"Don't you want me to take over now, Jessa?" Celeste asked with care, a jelly donut attached to her powder coated fingers, noticing Jessa's eyelids drooping every few seconds as morning traffic diminished to a brisk trot, noticing the 3rd bag of Goldfish they bought this week almost scarfed away by Jessa uncontrollable desire for the only fishes she could enjoy. "Don't you ever go a day without Goldfish?"

"No and No," Jessa responded, a fatigued yawn spilling into the damp air, the air cool enought that the unreliable air conditioning would not be put to the test today. She reached into the bag of Goldfish and snagged a few unlucky fishes and popped them in her mouth like popcorn, "I got a few more hours left in me."

"Late night with Greg?" Celeste analogiesed evenly, plopping down into the passanger's seat as they trailed Dream Street's bus loyaly to the next destination in the heart of Portland, OR.

"Naturally," Jessa responded with her seductive grin, her eyes twinkling with lustful intention behind her sunglasses, smoothly executing the exit toward the Aladdin Theatre.

"I don't get you," Celeste disapproved, a frown expanding on her face like grass grows in the soppy mud as she threw the last bite of donut into her savoring mouth, her fingers grazing her tounge to rid the powder.

"What?" Jessa replied, distracted from the red light that appeared out of nowhere and slamming on the beaks, the grinding gears objecting at her lack of judgement.

"You say Greg is nothing to you," Celeste began, the loq groans screetching in her ears from an ailing Taryn's bed derailing her train of thought, "Then you smile, a smile I've never seen you have before, and it looks like you don't have a care in the world, not even eventually hurting this guy."

"I don't have a care in this gigantic, wonderful world," Jessa admitted, sighing with relief as her eyes darted from cluttered sidewalk to cluttered sidewalk, "Not even...nope, not even for Greg. That was the point of this trip."

Celeste peered at her skeptically, almost as if she could read her mind. Celeste's hands clamped firmly on Jessa's arm unexpectantly, causing Jessa to jerk in her seat. Celeste's crystal eyes were glazed over in concern and fright, her lips in a stern frown. "It's impossible to forget everything that has happen. Look at what happened yesterday with the boys. It always follows us."

"You're overreacting," Jessa dismissed her proposal, shrugging her off nonchalantly, redirecting her eyes to the lines in the road. "What's followed me?"

"Your mother," Celeste bluntly replied, abruptly rising from her seat to retract to the overhang bed.

Those words seeped into Jessa's brain like a poision that could slowly shut down her organs and kill her in a laggard, painful seizure of bad decisions. The thought of her mother barely surfaced in the sea of excitement and ignorance she's been experiencing so far this enjoyable summer. Her mother was at the bottom step on Jessa's ladder of respected people. Her mother was nothing. She has been misusing and abusing her body for men's pleasure and paychecks for as long as Jessa could recollect. Jessa didn't have a father. She felt as if she didn't have a mother sometimes either, her mother climbing up the stairs in a drunken stumble with red eyes and smudged lipstick late at night while Jessa studied for test, while Jessa motivated herself to become something, not a piece of trash. Her mother's one love banished her to the disgrading filth of a women without options, without hope, without life.

Tears fueled by sadness and determination jumped into Jessa's eyes, knowing her mother was absolutely lost and she was going to be somebody, somebody notable, proud, maybe even a movie star......

Ashley sat at the table, puffs of white clouds shielding away the brilliant sun, Ashley sifting through another pack of freshly-developed photographs, her eyes delicately inspecting every shadow and angle of her creations. A picture of Jesse and Matt began the movie slides of the 4th of July weekend, from preparation of foods to the big cook-off to the dancing sparkles launched into the still night. They were both sporting goofy smiles, Ashley catching them off-guard on their bus, both of them bent over by their bunks in quest for unannounced items. Ashley's face suddenly became sullen, finally noticing how close they were, all the guys were...like brothers.

She began to think about her family, her older brother Brett's obsession with car repair, her father's stories about his days as a farmer's help in England, her mother's genial eyes and walnut brownies wafting and cooling in the breeze while she cooked a hearty meal for her favorite men and only princess. Leaning her freckled cheek against the chilled window, she began to miss the little things her friends couldn't give her, the warm hugs, the harmonious talks over a hot dinner, the petty arguments over what to watch after Wheel of Fortune. She began to miss being the baby of her real family.

