Chapter 5- Family Values

"Aaron! Turn that RUDDY MUSIC OFF AND HELP ME!" Claire screamed to the ceiling, hoping she would drown out the subwoofer that was making her whole kitchen shake.

Aaron mumbled something incoherent and soon footsteps were heard clomping down the stairs. When he entered the kitchen he had to duck to avoid getting hit with green-goop that was apparently mashed spinach (although he was tempted to send it in for tests as he was pretty sure Spinach didn't move…).

"Funny, Adah." He popped his headphones onto his shoulders and rolled up his sleeves. His youngest sibling was Adah who was just over one…and the fussiest eater the world had ever seen. Few people came away from an encounter with The Beast without having stains on their shirts compliments of Gerber's. She was particularly adept at chucking vegetables when your back was turned.

But for whatever reason she adored her oldest brother and could often be tricked into eating when he played with her.

His mother came into the kitchen from the laundry room and found him playing "Choo-Choo" with a spoon of green goop ("Airplane" was strictly forbidden).

"Thanks, sweetheart." She kissed Aaron's forehead, "I would delve back into the trenches but Ewan thought it would be cute to put Seth's frog in the toilet and now I have two fighting boys, a confused frog and one very blocked toilet."

Ewan was seven and the consummate trouble-maker of the family. He seemed to particularly like antagonizing his eleven year old brother Seth. The only person Ewan didn't prank was Aaron, who had achieved 'cool' status by nature of being nineteen. Or maybe it was that he was a singer? Or maybe it was the tattoos? Well whatever it was, Ewan thought Aaron was the coolest thing that wasn't frozen and kept a respectful distance between Aaron and all the pranks.

But that left poor Seth an open target. Seth looked like their father in all the wrong ways, but was scrawny like his mother. In many ways Seth rather resembled a frazzled mouse, but he was a sweet kid and smarter then the rest of them combined. Ewan was scruffy, if a kid could be scruffy. He had unruly brown hair and mischievous brown eyes with chubby cheeks and a devious grin. The two were constantly at odds. Claire maintained that Ewan was suffering from middle child syndrome and taking his desire for attention out on his brother. Charlie gave her a funny look and asked when 'he's a bully' became 'he's suffering from middle child syndrome'. Consequently Charlie slept on the couch.

Adah took advantage of Aaron's distraction to hit the spoon out of his hand. She wasn't going to eat unless the Choo-Choo was moving and Aaron's Choo-Choo had frozen mid-air when he thought about his brother.

"Sorry, I forgot Miss Adah's train doesn't make stops." He cleaned off the spoon and tried again. This time he managed to get the food in her mouth. It took him ten minutes, but eventually all the food was somewhat in her mouth…somewhat all over her mouth as well.

Without waiting for him mom to ask him Aaron got a cloth and wiped down his sister's face. She was really cute without mashed greens all over her. She had huge blue eyes and curly blonde hair and the biggest smile anyone ever saw. She smiled so much because it fooled people into thinking she wouldn't chuck a bowl at their head, or at least that's what Aaron believed. Adah looked the most like him of all his siblings, and he had a special connection with her. They understood each other. She didn't throw food in his face, he let her destroy as many Barbie's as she pleased. It was a good deal.

"Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!"

"Keely's home." Aaron rolled his eyes to Adah, much to her amusement. Keely was five and completed the Zoo that was the Pace household. Keely was the very image of their mother, but she was the biggest diva the world had ever seen (a trait Claire assured them was inherited from Charlie).

"Claaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaire!"

"Dad's home." Aaron smiled, sometimes Keely and Charlie were a little too similar.

Charlie entered the kitchen with a guitar strung over his shoulders. He kissed the baby and patted Aaron's head, "Where's your mum?"

"Breaking up the latest fight and probably wrestling with the toilet."

