A/N: Now that we're officially out of high school, I'm going to live up to my promise of one-shots taking place over a span of several years. So if this time leap seems odd . . . well, it is, but I planned it that way. Hope you guys like it this way!

Though . . . this had to be split into 2, like most of my chapters end up. So enjoy this!

"I don't understand what's wrong with him."

Sally paused, her hair in her eyes as she hung upside down. She'd been watering one of the planters that hung outside almost every window in the McDodd mansion when she'd knocked it off its stand. Luckily, she'd managed to catch it before it toppled to the ground two stories below. Less fortunately, the ground suddenly jolted and she had nearly fallen out the window with it, only saved by the leg of her pants being caught on the window latch. And since her children were all at school or napping, that left her alone.

When she'd called Ned, he said he'd come rescue her immediately, but somehow during his trip home he'd returned to an obsession that had been plaguing him for the last year or so: Jojo. Namely, why Jojo had stopped talking.

Of course, Sally was concerned about her son as well, but she was slightly more worried about falling on her head at the moment. "Ned, honey, I'd love to talk to you about that, but could you just . . ."

She couldn't see her husband, but after almost eighteen years of marriage she could picture exactly what he was doing: standing in the hallway behind her, wringing his hands and talking to her bare foot — all that was visible from his vantage point — as he paced back in forth. His hair was probably sticking up from running his hands through it, like usual, and if he didn't keep rubbing his sleeve over his mayoral crest to make sure it was still shiny, she would eat the flower planter that was still in her hands. "Oh! Of course." She felt his hands under her ribcage, and for a second she was worried he wasn't strong enough to lift her. I'm not that big yet . . . she thought to herself. But she was set safely on the floor of the hallway a few moments later.

Putting the planter down, she raised her hands to her head, wincing as the blood flowed out of it. "Thanks," she said, pecking him on the cheek before sinking to the floor with a groan. "That was not fun."

Ned looked down at her, shaking his head with amusement and consternation. "You really shouldn't have been doing that anyway," he replied, kneeling down in front of her and resting his hands on her stomach, which was barely beginning to show with twins . . . again. These would be the ninety-sixth and -seventh, respectively; Sarah had taken to calling them the Rabbits, and insisted that Sally had to be some sort of superhero in disguise.

She rolled her eyes. "If I stopped working every time I was pregnant, nothing would get done. Besides," she added, pulling out her Whophone, "while I was hanging there I called the doctor, and he says as long as I didn't hit my belly on the way down — I didn't," she said hastily, seeing the panic in his gray eyes "—they'd be fine. Which they are. So stop worrying, okay?" She held out her hands and he pulled her to her feet.

"It'd be easier not to worry if you didn't fall out any more windows." He polished his crest with his sleeve again, unthinkingly. "None of my colleagues' wives have done that, you know."

"Then I'm special, aren't I?"

He looked at her, a small smile on his face. "You most certainly are," he said, and surprised her by leaning forward and kissing her. With a gasp, she stumbled back into the wall (she was still unbalanced after her adventure out the window, after all) and pushed him away gently.

"Stop that," she said with a laugh. "The last time you did that," she put his hands on her bump and rubbed her nose against his, "you did that."

"Mommy?" They turned to see one of their three-year-old daughters staring up at them, approximately thirty older sisters standing behind her. "Emily, Susan, Minnie, Micki, Nicki, Carlie, Danielle, Angelica . . ." She continued rattling off names while Sally and Ned glanced at each other, wondering — not for the first time — how they could possibly have so many daughters, "and Caroline are home."

Those were all her elementary-school-aged girls. "What . . ." Sally began, casting her eyes over the sea of multicolored heads.

"Half day," they chorused. Nicki, one of the older girls, added, "The school caught fire." She cocked her orange head to the side, looking her parents up and down. "Why's Daddy home?"

"Fire?!" Ned repeated, alarmed, while Sally said, "None of you caused it, did you?"

Erica, a lime green fifth grader and Nicki's twin, let her mouth fall open and her eyes widen with teasing shock. "Mother! Why would you think that?"

