor, ignorant newbie just got stuck shopping with me," Lex patted Brittany on the shoulder sympathetically.

Brittany smiled and shook her head, "Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures," she turned to face Lex and sighed, "So does letting me in on this mean you're gonna be nice and just pick some clothes so we get this over with?"

Lex pursed her lips and shook her own head slightly, "No."

The Penthouse

8:45 p.m.

Logan sat on the couch with picture albums strewn around him. Running his finger along the edge of the photo in the middle, he stoically focused on the image of Lex proudly pointing at the bright purple cast that ran the length of her left forearm and wrist. The date below it read, "April 12, 2026."

"I told her the branches at the top of the tree wouldn't hold her weight," Max came up behind him, running her hands down to his chest and resting her chin on his shoulder. Leaning her head into his, she smirked, "The girl refused to believe me. Broke her radius in two places, ulna in one, and got a nice teaspoon fracture, too."

"And she had the cast for, what, three weeks?" Logan wondered aloud.

"It could have come off by two, but I made her wear it for a month." At Logan's questioning look, she held up her hand defensively, "C'mon, a kid falls more than fifty feet from a tree, in a public park, mind you, breaks her arm four different ways, and is totally healed two weeks later? That's the kind of rumor that attracts the wrong kind of attention."

"True," Logan's stoic expression returned.

"Ya know, you mope like chasing after a half-transgenic toddler was fun."

"I'll chase after the next five," Logan waggled his eyebrows.

"Yeah," Max rolled her eyes, "and you can carry them all for nine months, too."

Grinning, Logan kissed her temple as they heard the front door open. Brittany strode into the living room, carrying three shopping bags and looking like she hadn't slept in days.

"Setting me up like that, with the straws," she shook her pointer finger at Max, "not nice. Not nice, at all."

"Can you really blame me? You saw what she's like!"

"The monster may not be pretty, but that was still not cool," Brittany laughed and shook her head, holding out the shopping bags and dropping them one by one, "Dress, coat, and shoes. Ten hours, twelve stores. For three things," she flopped down in a vacant armchair. "I've never met a girl with such a strong aversion to shopping."

"Speaking of Lex, where is she?" Logan looked back towards the empty foyer. "You didn't drive by the Sound and dump her in, didja?"

"Tempting," Brittany smiled, "but no- Kayla called her, she stayed down by the car on the phone."

"Well, what'd she pick?" Max went to open the bag nearest to her, but Brittany shot out a hand.

"No! I'm not supposed to let you look! She said she wouldn't put up any crap about wearing it if it was a surprise."

"Surprise?" Logan twisted his neck to try to see the bag himself.

"Well, yeah," Max gave a small nod, "I did the same thing once, when we went to your cousin's wedding. If the dress is surprise, then Lex can say that the smile on her face is from shocking those who know her, not from secretly liking to feel girly every now then." At Logan's bemused expression, she shrugged, "There were several reasons why I wouldn't tell you what that dress looked like." Logan had called over and over that afternoon, worried about what Max had come up when she told him getting something formal wouldn't be a problem. Sure, she hadn't felt like telling exactly where, and how she had obtained the red silk gown, but the look on his face when he saw her was worth all those annoying pages. "Anyway," Max grinned at Brittany and stood up, "would some coffee get you to forgive me for your troubles?"

"It would certainly help." As Max nodded and headed off to the kitchen, Brittany turned her attention to the albums on the coffee table. "These Lex?" she slipped open the nearest one to see Lex blowing out the candles on the second birthday.

"That's her," Logan nodded.

Studying the regret that flashed in his eyes for the slightest second, she ventured, "You've hardly worked since they've been back."

"Well, I've got fourteen years to make up for," Logan shrugged.

"Are you still moping over that?" she chided. "I thought that whole deal wasn't anyone's fault."

"It wasn't. And I'm not moping," Logan had gotten the speech about moping from Max enough times already. "Finding where I fit in with a teenager is turning out to be a lot harder than I had anticipated- and I wasn't expecting something easy."

"Well, Uncle Logan, take it from someone who's just recently finished the 'teenage girl' stage herself- at this point, you're done until it's time to foot the bill for college."

"Words of encouragement are not your strong point, are they?" Logan asked rhetorically.

"Hey, I am a Cale, aren't I?" Brittany laughed.

A/N: So do I have any readers left? I'm continuing with this, and I really do want to write and wrap it up, for my readers. So leave me a review to let me know you're out there. Because if you've all moved to greener, updated pastures, well, I've got no one to finish this fic for.