"Toilet? Hold on is she…" Charlie's first thought when Claire was anywhere near a toilet was 'Did we use a condom?', because Claire was known to get violently ill whenever she had a Pace baby. Aaron had apparently been easy on her stomach, but any seed of Charlie's managed to bond her to the porcelain throne like a stomach flu that never left.

"No it's not morning sickness. It's worse."

Charlie paled, the only thing worse then morning sickness was PMS, "Worse?"

"Much worse." Aaron leaned closer and solemnly said, "Kermit took the plunge down into the pipes today."

"Oh…how's Seth taking it?" Charlie bowed his head and tried to calculate the proper mourning time for an amphibian.

"Not well considering the frog was still alive..."

"What? How the….Ewan?" Charlie moved the guitar to a nearby hanger and rolled up the sleeves on his button up, "Wish me luck, I'm going in."

He bravely marched up the stairs just as Claire shouted, "Ewan, TOILET SCRUBBERS ARE NOT PLAY TOYS!"

Aaron looked at Adah who was giggling profusely, as though she understood it all.

Home sweet home.

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You'd think that Jack would learn Spanish after seventeen years of marriage. After all that time he could probably only curse in that language. His wife would curse at him, his kids would probably curse at him. But hey, he could always pretend they were saying nice things in that angry tone.

When Ana Lucia paused to breathe in the middle of a rant he put up his hands, "Time out, pause!...Now. Can you tell me what happened?"

Deep breath.

"I come home and your daughter has this letter from the principal. It seems she had a fight today. She broke some girl's nose. I ask her what happened and she said 'She deserved it' and locked her door. She won't open it. So now, if you'll move, I'm going to go to the garage, get the hammer, and bash the door down."

They really couldn't have reproduced themselves so exactly in their children if they had cloned then.

Jack put his hands on Ana's shoulders, "Honey just calm down, I'm sure we can reason with Marita to open the door."

At that moment the front door slammed, followed by a loud thud as a backpack hit the floor.

"DAMMIT!" The voice came.

"Chris!" Jack called, his grip on his wife not relaxing as she was still looking at the garage door temptingly, "Can you come here, please?"

A skulking seventeen year old came into the kitchen. He looked like a Hispanic version of his father, he had recently started growing into his frame and as a result was looking less like a string bean and more like a man.

"Chris, did you hear about Marita getting into a fight in school today?"

"With Whitney? Yeah. Broke her nose." The boy leaned against the doorframe morosely.

"So we've heard." Jack moved so that his whole body was blocking the garage door from Ana, "Do you know what it's about?"

"Something like Marita was going to get asked to junior prom but Whitney stole her date, then Marita was going to get asked to senior prom but Whitney said she was a dyke or that she was a slut or…I dunno, bathroom wall poetry no doubt." Christian started picking at his nails.

"Is that the whole truth? Marita didn't do anything to this Whitney girl to antagonize her?" Jack kept one arm around his wife in case she made any sudden moves.

"I think she might have shown pictures of Whitney hooking up with this Trombone player at a party and her jock boyfriend got mad and broke up with her or something stupid… I really don't listen to Sophomore gossip." Although he was forced to say that as a Senior (after all what's worse then an upperclassmen digging through the underclassmen grapevine?) Jack knew his son too well. Christian was protective of his sister, he watched out for her and kept an ear out for anything that was being circulated about her (and always attempted damage control when she did something stupid) but Marita made it hard to protect her. She was just as self sufficient as her mother, if not more so. She had absolutely no desire to be baby-sat by Christian as though she was still a child.

"See? Marita was provoked…kind of." Jack rubbed Ana's arms, "Maybe she'll let you talk to her about it now that you're not demanding details?"

"I'll try…but she's got three strikes before I'm coming for that hammer and she's already used two." Ana trudged upstairs to do battle.

Jack sighed as he looked at his son. Something was obviously on his mind and he only had twenty minutes before his shift started. He took a seat at the kitchen table.

"Why don't you sit down and tell me what's up?" Jack pushed back a chair so Christian could sit.

The boy reluctantly sat down.

