Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with the OC

Sorry it's taken me so long to update. It was Easter weekend and I now have lots of homework. I'm definitely going to finish this story; the updates will just take a little longer to get posted. And of any of you are also reading Confused and Alone, don't worry I haven't forgotten about it. Same story: lots of homework and Easter! Sorry for the lack of updates I'll try to post longer chapters to make up for it. Thanks!

"Seth honey? Wake up," Kirsten said as she walked into Seth's room.

"Mmmm….go 'way," a voice grumbled from underneath the mound of blankets.

"Sweetie, your dad and I are going away for the weekend."

Seth's head immediately popped up from under the sheets.

"Really?" It was obvious that he was trying to contain a smile.

"Yes, but only if I can trust you to not do anything irresponsible while we're gone," she crossed her arms and looked at him.

"Mom, out of all the times I've been alone before what have I done to make you think that I would not be able to stay responsible and keep the trust that my amazing parents have bestowed upon me? I'm hurt that you would even think I would do anything bad. Deeply, deeply hurt mom." Seth put a hand over his heart for dramatic effect.

Kirsten smiled at her son's reaction. He had always been overly dramatic. "Honey, I do trust you. That's why we're going away on this trip. I just wanted to make sure that you knew the consequences you'll be facing if we come back to find our house a mess," She put on a serious tone. She wanted Seth to know that she was being completely serious. "You and Ryan will be grounded for at least a month, no car, no video games, no TV, no girls, you come over as soon as schools done, and no Worm Shop if we come home to the after effects of anything bad."

Seth scrunched up his face. "The Worm Shop? What the hell is that?"

"That place you and Ryan go to a lot. You know the place…… it has live bands. Your friend Alex used to work there."

Seth smiled. "You mean the Bait Shop."

"Oh yeah. The Bait Shop. Well, I have to go. We're going to be late for our flight. I'll see you when we get home honey." She bent over and kissed Seth on the forehead.

As soon as Kirsten left the room Seth smiled a devilish smile. As long as everything was cleaned up they could do whatever they wanted.

"Ryan? Kid wake up."

Sandy walked into the pool house to tell Ryan that he and Kirsten were on their way. All Sandy could see of Ryan was a leg sticking out from underneath the blankets and a mop of blonde hair sticking out from the top of the bed.

At Sandy's voice the leg was pulled in and the blankets were pulled up over what was visible of the dark blonde hair.

"Kid, you don't have to get up, I just want to know that you're hearing what I'm saying."

Ryan pulled the blankets down a little bit and gave Sandy a bleary eyed glare.

Sandy laughed. Ryan was turning more into Seth as each day went by. It was already 10:30 and usually Ryan was the first one up.

"What?" Ryan snapped.

"Wow, you're really not a morning person anymore are you?"

Ryan just flopped down onto his bed with an exaggerated sigh.

"Well, as I was saying before, Kirsten and I are on our way now."

Ryan grunted in reply.

"I want to come back to a clean house. If we don't then you and Seth will both be grounded. No cars, no girls, no late nights, no Play Station, no Bait Shop, and the two of you will have to come home right after school. Kirsten and I have talked about it and we think that these consequences are fair. We have a lot of trust in you guys and I want to keep it that way."

"Yeah, sure."

"Well, we're already late as it is so we should get going. I'll see you when we get back, kid." Sandy gave Ryan a kiss on top of his head before walking out of the pool house and down the driveway to the waiting taxi.

"Ryannnnnnn……dude, get up. We have the house to ourselves. And do you know what teenage boys do when they have the house to themselves?" Seth waited for Ryan to answer who was still buried underneath his blankets.

Seth heard a muffled "leave me alone".

"Ry, come on get up. I've been waiting for you for an hour now. The parents are gone and we have to start planning this little party we'll be having."

Ryan pulled the blankets off and started to sit up in bed. "Your parents made it pretty obvious that they didn't want us to have a party, Seth." Ryan reached behind his bed and pulled a pair of jeans and a black T-Shirt over. He got out of bed and started walking towards the bathroom. Seth continued talking. When Ryan closed the bathroom door, Seth walked over and began talking through the door to make sure Ryan could hear what he was saying.

"But dude, it's perfect. No parents, we have their trust, and we have an entire day to clean up. We can have it tonight and then tomorrow we can clean it up. They don't get back until late so seriously, there is absolutely no reason for us not to do this. They'd probably be worried if we didn't do something crazy. We are after all home alone, 17 years old, and…….uh….we're home alone, man. It's perfect. We can tell Marissa and Summer about it and then they can spread the word while we get everything ready. It's foolproof. We have to do it."

