“What?”

Mr. Ranch stared at both Zach and me for a moment, and we had absolutely nothing to say about the baby that had exploded. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t believe us, even though we had other witnesses who song the thing explode.

I explained as much as I could to him, but that wasn’t very much at all. I barely even knew what happened, and I was hoping that he wouldn’t fail us just because our baby exploded. We wouldn’t be able to graduate if we didn’t pass this project.

“How about this,” Mr. Ranch started now, and I felt my breath catch into my throat. “I’ll let you two pass the project if you do one thing for me.”

“Anything!” I nearly shouted, and this caused Zach to elbow me in the side. Obviously he didn’t want me agreeing to do anything for another man, even if he was just a teacher.

Mr. Ranch laughed at Zach’s reaction, but we both stayed silent as we waited for our teacher to tell us what we had to do to pass the class and graduate.

“Bake a cake.”

Both of us stared at him for a moment before I couldn’t help but ask, “Why?”

Mr. Ranch laughed as he shrugged and said, “You two know that the school year is coming to an end sooner than we all think, and I’m sure the entire class will appreciate if you two bring in a cake to celebrate. This way, I won’t have to bake the cake myself, I can just have you two do it.”

So this was just so he could get out of work. Whatever, I didn’t really mind all that much. We were still going to be able to graduate, and all we had to do was bake a cake. This was so easy that it wasn’t even funny.

So the three of us all agreed that we’d bake a cake for the class party, and Zach and I quickly left Mr. Ranch’s room after we had settled everything. Our baby exploded, so we got to bake a cake. As strange as that sounded, it was what happened.

“Someone at the party had to have planted the bomb,” Zach informed me once he pushed the door open for me once we were finally at the front doors of the school. “But since most of the guests were kids, I don’t know who it could have been…”

“Aveline was there,” I couldn’t help but mutter, not wanting to think that she could have been the one who had blew up our baby doll, even when she had disappeared before everything had happened.

Zach stared at me for a moment, as if he knew what I was thinking. It was something that I couldn’t help but worry over, since everyone knew that Aveline hated me more than anything. She couldn’t stand me, and she never had been able to, even before I had Zach. That just fueled her hate for me even more.

“You don’t think Aveline would actually do something like that, do you?” Zach asked me now, and I knew he didn’t want to think that his friend was capable of doing something as horrible as this. “I mean, I know Aveline can be crazy… but not that crazy.”

Even though I had never liked her, I didn’t want to think that she was actually capable of something as horrible as trying to kill me. Not only that, but she had also hired two guys to kill me, if she was the one who had been behind all of this.

I didn’t know if it was Aveline I should have been fearing, or my mother’s family. As of right then, I was going to worry about both of them just to be safer.

Once we finally got home, we were surprised to see the items we needed to bake the cake already in the kitchen. We had planned to go out and buy what we needed, but it seemed that Brianna already had everything we needed.

“Hey, kids,” Steve greeted once he came down the stairs. “You guys don’t mind watching Ethan, do you? I’ve been called into the office, and both Brianna and Hank are at work. Is it okay if you just keep an eye on him?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I smiled, even though the last thing I wanted to do was spend time with the little brat. “We’re just baking a cake for a class of ours, so it shouldn’t be too hard to watch him while we do it.”

It didn’t seem like Steve was listening to me any longer, because he was now looking down at my mother’s ring that was still on my finger. I glanced at it, and Steve noticed this.

“Your dad gave you your mom’s ring, huh?” he asked me, and I nodded. “That’s good. I’m sure she would have wanted you to have it.”

I nodded, but the only thing I could think of at that moment was that Steve had a crush on my mother. It was weird to think about, since he ended up with Brianna and my mom ended up with my dad. Everything would have been different if they had gotten together.

Steve patted my hand and then left after this, and barely five minutes after he had left, there was a knock on the front door. Zach moved to get it, but I was closer so I quickly made my way to go open it.

I was surprised to see Kate there, pregnant stomach and all. She hadn’t told me that she was coming over, so I had no idea why she was there right then.

“Mr. Ranch told me that you and Zach were baking a cake,” she grinned, and it was the kind of grin that had always scared me when it came from Kate. “You’re baking a cake without me? You know how much I love to bake.”

I blinked at her. “I thought Mr. Ranch wanted only Zach and me to bake the cake, since our baby blew up and everything…”

She shrugged, making her way by me and into the kitchen to join Zach. “He didn’t seem to have a problem with it when I told him I’d help you guys out.”

Okay, then. The more the merrier, and the easier it would have been to get this over with. Even though this was easier than taking care of a fake baby, I still didn’t really want to bake a cake. I hadn’t ever been the greatest baker, unlike Kate.

