Chapter 16

It's early Saturday evening, the night Grace asked me to baby-sit for Ally so she and Brendan could go out. I'm standing in front of the Finneys' apartment, listening to the callbox-thingy ring. It's abnormally cold, and I stamp my feet, trying to keep warm.

"Hello?" a man's voice that I recognize as Brendan's answers.

"Hey, it's Kylie. I'm downstairs."

"Hey Kylie, I'll buzz you in."

Seconds later, the door hums and I pull it open, grateful to get out of the cold. Once I get into the elevator, it groans almost as if in protest that it should actually be made to transport passengers on this cold of a night.

Brendan and Grace's apartment seems to be in casual disarray when I get in. Grace pulls the door open when I knock, looking harried.

"Hey Kylie, thanks for coming. Ally's in her high chair in the kitchen. If you could finish giving her dinner, because I don't feel like wearing any more of it tonight, we're about ready to leave."

"Um, okay," I say meekly as she rushes off, and her words that seemed to travel at the speed of light trigger a connection in my brain.

"Hey, Ally-o," I say as I go into the kitchen and see Ally. She gives me a delighted grin only slightly marred by the green beans she has somehow stored inside her cheeks. I pull up a chair beside her and watch with amusement as she picks through the rest of her food, seemingly sorting it into "Playable" and "Non-playable" piles.

After a moment, it dawns on me that this will very easily be my life in the not-so-distant future—watching my little brother or sister tempt the boundaries of normal baby-mouth capacity.

Footsteps behind me make me turn as Brendan walks into the kitchen.

"Hey," he says, "How're you doing? I haven't seen you around the station in a while."

"Yeah, well I sort of make it a point to generally avoid the police station—you know, it being a police station and all. But I did do a ride-along with Sully and Ty a few weeks ago," I answer.

"Really? How was that?"

"It went okay, it was for my government project at school."

"Brendan! If we don't leave now, we're going to be late!" Grace's voice calls out from the living room. She joins us in the kitchen.

"Again, Kylie, thanks for coming. We should be back around midnight, maybe later. Call if you have any problems, okay? Oh, and Daniel should be home by ten."

The mention of Daniel's name makes me smile (remember Daniel? Grace and Finney's son who in a fairy tale-like world would be my betrothed?). "All right, sounds good. See you later."

Several hours later, once Ally's been put to be and I am off active baby-sitter duty (unless there should be an unfortunate Blanket Incident, like last time) I sit down on the couch and for once have some time to think. That may sound weird, I know, but it's like I don't have any time to do that anymore—or anywhere. The apartment lately has been overflowing with baby-related items, and practically every weekend we've been digging through (what I thought was) long-lost random crap, deciding what's going to survive the move and what we're tossing.

Holly and my dad have been getting along really well—I guess our whole morning sickness routine beat what little he could muster up to complain about out of him. As for me, Holly's been pretty easy to deal with—before she got pregnant we'd been having a little bit of the old (step)mother-daughter-typical-disagreement issues, but that fetus must be giving her a boost of extra-maternal hormones, and she's been a lot less easy to fight with. Which translates to not fighting at all.

As far as my dad and I go, we're going. Or something. What I mean is we're fine, despite my knowing for a fact that he's definitely having sex with my stepmother (Hello? The pregnancy thing? It's still sort of weird though), and the whole him-making-us-move-out-of-my-childhood-home thing. But we're good, old Carlos and I. Except that I don't think that he's going to be too thrilled when I inform him of my much-needed shopping excursion due to the fact that last week I washed one of my lip balms with the rest of my laundry, and I now have enormous grease stains on half of the clothing that I regularly wear.

But you know what? Despite my whole jumping-the-gun, making-huge-deals-out-of-nothing, tendencies-to-freak-out thing (come on, you must've noticed, having been privy to my innermost thoughts over the past couple of months) I really think I'm going to be okay. The moving thing sucks, but I'm getting a baby sibling (and okay, my dad and Holly aren't exactly seeing my side regarding the name Desmond—boy or girl).

Oh my God, I'm accepting the circumstances of my life. Acceptance, that's the final stage when you find out you're going to die, right? Except that I don't think I'm dying, I think that I'm growing.

THE END

Author's Note: That's it, the end! I want to give a big thank-you to everyone who has followed this story through, and an even bigger thank-you to everyone who was brave enough to review (and to everyone who didn't—I know you were reviewing in spirit).

My longest-running story has come to a close. If it seems random and abrupt, that's exactly what Kylie's been feeling for so long. I hope you enjoyed the character of Kylie that I created, and if I receive enough interest I may do an epilogue. If not, I had a great time, and I hope you did too!