"What the hell is this?" Taryn demanded lightheartedly as she plowed into the back room of the boys' tour bus, bashe everywhere, on the walls and carpet, unnanounced, lewd views of a blonde woman and brunette woman debasing the proper use of a TV, 4 boys staring up at her like guilty children in utter shock, their bodies stricken of movement.

"Uhhh..." Matt studdered, quickly switching off the TV and crawling to the VCR, ejecting the tape swiftly.

"What's going on?" Celeste asked in suprise as Taryn tumbled over Chris, Jesse, and Frankie sprawled around the room like loose laundry, the boys grasps up at Taryn to desist her approach futile. Jessa and Ashley filed in when Taryn grabbed the video from Matt's weak hands, holding Matt back with her free hand as her eyes widened in amusement.

"Oh my God," Taryn sardonically laughed, tossing the video across the room to Celeste. Chris and Frankie jumped up to catch it, but bumped heads as it landed shakily in Celeste's arms. "Check it out."

"Hmmm," Celeste scrutinized the video, Jessa and Ashley snickering at her sides uncontrollably. "Hotel Erotica, eh?"

"So this is what they do before a show?" Ashley asked Celeste and Jessa with a misguided, naive smile. The boys were at a loss for words, even the smooth Chris.

"Boys, Boys," Jessa shook her head in disapproval, supressing her giggles and peering over Celeste's shoulder at the video, "I had so many higher hopes for you all. Resorting to surgically-enhanced women to get satisfaction and pleasure..."

"It was...uhhh...Greg's idea!" Jesse interrupted in defense, scanning the room for Greg, who was missing in action.

"That's it!" Frankie agreed with a sheepish smile, his eyes lighting up as if he made a miraculous discovery about the world, stuffing some popcorn to choke down any other false statements.

"That makes sense because he's in here and all," Jessa acceded in mockery, her eyes inching to the ajared door leading to the sleep quarters where he layed.

"It's lonely!" Chris yelled with a frown in defense as Jessa turned her back to him, shrugging his shoulders.

"Please!" Taryn interrupted, not willing to hear that kind of bull shit, plopping down next to Chris as if to console him, not smack his head around with her blows of words. "You have girls flooding to your feet and you can't have any of them?"

"How can they compare to you girls?" Matt asked earnestly from across the room on the bashe loveseat, a statement released on impulse, and he began to blush like a young girl. The girls glazed at him astounded, smitten, flattered.

"That deserves a hug!" Celeste announced with a brilliant smile, pouncing on Matt, Matt's smile glowing. Taryn and Ashley joined in the hugging bragade when Jessa slipped from the room unconspicuously toward Greg's bunk.

Jessa slowly opened the maroon curtain, Greg snuggled comfortably under his flannel blue sheets, his eyes closed from the bright light of late morning attempting to smash through the thick curtain, his head averted towards her, his chest rising and falling with every prolonged breath drawn in and out like a vaccumm, slumbering in utter peace and tranquilty. Jessa smiled and leaned in, her dainty hand whiping gently over his cool forehead. As she sat down on the edge of the bed, Greg's eyes fluttered open, shadowed over from sleep as he turned to Jessa, Jessa's thin eyebrows raised and smile gleaming behind shards of light crowding around her like she was an angel.

"I just saw you," Greg whispered breathlessly, his voice raspy with the sleep still being shaken away, rubbing his hands over his rebelling eyes.

"Where, Tiger?" Jessa asked softly, ruffling her hand through his short hair.

"In my dreams," Greg responded, a sleepy smile diffusing on his face.

"How cute," Jessa laughed, leaning down and leaving some sugar from her kiss on his lips, as addictive as Cocaine, his tounge swiping over his lips eagerly when she pulled away. "You didn't watch Porn like your other friends?"

"Who needs Porn when I got you?" Greg replied crudely, wrapping his arms around her pink Princess tank top, his brain beginning to acquire normal male chauvenistic behavior.

