Chapter Nine – Dougie's Problem

Chapter Nine – Our Little Secret

"Hey, we're back!" Riley shouted the next morning as she, Rhuben, Gen, and Jacqui came through the front door, Gen twirling car keys around her finger. Recently she had her 16th birthday and her Gran had bought her a BMW, so she drove it every chance she got.

"Hey" Tom greeted as he walked into the foyer, drying his hands on a dish towel. He leaned over and kissed his girlfriend on the cheek. "How was the sleepover?" he asked, looping his arm around Gen's waist.

"It was good" Riley replied slowly.

"Until Jacqui got a little too hyper and broke a lamp" Gen replied and glared at her friend, who shrugged in reply.

"Anyway, I just finished making breakfast and there's plenty to go around if you want to stay" Tom replied and then turned to Riley and Rhuben. "By the way, Patrick and Noah have been kind of quiet lately, you have any idea why?"

"No, but we'll talk to them later, thanks." Rhuben replied. "How was Sydney, he didn't go on a massive sugar high did he?"

"No, but Dougie did." Tom replied with a little chuckle. "You need to keep your boyfriend in check around food."

"I'll keep that in mind" Riley laughed and set her duffel bag on the ground. "I'm going to go wake the oth…other…achoo!" she sneezed, quickly bringing her hands to her face. Rhuben grimaced and looked away in disgust and Jacqui finally spoke up.

"You're getting sick, you must have gotten it off of me, I was kind of sick earlier this week" she said in concern.

"Gee, thanks, especially when I have to work because the stupid Café has low staff this week." Riley grumbled back as she went upstairs, sneezing again. She first stopped at Sydney's room and wasn't surprised to see that he was sitting on his bed, already awake, looking at his laptop. "Hey, how'd you sleep?"

"I didn't sleep" he replied, barely looking at her as he rubbed his baggy eyes. Riley clicked her tongue and pulled his laptop from him.

"Then you can have breakfast later, you need your sleep." She instructed, but what Sydney asked next caused her to freeze as she was putting him to bed.

"Ri-Ri, do you think that we'll actually have parents who love us?" he asked. "I mean, Robert isn't our dad and he lost the rights to us, but do you think we'll be adopted again?"

"I don't know, good night…morning Syd" she replied and kissed his forehead, he squirmed away from her.

"If you're getting sick, could you not do that?" he requested.

"How'd you know-"

"I can't miss your sneezing, its so loud" Sydney grinned in reply and rolled over onto his side, closing his eyes. "Good night…morning Ri-Ri"

Riley smiled and closed his bedroom door and continued walking down the hallway. She knocked on Patrick's and Noah's closed door before opening it and seeing that they were also awake, reading and listening to their I-Pods. Wordlessly, Patrick paused his I-Pod and looked at her. She mouth the word 'breakfast' and he nodded in reply.

"Hey, where's Rhuben?" Danny asked as he walked out of his and Rhuben's bedroom.

"Downstairs eating breakfast with Gen, Jacqui, and Tom" she replied. Danny nodded his thanks and started downstairs, when Riley noticed the book in his hands. "What's that?"

"Oh, it's the Big Book to naming you Baby" he replied. Riley raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything else and went to Dougie's room. He was sitting up in his bed, but was still asleep, snoring softly.

"Doug!" she called, snapping on the light. He moaned in pain from the sudden light and rolled over. Chuckling to herself, Riley grabbed his covers off of his bed and pulled them onto the floor. Dougie groaned and opened his eyes, shielding them from the bright light. He smiled up at her.

"Good morning"

Riley's smile faded when she smelled the alcohol on his breath but didn't say anything. "Come on, its time for breakfast. Where's Harry?"

"All right" Dougie sighed, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He sat up and looked at her with watery eyes. "Harry is in the basement, he's, most of the time, the first one awake."

"Ok" Riley replied and started to walk out of the room, but Dougie grabbed her arm and smiled shyly.

"Aren't you going to kiss me good morning?"

'Yeah, if I want to pass out from your breath' she thought to herself before replying. "Not if you want to get sick."

"Hey guys, one of our interviews is going to be on TV today" Harry announced as he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a plate from the cupboard before joining everybody at the table.

"Is that what you were doing, watching TV?" Noah asked as he stabbed a piece of Kiwi that was in his bowl of fruit.

"That and I was working on my rim shots" Harry nodded and twirled his fork around his finger like a drumstick.

"Hey, could you help me with that?" Noah spoke up.

"Sure" Harry nodded in agreement.

"Oh, by the way, what do you guys want for your birthday?" Jacqui asked through a mouthful of pancakes.

"I don't know" Patrick shrugged. "A new bass maybe."

"Keep dreaming, the only way that we'd be able to do that is if we robbed a store." Rhuben snorted.