"Lovely," Ned muttered. "Sarcastic, just like her mom."

Sally stifled a giggle and elbowed him in the side. "Statistically, it seems likely," she told Erica. "Can you get them into the dining room and help them with lunch? I'll be there in a minute."

"Sure they will," Minnie said in a stage whisper. "Once they're done being gross and making kissy-faces." At that, the entire crowd squealed in disgust.

"You're too old for that," Nicki informed her parents, shaking her head and meeting Erica's smug gaze. "Way too old," Erica added. "Like, dinosaur old."

Sally rolled her eyes and swatted at them with her watering can, shaking sun-warmed drops all over and making them shriek. "Get out of here," she told them with a laugh. "I'm going to walk Daddy to the door and give him a kiss goodbye."

"EW!" they all yelled in unison.

At the door, she handed him an apple. "I made you skip lunch," she said apologetically.

"I'm glad you did. Could you imagine those girls trying to rescue you from the window?" He smiled and hopped onto his dad's old unicycle, which he had lovingly kept in perfect condition. "I'll be home around seven," he said, waving with the hand that held his apple.

Once he had cycled out of sight, the house exploded into a cacophony of screams. Sprinting to the dining hall, she saw her dining-room table half-full of girls, the rotating chairs spinning rapidly while Erica and Nicki stood by the control panel, slamming buttons. "I don't know what happened!" Erica cried, watching the blur of rainbow fur.

Sally gently pushed them both to the side and turned the rotating off, causing the chairs to stop so suddenly that everyone fell onto the floor. As they picked themselves up, grumbling, she turned to the twins. "Haven't I told you not to play with this?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. Once they'd bowed their heads and apologized, she shooed them and some of the others into the kitchen to help bring out food.

Two near-disasters averted before lunch, she thought, putting her hands in the small of her back to crack it. Not bad.

"I still don't know what's wrong with Jojo."

Well, he'd gone almost nine hours without bringing it up. With a weary sigh, Sally rolled onto her side, peering through the dark to see the outline of her husband's face. "He's a teenager," she told him, biting her lip to keep from pointing out that it was ten at night and she had been very close to sleep. "They're just weird."

"I still think something's wrong," he said, staring up at the ceiling, where light from the streets was making pretty shadows. "Kids don't stop talking for no reason."

"Maybe it's the end of the world," she joked, resting her chin on his chest. "I mean, that mini-earthquake that made me fall out the window, Jojo giving us a year-long silent treatment . . . What does it all mean?"

"I'm serious," he complained, turning to face her. "Aren't you worried about him?"

She was, but she and her only son had a strange form of communication, one they'd developed in the three years before he learned how to speak (though she thought it hadn't been a lack of intelligence as much as stubbornness; he didn't see the point in verbal communication, so he didn't bother with it). She would talk and he would be silent, but if she asked him a question ("yes" or "no" only), he would either snap his fingers once or twice, often giving her a small smirk like he realized how stupid this was. But he was like a brick wall to his father: not only did he refuse to speak, but he wouldn't snap, smile, or even look directly at him. He would just sit there, which hurt Ned unbearably, but no matter how many times his sisters or mother tried to talk him out of it, Jojo wouldn't say a word.

Sally hated keeping secrets, but she couldn't bring herself to tell her husband that she and Jojo had this small communication, and that she had an inkling — though Jojo would never admit it outright — of why he was being so quiet. So she lay in silence, thinking to herself, as Ned continued. "I try to talk to him, get him interested in something, but it's like there's nobody home."

"What do you talk to him about?" she asked, feeling suspicion tickle at the back of her mind.

Ned shrugged. "What I loved as a kid," he said. "The thought of being mayor."

There it was. Since Ned was about as subtle as a flying brick, she had to tread carefully with this topic. "Honey, do you think maybe you should . . . not bring up the mayor thing? He might not be as excited about it as you were." When he stared at her like her fur had suddenly turned neon green, she added, "You know, nervous." Or not the mayor type, she thought to herself, knowing better than to suggest that particular idea.