After a deep sigh forced its way from her rotund body, she realized that the severity of her illness hasn't effected the tip thus far. She hates having to consume the pills so often, checking her blood twice a day, especially when so much buzzed around her. Yet, she's responsible, takes her medicines and eats right, thanks to the belligerant Celeste. Ashley's eyes became frosty with remembrance of the dangers of not paying proper attention to her illness, of her kind and humorous family and common tradition as she layed her head on the table, her lips skimming some photographs skewd across the table like the reprocussions of a game of "52 Pick-Up."

"You OK, Ash?" Celeste asked, perking up in her bed as if she had acquired a 6th sense for when her friends were distressed, her eyes alert.

Ashley sadly shook her head on the table, biting on her bottom lips to supress her sadness. Celeste climbed down from the bed, her smile kind like Ashley's mother's. Ashley scooted over in her seat and Celeste glided in, her shoulder offered and quickly accepted. Ashley rested her head, two silent rivers of tears streaming down her cheeks as Celeste rocked Ashley back and forth as if she still had diapers and unresilient appendages.

"It's alright to be homesick," Celeste cooed, her voice smooth like silk, her hand rustling through Ashley's blonde hair like a rake through blanketed autumn leaves. "You've never been this far from home before."

"I just don't want you guys to think I'm a baby," Ashley retorted, her fingers sliding up and combing past her spilt tears to slightly inflammed eyes. "I'm just...emotional, I guess. I miss my mom and dad and Brett terribly."

"No one thinks you're a baby," Celeste assured her, gazing down to her splotted cheeks.

"Then why do you act like I still am?" Ashley replied brusquely, a sliver of vexation slicing at Celeste's brain as Ashley folded her arms together.

"I..." Celeste started, Taryn's moans growing louder as they tourmented her mind, "I want a little sister. You know, someone to talk to and hang out with and shop with. You know, do girl stuff."

"That would be nice," Ashley agreed, her fingers grazing the pictures tatooing the table.

"Me and her would gossip about boys, stay up all night with our worries and problems," Celeste continued, her eyes slipping into a reflective gaze of awe, "We'd go to the latest Josh Harnett movie and just...be there for each other." Ashley let a sweet smile bulldoze through her anguish when Celeste glanced down at her, her curls framing her face, her cheeks rosy from the heat colliding with humidity, "She'd be a lot like you. Sweet, kind, generous, too cute...just some one who would always be there."

"Really?" Ashley asked, flattered, her hands clasping together at the thought.

Celeste nodded, her face succumbing closer toward that fantasy, "Maybe I wouldn't have...have..."

Ashley placed her small hand over Celeste's ruby lips, Ashley shaking her head in disapproval in resurfacing that inflictave subject. "I know she would have been there for you."

"Like you guys?" Celeste questioned with a straight face, her head inclined toward the pictures.

"Of course!" Ashley shouted, tying her arms around Celeste's neck like a shoe lace, their hearts syncronizing in beats. Celeste laughed, rebonding them both of the glass whose slivers and pieces cut themselves and the things all around them, things that they can't fix or change.

"Just remember," Celeste cationed amicably, brushing her hand against Ashley's freckles as she rose to her feet. "Friends may be for life, but family is forever. Feel lucky to have a family that cares for you the way they do." Like a college professor whose life lesson was taught and chalkboard erased clean, she exited toward the bathroom in the rear, leaving Ashley at the table with her tactile memories and a subsided yearning to call home with Celeste's comfort.

Celeste checked over to Taryn after she departed from their small bathroom, Taryn's face a lurid complextion and eyes red marbles, coughs shaking through her like violent tremors.

"Celeste," Taryn moaned, taking a drag of her marajuana cigarette, the smoke weaving into the air in several sinister spirals. "Get me my orange juice in the frigde, please."

"Are you fucking kidding?!" Celeste asked in an inconsiderate tone, her eyes glaring vexedly at the marajuana cigarette perched between Taryn's fingers, Celeste's head cocked foward and hands stabbing into her hips.