"Hard day?" Jack prompted.

"You remember the kid that was on the edge of being expelled? Tommy?" Jack nodded, he remembered the boy vaguely, "Well, they assigned me to tutor him. Spanish mostly, but some biology too. He had the potential, dad. He wasn't smart, he just didn't apply himself. And he had it, it was all there. I helped him study for this big test that could've brought him grade from a D to a B…and he hits this kid in the locker room. Third suspension therefore they expelled him. He was so close." Christian let his head fall into his hands frustrated at his failure.

Truly, he couldn't be more like his dad…and yet he was his own person. Which amused Jack. He did have specks of Ana Lucia thrown into him and they could pop out. Though for right now it seemed mostly Jack.

"You did what you could do, Chris…and if other people fail it's not your fault. You put your 100 percent in, and he couldn't give you back half. That's his problem, not yours."

Christian raised his head and looked at his father, "But he was right there… he could've done it, Dad! I had him all ready!"

How many times had he and his father had this conversation? How many times had he actually listened to the advice? Jack sighed. Maybe his son was a little too much like him.

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"Goddamn, String Bean!"

"I'm sorry!" A voice squeaked, "I thought you were looking!"

Kate perked up her ears as Sawyer came into the bedroom with an aura of pissed off. His black shirt had yellow mush on it. She quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Banana." He muttered darkly, "Your little angle just hit me with a mushy banana."

Barely restraining a laugh Kate tried to sound solemn, "Maybe she couldn't find a rock."

They shared a moment before Sam came in. She was all grown up, nearly eighteen. She was tall, taller then her mother, with the same curly mop of hair and Freckles, but her eyes, her build, her snippy comments were one hundred percent pure Sawyer.

"Dad, you can't just say toss me a banana and then look away."

"She's got a point, Sawyer." Kate dove into mom hear and started dabbling the spot on Sawyer's shirt with a damp paper towel.

"Thank you Banana Rama for your insight into the conduct code associated with the phrase 'Toss me a banana'." He grabbed the towel from her, "I'll get it out."

Kate meandered over to Sam and nudged her whispering, "You got him pretty good."

"So did you last night… you two were aware that the walls in the place are paper thin?"

Kate tried to withhold her blush but failed.

"We woke you up, huh?" Kate's face scrunched up with embarrassment.

"Don't worry, give me time and I'll repress it with the rest of my childhood." Sam cracked a smile.

Within the hour they were gone from the hotel room they had been in and were on the road. Years ago they'd been forced to give up their old truck and ever since were making do with a half-broken down Chevy Cavalier that to this day smelled like burning rubber without a reason. They were halfway across Delaware when Sam kicked the back of the driver's seat.

"Is it my turn? You said I could drive an hour ago but you didn't pull over." Sawyer didn't respond, he kept his eyes glued in front of him as though she hadn't said a word.

That's when she kicked the seat so hard that he nearly cracked his head on the steering wheel.

"OUCH! Son of a BITCH!" He put one hand over his forehead and continued to watch the road, recovering from the swerve he'd made without hitting anyone, "Stop it, Sam, or so help me…."

"What? You'll glare at me? You said I could drive!" Sam sulked and Kate looked over at Sawyer.

"Sawyer, you realize that she's not going to stop until you pull over, right?"

"I know that!" He snapped and rubbed his head, "Ouch, goddamnit Samantha I think you crack my goddamn skull!"

"Then you're in no fit state to drive, pull over and hand me the wheel."

Reluctantly Sawyer pulled into the next rest stop and headed to the bathroom.

"Might as well pee now so I don't wet myself when you drive in the wrong lane…"

"That was ONE time!" Growled Sam as she took a battered CD player and an adaptor that allowed her to play it off the tape deck.

Kate unbuckled her seatbelt and slithered into the back. She always let Sawyer take the airbag, as he seemed a bit less comfortable with Sam's driving then she did. Mostly because Sam's driving reminded her of how she was at that age. Things like signs and directions had confused Kate so much that she'd bashed in her first two cars. For whatever reason her motorcycle was the only thing she could maneuver a road with.