His face brightened. "I understand that!" he exclaimed, convincing Sally that he didn't understand at all. "I'll reassure him that he has nothing to be afraid of! That he —"

"Or you could talk about something else." His face was blank, and she groaned inwardly. "He likes to read, Ned. I always see him with books." Of course, most of them were about machines and famous inventors, but her husband had read almost everything. There had to be some common ground there.

He rolled onto his back again, looking thoughtful. "I suppose . . ." he mused, somewhat doubtfully. "I'll give it a shot, anyway."

"You do that." She snuggled against his shoulder and fell asleep hoping that it would work out.

"You'll be okay?" Sally asked Jojo, shrugging into her coat and hiking her purse up her shoulder. "You know where all the emergency numbers are, and Nora and the older girls have been ordered to help —" He rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers once. She smiled and kissed the top of his head. "Just making sure," she said, glancing up the stairs behind him to see if Ned was ready yet. Since he wasn't, she knelt down in front of him, surprised anew at how tiny he still was. "You know," she murmured conspiratorially, "if you talked you would be able to argue with me more. There's only so much disdain a kid can express with finger snaps."

He shot her a look that clearly said, "Nice try, Mom." She laughed, ruffling his hair and making him grimace.

"Ned!" she called up the stairs. "We're going to be late!"

He appeared at the entrance to their bedroom, his shirt caught around his head so that only his hair stuck out the top. "Just a second — I just need — AAAAH!" In his blind stumbling, he stepped off the edge of the landing and fell down the stairs, landing at the bottom in a crumpled ball. Jojo leapt nimbly out of the way, and after ascertaining that his father wasn't dead, disappeared into the kitchen.

Sally helped Ned to his feet, fixing his shirt and giving him an exasperated look. "Your nose is a little swollen," she said, shaking her head.

"I'll be fine," he replied hastily, shoving her out the door and yanking his jacket on at the same time. "Goodnight, kids!" he shouted before pulling the door shut and speed-walking down the driveway.

Sally struggled to keep up, a pair of high-heeled death traps on her feet and a very impractical white-fur dress swaying around her ankles. Finally catching up to him, she tugged on his arm until he slowed down, and they made their way to the Town Hall, where Ned was going to ordinate the council members for the year. "It's freezing," she said, drawing her coat tighter around herself. "I know it's January, but it felt like summer last week."

"Hmm." Ned's gaze was far away, and she knew that he was either worrying about the ceremony or about their son.

Hazarding a guess, she asked, "Did you talk to him about books?"

He blinked, surprised, and she knew she'd guessed wrong. "Who? Oh, Jojo." His expression tightened. "I asked him what he was reading, and he held it up so I could see the cover. Something about great musicians of Whoville . . . I remember reading it when I was his age, actually." For a second a smile flitted across his face, but it was immediately replaced with consternation as he added, "But when I asked if he liked it, all he did was snap his fingers at me and keep reading. I don't get it — is that some kind of insult now?"

Sally clutched his arm, excitement shooting through her. "No, that's good! How many times?"

Startled, he looked down at her. "Um . . . once, I think."

"That means he likes the book!" Giddy with excitement, she threw her arms around his neck. "This is progress, honey!"

"Really?" He beamed. "Then what does it mean if he rolls his eyes and walks away?"

"Think about it, Ned."

His face fell. "Oh. Of course. I wasn't thinking."

"It's okay." She wrapped an arm around his waist and asked, "So what did you say to annoy him?"

"I have no idea! After he snapped at me, I decided to change the subject, and told him about how mayors are a lot like musicians . . ."

Sally sighed, tuning out her husband and gazing up at the stars.

It was a first step, at least.

A/N: It's very odd trying to write an almost-movie-age Ned without making him exactly like the teenager I've spent so much time with. But . . . you know, I doubt they'd ever grow up, those crazy kids. Not really, anyway. Also, their daughters are so much fun to write and I wish there weren't so many so I could develop them more.