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Alright all, here it is. I hope I made it long enough to make up for my problematic lack of updating. Thanks to all readers and reviewers! It means a lot that you're all sticking with me. Any mistakes in here let me know!! Oh and all belongs to Sarah Dessen :P

I'm willing to bet that a lot of people are going to see Harry Potter!! Hope it's awesome and have fun!

That same night, I lay awake in my bed, my arms folded behind my head as I tried to sleep. I listened to the thunder rolling in the distance, preceded by flashes of blue lightning. They flashed across the sky like jagged cobras, illuminating the land in a way neither the sun nor the moon was capable of. Sometimes the only true artist was Nature herself.

I'd thrown my window wide open, preferring the cool, pre-storm breeze over the whirring of the air-conditioner. My mother had always done the same thing, and I never could forget the sound of rain coming from her room, just across my own, always mingled with the sounds of Bert's raucous snoring on the other side of the wall. It had been a kind of lullaby to me, once upon a time.

Suddenly, my phone lit up and skidded around my nightstand. I watched its mad vibrating dance for a few seconds before snatching it up and sighing. I knew who it was, even if the number was unknown to me. Only one person called at three in morning.

"Did I wake you?" Becky whispered, unprompted. I pulled a hand through my hair.

"No. Whose phone are you using this time?"

She snorted quietly, and I knew her roommate-like everyone else in the world-was fast asleep. "Dr. Bloodgood's. That crazy bitch."

It took me a moment to find the meaning (and irony) in the name. "Your shrink," I said flatly. I should just hang up on her, I thought to myself, as I always did when she pulled this little stunt. By talking to her, I was just encouraging her to steal (or borrow, as she put it) from the people who were only trying to help her. But I never could bring myself to hang up.

She had never hung up on me.

"Don't give me this shit, Wes. I get enough of it here. I'm going fucking crazy in here, you know? I just wanted to hear you. I miss you."

I rubbed a hand over my face as I stood to look out the window. Another flash of lightning cut open the sky, highlighting all the smallest details of farm and forest around this old house.

"I miss you too," I said, because it was true. I opened my mouth to say more, but she cut me off.

"Jesus Christ, do you hear that? My fucking roommate snores like a goddamn bear. I swear I'm going to smother her with a damn pillow...She'd probably be thankful."

"Beck..."I began disapprovingly.

"Oh lighten up, Wes, Jesus. I was kidding. You're no freaking fun anymore." A burst of thunder erupted, and I flinched. "Don't worry, babe. I get out of here soon. I'll restore the old you in no time." Her voice had gotten low and sensual, but it had no effect on me with the sentence she was forming with it. "It'll be just like old times...Oh shit! I gotta go."

And then dead silence filled my ear with a click. I couldn't help the relief that seeped through me to the very core.

I loved Becky, I really did. But there was no denying that, while the girl I had fallen for had never changed, I had. We'd been the same people during the darker stages of my life, but I liked to believe that I had done some serious growing up, and I was simply waiting for her to do the same.

It was getting harder and harder for me to bear her crude, judgmental ways of talking, to watch her hurt the people who loved her and wanted the best for her, because I knew that she should be relinquishing these habits as she got closer to her departure from rehab. Every time she called me, I hoped that she would have changed for the better in some small, subtle way. But she was always static.

I wait several more minutes in case she called again, but she never did. So I rested back against the mattress, and closed my eyes.

And then it started to rain.

The phone call kept me distracted for the next few days, so I poured into some sculptures I'd been planning for a while. The parts I'd bought from Mark-even the pity parts that I didn't think I'd ever use-might as well have been a gold mine.

I worked in a small garage-like barn on the other side of the driveway, the Hole in plain sight. This was good, since I could keep an eye out for victims while I worked.

Delia came in one day with a tray of lemonade and a sandwich. I lifted my foot off the gas, turning the torch off, and lifted off my welding visor. She glanced helplessly around the cluttered workspace briefly before balancing the tray precariously on the sawhorse.

