The dark figure watched as Lisa dragged Natalie to her car. It cursed under its breath. Oh well, I can always get her next time. And with a swish of its cloak, it was gone.

Lisa stumbled into her house fifteen minutes later, carrying a very asleep Natalie. She put the girl on the sofa and pulled a blanket over her.

Lisa stumbled into her bed room and didn't even bother taking her shoes off; she flopped on the bed and she had enough time to think one simple thought before falling into the deepest sleep she had been in since the plane: What am I going to do with her in the morning?

Lisa woke up the next morning and it sounded like every appliance was running in the kitchen. She stumbled out of bed, nearly falling over and staggered into the kitchen to find Natalie awake and making some kind of deformed breakfast.

"Oh, you're up! I was going to serve you breakfast in bed." She sounded slightly put out, but happy, nonetheless.

"What are you doing?" Lisa asked. Her headache had carried over from last night and grown in pain and size. The sun and Natalie's vibrant pink hair weren't doing much to help, either.

"Making you a pick me up breakfast." She got a glass down from an open cabinet and poured some green goop into it.

Lisa picked it up and tried to see if any light could penetrate the thick green drink, but it didn't. "What is this?"

"It is a headache fixer. I got a recipe from a friend at the orphanage and they said it is a really good low carb drink, but it works better for headaches and to make you perkier in the morning."

Natalie turned to the something she was cooking on the stove and Lisa set the glass down. "I really need to get you back to the orphanage. They will be worried about you."

"Nah, they'll be fine. Sometimes I will sneak out and visit a friend and they won't even notice I am gone. My door is always shut and locked so no one ever knows if I am in it or not. And most of the time I am in there watching TV or surfing the web and just won't answer my door because I am being lazy. And besides, the orphanage is closed for visitors on Sunday." She smiled to herself and went on to say, "Okay, so since I don't have a car, can you drive me to my tryouts?"

"For what?" Lisa ran a hand through her dirty hair. She needed a bath desperately.

"I am trying out for the Miami Women's Soccer team. I don't know if they will let me in because I am so young, but it's worth a shot."

"I guess I will have to." Lisa said, resigning to her fate.

"Thanks! It's at Sea Side Park. You know the one down town?" Natalie forked some kind of mutilated eggs, disfigured bacon, and burnt toast on to a plate and shoved it in front of Lisa's face. "I hope you like it! I made it myself!"

Lisa didn't want to hurt the girl's feelings so to get out of eating the breakfast from hell, she said, "What time do the tryouts start?"

"Twelve o'clock. Why?"

"It is 11:30; you probably need to get ready if we are going to make it on time."

"Oh god! Your right! Thank you so much for taking me in last night." She hugged Lisa and ran up stairs to take a bath.

"You can borrow some of my clothes for the tryouts. I don't think that they would take you seriously if you came in a halter top and jeans," Lisa yelled from the kitchen. She heard Natalie laugh as Lisa threw away the unpleasant breakfast.

"Miami State Penitentiary, how can I help you?" asked the woman from behind the front desk.

"I am here to see a mister Jackson Rippner," said the man from in front of the counter. He was tall and distinguished with long blonde hair.

"One moment please." She turned to the intercom on the desk and said, "Billy, we have a visitor for Jackson Rippner, inmate 108."

"Roger that," said the voice of Billy through the intercom. "Send him in."

The woman at the desk turned back to the man at the counter. "Go through the double doors on the left and it's the third door on your right."

"Thank you." The man followed the directions and when he reached his destination he saw a very sick looking Jackson. "My, my. You don't look to well."

"Boss, you are the last person I had expected to see here. To what do I owe the elated pleasure to?" said Jackson, thick sarcasm dripping off of every word.

"Come now Jackson, you don't work for me anymore. We are on first name basis."

"Okay, James, you haven't answered my question."

Josh leaned back on his chair and folded his arms. "What, friends can't visit one another anymore?"

"I highly doubt that you came here to 'chat' unless it was just to gloat."

Josh laughed and smacked his knee. He leaned forward and said, "You always did know me the best, Jack."

Jackson cringed at the name. "How many times do I have to tell you that I am not Jack anymore; it's Jackson." Every time some one called him Jack, he felt a pain in his throat and knee and remembered the day Lisa said that particular name.

"Whatever." Josh shrugged his shoulders. "But I did come to gloat, you are right on that."

"Well then let's get it over with. I have far better things to do with my time then to listen to you ramble on about some meaningless goal that you have been trying to attain for a very long time, and was never able to 'cross the finish line' like you used to say. Then one day, by miraculous chance or by your own doing, you managed to achieve it and in doing so, getting out of a sticky situation by the skin of your teeth. Like I said before," Jackson looked Josh dead in the eye and leaned in as close as he could, as to intimidate him, and spoke very slowly and softly. "I have better things to do with my time."

"Like what? You're in prison, remember. And the last I remember, although never experiencing it my self, there is not much to do on the inside." Josh took a minute to let Jackson stew in the stench of jealousy that he had been caught and Josh walked away scot-free. "I just came to say that I have the Clarke girl in my sights. A very good friend of yours screwed my master plan up, though."

Now it was Jackson's turn to laugh. "You know full well that it is hard to make friends if you kill them all, which is what my latter profession entailed."

"You know this person very well, and this person thinks about you very often. This person can't get you out of their head. They think about you every second and see you when they close their eyes."

"Enlighten me as to who foiled you yet again with you terribly dim-witted vendetta against the Clarke family."

"Lisa Resiert," he said with a smug smile on his unshaven face.

Jackson thought he was going to throw up.


Thank you to all of those who read and thank you Brit and BregoBeauty for being my first two reviewers! (throws confetti and cuts Brit and BregoBeauty a piece of cake) Thank you for all of your support, and I hope this next chapter meets all of your expectations! (throws more confetti)

Love,

Celia