"I don't know what kind of Johnny Depp that was, but he looked a deformed potato with a moustache."

Ignoring Cole's monologue of the day and plans for the future, Violet clipped the worn seat belt and moved slightly to the left so Aiden was able to remove his. She gave him a small smile which he politely returned. It didn't take long for them both got lost in their whirlwind of thoughts once more.

"Vi, are you listening to me?"

Cole raised his voice, drawing his sister's attention away from her mind and into reality. Seeing that she was now looking at him Cole smiled before hastily starting the ignition. The car let out a loud groan of machinery, but after a few more tries and muttered curse words from nearly everyone present in the car, the gravely hum of the engine started.

"We have six days to get this band ready." Cole said quietly, more like he was talking to himself than anyone else. His fingers tapped the steering wheel in excitement of the range of ideas he was now scheming up in his mind.

"It's impossible," Violet pointed out in a matter-of-fact way. Everyone ignored her.

"What do we need?" her brother asked. Mia was too quick to reply for Violet's liking. There was a bit of chocolate on her friend's face but everyone had silently decided not to comment. She wouldn't have cared anyway. There were very few things Mia had the heart to bother about nowadays.

"Equipment," she said out loud and Cole nodded eagerly. He was finally getting somewhere, for once, and he wasn't quite sure how to deal with this new opportunity.

"A person who can actually sing," Violet piped in, knocking down the level of his optimism just a notch. "Someone who can actually play the drums and the guitar."

Taking in a short breath, she smiled sickly. "Basically... not us."

Cole almost sighed as he spoke. "Aiden. Can you please eliminate the festering negativity in this car?"

Laughing, Mia's brother took the heavy coat that was resting on his lap and slung it over Violet. Trying to escape she let out an array of inaudible yells. The car was quick to fill up with deep uncontrollable chuckles from everyone, apart from Violet. Thrashing her arms around, still in Aiden's coat, Violet breathed heavily under the weight of the fabric. She had finally managed to get the hefty material off, muttering about how this wasn't acceptable, before Cole murmured, "Does it matter?"

Shoving Aiden's coat back into his arms, Violet leant forward to whack her brother hard around the head. "Ow!" he said instinctively, rubbing his hair while trying to maintain some form of driving ability. Looking at his sister through the rear view mirror he laughed. "Your hair is looking super sexy today."

"Likewise," she replied.

"Fantastic comeback."

"Spent all day on it."

"I guessed."

Frowning, Violet slumped back into the car seat, already tired of Cole's antics. Cars sped past them on the motorway, a few beeping at either the slowness of Cole's driving or by how much he seemed to dawdle between the lanes of the road. "This is as fast as it goes," he muttered towards a speeding Mercedes which was overtaking them. The driver, a balding middle aged man, mouthed some words to the group from inside his care. Obviously in a rush he speed on, but made just enough time to give Cole the finger.

In return, he waved.

-

Coursing through the cold air, a chilling wind swept and swirled past Violet's flushed face. Tugging Mia's jumper around her cold shoulders, she smiled at her friend in thanks - her pre-packing for the occasion was beginning to show and only reinforced Violet's thoughts about how stupid she was being by going along with her brother.

All that was running through her mind was how irrational the whole situation was. And what would become if gone unintended.

Aiden was true to his word when he said their destination was a field because after another hour of driving, Cole pulled up inside a dank but flat meadow with a deep forest falling as its backdrop. Right now - after about an hour of faffing - he had taken Aiden for a quick talk beside the rusty car. Their voices were both muddled by the wind and although it wasn't entirely purposeful, he was thankful.

"What the hell is happening over there?" Violet shouted over the wind. Mia shrugged in response, her plump body cradling a fake fur jumper that she had brought from a charity shop down the high-street. The wind was knotting and matting her frizzy ginger hair into a bird's nest, giving Violet a clear idea of what it was doing to her own.

The loud crinkling of a plastic tent caught the girl's attention. Trying not to smile, Violet watched Cole and Aiden try to keep the flat tent grounded onto the grass while it looked like all the wind wanted to do whip the material and plunge it into the air. Both tried to juggle the tent, moving in separate directions and having no clear plan of what was going on. Eventually they both pulled on the tent at exactly the same time, causing them to lose their balance and fall head first into the field.

Violet was too busy laughing to notice the wind puff up the tent, taking their only form of shelter with it. Both Aiden and Cole were lying on the floor, breathless and too tired to notice.

This was Mia's chance. Nodding a tad too dramatically she threw Violet her fur coat in a dash before roaring and frantically sprinting after the floating tent. She yelled something along the lines of this being her one and true destiny, but Violet chose to ignore it.

