Here is all of chapter 11. Tomorrow, chapter 12 should be up and believe me, it's gonna be good!

I'm also thinking of posting my best review from the current chap on the followin chapter...maybe sometime around chapter 13 or 14.

Thanks so much for all of the reviews for chapter 10.

Now for chap12, reviews please? They inspire me to type...

Oh and sorry of there are any grammer mistakes...

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Spencer's schedule was ideal. She would be working the cash register from approximately 10:00 to 5:00, four days a week, and Mackenzie's mother side she had the option of working more days of the week as the summer progressed. Mac's schedule was about the same, which suited them just fine.

Spencer's new friend had been brought up with the school of thought that you had to earn money before you could spend it. As a result, she was not one for shopping sprees or running a credit card balance to the max. Spencer admired that.

Monday night, Spencer was surprised when her father arrived early enough to take her out for dinner to a French restaurant near the hospital. She saw Ash only in passing when they got home.

Tuesday played out much the same. This time, Arthur took her out to an Argentinean steak place in Orajenstad. The restaurant was packed, but they had a table waiting for them. The food was, but the proportions were gigantic. They came back home with enough left over to last them for a week. There was no sign of life in the guesthouse.

Spencer really missed seeing Ash, but it seemed that she and her father were finally breaking down the wall of ice between them. As she lay in bed, she thought about Arthur. Their dinners were filled with conversation, and this surprised her. He appeared to be honestly interested in in everything she did back in Cincinnati, and even asked a lot of questions about Paula and her new husband. Spencer was mature enough not to harbor any romantic thoughts the two ex's still carried. She understood her father's interest was simply curiosity.

Wednesday morning, Spencer woke up to an empty house. Outside her window, two annoying birds were singing arias to each other.

"Okay. . . Okay.," she murmured. "I'm up."

Coming out of the bathroom, she left her crutches by her bed and started toward the kitchen. On days like this, Spencer was impatient to have her cast off. For her first time since breaking her leg, she really wanted to try so many things. Now, she was counting the days until she'd get the darned thing off. So different than when she was in Cincinnati. Thinking back now, shed just accepted the cast as an inevitable part of her life.

Spencer felt different here. There were so many things to do. Places to go. People to meet. But-what to wear?

In Aruba, she thought, you never see or hear weather reports.

"Of course not genius," she muttered. "The weather's always the same." Crossing the open area towards the kitchen, a door at the end of the hallway caught her eye. The front door, she never used it. Going down the hall, she pulled the door open and stepped out.

There was a small veranda and a path leading to another gate to the street. The path was narrow and hemmed in on either side with green shrubs filled with yellow flowers. Six colorful little lizards and two iguanas were sitting on the path, eyeing her.

"Move along, you!" As she moved to shoo them off, she heard the door click shut behind her.

"Oh great!" She tried the handle, but she already knew it would be locked.

No crutches, deserted in only a long t-shirt that ended mid-thigh, she made her way to the gate and peeked out at the street. It was deserted.

"Thanks god for small favors."

Taking a deep breath, she limped as quickly as she could along the fence. Halfway to the gate, she saw a small landscaping truck filled with laborers coming down the street. The truck came rumbling just as soon as she got into the courtyard, and Spencer slipped inside to the sounds of whistles and good-natured laughter behind her. In moments, the street was quiet again.

"Great, Spencer," she said, her back to the gate. "Put on a show why don't you?"

She made her way to the sliding glass door. Locked. She looked around the veranda. There was a thousand places a key could be hidden, but Spencer didn't even know if Arthur tucked one away out here in case of emergencies. She considered going to one of the neighbors houses and asking to use a phone. She hadn't met any of them, and she looked at her reflection in the glass door. She wasn't really dressed for socializing.

Mac wouldn't be coming by to pick her up either. She told Spencer the day before that she had a doctor's appointment.

Spencer tried the windows facing the courtyard. They were all locked. She wasn't going to venture out onto the street again, that was for sure.

She looked across at the guesthouse. It was along shot, but she didn't have many other choices. She hobbled over to Ash's place. The door was bolted. Walking around the building, she spotted another window overlooking the courtyard. Another step and Spencer could see it was unlocked.

To avoid getting cut, she had to work her way very carefully between a couple of giant aloe bushes. As she pushed a large spike of the plant aside, she almost placed her bare foot on the tail of a two-foot-long iguana. The bright green lizard merely blinked at her and ambled off.

"Well, excuse me," she said to the retreating creature.