"I thought you could use some sustenance," she told me, coming to look at what I was working on. "You've been at this since nine." She came to look at the piece I was working on: an angel.

I stretched my arms back, hearing my back crack in several spots. "What time is it?" I asked, grabbing the glass of lemonade off of the tray and pouring it down my throat in big gulps. Delia's lemonade was all sugar, and I had to work to keep my face from scrunching.

"Three," Delia replied, poking the tip of one of the many nails I'd been spent welding to the top of the sculpture's head. "This is just beautiful, Wes. Going for the Medusa look?"

I shrugged, looking on as she continued examining my work. Maybe with anyone else, I'd be a little uneasy. But I never feared Delia's criticism. She just had that way of phrasing everything to soften the blow.

"Have you managed to find a place to sell at?"

I shook my head. "I'm working on it."

Delia walked back around to me, leaning against a wall. "So listen...I know something's been distracting you, Wes, and I also know you don't like to be bothered when you're distracted...But there is a huge party tonight that just called us in at the last minute, and I really need all the help I can get."

I sighed and ran a hand over my face in faux exasperation. "You know Delia...If you hadn't taken me and my brother in, provided us with food and a place to sleep, and helped us grow up..."

I trailed off, because she already knew my answer and was smiling. "I knew I could count on you. She stepped forward and pulled me into a hug, trying her best to wrap her arms around me with her gargantuan belly proving to be such an obstacle. "And I hope that whatever's been bothering you eases up a bit." She gave me a knowing look before saying, "Or whoever."

"Thanks," I replied, a little hesitantly.

Delia pulled back and said, "We've got to be there by six. Now I'm going to go and get everything together."

"Everything minus one," I replied, a trademark Wish inside joke.

She snorted, said, "Or three" and began her waddle back to the house.

Delia didn't like Becky. Actually, none of my fellow Wish employees did. And it wasn't just a Wow-Wes-you-know-you-could-do-better kind of hate; it was more of a Wow-Wes-you-know-you-could-do-better-hang-tight-while-I-go-light-a-torch-and-sharpen-a-pitchfork kind. Just a little more intense. But if anyone hated Becky the most, it was Kristy. Kristy was the poster girl for the Die, Becky, Die fan club.

Though I'd never say it out loud, it was hard on me, not having any support when I was becoming so doubtful myself concerning the subject of our relationship. Just for once, it'd be nice to hear that I wasn't doing wrong by dating Becky. It was extremely difficult to bear the fact that the people closest to me didn't approve of her, of us. I'll admit that I wasn't much of a talker, but everyone needs to vent their troubles out eventually, or else things start hurting inside. But the second I spoke a word shedding light on my problems with Becky, my family went for the jugular without even listening, and that was just short of painful.

With this Becky-induced distraction on my hands, I was six shades of useless. I found myself constantly falling easy prey to gobblers, and that was before I almost set a potful of meatballs on fire (which is just downright impossible). It wasn't until I was one beat away from handing off a rum and coke to an eleven year old that Delia came up behind me and ushered me out from behind the bar.

"How about you go help Macy set up some trays, Wes?" she suggested, smiling nervously at the kid, still waiting for her non-alcoholic beverage. Then, in a hushed voice, "Preferably before we have a lawsuit on our hands?"

I trudged on in to the kitchen, where I found Macy bent over the counter, arranging some freshly made mushroom puffs neatly on a tray. I saw several trays with a dozen mini quiches arranged in smiley faces, and I looked around, wondering where Kristy had gone.

I pulled out a sheet of warm crab cakes from the oven and set them next to Macy, beginning my work. Other than a quick glance at the tray of cakes, she didn't acknowledge my presence.

After a few minutes of silence, I looked over at her, finding her brow furrowed as she focused on the mushroom puffs. "You seem to be concentrating awfully hard," I noted.