But after we started to get to work, I noticed how much faster we were going with Kate helping us. We’d be done in only a few hours, and I knew it was going to be decorated a lot prettier than it would have been if Zach or I tried to do it.

Everything was going so well, amazing even, but then I heard the screaming.

I spun around to see Kate squatting down on the floor, she being the one screaming, and both Zach and I looked at each other for a moment, neither of us knowing what the hell we were supposed to do.

“Kate!” was all I was able to shout as I crouched down beside her and placed my hand on her arm. Her hands were on her stomach, and I feared the worst. “Kate, are you okay? What do you need? What’s going on?”

“Kate?” Zach tried when Kate didn’t respond to me. He gently placed a hand on her shoulder, and this seemed to get her attention. “What’s going on?”

“My water broke!” she gasped, holding onto her stomach even tighter now.

I didn’t know if only your water breaking caused you to act like she was, but Kate had always been one to overreact…

“Call Logan, and then her parents,” Zach ordered as he helped Kate up off the kitchen floor. “We’ve got to drive her to the hospital.”

 I nodded, turning off the oven before sprinting to the other side of the kitchen, where my phone was. I quickly picked it up as Zach nearly carried Kate all the way out the door and into his car. I typed in Logan’s number, barely even looking down at my phone.

“Hello, future Mrs. Deveraux,” Logan started, and I was in too much of a panic to snap at him for calling me that, even though it was true. “What have I done to deserve a wonderful call from my dear friend?”

“Kate’s in labor!” I blurted, not even thinking about breaking it to him quietly.

He said nothing at first, and for a moment I thought he had somehow passed out. But soon I heard him say, “You’re going to the only hospital in town, right?”

“No, she’s going to give birth in my barn,” I couldn’t help but snap sarcastically at him.

“You have a barn?”

“Just meet us at the hospital!”

I hung the phone up then, turning toward the door to leave. I’d call Kate’s parents on the way there, since I knew I was keeping Zach from driving Kate to the hospital. I nearly tripped over myself as I made my way closer to the door, but I was stopped when I noticed something now coming down the stairs.

“Crap!” I couldn’t help but shout when I saw Ethan. “You’re still home!”

He glared at me. “Right back at you, ogre.”

Ignoring his nickname, I nearly picked him up right off the ground and carried him out of the house. He started kicking his legs, but I didn’t let go of him.

“We have to go,” I snapped at him, but this didn’t stop him from kicking me. “Kate’s in labor and we can’t leave you here all alone after we’ve been told to babysit you.”

Ethan grumbled to himself, but I didn’t hear what he said. I shoved him into the backseat of Zach’s car, and I followed him right in. The second I shut the door, Zach was off and we were on our way to the hospital.

Logan was there before we were, but I was expecting ass much. Kate was quickly wheeled away in a wheel chair, and I was finally able to plop down in a waiting room chair and breathe for the first time since Kate’s water had broke.

“I don’t get why I have to be here,” Ethan muttered as he sat beside his brother, his arms crossed over his chest as he pouted. He looked like a typical eleven-year-old, even though that was the last he was. “I could just be home watching TV.”

I wasn’t going to say this out loud, but I honestly didn’t trust him at the house all by himself. He might have been smarter than both Zach and me combined, but he was still Ethan. And it was almost scary how much smarter he was than us.

“Do they know the sex of the baby yet?” Zach asked me after our best friends were gone for what felt like hours.

“No, they don’t,” I answered with a shake of my head. “They wanted it to be a surprise, so they didn’t find out. Kate wants a boy though.”

“Hah,” Zach chuckled. “Logan wants a girl.”

Well, they could only have one of them… I was hoping that they’d have a boy as well, since I’d like to see a little boy that was actually sweet, unlike Ethan, who was grumpy all the time for absolutely no reason.

When Zach draped his arm around my shoulders, I couldn’t help but notice Ethan scowl at us harder than he usually did. Normally this didn’t bother me, but for some reason it now did. I wanted to know what was wrong with Ethan, but I knew that he’d never tell me.

“What about you?” Zach whispered into my ear now, his breath tickling me. “Do you want a boy or a girl?”

His hand slid over my flat stomach, and it caused chills to go right down my spine. I hadn’t even thought about having kids with Zach, since we hadn’t even slept together yet, but it wasn’t like it was something I wasn’t looking forward to. Having children with him was going to be amazing, I was sure.

“I don’t know,” I couldn’t help but giggle when he started to run his fingers over my covered stomach. “Both would be amazing, as long as they’re with you.”

“Oh, man,” Ethan groaned, covering his face with his hands, snapping Zach and me out of our trance. “Someone smother me.”

