Should they really have been that surprised at how quickly they bounced back?

Total Drama was a Canadian cultural icon at that point, and the Drama Brothers were a part of that. Every other member of the cast had their exploits splashed across the front pages of all the gossip magazines. The public couldn't get enough of them.

Plus, their fanbase was primarily made up of teenage girls, and everyone knew how insane they can be.

Your Smile broke 100,000 sales by the end of the week. It was already at #19 on the Jillboard Top 100. Both stats were expected to continue climbing.

Because of their instant success, Apollo had pretty much given them free reign over their album, confident in their ability to write another hit. Jerome was their producer, as well as their acting manager. Back when they did their first album, Jerome had been the one who brought out the best of their music. His experience was greatly appreciated.

Hell, their entire fanbase appreciated the whole lot of them. Every day on Tweeter the likes, comments and retweets would keep on rolling in. Sometimes a fellow cast member would retweet something of theirs. They had follow requests from other famous musicians and actors, which they readily accepted. Once more, the Drama Brothers were practically drowning in appreciation.

Now, if only the Drama Brothers could find that appreciation in their own family.

Ezekiel's predicament was already apparent. His parents had washed their hands of him, and that was that, as harsh as it may be.

But the other three didn't exactly have happy home lives, either.

Cody's parents ignored him once more, leaving him saddened and resigned to his loneliness. It had been happening for his entire life, no matter what he did, and there was no reason to believe they'd change their tune.

Harold's mom was also pretty hands-off, prioritizing her career at the car manufacturing plant than quality time with her kids. Aside from a brief comment about how she liked the instrumentation, she hadn't commented on the song at all. She just continued to shuffle around the house, getting ready for yet another long shift.

But it was Trent's parents' response which triggered a vicious burst of creativity.

Gwen had long since gone home. It was just the four boys in the basement now; drumming their fingers and pencils on pads of paper, trying to get the creative juices flowing. It was late afternoon, and the whole house was silent except for them.

Well, except for Harold, more specifically.

"Did you know that in the 1960s, NASA had to invent a pen that could work in zero gravity?" he said. "They invested a lot of time and money into it, and it became a huge deal, since the astronauts needed something to write with. When I was video chatting with Leshawna last week, I told her all about this. She just looked at me and said, "Why didn't they just use a pencil?" So then I told her: that's exactly what the Russians did! But using a pencil in space isn't really a good idea, since the graphite can snap off and-"

"Dude, knock it off." Trent grumbled. "I'm trying to focus here."

"Excuse me for trying to teach you something. Gosh!"

"Please stop," Cody butted in. "Let's just focus for now."

But they would lose that focus almost immediately, because at that moment, Trent's phone started to buzz.

Trent groaned. "I'll bet you anything it's my parents asking me to come back home and reconsider not going to law school." He took one look at the caller ID and frowned. "Yep, it's them, all right. I'd better answer, or else they'd get even more upset."

He held the phone up to his ear. "Hi Mom. Yes, I'm fine…oh yeah? Did you like it? We're working on another album and-"

There was a loud commotion from the other end of the line. Trent held his phone away from his head for a moment, grimacing all the while.

"For the last time, Mom, I'm not going to law school! We've been over this! Law isn't my thing, music is…my music career is not a bust; have you seen how popular our new song is? Do you ever pay attention to anything I do these days?"

That generated another screech that sounded like, "Don't you dare talk to me like that!" Then even more screeching which couldn't be made out. But whatever was being said, it was making Trent visibly enraged. As each second passed, his face grew stormier and stormier.

Through gritted teeth, he spat, "When will you learn that I'm not just some stupid fucking clone of you that does everything you do? Why can't you just shut up and leave me alone?" Without even waiting for a response, he ended the call and tossed his phone onto the couch. Then he put his head in his hands and groaned loudly.

"Woah, what was that about, eh?" Ezekiel asked, eyes wide. It wasn't really common for Trent to swear like that, especially to his own parents.

Trent groaned again. "My mom was complaining about how I focus too much on my music, and not enough on a 'proper' career. She and my dad have been really trying to push me to become either a lawyer or an accountant. They don't seem to understand, or even care, that I don't want to be either of those things. I'm not even good at maths, anyway!"

"That sucks, man." Cody patted him on the shoulder. "And I can relate…kinda. My parents have been thinking of sending me all the way to Oxnard. They said it's the 'most distinguished school' ever, and anything less just wouldn't do."

Harold grimaced. "Yeesh. And I thought my mom wanting to send me to Toronto for my tertiary education was bad enough."

"My parents always said that all lawyers are evil, and that universities are for posh bastards." Ezekiel joined in.

Trent spat out a laugh. "Well, they're right about the lawyer thing. My dad can be pretty evil in the courtroom. He doesn't understand that I'm just not that kind of person."