Ryan walked out of the bathroom and walked around Seth. "As long as we get everything cleaned up I guess I don't really see a problem with it. But we have to get everything back to normal. I really don't want to disappoint your parents but we haven't really ever done anything like this so it'd be fun I guess."

"Yes! Okay, perfect, I'll go call Summer and Marissa. You go out and get the alcohol."

"I'm not 21."

"But you have a fake I.D right?"

"If you're talking about the ones you got us for Vegas I'm not using that. It sucked."

"Well, don't you have one from your hoodlum days in Chino?"

Ryan glared at him. "Why would you think that I have a fake I.D just because I'm from Chino?"

"Well, do you?"

"Well, yeah but…"

"Then get going. We need to get this party started."

Seth walked out of the pool house and into the kitchen to call the girls while Ryan searched his closet for his fake I.D. He didn't think he'd use it in Newport so he had tucked it away when he arrived. After 10 minutes of searching he finally found it. According to the card he was 22 years old and his name was Ryan Wood. He had scored it off of one of Trey's friends when he was 15 years old.

He walked back into the main house to tell Seth he was on his way.

"Hey, Seth. Do you have an extra set of keys?"

"Yeah, on the counter right over there." He vaguely pointed over to the counter in the kitchen.

Ryan walked over to it and picked up the keys. "I need money. Kegs are expensive, and we're going to need more than one."

"Take my debit card." Seth reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open and pulled out a card. "PIN number is 1324."

Ryan took the card from Seth and walked out towards the Range Rover. He wasn't worried about his I.D. He used it all the time in Chino and it always worked.

"Hello?"

"Summer, its Seth."

"Hey Cohen. What's up?"

"Me and Ryan are having a party tonight. Are you with Marissa?"

"Yeah, do you want to talk to her?"

"No its okay. I was just wondering if you could maybe spread the word, seeing as me and Ryan don't exactly have a huge contact list we won't be able to."

"Yeah, sure. How many people are you thinking?"

"A lot."

"Yeah, okay. What time should I come over?"

"Um, is 7:30 good?"

"Perfect, I'll see you then Cohen."

Seth hung up the phone. With Ryan gone to get the booze and Summer working on the people, his party was officially under way. He was going to need to stay sober tonight though. Since it was his house he wanted to be clear headed so he could keep it under control. Well, at least a little under control.

"Corman! Awesome party dude!" Some drunk water polo player yelled at Seth.

"It's Cohen. But thanks."

People had started to arrive at around 8 and it was now 10:45. His house was full of drunk teenagers and he hadn't seen Ryan since he had gotten back with the keg. He was starting to get worried but Ryan lived here so he couldn't really get lost.

"Seth! Bro yo! Wadduupppppp?" someone clapped their hands down on Seth's shoulders causing him to jump. He whirled around and saw Ryan. A clearly drunk Ryan. He had a lazy smile on his lips and his eyes were glassy.

Great, Seth thought, I am now officially the only sober person here.

Ryan flung an arm across Seth's shoulders. "This party is awesome! I love you, bro. I really love you. I don't know what I would do without you."

"Okaaayy, buddy. How much did you have to drink tonight?" Seth had never seen Ryan drunk. He was nervous because now he'd have to handle this party all by himself but he was also excited to see what his foster brother was like when he drank too much.

"Oh, um…..a bit. But dude, guess what?" Ryan had a big smile plastered across his face. "I jussaw Marissa. She's so pretty. Don't you think she's pretty?" Ryan had a very noticeable slur.

"Yeah, Ry," Seth didn't know what he was going to do. He couldn't handle all this by himself. He needed someone else.

"Cohen!" Seth looked over and saw Summer running over to him. She was obviously flustered. "Thank God you found Ryan! I saw him drinking like non stop and so I decided to stay sober since no one else here is, to you know, keep an eye on him, and I looked away for like a second and he disappeared! He was hanging out with the water polo team."

"The water polo team?" Seth knew this was weird. The water polo team and Ryan did not get along. At all.

"Yeah, I know. He was laughing with them and they were playing poker and I didn't really know what to do. I've never had to deal with a drunk Ryan before. And also shouldn't he have stayed sober? Seeing as this is his house to?"

"Yeah, I don't know what happened. It's okay though. As long as we both don't drink anything we can deal with this. Don't worry about it."