She would've let Sam get one but… well it didn't make sense being on the run and all.

With Sawyer firmly strapped into the front seat Sam slammed the car up to 40 in a heartbeat. She didn't signal when she merged lanes, she was constantly racing other drivers…and she believed cutting someone off if they annoyed you was a God-given American right. The only thing she was good at was spotting traffic police, she could sense them from two exits away and immediately put her best foot forward. It just wasn't in their best interests to get pulled over…they'd learned that the hard way.

"Sam what's this crap on the radio?"

"It's not crap and it's not on the radio…it's my CD." She swerved into another lane and Sawyer clenched the armrest as though that would help.

"Why do I have to listen to your music?"

"Because I have to listen to your crap when my batteries die."

He glared out the window, "Which is hopefully very soon."

Sam sung along with the music, "And wherever you go I hope you know, That the hatred inside me grows DEEPER then the love I feel whenever you come back and start to USE ME, ABUSE ME, it's more then I can bare after you CHOOSE ME, then LOSE ME like you just don't care and it's just more then I can take…you're a hard habit to break!..."

Kate cocked her head, there was something odd about the song…more specifically the singer. She felt like she heard it before.

"Sam….SAM!" She screamed over the blare of the guitar rift.

"Hmm?" Sam turned her whole body when she turned her head and Sawyer reached over to steady the wheel before she careened them into the pissed off Ford Explorer pulling up beside them.

"This isn't Drive Shaft, is it?"

"God NO!" Sam shivered as though the name sickened her, "It's OffTune."

"Damn straight it's off tune!" Sawyer tried to lower the volume but he was too focused on making sure Kate was properly buckled in.

"Oh, it sounds like Charlie a bit."

"Charlie?" Sam made a ninety degree turn onto an exit ramp and nearly took out a Volkswagen Beetle that wasn't doing anyone any harm. Poor innocent by-stander. Kate's reply was lost in her shriek of surprise that a Chevy Cavalier can drive as well on two wheels as four.

Something from the back window flew forward and hit Sawyer's head when Sam slammed on the breaks for a red light. It was the CD case for OffTune. He glanced at it, turned it over, and read off some songs.

"What is this crap? 'Your Eyes, The Ocean', 'Mile High Club', 'Fire Dancer', 'Powder and Love'….who sings this shit?" He read the singers name, "Aaron Pace?"

"Also known as Sex God." Sam quipped.

"Pace?" Kate grabbed the CD case and perused it, "Oh my God!"

"Yes, Sweet Cheeks?" Sawyer gave her a cheeky grin.

She swatted his head and said, "Sawyer this is Aaron! Claire's Aaron!"

"The island baby?"

"Woah! Time out!" Sam swerved the car to the side of the road and put it in park, "You know Aaron Pace?"

"Honey, I gave birth to him."

Sam's jaw dropped, "Dude….you just won SO many cool points."

"Yeah well I'm cashing mine in for the right to drive…you take shot gun for a while Short Stack."

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Aaron came out of the studio sweaty and tired, and was immediately tackled by his mother.

"Oh honey you sounded so good! The new CD's really coming along isn't it?" Adah motioned to be handed over to Aaron and he took her happily, letting her ride on his shoulders.

"Yeah I suppose…I want something softer though…Like 'Your Eyes, The Ocean' was. It was the only soft song on the last album and I really liked it…you know? It's easy to write blood, hate, heartbreak and drugs…but you try and put feeling down and your getting something else."

"What's wrong with blood, hate, heartbreak and drugs? Besides the drugs, that is." Charlie popped in, "Your last record did great! You have a knack for rock music, you really do!"

The rest of the band filtered out, paying homage to Charlie and patting the kids on the head.

