Lost

Chapter 25 - Vacation?

Over the next few days, things were a little tense between Caleb, Jodee, and Ace. Caleb and Ace were both on board with Ace taking custody of his younger sister and moving to California. But Jodee ... She doesn't even know of the plan yet.

Ace was pretty confident Jodee would go along with the plan as he would probably be the one to bring it up to her. But he was a little worried that she wouldn't want to move to California or that she would accidentally spill the information to their father before he told Tobias — which would be a worst case scenario.

The girl was still young at six years old, but already she was very set in her ways and one of the things she didn't like was change. Change affected her routine and her entire life. If there was even just a minor disturbance to what she did on the daily — Jodee would not be very happy about it and would have many days without sleeping, crying a bunch, or just overall not being very happy.

After Caleb and Jodee had been introduced and Caleb started spending more and more time with the Chambers siblings — and integrating himself into every aspect of their lives — Jodee had a rough couple of days. She was comfortable around the new boy by this stage but this was still a massive change for her. She was used to just Ace and now she had Ace and Caleb. So for the next few days Jodee would get pretty mad if things didn't go as they were supposed to (whereas normally, she'd pretty much go with the flow) and she slept with her brother for about two weeks straight. At that point, Ace had to put his foot down and more or less reteach the little girl to not co-sleep as he had done when she was about two years old.

Moving all the way across the country — away from Tobias, from her friends, their neighbor, away from everything that Jodee knew to be her life was sure to throw the girl for a loop. Ace was confident California was the destination for her, but he wasn't confident in how long it would take her to realize that and how difficult it would be.

To ease the transition, Cal and Ace decided it would be best to travel to California and just look around — with Jodee, of course.

Their plan was to find a good area; The criteria being school district, safety, and the amount of gang activity. Although the last part would be a more secretive part of their trip. The boys had been saving up money for a while and wanted to live a more comfortable life in California which meant looking around for houses as well. Bringing Jodee along would give her a chance to feel out the new area as well and also the two boys realistically had no choice as Jodee wouldn't want to stay with someone while they were gone, nor did they have someone for her to stay with.

But before they could even make their way to California, Ace had to make sure no one stopped their plans — namely Tobias who would most definitely give them problems if he were to find out (before or after). Ace knew the inevitable was that Tobias would need to find out Ace was taking custody of Jodee as Toby would have to give up his custody rights in order for that to happen. But Ace planned that to be at the last possible second and something he and his father did alone without Jodee to get caught in the crossfire. She needed to be far away for this to go down.

Jodee wasn't going to be happy with the short notice of their flight to California tomorrow. But it was a consequence Ace was willing to bear to keep the information from getting to his fathers ears.

"We just have to do it, ya know?" Caleb's hushed whisper brought Ace out of his worrying thoughts.

They were both huddled together at the entryway of the Chambers house, looking at Jodee through the doorway as they spoke in quiet tones, careful not to tip her off that anything was different about today.

"I know." Ace whispered back a little harshly, running his fingers through his dark locks of hair before rubbing his neck.

He was rarely a nervous guy, but something about this particular talk with his little sister made his skin crawl. Every time he looked at Jodee, he saw her innocence and how unaware she was of the upcoming changes. The thought of her reaction, the confusion and fear she might feel, tightened his chest. Ace had always been the strong, silent type, but facing Jodee now made him question everything. His usually steady resolve wavered as he imagined how she might react to the news that her world was about to shift dramatically. It was one thing to be cautious about his own decisions, but it was another to disrupt Jodee's sense of security. He felt a knot in his stomach, knowing how important it was to handle this right, even if he didn't have the right words to say.