"Fine, God, calm down," Taryn responded nonchalantly, as if she didn't perceive what she held in her hands any more dangerous than a lollipop, stiffly chucking the sheets off herself and hoisting herself up, her body position that of an old, brittle women, "I'll get it myself if it's so much to ask."

"Where did you get this?" Celeste demanded, yaking the marajuana from Taryn's fingers and shoving it into Taryn's face, lightning bolts of misbelief at Celeste's audacity flashing through Taryn's brown eyes. "You wonder why you're so sick?"

"I got it in Washington and I have a fucking sinus infection, not a death sentance!" Taryn bickered, stumbling to her feet and grabbing the joint back, her body rigid with anger.

"Keep it down!" Celeste hushly demanded, glancing over her shoulder, "I don't want Ashley to..."

"Hun, get with it," Taryn suggested austerely, shoving past her toward the regrigeratior, Celeste hot on her tail with clinched fists as Taryn fished through the fridge, "Ashley is 16. She isn't a nun." Ashley turned toward the quarrel, her brows furrowed down with confusion as Jessa glanced at her rearview mirror to properly diagnose the problem.

"And you are?" Celeste replied incredulously, slamming the refrigeratior shut just when Taryn crept her way from the lane of fire. Taryn glared at Celeste, her hand tight around her glass of orange juice, her top lip curling up in the infamous Elvis sneerk but more volatile, the veins in her neck beginning to climb up and push past the normal restraints of her skin like they were little aliens trying to burst from her body.

"I don't know what you're getting at," Taryn began softly, her eyes taunt slits as she crouched over the shorter Celeste, "But I'm not in the mood or the state of mind to hear it." Taryn strolled with a slight limp back to her bed, Celeste's eyes blazening the path behind Taryn.

"Is it wrong for people to care about you?" Celeste demanded as Taryn slipped back into bed, a loud groan plummeting to the floor. "Is it wrong for you to have feelings and insecurities?"

"Is this rhetorical?" Taryn asked wryly, taking a sip of her juice and smile sardonically, a golden shade of sun inching from the clouds aross her face.

"You are an inadequate and ignorant person!" Celeste informed her explosively, her nostrils flaring, eyebrows furrowed over her eyes, lips quavering from the fustration building up insider her like plaque on artery walls, "You're afraid of your own feelings and the feelings of others. You're throwing your life away to make some fucking point everyone already understands. I hope you overdose on the stuff you choke on and die!"

Taryn's shocked face casted immoble in the cold frost of Celeste's words, Celeste storming with thunderous steps back to her overhang bed, Ashley and Jessa not phased at all about this confrentation, only that Taryn barely retaliated at Celeste's bullets, bullets that drove deep toward Taryn's heart. No one has spoken so cruely to Taryn in all her life. Taryn now know how her tourmentees feel...horrible.

As if on cue, Taryn's cellphone began to ring lightly, the ringing fighting through the clouded air toward Ashley, Taryn immoble in a pod of shock and unexpressed grief to advance to it. Ashley reluctently stepped away from the table toward the phone and answered. "Taryn's line," Ashley spoke into the reciever, hearing Jessa's giggle in the distance. "Oh, Hey Matt...Everything's...weird, but OK. What? Really? Really?! That sounds great! Oh yeah, I'm sure we'd love to. I'll talk to them and get back to you? OK, Bye." Ashley began to jump and parade around like a child, awkward to the combustable atmosphere, her eyes wide with excitement. Ashley sprinted into the passanger's seat, perched on the teal arm rest like a dog relief and joyed to see its master.

"What is it?" Jessa asked with an exausted laugh, swirving into the back lot of the Aladdin Theatre, screams of fans beginning to bleed into the RV.

"The boys are getting a 3 day vacation after their show in Anaheim. They rented a few hotel rooms and everything. Sun, sand," Ashley began, her eyes enlarged as she counted the many spendid offers and items to their disposal, "beaches, food, room service, Dream Street! They want us to stay with them."

"Sounds like a party," Jessa replied intrigued, an enchanting smile coupling her dark, mystic sunglasses as they parked behind the boys, her strong arm shifting the slug of a bus in park.

"Sounds like another slide show in my movie of the summer," Ashley agreed, her eyes augmenting with what was to come.