"If you think being different from your parents is tough," Harold said, "try being different from your siblings. My brother and sister are both psychologists. Massively successful ones, too. They're out there helping people every single day. But I'd rather focus on my passions. And my mom looks at my siblings and feels proud of them, and then she looks at me and feels disappointed."

"That's sad, man."

Harold waved him off. His movement was nonchalant, but he struggled to keep the sadness off his face. "It's not that big of a deal. I've had plenty of time to come to terms with it. Besides, not having a super stressful job means that I can focus on what really makes me happy."

"But if your sister is so successful,then how come she still lives here, eh?" Ezekiel asked.

"Cuz she can't afford a house yet, even though she's been saving for months. Her student loan debt is high enough that she won't be able to pay it off until she's forty, at the earliest." Harold couldn't help but smirk.

"Well, next time she starts harassing you, just tell her that at least you have the money to move out whenever you want," Trent said.

The four boys giggled madly. "I can try, but she'd probably beat my ass," Harold responded.

"I'm so glad I don't have siblings," Cody spoke up. "Who knows how they would have turned out, with the upbringing I had."

Trent nodded. "Same here. If they were more 'obedient', they'd probably be really insufferable."

An image of Damaris floated up in the back of Ezekiel's mind. He tried to push it away. After all, Damaris wasn't the least bit insufferable. Not in the slightest.

And even if she was, it was all their parents' fault.

"My cousin's like that," Cody said, continuing the conversation. "She gets spoiled rotten by my aunt and uncle. I can hardly stand to be around her sometimes. Luckily, she doesn't really pay much attention to me."

"Oh, man," Harold adjusted his glasses. "You have no idea what my extended family is like. They're so out of control, they'll probably be in the next edition of my sister's psychology textbook." He paused. "Actually, they all should be. Mental illness does tend to run in the family. Though, it seems that my branch has avoided the worst of it."

"At least yours has the excuse of mental illness. Mine just sucks." Trent sighed.

"Sometimes I wonder if mine are mentally ill." Ezekiel spoke up suddenly.

It felt dangerous, and wrong somehow, to say that at all, let alone out loud. The thought just entered his mind like a bullet and unfurled its tendrils into his brain.

"Uhhh…what makes you say that?" Harold's eyes widened behind his glasses.

"I mean, they kicked me out, eh? They did for really dumb reasons. Because they were embarrassed. Because they thought I was lazy, even though I'm not. That's pretty illogical, right? Don't mentally ill people do illogical things all the time?"

Trent seemed concerned, more so than usual. "Uh, I don't think you can just attribute everything they do to mental illness-"

But Ezekiel just kept going as the poisonous thoughts clouded his brain. "They're so weird, too. They would watch movies all the time, but they'd never let me watch them. Know why? Because they said movies would rot my brain. Well, since they still watch movies, their brains must have rotted. That's why they are the way they are. It has to be, right?"

Cody opened his mouth to say something, but was also cut off.

"They hate going into town and talking to other people. They never let me go to school because they thought the government was being controlled by someone more powerful. But they still let me go to that spelling competition. That was hosted by the government, or at least a small part of it, right? Don't mentally ill people hate the government?"

Wow. That was the first time Zeke ever brought up the fact that his parents believed in some kind of conspiracy theory. Now it seemed kind of obvious with immediate hindsight, but until this point, they just seemed like run-of-the-mill assholes.

"Don't mentally ill people also hate their family?" The words came spewing out of his mouth, faster and faster, like a dam breaking. "That's why they kicked me out, right? Because they thought I was all of these things that I wasn't. And…and…that must be why they made my sister leave, too! Because they hated her, too!"

"Sister?" Harold zeroed in on that tidbit of information. "I didn't know you had a sister."

They all fell silent at that. Ezekiel could hardly bring himself to look at their faces - their sorrowful, pity-filled faces that they all undoubtedly had. Part of him wanted their sympathy, yes, but a bigger part of him felt so awkward at the idea.

"...Yikes. This is a lot to, uh, unpack." Trent finally said, still processing what he was just told.

"Do you need therapy?" Cody asked.

"What's that?"

Cody and Trent shared a concerned glance. "It's when you go talk to someone else about your problems, and they help you to deal with them."

"Oh." But after a moment, Ezekiel said, "My parents would probably think that therapy's for losers, anyway. Maybe they should get it."

Trent gazed around the room, awkward and uncomfortable. "Uh, Zeke…I…you don't have to, but can you tell us about your sister?"

Ezekiel's gaze dropped down into his lap. He played around with his thumbs; something he'd seen Cody do whenever he was nervous. "...What do you want to know?"

"Whatever you're comfortable telling us, dude."

Ezekiel said nothing for a long while.

