Refugee (a Petekey story)

Chapter five

A/N So this chapter is slightly longer (yay) and a lot sooner than I thought it would be (even thought it is just basically explaining some stuff that's really boring.) In all honesty, from now on, it will start to take longer and longer for me to update- blame the fact that school is starting up soon, and a whole bunch of stuff is happening. That being said, this will probably be the last update before winter break ends for me. But hopefully it won't take me another three months to update (sorry).

But yeah. New Year!!! Yay.

Okay. Here's your chapter.

Strangely enough, after two or three days of struggling, there was a system being formed in the apartment. At around six in the morning, Lindsey would take Brendon and Patrick to school before coming back and making food for the rest of the people still in the 'house'. Then Pete would leave for work at around eight, picking up Patrick from the smoothie hut at about five. Lindsey would be home almost the entire day, coming close to the end of her pregnancy period and therefore being unable to go to work and earn money. So instead, she spent her time picking up and dropping off the boys to and from school and work, doing grocery runs, and picking up Brendon from his closing shift at around nine pm. Then would be the painstaking wait up for Mikey to get home at around two am, the boys doing their homework and Lindsey going to bed almost immediately after she had returned.

The thing was, Mikey's schedule didn't really coincide with the one that the rest of the apartment had. He would leave for work at around ten, before coming home at around six thirty and immediately leaving the house for his other job. The only times he really saw the people he was working to take care of was when he came home in the early morning. Some days, he wouldn't even come back during the in between period and go straight from one job to the next. It was irregular, something that changed as the days went by that no one could really predict.

Other things were changing during this time. Pete was getting the hang of working in a cafe, from being the ever so busy busboy to manning the counter and taking orders. He (and his supervisor Andy) didn't really trust him with handling the food yet, giving his unreliability with being able to handle things and not drop them, so he stayed behind the scenes and worked on making the cafe a better place to work and to be. But, of course, this was nothing compared to what Brendon was able to do at his work place.

The smoothie shop became the number one place for people to go to relax, and Pete was hearing all about this from the customers that liked to stay and chat. People were coming in from all around town talking about the new boy that was hired at the shop, the new boy that sang and smiled and made everyone's day a little bit brighter along with the chilled ice drinks they ordered. But of course, the new boy was still in school, so he could only work during after school hours. Not that this stopped people from going to the shop, though. In fact, by the time Pete got off from work everyday, there was a line to get into the smoothie hut. A line that he really hated waiting at.

To say that Pete was jealous of Brendon's achievement would have been an understatement. Not only was the younger boy doing much better than him in terms of social situations and job situations, everyone in the house seemed to have some magical talent that made them seem unreal. Meanwhile, Pete was still just Pete.

Brendon was social and able to get people to trust him easily. Patrick had an incredible voice that would definitely get him places in the future (although Pete seemed to be the only person that noticed it.) Lindsey was smart and clever, always able to hold her head up high when people were questioning her about the coming baby and the state of the home she lived in. And Mikey, well, Pete thought that Mikey was the most beautiful of them all.

Mikey was smart. He got a job at two different places, both of them not realizing he was not even sixteen years old yet (not that Pete knew where he worked). He was talented, Pete had heard him more than once playing an old bass in the room that he shared with Lindsey, already a much better player than Pete was at his age. In fact, everything about Mikey seemed to up Pete in some way, he couldn't help but feel the jealousy turn into some strange form of admiration. Or at least, that's what he tried to tell himself.