Laughing, everyone watched Mia run chaotically in a zigzag line after the tent. The wind whipped her curly ginger hair on to her freckled face but she carried on chasing it, her arms and hands waving in the air as if this would magically help increase her level of speed.

"Enjoying camping now?" Cole said, standing up from the grass. Turning towards him, Violet burst out in another ring of laugher, her finger pointing at his face.

"What is it?" he self-consciously asked with wide brown eyes. Bursting out into another fit of laughter, Violet looked down at Aiden, who had just noticed and was starting to join in . "Cole," he said, his normally tight lipped mouth smiling brightly, "You've got cow shit on your face."

After recovering from the past events, the group tried to sort out the tent, which had been so valiantly retrieved by Mia. It took them all of three hours to pitch, unpack and set about on cooking the diner that Cole had brought in preparation but by the end of it, Violet was just happy to get some food in her empty stomach.

"It would be unfair to say that the boys did no work," she pointed out, her hands holding a blackened sausage that Mia had tried her utmost best to cook: "trying to wipe crap off Cole's face looked like it sucked."

Smiling smugly at her brother, Violet took another bite out of the black sausage before gagging on the bitter taste. The whole group fell into laughter as they watched her try and eat the only edible parts of the food. Her fingers picked past the parts that should have ended up in the bin: leaving very little left.

Following the events of unpacking the tent the time afterwards was wasted due to the two boys. An hour had passed and Cole and Aiden were still missing from the team. Violet guessed they were either trying to find a toilet in a nearby restaurant or that the cow poop was sticking extra hard. As a result, Mia had decided to cook some sausages she found in the boot of the car. She was not graced with her mother's skills of cooking, a pitfall in her character which made sure the sausages looked like charcoal.

"It wouldn't come off," Aiden said grimly, the shadows of the evening casting onto his otherwise pale face. Sighing at his friend, Cole drank a large sip of his beer before frowning at him. "I don't know why you're complaining. You didn't have some animal's diarrhoea as a face mask."

"I think you would've known if it was diarrhoea," Mia laughed, her body edging slightly closer to Violet's brother ever so slightly. Trying not to gag, Violet put her black sausage back on the kitchen paper. "Still eating over here."

Throwing a bit of sausage at her, Cole picked up his drink and smiled. "Have some. It washes down the burnt parts." He handed the drink out to her, but she was quick to refuse. Violet wasn't sure what was more shocking, that her brother was offering to share or that for once, she was refusing alcohol. Mia widened her eyes at the exchange, Violet's latter thoughts reflecting her own.

Scowling at Cole, Mia punched his shoulder lightly. "It was just well cooked."

"Burnt," Aiden piped in. Violet nodded along with Mia's brother, now knowing full well when Aiden actually did speak he was taken seriously. His words were few but that didn't mean they didn't count in group discussions.

Slowly the camp fell into silence. Mia sipped her cold beer, her body snuggling into her warm furry jacket. Cole picked at the grass beneath him, his eyes suddenly growing very tired and Aiden...

Aiden was probably imagining the end of the world with his choice of facial expression. Deeply furrowed eyebrows, wrinkled forehead and eyes that Violet felt were in deep reflection was how Aiden looked against the embers of the fire.

"Let's go inside," Mia mumbled sleepily, standing up and hovering for a bit before practically stumbling off inside the tent. The clumsy shuffling of her sleeping bag seemed distant in the early night.

"It's not that late," Cole mumbled against his cup just as his sister stood up. Shrugging at him, Violet headed off, not speaking until he said, "Come on Vi. Have some fun for once."

Taking in a deep breath she carefully turned around, keeping her expression blank. "I do have fun."

"You did have fun," Cole stated matter-of-factly. Holding his drink to his chest, he fidgeted about in his seat, his head lolling from side to side slightly. He sighed dramatically. "- but then Mum happened and now you two are practically twins."

Nervously looking at Aiden, Violet saw he was staring down at his shoes. His lanky body was crouching over his mud stained laces. This wasn't a conversation anyone but Cole wanted right now.

"We aren't anything alike." Violet took a tiny step forward, her head shaking as she looked down at her brother.

"But you are."

"But we aren't."

Belching, Cole looked down lazily at the floor before looking at his sister and trying to stand up. His right leg buckled under his weight, causing Cole to waver slightly before tumbling quickly to the ground in one heap. If Violet were to lean forward, she was sure the smell of alcohol would make her gag. It took him three attempts to finally succeed in standing, his squinting eyes coming face to face with Violet's.