"Okay, I'm going to go find Marissa. One again she's drunk out of her mind." Summer rolled her eyes before walking away to find her best friend.

As she walked past the front door she saw more people coming in. She stopped to see who it was and was shocked when she saw who was walking into the Cohen house. Volchok and four of his friends walked into the house acting as if they owned the place. Immediately Volchok's friends headed over to the keg. Volchok looked around and when he spotted Summer he walked over.

"Summer right? I was wondering if you've seen Marissa."

"And why would I tell you?"

"Well, then have you seen Ryan?"

Summer didn't know what had gone on between Ryan and Volchok. She wasn't really close with him so she didn't really notice when she didn't see him for a while.

"Why?" She asked. She glared at him.

"He came over last week to sort some things out about Marissa and he forgot his jacket. Thought he might want it back," he held up a black jacket that Summer recognized as Ryan's. After eyeing him for a few more seconds she told him what he wanted to hear.

"Last time I saw him he was out back. He's drunk out of his mind though so you probably won't be able to have a decent conversation with him."

Volchok's face lit up at the mention of Ryan being drunk. "I'll just drop this off and be on my way."

Summer continued to watch him as he walked away towards the backyard.

"Atwood."

Ryan slowly turned around holding the pool chairs for support. When he saw who it was his smile faltered just a little bit. "Volchok. Wha' you doin' 'ere?" He slurred.

"Just came to drop off your jacket. And also I wanted I wanted to give you this." Volchok shoved Ryan. Ryan stumbled backwards farther then he should have because of his inebriated state of mind.

"What the fuck? Get away from me." Ryan pushed Volchok back. "What the hell did I do?"

"Nothing. I just don't like you. At all." he gave Ryan another push. Harder this time.

At the second push the people around them stopped talking and watched the boys pushing each other. Ryan instantly seemed to sober up at Volchok's second push and straightened out and seemed to gain some more balance. He forcefully pushed Volchok backwards towards the house. That only spurred Volchok on and with one final punch to Ryan's cheekbone, Ryan was flung backwards into the pool. The people around him gasped and Volchok walked back towards the front entrance.

"Ryan, man! What the hell!" Seth came running out and kneeled at the edge of the pool.

"Hey Seth. What's up?"

"Um, you're in the pool. Why the hell are you in the pool?"

"Oh um, Volchok came over. He left though."

"Volchok? He was here?"

"Yeah, but not for long. I think." Ryan swam over to the pools edge and pulled himself out of the water.

"Well, are you okay?"

"Yeah I'm fine."

"Good, because we are going to have one hell of a hard time explaining this to the parents."

"What are you talking about? People have already started to leave and for a party it wasn't that wild. There wasn't any cocaine or anything. Just a lot of booze. Speaking of booze I think I got too much. What are we going to do bout the rest of it?" Ryan was obviously still a little buzzed.

"Don't worry about it. What I meant though was you have a shiner. And if I remember clearly those take a little longer then a day to go away."

"Oh. Yeah, um….." Ryan thought for a second.

"My parents are going to kill us. Seriously, we're going to be under house arrest or something for this. Wait, maybe if you just played up your injury, you know, made it seem like a bigger thing, then we could get some sympathy and maybe they wouldn't come down so hard on us. It could work. We should do it."

"I suck at lying. And I can't really act."

"Really? But you were in musicals and everything. Just think back to your Snoopy days and I'm sure you won't have a problem."

"I didn't act in those. Well, not really. It was just a bunch of singing."

"I'd like to see you sing. That would be funny. You should do it some time. But back to the issue here. If you don't try to make it seem like your hurt more then you actually are we have absolutely nothing."

"I can try I guess but I'm really not good. They won't believe it. And then they'd just get even madder when they find out we tried lying to them after we had a party."

"Come on, dude it's all we have. You have to try. I'll write it down for you and you can memorize what you have to say. That way you won't get stuck."

"Seth, when I played Snoopy my only line was to bark and I screwed that up."

Seth laughed. "How the hell did you screw up a bark?"

"I didn't do it at the right time and the drama teacher said it didn't sound like a dog."

"Okay. But this time you're not going to be playing a dog. You're going to be playing a person."

"……"

Seth put his head in his hands. "Ryan, are we screwed?"

"Well not if your parents believe me. I mean, I'm not horrible, I'm just not very good."

"Ryan, man. We're so screwed."

That took me forever! Sorry for the long wait. I feel really bad but it's up now! I'm just having a really hard time with school right now but once it all dies down a bit you can expect faster updates. Don't forget to review! Thanks for reading.