So I know I've been long in coming, but I learned of something they call writers' block, and I'm still trying to deal with it. I don't know, I never really had a problem with it before. Anyways, I actually had this done last week, but my sister just got out of the hospital and this is the first chance I've had to sit down and type it.


Love in a Bottle
By me, Cassi Mo

Chapter Six: Emotions, they run you

"What have you got, Libby?" Jimmy asked as he slowed his jog to a walk when he saw the group of three already by the lake.

Libby's face shone with hope and sadness simultaneously. "A note."

"Are you sure it's her handwriting?" Carl asked skeptically.

"Of course I do," she snapped back. "She's my best friend. I should know her writing better than anyone."

"So what does it say?" Sheen cried. "I don't got all day, ya know."

Libby sighed. "It's really vague. I think it's a song, but Cindy and I haven't been interested in the same tunage since we were in the fifth grade. She went down the rocky path, and I rode the highway of hip-hop."

"Probably," Jimmy murmured, taking the paper from Libby. "I know this song, but I didn't know she liked April Sixth. I have this song on my computer in the lab."

Upon entering his lab, Jimmy walked straight to his chair and brought up the song. As Dear Angel started to play, everyone crowded around the piece of paper to read the lyrics along with the tune.

Jimmy sighed as the song ended. "A runaway note. So she has taken off this time. Apparently it's directed toward me, considering… how I treated her. I couldconstruct something to properly analyze her handwriting to see how she was feeling when she wrote it."

"You can do that?" Carl asked, amazed.

"Yeah, people analyze handwriting for a living. Your handwriting changes as you're feeling different emotions, even if you don't notice it."

"Yeah, yeah," Libby piped up. "How long?"

"I'm sorry?"

"How long will it take!" she cried desperately.

"Without sleep, about two days," Jimmy replied. "I already have some research done on it, I just haven't had the time to put it together."

"Get to work as soon as you can," Libby demanded. "We'll bring you whatever you need."

An hour later, Libby, Sheen and Carl found Jimmy outside his lab, working on his DNA scanner (and correct me if I'm wrong, but DNA is not found in hair. Other tissues, but not hair).

"This doesn't look like your note-analyzer-majig, Jimmy," Sheen pointed out as they approached him.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Libby said sarcastically. "What are you doing, Jimmy?"

"Well," he explained, "I was thinking during dinner and I realized that it would be more beneficial tocommence tomorrow so I would have a full night's sleep and breakfast to work with. That said, I kept thinking and came to the conclusion that I will not want to be interrupted all the time to let people in. And since I'm not startinguntil tomorrow, I decided to make the most of tonight and slightly adjust the security system on my lab. I'm putting your DNA into my system so you can forego knocking and be able to come down without me having to cause a frustrating cessation in my work to let you in."

Sheen was the first to react to what Jimmy just said. He dropped to his knees and cried, "There is a God!"

"Whoa, Sheen, just because you are temporarily in my system doesn't mean you own the place. On second thought, maybe I'll just put Libby in the system, since she's the most responsible, and you can get let in with her. If you want, you can use that bag of my hair that Carl keeps in his dresser, if he still has it."

Sheen's expression turned dark, and he shook a fist at the sky. "What comes down must go back up eventually!"

"Sheen relax," Libby said. "When you and Carl can learn to keep your mouths shut, you can temporarily be in the system too."

That seemed to pacify him, so Jimmy continued, his voice growing serious. "Here's the plan for tomorrow: As I work in my lab, you three will keep going to school, so as not to cause undue alarm, and to keep rumors from spreading." He gave them all a 'look.' "You know what kind of rumors I'm talking about. Anyways, Libby will come here after school with plenty of Purple Flurp and whatever foods you can bring that have a lot of carbohydrates and/or protein. Carl and Sheen, you will legally search for scrap metal that no one else wants but is still large enough to work with.You can usemy hypercube to store it all in, but please try to act smart about this. Bring as much as you can, because I don't want to have to scavenge for awhile. Once you're done, come straight back, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. Capiche?"

Once everyone nodded, Jimmy exhaled, suddenly very fatigued. "Okay guys, go to bed. I'll see you after school tomorrow."


Three days later, Jimmy emerged from his lab, pale and haggard. He entered his kitchen to find his mother and sister just sitting down to dinner, both of them eyeing him curiously as he eyed their plates of pasta.

"Grab a bowl, Jimmy," his sister, Sophie, said cheerfully. "The pots are still on the stove."

Jimmy sat down with an overflowing bowl of angel hair and Alfredo sauce, and didn't even give his mother a chance to ask him anything before he dug into his food.

"You look horrible, Jimmy," Sophie said. At four she had an abnormally extensive vocabulary for her age and beyond impressed her preschool teachers. Much of that had to do with having Jimmy as an older brother. "What happened to delay your work another day? I was counting on you being back yesterday."

He paused his scarfing long enough to answer her. "My power cells suffered spontaneous inner core implosions while I was turningthe machineon for the first time. That in turn ruined the holding box for the cells, so I had to spend another day fashioning three new power cells and a new holding box."