She spared me a quick glance before returning to her work, and I suppressed a sigh. However, after about a minute, she turned her whole body to me in one flash of movement and asked in a huff, "Do you know who Anna Akhmatova is?"

"Anna Akhmawhat?"

"Anna Akhmatova. She's some Ukrainian poet born in the nineteenth century."

I paused, as though I had to rack my brain for this information. "Oh yeah, her. Of course I know her," I said sarcastically. She gave me a look, so I just grinned. She went back to work. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged, setting the finished tray over by one of Kristy's smiley face trays and grabbing a clean one. "I was just making sure I wasn't the only one, since, apparently, everyone knows her."

I laughed, nodding at Monotone as she plodded into the kitchen to leave her empty tray in favor of two full ones. She kicked open the door and left without a word. "According to who?"

"These two girls I work with at the library."

I looked at her, pausing in my finger food arrangement, which, I had to admit, was turning out nicely. "You work at the library?"

She cocked her head to the side. "Sort of. My boyfriend asked me to fill in for him while he was away."

I was both shocked and relieved when I heard this. Shocked because my stomach had dropped when I heard "boyfriend"; relieved when I heard that he wasn't in town.

I could have kicked myself.

First of all, of course a girl like Macy would have a boyfriend. It was unavoidable. Second, it wouldn't matter if the guy was in space. No matter how far away he was, he was still in the picture. And third, I had Becky.

I came back to reality as I heard Macy's clear voice saying, "Anyways, they were acting like it was a federal offense for me to not know who the heck she was."

"You should be shot," I said critically. She looked up at me and smiled, her sad, grey eyes twinkling with amusement. The word "boyfriend" hit me like a train again. I cleared my throat when she looked back down and said, "You'd make a great librarian."

She looked up at me, beyond bewildered, and I burst out laughing. "What on earth is that supposed to me?" she asked, offended.

"I didn't mean anything by it," I said, still laughing.

"Then why are you laughing?" she demanded.

I held the counter for support as I struggled to breath. "Your face."

"Wes!" she exclaimed, her cheeks turning attractively red. It was the first time she'd actually said my name, and I was shocked again to realize that I noticed this.

"I'm sorry," I said, regaining composure. "Your expression was priceless. I was talking about your personality, not some porno fantasy if that's what you were thinking."

"I was definitely not thinking that," she said, shooting me a death glare. "What do you mean, 'my personality'?" She picked up the knife to begin chopping off stray strands of parsley from some mini quiches.

"You just seem to kind of keep to yourself," I replied offhandedly. "It's not a bad thing," I added quickly.

"Yeah well-"

Bert burst into the kitchen just then with an empty tray, his face one shade short of purple. He shoved his empty tray onto the counter by Macy, and I could have sworn she flinched and maybe gasped, but I didn't have time to process this as the Bert Bomb exploded.

"Some moron out there was trying to tell me that the world would be overrun by aliens before the ozone layer disintegrated! Aliens, Wes! Aliens! How absurd!"

I looked at my brother sharply. "Bert," I began sternly. "You are not supposed to be arguing with the clients, remember? You're supposed to be invisible, Bert. Invisible!"

He grabbed a tray of mushroom puffs, grumbling to himself, and stomped out of the kitchen.

Shaking my head, I looked over at Macy, who was washing her hands at the sink with her back turned, before turning back my next tray. "He's so- " But I stopped as I noticed something red out of my peripheral vision. Looking quickly over at Macy's workspace, I saw several drops of blood, and a streak of red along the edge of the knife.

I let the quiche I was holding fall to the floor and was over by Macy in a second. "Holy shit, Macy!" I exclaimed, seeing the pretty gory cut on the palm of her hand, running pink with blood and water under the faucet. "Are you okay?!"

"Yeah, it's fine," she replied faintly.

"Oh, Jesus," I said, looking at her face. It was pale, and a little clammy. "Give me your hand." I turned the water off and gently picked her hand out of it, drying it as best I could with one of Delia's dish towels. I tore two paper towels from the roll next to the sink and folded them into a rectangle. "Squeeze this, okay?"