"That wouldn't be so hard, all you have to do is trick the system" Noah replied. "Get someone to hold onto anything from the store and wave it though the security alarm. It goes off, the other person with the thing you want to steal, quickly runs out of the store."

"You sound like you've done it before" Tom observed curiously. Noah shrugged.

"It's the fact that you can definitely get away with it, if you study the store enough" he replied, not exactly answering the statement..

"There's also another problem with that," Danny pointed out. "You won't be able to get out of the store carrying a bass. They're too big."

"A common set back" Noah replied and scrunched up his nose in thought. "You can think of a way to get around that too."

"Next time I want to rob a candy store, I'll get you to do it" Dougie joked and everybody laughed. Riley reached back as the phone rang and looked at the caller ID before bringing it to her ear.

"What's up, Julius?" she asked her brother, who was off at college.

"Let me talk to Rhu"

"So you've heard?"

"Yeah, but you kind of have a bigger problem"

Wordlessly, Riley handed Rhuben the phone and continued to eat her breakfast as Rhuben talked to her brother. Her sudden outburst caused everybody to freeze, and Patrick to choke on his fruit. Noah punched him in the back and that caused him to cough out the strawberry he was eating.

"What's wrong, love?" he asked.

"Someone, get me a laptop!" she replied and hung up the phone. Noah quickly jumped down from his chair and ran to Sydney's room to get his laptop. When he came back, Sydney was with him with his computer goggles around his neck and his computer/wheelchair gloves on his hands.

"What's going on?" he asked as he sat down on Rhuben's lap and opened the laptop.

"Go to our website and check the inbox" Rhuben instructed and everybody crowded around the computer. She shook her head at the computer screen as everybody read the comments.

Dark-Elements-Forever: Rhuben are you seriously pregnant? What made you want to have a baby at such a young age?

X0X0 Casey: I think that you were pretty stupid to get pregnant when you have such a great career going

And there were many more like that.

"And Julius says that a lot of magazines are posting articles like that too" Rhuben sulked. "Which means our phone is going to be ringing off the hook.

"Then I think that you should announce that you were raped" Gen said gently.

"I don't think so" Rhuben immediately shut down the idea. Sydney closed his laptop and grabbed a notebook.

"Let's write down the pros and cons of explaining that you were raped. A pro is that the rumors would stop." He said writing it down in the notebook.

"Yeah, but a con to that is that people might think that Danny raped her" Dougie pointed out, grabbing Rhuben's half eaten bagel and biting into it. "Or there will be more rumors."

"I can't take this" Rhuben said and took Sydney off of her lap and went to her bedroom, Danny following her, calling his name after her.

"Ri…Riles"

Riley opened her eyes and saw Dougie kneeling next to her. She tried to raise her head, but the head congestion caused her temples to pound and she dropped her head again. "What is it?" she moaned.

"I wanted to know if you wanted to go to this club," Dougie replied. "Tom and Gen were already going and they invited the rest of us to go. Harry is taking Jacqui, like on a first date because he finally asked her out, and Danny and Rhuben don't feel like going."

"I don't think I feel well enough to go" Riley replied and sneezed loudly.

"BLESS YOU!" Sydney shouted from somewhere in the house.

"That's fine, I'll just stay here and take care of you" Dougie replied and brushed her hair off of his forehead.

"No, go ahead, you should have fun anyway" Riley insisted. "I'll just see you later."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Dougie smiled and kissed her forehead before grabbing coat and meeting the others by the front door. "She doesn't feel well enough to go" he explained.

"That's fine, let's go" Gen said and they went out onto the porch.

"Can I drive?" Tom asked.

"Not on your life, I don't trust you while you drive a car" Gen replied with a small laugh as she pressed the unlock button and the BMW's lights flashed.

"So you trust me enough to take you on a date, but you don't trust me to drive a car?" Tom asked incredulously.

"That's right, now get in."

The five of them talked about how they were going to help Rhuben take care of the baby as they drove to the night club, the Red Heat, which lived up to its name because the inside was mostly red, and it was always really hot inside. As soon as they got there, Tom and Gen went onto the dance floor as Harry, Jacqui, and Dougie grabbed a table, talking a little bit about music, but still worrying about their friends.

"So, uh, Jacqui do you want to dance?" Harry asked nervously. Jacqui looked over at Dougie, who raised his eyes brows and smiled a little bit.

"Oh, don't mind me, I'm just going to get something to eat" he replied. Jacqui nodded and Harry took her hand, leading her onto the dance floor. Dougie looked around for a waiter and saw a girl who was dressed in black and white and signaled her over.

"Yes, what can I get you?" she asked.

"Um, I'd like a double cheeseburger and fries please" Dougie replied and watched as the girl wrote down his order.

"And to drink?" she asked.

"I'd like a beer. It doesn't matter which kind, I'd just like a beer."