Sophie's amethyst eyes followed his beryl ones intently, for not only was her brother her idol, but she knew his attention was not something to be taken lightly. He granted her an affable attitude that he rarely graced his mother with at times, and even though she was many years his junior, he still treated her as an equal. She and Jimmy were closer than siblings in some areas, and communication was one of them.

"Well, that stinks," Jimmy's mom interjected. She hated being left out of conversations and was always butting her way into them. "So is it finished now?"

"Not yet," Jimmy replied, suddenly taking on a bored tone. "I still have to test it." He turned eagerly to Sophie. "Do you want to help me test it? You can write sample notes for me and get to hang out in the lab."

"Yeah!" Sophie exclaimed. "When?"

"After the dishes are done, I guess. We can test it and then call the others. How does that sound?"

Sophie made a strange expression. "As long as Sheen doesn't pester me like he normally does."

"I can't promise anything with Sheen, but if he gives you any trouble, you just tell me or Libby and we'll set him straight as a rod."


"So how were you feeling when you wrote this one?"

Jimmy passed the note written by Sophie under the reader eye of the Neutronic Note-alyzer and waited at the console nearby for the results. The machine itself was huge; Jimmy couldn't downsize it on account of the time limit. He had it in one corner of his larger workroom of his lab since it wouldn't fit in the other one without makingthe alcovecluttered. Standing over eight feet tall and six feet wide, it easily dwarfed any other invention in his cache, besides his vehicles. Right now he was in front of it, pushing buttons fervently.

"It says you're excited… and eager." Jimmy's tone held defeat. "Like the last five notes." But Sophie wasn't one to give up so easily.

She giggled. "Well, it's right. I am excited to be testing out your new invention, and I'm eager to see if it really works. I can't seem to make myself feel any other way. Did you get my hidden message?"

Jimmy pushed one more button before answering. "'Jimmy has smelly feet,'" he read. "It's okay. Your feet reek too. I can accept that the hidden message finder works, but I'm still not convinced about the emotion detector."

"Then how about you write something?" Sophie suggested. "Like a second opinion, to deepen the pool of results. If it turns out the same, then don't call the guys in."

Jimmy hugged her, suddenly refilled with new hope. "I knew I taught you something worthwhile in these last four years. What should I write, though?" he asked, walking over to the long worktable in the middle of the room.

"Anything," she replied, "whatever is on your mind."

Jimmy sighed and started to write. Two minutes later, he held up a paper filled with words. He passed it under the reader eye and watched the words come up on the screen.

Dear Sophie,

It's 8:30pm and past your bedtime, but I have you in my lab for machine testing. We are testing my Neutronic Note-alyzer, which bears your name in addition to mine. I'm not sure if I like that idea, but that's a different story for another time. If it works, we'll use it on Cindy's runaway note. Speaking of Cindy, I'm not sure whether to be worried about her or not. I know she can take care of herself; I've seen her do it, but she's only 16 and has led a fairly sheltered life. I hope this is long enough.

Love,
Jimmy

"So?" he asked anxiously. "What does it say about the note?"

Instead of answering him directly, Sophie asked him a question of her own. "Why does it say you're feeling hopeless, afraid and defeated?"

Jimmy grinned. "Right now, I'm actually elated that it works." His face fell as he answered her question in depth. "Worrying about Cindy has drained me of all my other emotions. Soph, I'm the reason this all came to pass. I said words I didn't even know I could think about another person, let alone the woman I love. Locating a runaway is hard business, because there are infinite variables. I dreamt about her the other night, you know."

"Nope, I didn't know," Sophie replied, sitting down on the floor. "Sometimes, if you talk about what's bothering you, it doesn't bother you as much."

"I was at a funeral," he started, "Cindy's funeral. The programs were blank and the only people I recognized besides her were her parents. At the end, I got up to say something about me being the cause of her death, and as I was leaving, I saw words carved into her left wrist. Cindy is left-handed, you see, so this made things complicated. They said it was suicide, but I knew then that she was murdered." Jimmy's tone became more introverted as he continued, now talking more to himself than to Sophie. "But before I could do anything about it, the mourners grabbed me and threw me into an endless pit. I was never so scared in a dream or in real life as I was then. Even doing calculations about it to prove it wrong didn't help. I felt horrible when I woke up, because I'm usually the strong one, but I wasn't strong enough to save her."

Halfway through this he had slumped to the floor and now Sophie climbed into his lap. "Don't talk like that. You're a genius, and I know in my heart that if anyone can bring her back, it's you. Remember, even death cannot stop true love. Whether you want to admit it or not, you and Cindy were fated to be together since the beginning of time. She won't slip through your fingers. And believe me, if I can see it at only four years old, everyone can, including you."

"You know," Jimmy commented, "children do think the clearest." With a yawn, he stood and said, "I'll show it to them tomorrow. I've been up too long, and I'm way overdue for some much-needed sleep. What do you say?"

Sophie smiled and took his hand. "Let's go."


I know, I need to stop with these long notes, but I'll be proofreading and I need to write something. (I still use April Sixth illegally and it's not mine.) I just needed to say that tunage is pretty much music. Like Ron Stoppable calls snacks snackage, I do that for music.

I'll admit it. This chapter was mostly a filler. I needed to introduce Sophie, because she'll be important later. The next chapter should be better, though.

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