"Mum I want to sing! Can I start singing? I'm going to be a star." Keely reached her arms up to her father to pick her up, he whisked her up as Claire said, "We'll see when you're older, sweetheart."

"Oh moooooooooooooooooooom!" She pouted and Charlie whispered, "We'll get you a microphone for your next birthday! And it'll be sparkly and pink and then you get a stage…"

Claire rolled her eyes and barely restrained Ewan as he attempted to draw a mustache on the autographed picture of Billy Idol hanging on the wall.

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"I don't need your help, Chris! Just leave me alone!"

"Marita, you're failing biology and I passed it with an average of 102…just let me help you! Give you some pointers!"

"You can shove your self-righteous bull up your ass, big brother, cause I don't need you to rescue me, ok?"

She slammed the door.

"MOM YOU REALLY HAVE TO CONSIDER CUTTING THE HINGES ON HER DOOR!" Christian yelled down the hall.

"TELL IT TO YOUR FATHER, I'VE TRIED!" She yelled back, she was busy preparing a nutritious meal for her kids… Lean Cuisine's.

Par normal she was just off a shift, and Jack was due home in twenty minutes barring disaster (which always seemed to show up). Just then the door opened.

"I'm home!" Jack called. Ana left her post of sentinel at the microwave to greet him.

"We're taking the door off of Marita's room later."

In the Shepard Household they didn't do "Hey honey, how was your day?" because if Ana wasn't getting shot at, Jack was holding people's lives in his hands, and 'how was your day' just didn't cut it. Instead they cut right to the chase. It wasn't a delicate way of doing things, but it was their way and it worked well.

"Are we sure we want to do that and then have to risk watching what her and her boyfriend do? Cause I can ignore it behind closed doors but when its right in front of me…" His humor missed its mark and he sighed, "What'd she do now?"

"She's failing biology. Chris offered to help her and she goes off screaming at him. I think she needs anger management."

"Really?" he kissed Ana's head, "Cause she reminds me of someone else that everyone thought needed anger management…but really she just needed the right person to talk to."

Ana melted for a moment, the ice queen gave way to a wife happy to see her husband. They ignored the smell of disinfectant and gunpowder and gave each other a warm kiss, letting the drama subside for a single second before it came back.

However it may seem, this family functioned well on their dysfunctionality.

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"Mom I'm not a size 4, can you please hand me the 8?" Sam shoved the dress over the divider to Kate's cubical.

"But weren't you just a four?"

"When I was four."

Sam was touchy about her size. She was a tall girl and built big, but she was a far stretch from fat. People would say she "looked like her dad" and she took it to mean that she was a cow compared to her mother. It's hard to be the daughter of a woman more then two sizes smaller then you, because it just doesn't dawn on them that you can't fit into that size.

Which made clothes shopping a lesson in bitching.

"God…damn….zipper!" Sam gave up and tossed the dress to a heap on the floor, "What do I have a dress anyway? We going to be modeling for the Feds next go around?"

"Funny, Sam." Kate slipped on a shirt over her dress, which fit her as if it was tailor made, "I thought you'd like a sundress…its getting warmer, your getting older…maybe you'd like something a little more….girly or whatever."

Sam pulled on a pair of jeans with relish, "You can say that I dress butch and it wouldn't sound so insulting."

"Oh really, I'm not saying your fat."

"No, you're saying I'm large and frumpy. Can you say 'Ouch'?" She pulled on a shirt and then another one. Pausing to check how she looked she pulled on a skirt over the jeans.

"I NEVER said you were-"

"Do you have that Trucker hat?" Kate tossed it over the divider without finishing her previous statement.

Five minutes later they emerged; put on the coats they came with and walked out.

With over $300 in clothing walking out with them.

Shoplifting: the lesson every mother should have to teach her child.

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"It's the BEAT OF MY HEART! It tears me apart-"

"Shut up Keely!" Seth cried and slammed the door.

Keely began crying, "DADDY!"