"She's changed you. And you haven't even noticed." His heavy breath felt hot against her face, his watery eyes even with her narrowing ones.

"She is our mum." Violet said. Her voice was firm.

Cole just shook his head, his messy brown hair flapping around his face as he staggered off towards the tent, the sound of his body collapsing inside stretching through the now still air.

"I think... I think I left something in the car."

Although Violet's voice seemed controlled enough, she wondered if any second her throat would cave in, and her with it. She wasn't even sure if she was addressing Aiden but when only the short breaths of Violet's own breathing replied to her voice, she slowly wandered back to the rusty car without any acknowledgement of what actually just happened. As if she had made up the conversation in her head.

If only things were so simple.

Thankful that Cole had ignorantly left the car unlocked, she slipped into the passenger's seat. From here the girl tried to count to ten. Her tired eyes shut while her hands grasped onto the coffee stained seat underneath her. It didn't help. Nothing ever helped.

Violet's mind was a whirl that kept on replaying the situation over and over again, telling her what she could have said to her brother as a better insult or point. Or of what she could have done to make his drunken eyes look as hurt as hers. Taking in another deep breath, she opened her eyes and looked down at her now red and aching hands.

She tried to focus on the the grey night outside, the silhouette of towering trees and looming clouds creating a slightly eerie landscape. Violet made her eyes drag across at these outlines, as some sort of distraction for herself more than anything. She wouldn't get angry.

She couldn't get angry.

However, as much as she said these words inside her head, her body told a different story. Her fists were still clenched and her eyes remained drawn into thin slits. She tried to remain calm for ten more seconds, but even that couldn't be done.

Violet screamed. She screamed so hard her throat was sore. After that, she pounded on the dusty monitor angrily. Then she screamed some more.

She yelled until her voice was sore and croaky; she hit the stupid monitor that probably didn't even work until her hands stung from the sheer force; and Violet only stopped being even violently angry when Aiden slipped into the driver's seat and started talking about his hair.

It would have been funny, really, from an outsider's point of view. A masochistic girl and a ginger haired boy most likely having the weirdest conversation anyone had ever witnessed considering the circumstances. But Violet wasn't quite sure if things would have been better if Mia's brother came in the car or not.

"People used to call me gingerbread man," Aiden admitted, his eyes fixed ahead His long fingers brushed off some dust of the window and his body that was too long for him slouched in the seat.

"Fire head. Agent Orange. Carrot top. One very creative guy decided to call me rusty nuts." Aiden paused slightly, turning towards Violet's confused face and back to the window again. "I'm not sure who was teased more. Me for having a different colour hair from everyone else or him for not giving me a funny enough nickname. "

He was about to say more before she stopped him, her harsh voice cutting into his monologue. "Is this supposed to relate to me in any way?"

Aiden just sighed, his slightly washed out eyes looking up at Violet from his slouched position on the driving seat. He looked like he was about to say something mind blowing, as if he was about to share some unknown secret with her that could change the girls views on the whole situation at hand. That would shed some kind of glorifying light on the situation.

Slowly Aiden opened his mouth, his white teeth peeking through before truthfully saying, "Not really, no."

"What do you mean?" she asked, slightly annoyed.

Scratching the top of his hair, he just shrugged. "I thought if I didn't say something, you would have broken the car radio." Gesturing towards the monitor of the car, Aiden gave Violet a sheepish look which she returned with an equally awkward glance. He had seen her.

"Sorry about that," she quietly muttered.

"Sorry about what?" Aiden asked, "Giving this innocent car a beating or just being around to see you and your brother settle things?"

"I wouldn't say we settled things."

Not wanting to appear difficult, Aiden considered her words carefully before speaking, "Well, he knows how you feel and you certainly know how he feels now. I would say that's settling things."

"Well, I wouldn't. Half the crap that comes out my brothers mouth doesn't even make any sense anymore."

Giving her a light smile, Aiden scratched his right cheek. "You're talking about the rock competition, aren't you?"

"I might be," Violet said, flicking her gaze between him and the small glowing light coming from the tent outside.

"Look. Your brother needs the money. And he likes the idea. Let him have some fun."

Ignoring the blatant truths lying in Aiden's words, Violet just shrugged her shoulders and let out a loud yawn. "I should get off to bed. I need to talk to Mia anyway." She managed to mumble as she opened the car door. Surprising her, Aiden let out a small laugh.

"Cole's sleeping in Mia's compartment. It looks like we're bunking up together tonight."