"We are finally able to come to an agreement on the whole thing in less time than it took to settle the Great Station Wagon Debate of 1973, the argument by which all arguments are measured. At least this one stayed civil as measured by appendages removed and furniture damage."

It all started when Alice came home with a white, 2-door Datsun. It was actually the smallest car I had ever seen. It reminded me of the ones you'd see in the circus with a bunch of maniacal, inebriated clowns climbing out of it.

I hate clowns.

Emmett came out of the house to see it.

"Alice, I heard this buzzing noise and thought there might have been a wasp nest or a mini-sewing machine out here." Alice stuck her tongue out at him and patted the hood of her tiny car.

"This car gets forty miles to the gallon," she said proudly. Emmett snorted at her.

"So? It's got a hamster wheel for an engine," he said. "I bet I could throw it further than Eddie threw that boulder this spring."

"Do you have to bring that up?" I asked. "Carmen is still mad at me about that."

"Well, maybe you should control your temper a little bit better," Alice says. Traitor. She knows why I was that mad. Major league baseball had been ruined forever. I swear, the designated hitter was the first sign of the apocalypse.

"What the hell is this?" Rose said, coming out of the house. "Is that a golf cart?"

"Can you believe this?" Emmett asked her. "We're going to be the laughing stock of the neighborhood. It was bad enough when Jasper freaked out on the guy at the record store when he tried to sell him the new Beatles album…"

"It's not a Beatles album!" Jasper yelled from the garage, where he was moving his truck to make space for Alice's new car. "It was goddamn Wings! That's an abomination!"

"'Live and Let Die' wasn't that bad," Rosalie added mildly.

"Yeah, but 'Band on the Run'? I'll give them something to run from!" Jasper yelled.

"Just wait until he hears 'Silly Love Longs'," Alice muttered. I gave her a questioning look. "Three more years," she mouthed.

"I don't understand why you're so concerned about gas mileage, Alice," I said. "Plus, this thing is tiny. Emmett and I won't even fit in it."

"There's going to be an oil embargo next month. Gas is going to become scarce. I don't want to spend a bunch of time waiting around in line to get gas." She points to her tiny white car. "This thing gets great mileage. Plus, it's cute."

Emmett shakes his head with disgust and, as he walks away, I can see what he wants to do. I look at Alice to see if she got it. She shakes her head in disgust.

"He wouldn't dare," she says, putting her hands on her hips.

"I think he would. He's been in a bad mood since Bonanza got canceled." I shrug my shoulders at Alice.

"We have an agreement about spaces in the garage. There's no way I'm parking this thing outside." Alice says. "It'll get so rusty it'll look like the Titanic after one winter here."

Sure enough, Emmett went out the next day and bought the ugliest station wagon he could find. I mean, really ugly. It was pistachio green with that wood-colored paneling on the sides, as if that was fooling anyone. Like anyone said "Oh, look! That car is made out of wood! And pistachios!"

"You're not parking that in my space, Emmett! I hope you're planning on getting rid of one of your other cars."

The problem is that there was no way Emmett could get rid of any of his other vehicles. Emmett is a brave, brave man. He's not afraid of anything. The Volturi, fire, clowns, nothing. Except his wife. Heck, I'm afraid of his wife. And she's a little…attached to her cars.

"Don't worry about it, pipsqueak," Emmett assures Alice.

I don't know how he hid it from us, but when we got back from school the next day, (Bemidji High School, home of the Fighting Norwegians) Alice shook her head furiously.

"Dammit, Jasper, I told you we should have taken your car!" Jasper sent her waves of calm from the back seat of the Datsun, where he was wedged in sideways, his knees nearly pushing into his chin. I saw that Emmett had parked his station wagon in the Datsun's space.

Alice honked the little, squeaky horn of the Datsun until Emmett came out. He and Rose had "graduated" the year before and were supposed to be in College in South Dakota. Really, Rose worked on her cars all day and Emmett goofed around and read science fiction. And listened to the news about Watergate. I don't know which was more bizarre. He kept trying to convince me to go to DC with him to see if I could read Nixon's mind to see if he was lying. I can't think of anywhere I'd rather avoid than the mind of Richard Nixon. I have an infallible memory. It would never go away.

Emmett came out of the house with a big grin.

"What's up, Mini-Sis?" Alice growled at him and pointed to the pistachio abomination in her carport space.

"Move that thing now!" she commanded, getting out of the car. I got out and helped Jasper pull himself out of his contorted position in the backseat.

Alice stalked into the house followed by Jasper. I looked at Emmett and raised a brow at him.

"Athletics won," he said with a smile.

"Dammit!" I exclaimed. "I swear, Emmett, the day an American League team from Oakland wins two World Series in a row is the day I drink Hermit crab blood."

"You might want to get yourself to the pet store then," Emmett said with a wink.

I scowled at him and stomped into the house. I had no sooner sat down to change out of my corduroys and sulk about baseball than I heard a horrible screeching noise and rushed back out.

I have to admit, it was kind of funny. Emmett had taken Alice's Datsun and put it into the back of his station wagon. The problem was - the back of the station wagon, despite being the biggest station wagon ever - wasn't quite big enough.

I stopped laughing when Alice came out.

Emmett stopped laughing when Alice tore his arm off and threw it.

Alice stopped laughing when Emmett tossed her through the garage door after she latched onto his leg.

Then he laughed again as he saw Alice (and his leg) hit Rosalie's current project, the Shelby Cobra she had just finished painting.

Rosalie didn't laugh at all as she stared at the vampire imprint in her wet paint.

She just pulled off his other leg and hit him with it.

Then she went after Jasper and I.

She had gotten my ear and Jasper's hand and we had trashed all of Esme's wicker porch furniture before Esme came out and stopped us.

Who buys furniture made of sticks for a house full of vampires, anyway?

Esme watched us, tapping her heel on the deck while we picked up everything as best we could and reattached all our limbs.

Getting my ear pulled off was nothing compared with the agony of Carlisle's consequence for us.

For the next year we were forced to share the station wagon, which had suffered no small amount of body damage from being stuffed with a Datsun.

It was humiliating. Excruciating. Plus, do you know how many Hermit crabs it takes to feed an average vampire? Lots. That's all I'm going to say.

a/n: Betham has all the awesome; I have all the punctuation errors. FYI: Bemidji High's mascot is actually a lumberjack but I hadn't offended enough Europeans this week so I went with a Norwegian to meet my quota. Thanks for your patience, I hope you still remember my pathetic story. I have a few more outtakes up my sleeve (that hopefully won't take this long!) Thanks for reading! xoxo JuJu