She did so wordlessly and I led her over to one of the four chairs. "Just sit tight while I grab some stuff from the van, alright? And keep your hand palm up on the table." I started out of the kitchen. "And keep squeezing!" I called over my shoulder.

I ran out the back door, receiving many strange looks from our clients. I'm sure what with Bert's debates and my little relays (and probably Kristy's foot-stomping) we weren't going to get asked back again. We had a small chance, though, as long as the little eleven year old kept her mouth shut.

Once in the van I pulled out the first-aid kit Delia always kept there. My aunt might not always be prepared when it came to frozen food and utensils, but she was sure strict when it came to safety materials.

Catering was a dangerous business.

Macy was staring blankly at her hand when I returned. I pulled the chair next to her so we were knee-to-knee and went to work, opening her small hand gently with my fingers. I peeled off the red paper towels and replaced it with a sterile gauze pad.

"Tell me if I'm pressing too hard," I told her softly, looking into her calm eyes. She nodded at me.

With the roller bandage, I wrapped her hand up, hoping my rough, calloused hands didn't bother her soft skin. It didn't take the whole roll, so I cut the bandage with the scissors in the kit and pressed the material down so it would stick.

"Where'd you learn first-aid?" Macy asked quietly, and I found her watching me intently. "Are you a paramedic-in-training or something?"

I shook my head, taking an alcohol swab and wiping stray blood from her wrist. "Not quite," I said, giving her a short-lived smile. "I work with a lot of metal. Getting cut up is just part of the hobby."

She nodded knowingly. "Right," she said, and I gave her a questioning look. "Delia told me. I still can't believe you made that sculpture by your driveway. It's...it's incredible."

I smiled at her again. "Thanks. This is just going to stop the bleeding," I told her. "So you should clean it up when you get home. I couldn't see how deep it is, but if it's more than a quarter of an inch, you'll probably need stitches."

She smiled at me. "Thanks, Doctor."

I snorted, and set to work putting everything back in the kit and throwing things out. She got back on her feet, a little wobbly and started helping me. "You should probably sit down," I remarked.

"I'm fine," she replied. I gave her a look. "I don't feel bad at all, honest."

"Does it hurt at all?" I asked.

"It throbs a little," she responded. "But barely. I don't think it's that deep."

I would tell her to go home, but I didn't think she was fit for driving just yet, and I knew Delia wouldn't appreciate two of her employees ditching mid-party so that I could drive her home.

"Just hang out there," I told her. "We've got enough trays to last...I'm guessing this was Bert's fault." The flinch and the gasp; he must have pushed his empty tray into the hand she held the knife in.

She gave me a look, the corners of her lips pulling up at one end. "It was an accident."

"He's not careful."

"It was an accident, Wes," she repeated. "Don't worry about it."

I sighed, starting to clean up the rest of the kitchen. "Yes ma'am."

She smiled at me again.

I had almost 1) achieved the impossible Meatball Inferno, 2) emptied out our food supply to the infamous gobblers, and 3) caused a kid to go from an eleven year old girl with pink bows in her hair to an inebriated eleven year old with pink bows in hair in a matter of seconds. But the moment I started talking to Macy, I'd managed to finish several trays successfully. Sure, putting food on a platter isn't exactly rocket science, but then again neither is handing a regular coke off.

Maybe it was the fact that she didn't talk about a nursery, or the apocalypse, or extraordinary boys, or say "Mmm-hmm" or "Donneven" in unusually large quantities during conversation, but I found Macy's presence both intriguing and soothing at the same time.

I hadn't thought about the conversation I'd had with Becky since Delia had kicked me into the kitchen.

Alright, so I guess it seemed a lot longer as I was writing it...So my bad if it's not satisfyingly long enough. I plan to continue from this point in the next chapter. Hope you like it!!