"Now who's seductive?" Jessa asked with a twinkle in her eye, placing her hands on his muscular arms, relishing the feel of his strength, his muscles a lot like Mike's, her brown hair sweeping over them like a broom. "C'Mon Lazy....We is gonna watch a movie with the others."

"But I'm naked!" Greg cried dramatically, covering himself.

"Really now? Well then, stay there and move over," Jessa joked, ripping off the sheets to reveal Greg's white boxers with blue verticle stripes cascading down the sides, Greg lounging on his bed like a centerfold, Jessa's laugher reverberating from his eardrums and he smiled graciously. "That's hot...now get dressed."

"Yes Ma'am," Greg replied smiling, closing the curtain as Jessa traveled back into the back room.

"We are NOT watching Serendipity!" Chris retorted, snatching the video from Celeste's hand, Celeste glaring at him angrily. "Chick flick, much?"

"OK, then let's just pop back in your Porn and wait for Louie and Brian to come in," Celeste suggested brashly, her hand thrusted toward the door as to signal for them to enter, "I'm sure they'd approve of such fine quality entertainment."

"We're men," Jesse supported Chris, flexing those baby muscles, Frankie and Matt snickering at what Jesse didn't have and they...well, erm, Frankie had a surplus of.

"Stay out of this!" Celeste and Chris shouted simultaneously, heavy and hot air circulating around them like weights and ropes, constricting them closer toward the violent point of explosion. They were dangerously close together, breathing in each other's air, the air fueling their scalding disdain toward one another.

"Celeste," Jessa piped in, running her fingers around the edge of the doorpane, "Come with me."

"Why?" Celeste spatted back, her voice climbing over her stagnant shoulder, her artic blues frosting over Chris's chocolate browns.

"We need to discuss dinner arrangements," Jessa continued smoothly, cautiously walking toward her friend and placing her hand in a consoling manner on Celeste's shoulder, heat snapping and stinging from Celeste's shoulder into her hand like blazes of fire.

"Fine," Celeste grumbled, whipping away from Chris and storming out the door with Jessa. When they were clear from ear shot, Celeste grabbed Jessa's shoulder and spun Jessa toward her. "'We need to discuss dinner arrangements?'" Celeste repeated skeptically with a roll of her eyes, "Like I cook, Jessa."

"I thought you needed someone to intervene before World War 3 broke out," Jessa defended herself.

"I can take care of myself," Celeste revoked, folding her hands in annoyance, "I'm not that sheltered."

"When did you turn into Taryn?" Jessa asked sincerely, pounding her eyes into Celeste's. Their eyes stayed locked together like conjoined hooks for what it seemed like years, a staring contest underway. Jessa cracked a smile, spinning them both back into reality with boisterious laughter. "You don't have to be a hard-ass. I only need one of those in my life."

"I'm sorry," Celeste aplogiesed, throwing her arm over Jessa's shoulder as they ventued toward the back room. "Boys are just...stupid."

When they returned to the room, Greg had joined the gang as the opening credits for "Road Trip" flashed over the screen.

"Ain't this an appropriate movie," Celeste whispered as she plopped next to Frankie and Taryn on the left, a safe distance away from Chris.

"Where the hell do they come up with this stuff?" Taryn pondered, vexed already by Tom Green's degrading performance as a bizarre co-ed.

"That's what producers get paid to do," Frankie replied with a smart-alleck grin, reaching for some popcorn from the bowl perched in the middle of the floor.

"Thank you, Dr. Spock," Chris saluted him, his attitude rising in intensity with every beat of his heafty heart, his eyes spearing into Celeste with invisable swipes.

"She's referring to who would produce such a stupid movie," Greg interrupted to clear up anyone's misconception, lacing his arms around Jessa's small waist as Jessa's head cuddled into his chest like it was a pillow, the feeling Greg was experiencing deep inside the tingled and skips of his heart simply incredable like how he feels before stepping onstage in front of a few dozen or thousand.

"It isn't stupid!" Matt retorted, defending his love for slapstick comedies with a scowl toward Greg's comment.

"It's funny," Jesse agreed, giving Matt a high-five.

