A/N Um, kind of a filler chapter, but I hope you'll like it anyway. Check out the forum (Simon Says: It's Award Time, it's fourth one down on the Mediator section) and vote for your favourite authors/fics... voting ends Feb 2nd, and we want lots of votes to count!

Plus, for those of you who haven't read it yet, I have a new fic - The Stroke of Midnight.

TODAY'S HEADLINE: THE SECRET IS OUT!

Hector De Silva's underage lover is finally revealed

Chapter Six

Let the Games Begin

I roll my eyes and throw out the magazine that Jesse had just tossed into the cart, scoffing at the headline. I know that right now, my sister is at home screaming on her cell to one of her brain-dead best friends, no doubt describing in graphic detail what it's like to have Hector De Silva's tongue in her mouth. Believe me – I'd heard one of the earlier conversations. It made me wanna barf pretty bad.

"Remind me why we are shopping again?" Jesse asks, patiently, as I scan the shelves for specific items. I swipe a box of L'Oreal hair dye – in a frightening blue/black colour – and dump it into the cart. Jesse eyes it doubtfully. "Didn't your mother buy the groceries yesterday?"

"Yes," I answer. "Although the only food items she actually bought were strawberries and ice cream. The rest she spent on this pair of shoes." Jesse nods understandingly, and pulls two multi-packs of Cheetos into the cart obediently.

"For substance," he explains. "The ice cream and strawberries could run out pretty quickly." I grin, and shrug. Then I ask him to pass me a bottle of maple syrup from one of the higher shelves, which he hands to me kind of dubiously. "For the ice-cream?" he asks. I hesitate.

"…sure," I reply. "Anna loves maple syrup on her ice-cream. Plus, sometimes we find pancake mixes in the cupboards. And syrup is even better on pancakes." Jesse doesn't believe me, but he drops the subject. The truth is, ever since I declared 'war' on Anna last week (without her knowledge, obviously) he's been watching me like a hawk. This is the second time he's come shopping with me in a week. After school on Tuesday, it was to pick up some aspirin for my mom. I know – major excitement.

Jesse glances at his watch. "It's nearly half past four," he reminds me. "We should be getting home now – or we'll have no time left for tutoring." I wave a hand impatiently, collecting just a few more random items into the cart before heading to the check-out. The cashier eyes my slightly worrying cart – I mean, it's not everyday that someone buys hair-dye and Cheetos and not a whole lot else – but starts pricing it. Jesse and I move to the end, and start packing the stuff into plastic bags. I've learnt quite quickly that Jesse's super strength is quite useful to have around. He packs stuff really fast.

Once we reach my house, we put away all the groceries – although most of them I hide in my room, away from Anna's prying eyes – and then I offer Jesse a soda, hoping desperately that he will forget all about math. He doesn't.

"Querida," he says sternly, unpacking a textbook and a calculator from the backpack that he left at my house before coming shopping with me. "It's time for tutoring now. Father Dominic is expecting improvement, you know, and he won't get any unless I actually teach you something."

I surrender, and get some paper from the study. Jesse opens the textbook to the latest topic – I was still stuck on simultaneous equations – and points to an example that I copy down obediently.

"No," Jesse says suddenly, and he reaches over to take hold of the pencil. This would be fine, except for the fact that my hand is still on the pencil. I tremble at the contact, but thankfully Jesse doesn't notice. Instead, his concentration is on the math – of course. "Label the equations," he reminds me. "And put your workings in to three columns. Don't you remember from last week?"

"Jesse," I reply impatiently. "Do you not remember the events of this week?" Jesse rolls his eyes, and I raise a hand to tick off the events. "Let's see – first, my sister brings home a movie-star. Then the paparazzi surround my house. And then my sister starts dating the movie-star. How was I meant to remember simultaneous equations after that?"

Jesse drops the pencil and squeezes my hair concernedly. "I know this week has been a difficult one, querida," he says, softly. "But if you do not pass math, you will not graduate in two years time with the rest of your class. It's important." I nod, and place a circled number two next to the second equation. Jesse releases my hand and sits back in his chair, watching me work silently, like he hadn't been holding my hand less than ten seconds ago.

It wasn't quite as easy for me to forget.

X

I push open the door to my sister's bedroom, careful not to let it creak, and stick my head in, just enough to see her body gently rising and falling. She is asleep, just as I had hoped. I close the door and creep down the hallway to the bathroom, collecting the hairdryer I had left outside my room on the way there.

I scan the shelves in the bathroom, skipping past my own bubble bath and shampoo, and reach up to collect Anna's. I unscrew the top of her shampoo carefully, pouring some of its contents down the sink in front of me. Part of me squirms in excitement as I tip the hair-dye into the bottle, and watch thankfully as the colour doesn't change.

Look, I know it's childish to wage a war like this on my sister, O.K? But part of me can't resist. And most of me wants to see the look on her face when she realises her hair is no longer chestnut brown and instead a gothic blue/black. And, of course, how her loving boyfriend Hector reacts.

Screwing the cap on again, I skulk carefully out of the bathroom and into my bedroom, before I remember the maple syrup downstairs in the fridge. The lure is too tempting, and I drop the hair dye box into the trash can before slipping downstairs to inspect the fridge.

The maple syrup is gone.

To any other family, this wouldn't really seem that odd. I mean, the disappearance of some maple syrup isn't life threatening, or anything. It probably was used up on some pancakes or whatever. But when I'd said to Jesse that Anna likes it on her ice-cream, I hadn't exactly been telling the truth.

No-one in my house can stomach the smell of maple syrup. Which made it even weirder than someone had taken it out of the fridge to use. I knew that nobody had thrown the bottle away unused, because I'd taken the trash out before I'd gone to bed, and there was no maple syrup there.

Unless…

Anna had figured out what I was up to. And had planned a comeback, involving maple syrup.

No, she wasn't that smart.

Was she?

I shrug to myself in the kitchen, and slink back upstairs to go to bed. I stuck my head into my mom's room to say goodbye, but she wasn't there. She must have been out working again. That was strange though; I didn't seem to remember her mentioning it.

I change into my pajamas and settle down to sleep, trying to push all thoughts of my mom, and Anna-and-Hector to the back of my mind. I lay there for I don't know how long – an hour, two hours – before there is a loud knock at my bedroom. I jump in the darkness, and call out. But there is no verbal answer, only another knock.

I sigh, and kick off the duvet. Sitting up in bed, I swing my legs over the side of my bed before slipping my feet into my slippers and standing up. It takes me a couple of moments in my dozy state to realise that my feet feel a little weird. I lift my left foot out of my slipper again and wiggle my toes a little before noticing that they are covered in maple syrup – and so is the other foot. I inspect the interior of my slipper, and groan.

The door is pushed open and there stands my sister, Anna. She takes one look at my syrup-y feet before replying.

"Gotcha," she says with a grin.