Damaris' name was like Satan's name: you didn't dare speak it in the Miller household. And his parents weren't even that religious. Well, okay, they kind of were, but they never went to church. But that was beside the point.

The night Damaris left, her bedroom door was shut forever, with the unspoken stipulation that it would stay shut. Her bed, dresser, and various knicknacks she left behind were to be hidden from the outside world. As far as their parents were concerned, she no longer existed in their minds, dead or alive.

But Damaris was still Ezekiel's sister.

She would sit and watch crappy Nature Channel documentaries with him. She would help him feed his first-ever pet calf. She would make faces to cheer him up while their parents stewed in a bad mood elsewhere in their house. Sure, he could please his parents and act like she never existed, but that didn't change the fact that she did.

And that night on the stairs hovered in his mind like violent storm clouds.

"She did so much for me." Ezekiel heard himself say. "She loved me, and I loved her."

If only his parents could hear him now.

"She never got angry at me. And even if she did, she always said sorry. Unlike Mom and Dad. Whenever they got angry, she always tried to cheer me up afterwards. She was always looking out for me."

Trent's guitar, tall and proud in its stand, stood nearby, facing Ezekiel with its shiny wooden surface. If Ezekiel focused hard enough, he could make out a very vague reflection. It was warped and woody and abstract, like so many of his childhood memories. He didn't like the feeling it gave him.

"Damaris ran away when I was seven. She was seventeen. I woke up to her shouting at my parents. I sat on the staircase and listened. She was telling them that they don't deserve her respect. She went to leave, but then she saw me. She came up and hugged me. Said that…that she'd only be gone for a while and not to worry about anything. Then she left. I haven't seen her since."

There. The Miller's long-hidden cat was out of the bag at last. Have fun stuffing it back in, Mom and Dad.

"...Do you know what happened to her?" Harold asked quietly.

Ezekiel slowly shook his head, resigned. "No. I don't know where she went, or what she's doing. Hell, I don't even know what that whole argument was about, eh. My parents never told me anything, and I wasn't allowed to ask."

"Jesus, dude. I'm so sorry that happened to you." Trent said, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

"You really have it worse than I do." Cody patted his shoulder. "I'm so glad you're not with them anymore."

"Me too." And despite the subdued tone of Zeke's voice, he'd never meant anything more.

"Were you or Damaris ever abused?" Harold asked.

Ezekiel furrowed his brow. "I dunno. I never saw anything. And my parents didn't do anything that bad. Like, they never hit me or anything. My dad mostly just yelled at me."

Harold pushed his glasses up his nose, preparing for lecture mode. "Leshawna says that abuse can come in all forms. I'd say that driving away one child and kicking the other one out is a form of abuse."

Now that made Ezekiel stop and think.

Yes, they did do some shitty things. And yes, he did remember them treating Damaris a little more harshly than him. But it was so long ago, and he was just a child then. Who's to say that he wasn't just misremembering stuff?

No no no, it didn't matter if he was misremembering or not. Because he certainly wasn't just inventing himself getting kicked to the curb, or his own sister running away after an argument.

Actually, would teaching him bad things about the world count as abuse, too? After all, he had no way of verifying what anything his dad said was true until he joined Total Drama and faced the brutal societal consequences for it. He was lucky to have friends after all that.

"Dude, you clearly need help processing everything," Trent took note of Ezekiel's swiftly changing expression as he tried to reason with himself.

"Do you guys really think I need therapy?" Ezekiel asked, concern spreading over his features.

"It can't hurt," Harold waved a hand. "Unless you do it with my brother or sister. That would hurt."

"You know what I find therapeutic?" Cody grinned, gesturing at their instruments scattered all over the basement. "Music! Writing songs, or heck, even just hitting random notes on my keyboard makes me feel a little better."

"Yeah." Ezekiel sat back with a tiny smile. Writing The Door made him feel a little better, even though it also made him feel a little worse. It felt good to just get all of it out there, no matter how hard it was.

Hopefully, Ol' Johnny would be happy with what he'd done.

"You guys have no idea how many songs I've written to trash my parents." Trent grabbed his guitar and began to strum. "Every time I see your face," he sang. "I'm reminded that I'm a disgrace."

"And I'd love to punch you in the face!" Ezekiel joined in.

"The law of retaliation dictates that I do so. But if I try, you'll leave me bruised on the floo-oor!"

"Jeez, that was dark," Harold snorted.

Trent's strumming became a little more intense. "What can I do, what can I say? You stubbornly refuse to let me have my way…"

"Your way or the highway…" Cody sang, "...is your bread and butter…"

"But deep down, you're just a big nutter."

At that line, they all collapsed into intense giggles.

"Hey, someone write that down! Maybe we can put it on the album!" Cody suggested.