"The things the youngings enjoy," Frankie stated, shaking his head in pity as he chewed at the popcorn.

"You're only 3 months older than me!" Matt argued, pointing at Frankie.

"And that much more intelligent," Frankie smiled with a nod of his head. Celeste giggled and Taryn actually broke a smile.

Frankie's eyes diverted to Celeste, his smile bright like pearls. Something on her wrist snatched his eyes' attention. He figured it was a bracelete of something, but his eyes tripped out of its sockets when he distinguished what it really was. Two gruesome slashes of scars rivered across her wrists, red with irritation and screaming with hurt. Celeste's eyes dropped to them, and so did her mouth, realizing she didn't apply make-up to them today.

"How'd that happen?" Chris questioned with a voice that was slightly on the edge of being caring, his head craning through the air to verify what he saw, his eyes still hard and cold.

"Uhh," Celeste began, burying her wound deep into her jeans like her other secrets, "It's a long story..." She looked around to her friends like she was trapped in a cage, no way to get out, no one to lend a hand or key. Her eyes pleaded and mouth twisted down in fear.

Jessa wiggled herself from Greg's hold and crawled over to her friend, sensing Celeste calling to her. She mitigated Celeste with a comforting arm around her shoulder, shivers shuttering through Jesse's arm. "You don't have to tell them if you don't want to," Jessa whispered motherly, taking her index finger and curling it around one of Celeste's loose spirals.

"No," Celeste disagreed, clamping her hand on Jessa's knee and scanning the room, every one's faces blank of expression, the movie mute to their ears, their brains ready to listen. "It's time. I have to tell them some time."

Jessa nodded, presenting her friend with a well-deserved, encouraging hug before scampering back into Greg's arms. Celeste drew in a long breath and exhaled, her eyes already glistening with remorse. "My parents drove me to this," Celeste admitted quietly, turning her wrists so everyone could view their tourture. "My dad, mainly. My dad's a Lieutenant. We moved around a lot, but finally settled in Frost Valley 3 years ago where I met my best friends." Ashley smiled her pixie smile, Taryn and Jessa nodded in harmony. "My father decided to...put me on lock-down, basically. He didn't tell me why, just that 'it was for my own good.' I had no life. I did no sports, went to no parties, had no boyfriends. I'm surprised he let me breathe the same air as him."

"Gosh," Matt whispered astounded, the severity of her story magnifying with every word, the suspense growing like a horror tale. And it really was.

Celeste sadly nodded, a ball of water tumbling from her eye. "I was a prisoner in my own goddamn house. I began sleeping a lot, eating less, slipping into depression. Then my father saw my grades before school was out last year. He flipped because I wasn't doing so well."

"Understandably so," Frankie interrupted, Jessa's eyes turning sharply to Frankie at his words. "I mean that you weren't doing well."

"Yeah...He took my magazines and burned them in the fireplace, the only things I had left he couldn't steal, the fashions I've always wanted and dreamed of, the things every other girl had freely. He burnt my dreams," Celeste continued, her voice quivering, wringing her hands together in a nervous habit. "I snapped. That night, I went into my bathroom with all intentions of killing myself. I took a razor from the drawer and cut with no hesitation, cut so deep I thought I felt the blade cut into the bone. I guess I was that determined to die. I didn't stop to think about the only people who cared, my friends."

They all sat in the silence, the muffling silence that zipped their mouths shut, afraid to comment on that story, afraid one wrong phrase would cause her to precipitate back into that grim state. Chris smacked himself internally again and again for being so callous and judgemental of her. He felt like an idiot, making Celeste feel so uncomfortable it catalysed her to her awful words and withdrawal from his attention. He wished he could turn back time and make a second impression, do something different; they all wished.

"I'm really glad you girls kidnapped me," Celeste cried hysterically, tears flooding her eyes like a breaking dam of emotion, her lips trembling into a small smile. "I love you so much."

All 3 friends jumped up and smothered Celeste in a group hug, all of them crying like Dream Street sings...together. That's how it was to be for the rest of their mortal lives.