Angela glanced up quickly. "Mellissa, I don't think we should be doing this. Storm is gonna murder us and hide our bodies in the basement."

"Shut up, Angela, and hit the brake pedal!" Mellissa yelled at her.

Stevie sat in the passenger seat of Storm's Acura grinning and messing with the radio dial, changing Storm's preset radio stations. He made one of them a local Polka station, the next one smooth listening jazz, swing, Latin Hip Hop, and Classical Oldies.

"Come on you two stop arguing so we can get the Dr. Pepper and get back before we're missed!" he told them as he set the final station.

Mellissa knelt on the seat grasping the steering wheel while Angela was scrunched beneath the console working the pedals. "Brake! Brake! Brake now!" The car squealed to a halt at a red light.

"Sorry! I got a cramp in my leg and I fell on the pedal! I didn't mean to stop so suddenly!" Angela called up to her.

Mellissa glanced in either direction as the light changed to green. "Give it some gas!"

Angela pressed the gas pedal slowly and the car inched away from the light. "Is that okay?"

"Yep good." Mellissa spun the wheel and slid the car into the parking lot. "Brake!" With a grin, she slammed the car into park and flung open the door. She leaned back in and yanked the key from the ignition.

Angela poked her head up from beneath the dashboard. "Hurry up you guys, I don't wanna stay here by myself! This place looks shady."

"Yeah, don't worry about it, we'll be right back." Mellissa waited for Stevie to jump from the car and they rushed inside the 7-11, grabbed a case of soda, flung a twenty onto the counter, and sped out the door without waiting for change. Stevie climbed into his seat clutching the case of Dr. Pepper, his eyes wide.

"Hurry up, Mellissa, the cashier is watching us!"

"I'm going as fast as I can!" After three tries, she finally got the key into the ignition and twisted it to start the MDX. The tires squealed as she backed out of the parking space and sped out of the lot and into the street.

"Hello, no seatbelt down here! Can you remember that please!" Angela screamed as Mellissa raced around a tight corner.

Beside her, Stevie held his hands in the air and screamed, "Whoooohooo" at the top of his lungs.

"Stevie, shut up. I can't drive while you're screaming!"

"You can't drive period. I think we just clipped a mailbox," he shot back at her, twisting around to look back.

"We're almost back at the school just relax!" she snapped back at him. The driveway came into view. "Gate! Gate, dammit!"

"Oh, right, sorry!" Stevie hit the button and the gates swung slowly opened.

Mellissa barreled up the driveway to the garage. "Door!" she yelled.

Stevie shrugged and punched the button for the garage door. It trundled open and Mellissa drove into the garage. "Brake!" The car squealed to a stop.

He punched the button again and the door closed.

Angela shoved at Mellissa's legs. "Okay, get out! I'm all squashed and my tutu is getting wrinkled!"

They piled out of the car and Stevie let out a loud groan from his side of the car. "Guys, we are doomed."

The girls walked around and stood beside him. Angela's mouth made a large 'O' shape and Mellissa spouted several words that Logan shouldn't have spoken in her presence.

Mellissa bit her lip. "Well, we just need to buff it out or something."

"Buff it out?" Stevie said in disbelief. "Are you serious? Do you know how they paint cars?"

"Oh, like you do?"

Angela looked between them. "None of us does. What should we do?"

"Wait! Logan is the one who works on all the cars! Hold on a sec." Stevie set down the case of soda and spun away from them. He moved over to the set of floor to ceiling cabinets along the wall and flung open the doors. He turned back to face them, his look was one of triumph, with a can of paint in one hand and a spray gun in the other.

Mellissa grinned. "Awesome. Gimme."

Stevie turned the items over to her and she poured the paint into the spray gun and pulled the trigger.

Angela stared at it in confusion. "Why isn't it working?"

"Because you have to hook it up to the compressor, dork," Stevie said with a grin as he grabbed the trailing end of the hose and clipped it to the port on the compressor.

"Wait, how do we smooth out the scratches?" Angela asked.

Stevie scratched his head. "I don't know. Get the paint off somehow, I guess?"

Mellissa set down the spray gun and started rummaging through the cabinets. She stood up and held out a gallon jug. "What about this stuff? It even has the word 'acid' in the name!"

Stevie took the jug from her and read the name off the label. "Mur ... i ... atic acid." He paused as he sounded out the name. "Yeah, okay sounds good to me."

"Let's do this thing!" Mellissa ran over to the car, popped open the jug, and dumped a stream of acid down the door of the car. After a few minutes, the paint began bubbling and dripping off the side of the car.

"We didn't put anything on the floor!" Angela screamed, pointing to the puddle of paint that was steadily growing on the rubberized floor mats that covered the garage floor.

"Not a problem, we'll just pour more of this stuff on it and it will go away!" Mellissa told her brightly.