"Maybe we can put it next to Your Smile. Can you imagine how hilarious the juxtaposition would be?" Harold wiped away a tear of laughter. "It'll be like, a cute love song, immediately followed by something about how much our families all hate us."

"God, can you imagine what everyone would think of it? They'd all probably think we're all secretly miserable, or something." Trent added.

"But we kind of are, aren't we? Isn't that what this whole discussion is about?" Ezekiel's smile slowly faded from his face. "I mean: my parents kicked me out, Cody's parents ignored him, Harold's mom doesn't care about his music, and Trent's parents hate his whole career."

"...Well, I wouldn't say I'm unhappy, or anything," Trent said. "I just don't get along with my parents. That's really the only big issue I have in my life."

"Same here." Harold nodded. "I know that no matter what my mom and siblings think of me, I'm still successful in my own right. Leshawna once told me that I should never let them dictate my happiness."

"She's wise, eh."

"Yeah. She volunteers at a shelter for troubled teens, so she knows exactly what she's talking about."

"But don't you still wanna…I don't know…get back at them, somehow?" Cody sat up straight. "Like, that song we just did on the spot…maybe we should put it on the album. It'll be like one great big 'fuck you' to them, for everything they ever did to us."

Ezekiel gasped. "Yeah! We should totally do that!"

"It's not like my parents listen to our music anyway, so they won't even find out." Trent smiled thinly. "Ergo, I won't even get into trouble over it."

"And my family has never once understood any of our songs," Harold added. "We're free to just do it!"

"Yeah!" Ezekiel and Cody high fived each other.

Harold found a clean page in his notebook. As he ran his fingers over the paper, he felt a shiver of excitement zip through his bones.

His mother, brother and sister won't even find out the true meaning of this song. For people who claim to be very good at picking up on other's hidden emotions, his siblings were remarkably close-minded.

They were safe from that. He'll show them. Big time.

It had been a productive day. Not only did they get some stuff off their chests, but now they were turning it into a song for millions of people to hear. The thought of their own families hearing it, but not picking up on the true intentions behind it, was dizzying.

Harold was seated at the computer, running through free drum loops, searching for the right one to use. The other instruments and vocals had been formed into a rough demo. Trent and Cody were sitting on the couch, brainstorming ways to rework the song into a better version of itself. Occasionally Harold would chime in with an opinion of his own.

Ezekiel was lying on the carpet, alone, notebook and pencil in front of him.

Something else was bursting from within him, crawling around his stomach searching for a way out.

Damaris' face and voice wouldn't leave him alone. They were there in the back of his mind. They always had been, really, but he'd always been able to ignore it before. His parents had tried their hardest to beat all thoughts of her out of his mind.

And they'd kind of succeeded. He went through the rest of his childhood only thinking of her sporadically, and briefly, at that. On rare occasions, something would spark a memory from within - perhaps the wind blowing a certain way, or a particular shade of pink he saw while watching TV - but he never dwelled on it. His mind was already full of thoughts of his parents and pet cows and chores and whatever was going to be for dinner and whether he'd remembered to put his laundry away this time.

But then, the memories of all those memories began to play themselves all at once, like TV screens in a museum exhibit. Everywhere he turned, he was surrounded by bits from the past, and he had no idea what to focus on first.

Eventually, he settled on Damaris as his mind displayed her throughout the ages: running alongside him in a field aged thirteen, making him a sandwich aged fifteen, helping him to catch butterflies aged seventeen.

Then Damaris' face morphed into his own as he too grew older: his mother teaching him math from an old moldy book aged thirteen, feeding his cows all by himself aged fifteen, feasting on apple strudel in a plane's dingy cargo hold aged seventeen…

Did she ever watch Total Drama? Did she ever buy his music, back when he was still solo? Did she buy a copy of Your Smile?

Or did she think he was still stuck on the farm somewhere?

He didn't want her to think that. He wanted to see her again. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened to him over the years.

Ezekiel stared at the page in front of him; pure, white and crisp. He flexed his finger around his pencil.

Did he dare do it?

What would everyone think of it, if he did do it?

But he needed to tell her. So much had happened since they last saw each other on the staircase that terrible night. She deserved to know. She was his sister. He was her brother. They had a bond that no one could break except for their parents. Maybe this could be the first step to mending it.

He put pencil to paper and began to write.

Dear Damaris…here's what you've missed…

Got this chapter done a bit quicker than last time. The next one I plan on being a shorter one, so here's hoping for speedy writing!

Also, I feel like I should mention that Ezekiel's whole rant about mental illness being the reason why his parents are so terrible is not meant to be taken seriously, nor is it intended to offend anyone. It's just meant to be Ezekiel trying to come to terms with what his parents did to him, and trying to find an explanation for it. It's not the right explanation, though. Zeke's parent just suck.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'' see you all for the next one!