Charlie spent twenty minutes teaching Keely new microphone tricks to calm her down. Aaron watched with amusement. The last time Charlie had been so excited was when Aaron had gotten lost in an electronics store and been found when he picked up a microphone from a karaoke set and started singing "You All Everybody". Charlie loved music, it was in the marrow of his bones. Thus his two favorite children were the two that showed the same love: Aaron and Keely. It's not that he didn't love the others, its just there was a big hole in what they could experience together.

To his credit Charlie actually went to Science Fair's to bond with Seth, found joke shops for Ewan to buy out, and takes the stains from Adah with pride.

Claire had a mother's perspective of her brood. They all had their own gifts and some she appreciated, other's she didn't. For example, while Ewan was a mastermind pranker, she hated cleaning up the after mass and having to apologize to 9 out of 10 playmate's parents. But he was exceedingly clever about the pranks, one day maybe he'd make a great strategist or engineer or chemist. Though today she was still rescuing frogs from toilets.

From Claire's angle, every one of her children was special. It was that mother's connection, she had known them since they were the size of a bean jiggling inside of her. Each carried their own way, birthed their own way and now living in their own way. She would never forget that Seth was the calmest pregnancy of her Pace children, and the quietest delivery and the quietest baby. Or how Keely had always had something amiss that she was center stage. Or how she always cried for attention. Or how her first steps looked like a strut.

Although undoubtedly their family was not the epitome of normal, having grown up with a rock-star dad, paparazzi flashing cameras at their strollers, and all that jazz, they were all pretty level headed. As level headed as you can be when your husband and oldest child are bloody rock gods.

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"Tequila and Tonic." Jack handed Ana Lucia a glass with a smirk, "Forty-two F."

"I still think you cheated when you got the tattoo… now you don't have to remember it, you can just look at it for a prompt." She accepted the glass warmly and moved over so Jack could sit with her on the couch.

He pulled up his sleeve where an elaborate 42 F was woven into the 5 on his arm.

"I didn't need to get it there to remind me of the number, I got it to remind me of my priorities."

"Remind me?" She knew what he was going to say, but sometimes it just felt nice to hear it.

"That my greatest fear is losing you. I don't have to fix you, I love you as you are and I wouldn't have us any other way then exactly as we are." He slung his decorated arm over her shoulders and pulled her against him. They basked for a while in the blissful silence of 1 am when the kids were asleep and their beepers were turned off.

The Shepard family was…. Something else. One minute dad was making pancakes and an hour later he's taking a tumor the size of Texas out of a newborn's brain, all the while Mom's holding up bank-robbers at gun point and chasing down drug dealers. Wasn't exactly your typical Dick and Jane lifestyle, but they'd worked it out. They made sacrifices, they made do…and they made a life that they both loved. They had two kids that drove them nuts and made them proud.

And life was following the same erratic scale it had always followed for Jack and Ana.

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Sam slinked out of the car, pushing her boobs into a more prominent position in her tank top.

"Just where do you think your going?" Kate called after her, catching up in a few strides.

"To get us a room."

"No your not, I'm not having my daughter show her goodies for a room key." Kate shrugged off her jacket, "I'm getting us a room."

"Hypocrite!" Sam cried, rolling her eyes, "Mom your not allowed to tell me that I can't show some cleavage for a room key! Your stole my fifth birthday cake with use of your cleavage might I remind you!"

"Damn your father when he gets loose-lipped." Kate muttered before meeting Sam's eyes, "You're not going in there, I said no."

"I'm not letting you in there!" Sam stood in front of her.

Sawyer pushed himself between them, "Will you two just quit it already? You'd think you two hated each other."

"Close enough."

"Hush, Sam!" Sawyer snipped at her before turning to Kate, "Neither of my girls are showing anyone any remote type of goodies unless its you and me in a hot tub later, capiche? I'll get the room key."