"What if it eats the rubber!" Stevie yelled.

Angela frowned and looked around. "Guys maybe we should lock the door to the school? Ya know just in case?"

Stevie ran for the door and flipped the deadbolt into place. "Done!"

Mellissa grabbed a rag and scrubbed the rest of the paint off the door of the Acura. "Give me the paint gun." She cocked her head to the side staring at the door. "A little smeary, but it will work."

Stevie handed the paint gun to her and started up the compressor. "Hit it!"

Mellissa gave a small laugh and began spraying the door. After several minutes, she was smiling blissfully as she painted. Angela walked up beside her and watched as Mellissa sprayed the door.

"I wanna try!" She grabbed for the paint gun, as they wrestled for the gun Angela's finger wrapped around the trigger. Angela yanked it from her grasp and fell backward as she did, spraying a swath of paint over everything as she fell.

"Angela! You sprayed everything! Logan's bike, the floor, the ceiling, a wall. Oh my God, you even got the Escalade! We are so dead!" Stevie stared at the paint splashed over Logan's bike, and everything else.

Angela grabbed a rag and scrubbed at Logan's bike. "I can get it off! See!"

"You're making it worse, it's smearing! Logan is gonna shish kabob us!" Mellissa wailed and snatched the rag out of her hand.

Stevie ran over to the paint cabinet. "No problem, there's paint for Logan's bike and the Escalade in here too!"

Mellissa walked over and snatched the paint out of his hands. "Good, okay, great. What about the floor and the ceiling?"

"Um, well the floors are black we can use the Escalade paint for that. And, let's see what else is in here." He rummaged the cabinet again. "Rogue's Prius is white we can use that for the wall and ceiling!"

It took Mellissa only a few minutes to paint the bike and Escalade. Angela stayed well back out of the way this time. Mellissa sprayed the floor, and then the ceiling (with the help of a stepladder), and stared at the wall in silence for a minute when she finished.

"What do we do about all the stuff on the shelf?"

"Who cares, paint that sucker. They'll never notice," Stevie told her.

She shrugged and sprayed everything white. They quickly cleaned everything up best they could and made for their rooms before someone happened along and they got caught.

***

Logan flipped on the light in the garage and Storm followed him in. "I'll do a quick area search and hit some of our informants up, see if anyone has spotted Lenny. He hasn't been gone that long, maybe someone spotted him."

"All right, that sounds like a good plan." Storm stepped back as he threw a leg over his bike and sat astride it.

"If I find out anything I'll give you a call." He stretched down to straighten his pant leg and sat up with a frown, studying his sleeve as he did. "Why is the paint on my bike wet?"

Storm grabbed his sleeve and looked at it. "I think we need to speak to the children."

Logan stepped off his bike and growled at the paint covering his jeans. Storm was turning a slow circle, staring around the garage. She stepped away and walked around her Acura, before walking over to the Escalade nearby.

"Definitely Mellissa, Angela, and Stevie. I doubt any of the others would screw up to this magnitude."

Logan spun away and stalked off through the door. Storm followed him upstairs and winced when he slammed the bedroom door open. The knob stuck in the wall when it hit.

"What did you three do to my bike?" he bellowed.

Angela froze in the middle of a spin in the center of the room. Stevie lowered the Dr. Pepper can he'd been about to prove to them he could crush against his forehead. And Mellissa released the trigger on the can of whipped cream that she was spraying directly into her mouth.

The three looked at one another before turning back to Logan.

"Bike? What bike would that be?" Mellissa asked innocently.

A deep growl emanated from Logan and he stepped toward them.

"Okay well, you see it happened like this ..." Mellissa paused for effect. "Rogue was watching us, but she and Bobby were all snuggly on the couch so she wasn't paying attention to us. We really wanted some Dr. Pepper, but all that was left in the fridge was Logan's beer and bottled water. Soooo—"

Storm cut her off. "Why didn't you just drink water?"

"We didn't want water! So, we took your Acura and drove to the 7-11 on the corner a couple of blocks away. See, but then the clerk at the store was looking at us funny-like so I sorta drove a little faster on the way back. And then we sideswiped a mailbox."

"The one at the end of the driveway?" Logan asked.

"No, no it was one of those big blue ones, the ones they put on the corner with the birdie on them." She held her hands up like a pair of flapping wings and made a sound something like, "ca-caw".

"A U.S. post office mailbox," Logan bit out.

"Yeah! One of those!"

"Two months. In addition to the two weeks that you already have. Do not leave this room." Storm slammed the door on the way out, ripping the doorknob out of the wall as she did.

Mellissa shrugged andlifted the can of whipped cream again. "We'll go downstairs later afterthey go to bed and stock up on supplies. Don't worry guys, I've got thiscovered."