When she reached the window, she first pressed her face against the glass. It was her bedroom.

"Figures."

The bottom of the window was about chest high, and it stuck a little when she tried to push it up. A few huffs and puffs, and she knew it was this way from the humidity. She gave it one shove, though, and was stunned when it suddenly shot up.

"Well that wasn't so tough," she said peering inside.

Ash's bed was made and, with the exception of a t-shirt and some shorts on a chair, everything looked pretty neat. Her whole room was made up of doens of shades of blue. Her queen-size bed, walls, and furniture. There wasn't mush of anything in her room except she had lots of picture frames on her wall, the floor, and, a picture on her nightstand. There were pictures of random things like the ocean, autumn trees, two girls holding hands, and some revolutionary-type photos. On the nightstand was where she also spotted the phone. There was no way Spencer could reach it, though, where she was standing.

There was only one thing to do.

Spencer studied the size of the opening and decided it was smaller that the windows they had back in Cincinnati. She thought she could pass through it, though.

Standing on her cast, she tried to put her good leg in first. A couple of minutes of struggling sent home the message that either the window was about an inch too high or she was as stiff as a two-by-four. For some reason, she just couldn't get her legs to split the 180 degrees she needed them to go.

Going in headfirst seemed to be the only viable option. Spencer looked around her again, peering over the fence and hoping for some busybody neighbor that might be going by. Police cruiser would be nice, even. Maybe some good citizen walking by who might see it as their civic duty to call into the authorities and report a breaking and entering in progress.

No such luck. The people were just too trusting here.

"I'm going in," she whispered. Both hands went in first, and her head followed. Pulling herself up, she was soon hanging half in and half out. Just as her fingers touched the tiled floor, she started sliding forward on her stomach. She definitely didn't have the flexibility of a gymnast, but she was proud of her snake impression. Her butt cleared. Walking forward on her hands, she cleared her thighs.

Her ankle only tapped the open window. It was the gentlest of taps, but it was all that was needed.

The window came down like a guillotine. She was stuck.

Spencer let out a loud profanity and looked over her shoulder. The window had come down on the backs of her knees, just above the cast, trapping her.

She couldn't believe it. There she was, suspended from the window, balancing her upper body on her hands. She couldn't have put herself in a more awkward position if she tried.

"Don't panic," she told herself. "Breathe. You can do without an asthma attack right

now."

Spencer lowered herself onto her elbows. That was as far as she could go, as she was nearly upside down. There was no way she could turn around. The good news was that if the window gave out, the fall wasn't far enough to break another bone.

She tried to work her good leg through, but the cast took up too much space. There was no way. Next, she tried to push up the window with the back of her leg. That was a joke.

She banged her head a couple of times on the floor. She'd done it again. She got herself into another impossible position.

Spencer sighed. "Feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to help," she muttered.

She wasn't going to be stuck like this all day. She looked around the floor. A pair of sneaker vans and flip-flops were under the bed. Reaching as far as she could, she managed to pull the vans to her. She pulled them aside, deciding it wouldn't make her feel any better to throw them at anything.

Her back was already aching. She moved her weight to one elbow and looked over her shoulder at the bedside table. Everything looked so giant, so out of her reach. She now understood the perspective of a mouse. Or a lizard.

Spencer shrugged, looking around for any colorful creatures that might be hiding. She hadn't seen any indoors yet, but you never know.

Thinking from that perspective actually helped.

Almost immediately, Spencer saw the phone wire coming out of the wall beneath the bed. A bundle of it was bunched up and secured with a tie wrap. From there it ran up to the table and the phone.

She stretched as far as she could with one of the vans, but couldn't quite reach the phone line. Stuffing one sneaker inside the other, she tried again. The extension worked, and Spencer pulled the bunched wire within her reach. Once she had it, the rest was easy. She tugged on the wire until the phone crashed onto the floor and she yanked it over to her.

"A dial tone. Thank god," Spenceer breathed as she put the handset to her ear. Wracking her brain, she remembered her father's work number. He only recited the number once to her, but she was never happier that she had good memory.

Taking a coulpe of deep breaths, Spencer dialed the number. It was his direct line. He sounded busy, but she could tell he was listening attentively when she explained she locked herself out of the house. She kept her voice calm. She didn't think there was an point in mentioning the details of how and where she was stuck. She did mention, though, that she was able to get into Ash's house and immediately wished she'd called Ash instaed of her dad. No way in the world did she think he would be there anytime soon. If only she had Ash's number.