In he strode. Ten minutes later, Betty at the front desk was blushing and smiling after him until she saw Kate strut in, loop her arm around Sawyer's waist and mark her territory with a kiss. Betty learned an important lesson that day: Men are dogs. But lucky for Kate, she loved dogs.

Although Sam was exactly like her father. But female. Therefore Sam was a bitch, and she and Kate simply had not gotten along for the past couple of weeks. Within ten minutes of settling their room Sam stormed out of the room leaving Kate fuming.

Sawyer looked at her laden with trepidation, "Do you realize there's a vein in your forehead that looks like it's going to pop?"

"Yes, it's named Samantha." Kate ran a hand over her eyes.

Sawyer wrapped an arm around her, "Ah the joys of parenting. Warning side effects include tension headaches, sore throat, nausea, indigestion, raised blood pressure, violent outbursts, ulcers…should be exposed to when pregnant to prevent further impregnation."

Kate smirked, "You know, some people like having a bunch of kids, big families."

"Are they gluttons for punishment?"

Smiling Kate was finally calmed; Sawyer knew how to diffuse her by now. After a few minutes Kate turned to the door.

"I better go find her."

Sawyer cocked an eyebrow at her, "Honey did you even see the enraged, estrogen-seeped nightmare that flew out of here? Are you sure you want to go after her so soon? She might well be harboring homicidal tendencies and I've gotten used to having someone to sleep with, it'd be a bitch to have the bed to myself….although I could finally sprawl out again…" He seemed to ponder the last thought but Kate knew it was an act.

Sometimes Sam was a little too much like them.

By the time Kate found her she was sitting in a tree a few blocks from the hotel, watching the goings on in a little ranch she was in back of. Shimmying up the tree they sat beside each other in complete silence. Below there seemed to be a very moody girl about Sam's age fighting with her parents.

It seemed to be an epidemic.

"It's her birthday." Sam said, motioning to Happy Birthday balloons in the dining room, "They bought her a new bike."

Kate didn't know what to say. Ten minutes ago she was the bane of Sam's existence but now they were conversing about bikes.

"That's nice…I always liked bikes."

"She doesn't. She wanted a car." Sam was jabbing at a piece of dead bark with her fist, "She was screaming at them, pushed the bike to the ground."

The girl proceeded to storm out of the house.

"And now it looks like she's taking a walk." Kate observed, trying to gauge Sam's motive.

"She's pissed because her nice stable family, in her nice stable home, gave her a bike and not a car." Sam punched the trunk making her mother flinch, "What she doesn't know is I would kill for that bike. For one day of that life. Everything that she's so upset about I would gladly strangle her to have… and I hate her for that."

Kate wrapped her arm around Sam and kissed her head. She didn't know how to respond. She knew she hadn't exactly provided for a normal childhood or any kind of normal background for her daughter, but she wasn't willing to give her up. She loved Sam, and it might've made her a selfish, bad mother…but she felt the love balanced it out. At least a little.

She felt Sam stiffen in her arms for a moment.

She had the ability to wonder why before oblivion overtook her.

TBC

Author's Note: For those of you on The Lost Diaries: I love you, I do….but it is like needles in haystacks trying to convert my codes for you guys! And since I am sick and in no fit mood to convert the codes, this chapter is without any kind of italics, underline, bold or etc. If you'd like the version with it I am at Lost-Forum and and The Fuselage under the same name.

To everyone else: Hey look at that…that's a plotbunny burrowing in my head. Yay! It can keep the disembodied voices company…

Things to consider:

Just HOW are PB&J, Jana and Skate going to meet up? And how will the meetings go?

ALSO: If you think of any names for songs Aaron sings, feel free to suggest them. I am also putting out the ALL CALL for his CD cover (though I might take a stab at it myself). Also I'd love to see how you guys envision Sam, Christian, Aaron and the others…if you find or make pics please don't hesitate to post them.

I've been a good author, consistently updating every Friday….and no small part of that is Butterfly's ability to sense when I need to be kicked in the ass! Thank you to butterfly again!

Please Review!