How I Met my Kidnap-I Mean Your Father

::32:: Don't Leave Me Alone

"Hey, take care of Dad will you?" Preston nudged me, "He might be going a bit crazy in the head, but it's only because he loves us."

"Yeah, I will. Just make sure that Mom stays out of trouble. You're going to have to grow up a bit," I lightly punched my brother in the arm. He was grabbing the last few of his things to bring back to our mother's house.

The final court hearing had been yesterday on the placement and money and such, and custody of the two of us. Basically the judge had said that we're old enough to choose where we want to go and that he can't force us to go with either parent, so it was up to us. And even though we both wanted to go and live with our mom, our dad was, after all, getting a bit out of hand, we decided that one of us ought to stay with him and take care of him.

And even though he has put me on house arrest and doesn't seem to trust me to take care of myself, I decided that me staying with my father would be better for his health than if Preston stayed with him. Preston was aparently becoming more rebelious, and stopped messing around with so many girls.

"So what about this brunette taht's caught your eye, huh? Goona tell me about the girl who's setting my brother straight? What's she like?" I wiggled my eyebrows trying to get my brother to tell me anything. ANYTHING. If it were up to him I wouldn't have heard abouthis girl, but his friend, Tyler, was over a while ago and told me about Preston's first ever rejection froma girl since sixth grade.

Aparently they were at their usual hangout, Clover (a big dance club that aparently every teenager that's anybody sneaks into), and they had witnessed a fine brunette girl totally burn some guy that was hitting on her. And of course that lead to bets being placed to see if Preston could hook up with her, and of course he went with it.

But who would have guessed that his perfected pick-ups were absolutely useless on her. She shot him down cold. Preston couldn't have become more interested in the girl. Not to mention that it turned him into a total stalker. Now he went to the Clover every night just to see if she was there. And even if she was, some nights he didn't have the balls to go up and talk to her.

I could see the total beginning of an awesome love story right there.

"All I'm going to say is that she's is something different," Preston shrugged. The air of arrogance that he seemed to have has died down quite a bit. You could even see it in the way that he walked. He was becoming a normal human being. I could hardly wait to meet this girl. She was my hero.

"Preston," I whined, "I need to know more details about my future sister-in-law! You can't just leave me hanging!" I punched his arm again harder. Seriously this kid had gotten cryptic.

When I looked up though I notice that my comment had done something to my brother's face that I had not seen happen since third grade when he had peed himself during recess. My brother was blushing.

I gasped, and covered my mouth with my hands, "Preston! Your face! What's wrong with it? What's wrong with your face?"

"Shut up, Alex, I'm leaving." Preston scowled, his face still pink, and picked up the last box before heading out the door.

"I'll see you at the wedding!" I yelled to him just before he slammed the door behind him.

I scoffed and returned to my game of Solitare. I don't know why I was so fond of this game, but I found it enjoyable and could actually loose track of time while playing. How lame was that? I didn't care. I still loved it.

Suddenly my father's suitcase was sitting in front of me on the counter. I looked up just in time to watch my dad struggle with putting on his left black sock. He was wearing a black suit and tie which could only mean one thing for me.