Disclaimer: If I seriously owned anything in this story, do you think I'd be writing it? Exactly. I own Charity Burns, her family members, and all the other OCs. Nothing else. Zip. Zero. Nothing. Nada. Notadamnthing. :) Kapeesh? :)

A/N: Heyyo everyone! Hope you're having a wonderful day. I am. So, this is up a little early, but I don't want to wait to put it up. I've worked pretty hard on this chapter so I hope you like it... I think it's pretty good. Thank you to those who reviewed, alerted, added, and read. It means everything. That's about it... enjoy!

I hate funerals. I really, really, do. I wake up early the next day, not ready to have to say goodbye to my brother. I can hear my mom and father talking downstairs about the last minute plans. In front of the mirror I stand in a little black dress on, my curves shown in the greatest detail while I try to hold in tears. Truth is, I haven't stopped crying since getting home.

The letter that Penn left for me is sitting on my dresser – I have yet to open it. Hopefully it will give me some kind of closure, but right now, I can't handle it. My thoughts are so jumbled by this and I ache for Penn for once last time, somehow maybe he could have led me through this.

Part of me feels empty and hollow as if without Penn, I'm no longer whole. Maybe when he died, he took a part of my heart with him. How is that fair? Penn wants me to be happy, but how do I do that when I feel like crashing onto the floor and bursting into sobs. Yeah, I'm a little dramatic.

I wonder what's going on in North Carolina right now. Most likely, Beth and Jeff are arguing over something stupid, and Matt is on myspace checking up on everything. I want to be there, I can avoid my problem like that. What about Shannon, though? What is he doing right now? I try to picture him, but a gigantic blur is what my mind becomes. Maybe I should have gotten to know him better, not rejected him. After all, you can only rely so much on appearance.

Sure, Shannon's a bit immature at times. Isn't everyone? I wish for closure almost. What would have happened if we had gotten together in the same room one last time? Would I have attempted murder on him for doing what he did? Or, would I have broken down and admitted that we were possibly meant to be? I'm not sure. I won't ever know.

Unless I ever come face to face with Matt, Jeff, and Beth again. Because where they are, Shannon's sure to be, after all, best friends don't stay mad at each other forever, now do they?

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that I miss him. I want to know what would have came between us if we let it glide. Time would have told many stories, but now, I wonder what time will say.

Someone is knocking on my door. I hope it's not my father, I really can't deal with his attitude right now. My mother's tears won't help any either, but I need to answer the door. Much like the Carolina Crew, they just don't go away.

"Yeah?" I muster up a reply. There is shuffling on the other side of the door. "Mom?"

"Sorry, hunny," she says, peeking inside of my room. Her blue eyes float to me and instantly they fill with sad tears. "You look beautiful, honey. Penn would be so proud."

I smile softly. "I know he would have." She sits on my bed, watching me with the gentlest of motherly looks. I can't help but want to collapse in her arms like I'm a young child again and moan about how much I miss him already. How do you move on from something like this? Complaining over and over surely isn't going to help, not that my father would ever allow so anyway. He's Mr. Business Man, remember?

My mother smiles too. "I know you do. We all know. Honey, I'm proud of you. You're such a lil trooper."

I giggle softly, brushing my curled hair from my face. She still thinks of me as that ten-year-old girl who's terrified to leave the house and see the great world we live in. I'm not ten anymore and I think I've seen a little too much of the world's suffering to believe that anyway. "Mom, please. I'm eighteen, not five."

She giggles too, leaning against me. "I know, I'm sorry. You're just my little princess in my head, still. To me, you'll always be the baby and the one I try to protect from the bad guys. It's so hard for me to realize that you're now an adult with a mind and opinions of your own."

"Well get used to it, cause I'm not getting any younger," I reply in a joking tone.

She laughs. "Please, I have a good twenty-five years on you. I don't want to hear anything about age," she explains, while smoothing out her black skirt. We both stay silent for a moment. "Well, like I said, Penn would be proud of you right now. You know he would have killed to been where you were all last week. Speaking of which, how was your trip?" It's obvious that she barely knows about my Hardy Boyz obsession yet is trying to become closer to the last child she has. She can't even think about loosing another one emotionally.

"Amazing, to say the least. Matt, Jeff, Beth, and Shannon are amazing people. They made me feel at home and were great to me when time got rough." So Shannon wasn't so fitting of that sentence… I don't want to add anything else to my mother's worries. "Matt and Jeff understand; their mom died of cancer when they were really young."

"Poor boys," my mother murmurs. "So what do you have to show me, missy?"

I laugh at her attempt to keep the conversation light and fish around in my bag for my camera, showing her some of the pictures. "This is Matt," I say, pointing to a picture of Matt and me in the infamous blue dress, literally seconds before I went out into the gorilla. "This is Jeff," I continue, pointing to a picture of Jeff sleeping on the couch while Beth and I giggled on. I have no idea who took that one of us. "This is Beth, who is like a big sister to me, I swear…"

"Don't swear, Charity," my mother mumbles. Some things never change.

"And this… this is Shannon," I mumble, looking at a picture of him at the tattoo parlor, only moments before he inked me. "That's who did the tattoo."

My mother frowns at the outlined black ink. "Lovely."

"Don't say that, he's a great guy," I state firmly, though I'm not so sure I do fully believe it.

"I didn't say anything of the sorts!" my mother protests, though cracking a grin.

"Yeah, you took one look at all the tattoos and the tattoo shop and immediately thought something," I say with a laugh. "And you did the same thing with Jeff, too."

"It's not my fault they look like they're from another planet." She cracks another motherly grin while I swat her. "Alright, alright, I give. Looks like you had a lot of fun."

"I did," I admit with a smile. "A lot of fun." I slip to the next photo, which nearly breaks my heart into a million pieces. It's a group shot from outside the arena that night, where Jeff and Beth are kissing, Matt looks confident and proud, much like myself, and to the right, all the way to the right where you can barely tell he's in the background, is Shannon who is looking at me with lovesick eyes.

"What's the matter honey?" my mother asks. You wouldn't be able to tell if you didn't know the look but I do, and I know that I'm pretty much screwed.

"Nothing," I mutter, shaking my head while trying to erase the image from my head. Maybe he did come out but I was so surrounded by everyone else that I couldn't notice.

"Are you sure?" My mother's eyes radiate worry.

"I'm sure." With that, I let my lips go into a straight line and turn the camera off, the image fading into oblivion.

I'm aiming for the next update on Tuesday! Read and review, and update I shall. :)