“Gladly,” Zach muttered, obviously ticked off that we had gotten interrupted.

I was annoyed that he had interrupted us as well, but I still couldn’t help but feel bad about doing this sort of thing in front of him. Even though he seemed mature for his age, this boy was still only eleven, and he had just turned eleven at that. At that age, I would have been terrified to see two teenagers laughing and kissing with each other.

I had to talk to Ethan, sooner rather than later. Zach might have not noticed that something was wrong with his brother, but I sure did. And it bothered me a lot.

When the door to the waiting room opened, I turned to see Todd make his way inside before sitting down next to me. He seemed almost out of breath, as if he had run here, and I felt my heart swell just a little bit. He had run here to see what was going on with Kate. Todd really was a good friend to her, even though the two of them seemed like an unlikely pair.

“Is she okay?” Todd asked me now, and all I could do was shrug because I honestly had no idea how she was doing. It bothered me, that we weren’t getting notified on what was going on, but I knew these kinds of things took time. It wasn’t going to happen right away.

I looked at the clock to see time ticking right by, and now Johnny was there as well. I was growing more and more bored as the minutes went by, and I was annoyed with the fact that we weren’t getting any news about Kate or the baby at all.

So I jumped up from the seat I was sitting in, unable to take just sitting there anymore, and I made my way out of the waiting room and down one of the many halls of the hospital to look through the window of the room where all the newborn babies were.

I leaned up against it to look at them. They wrapped the boys in blue blankets and hats and then the girls in pink. All the babies looked so tired, like they could have slept forever, but I saw one that wasn’t like that had all. She had blonde hair sticking out of her little pink hat and looked very happy to now be in the world.

I sighed as I continued to look at the little babies, almost mesmerized by them. I smiled, thinking how Kate and Logan would be getting their own very soon. I couldn’t wait to see the little baby.

I jumped when I felt a pair of strong arms wrap around my waist from behind, but I soon calmed down when I realized who it was.

He placed his chin on my shoulder, smirking as he asked, “Want one?”

I smiled, placing my hands over his. “They’re not puppies, they’re babies,” I laughed.

I felt him shrug. “Well, do you?”

This time I was the one to shrug, even though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. But we were so young; we shouldn’t have been talking about babies just yet. But it felt right, talking to him about these kinds of things.

“Yeah, I want a baby,” I answered Zach now. “But not for a while, obviously.”

I turned around to face him now, wrapping my arms around Zach’s waist. I stood on my toes so I could kissed him. And before I knew it, my back was against the wall and he was running his hands up and down my sides.

I heard a nurse snap at us from down the hall, and it caused me to jump and shove Zach away from me.

“Sorry,” I cried, not being able to help myself.

Zach smirked at me, glancing over across the hall at the janitor’s closet. I blinked at him for a moment, knowing what he was thinking, and he grabbed onto my arm and dragged me into the closet before I could even protest.

“Was that necessary?” I couldn’t help but ask him, rubbing at his arm.

Zach shrugged. “Yep.”

Zach grinned at me as he placed his lips down on mine again, and I couldn’t help but smile as I kissed him back.

When the door suddenly opened, I quickly jumped away from Zach, even though I knew we had already been seen. I immediately felt horrible; the janitor had caught us making out!

But it wasn’t the janitor. Instead, it was Ethan, which wasn’t much better at all.

“Do you always have to ruin everything?” I cried, throwing a roll of toilet paper at him. H

“If I knew you two would be making out every two seconds, I wouldn’t have let you two leave the waiting room.”

“Go away,” I told him.

I threw another roll of toilet paper at him, but this time he caught it. “But since the two of you were in here making babies, you missed the doctor. He said Kate will be having her baby soon.”

I felt my face redden. “We… we weren’t making babies!”

Ethan shrugged. “That’s what it’s going to be eventually.”

I wanted to throw another roll of toilet paper at him, but there were suddenly no more by my side. I scowled, but walked out of the janitor’s closet and back into the waiting room anyway.

Zach and I had all the time in the world to make out, but Kate was only going to have this baby once. I was going to be there for her, and I wasn’t going to let Zach distract me any longer.

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I don't like this chapter. I feel like it's badly written. It's late, though, and I've been doing homework all day, so maybe that's why...

And just so you guys know, the song on the side has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the story. My history teacher ruined my life by showing it to us and making us sing along. Now I can't stop listening to it. If I ever have a test about Henry VIII and his wives, I better freaking ace it.

This is for the 2012 Watty Awards! Please COMMENT, VOTE, and SHARE! Don't forget to NOMINATE Ethan for Funniest Character! Thanks, guys! <3