Okay, so thank you guys for reading my story, and for the following chapter there are a lot of references to the movie series The Pirates of the Caribbean, so if you don't understand some things, I suggest you start looking there, but I'll mark and explain any other things that aren't related to the movies with an asterisk (*) <--those thingies. For stats, we're like 6 reads away from making 400, which I think is pretty awesome for my first book, and 10 votes/3 comments! Okay, I'm just gonna go now...

Bea stands at the front of the group with her hands on her hips trying to contain her smile, not helping me with my little coughing episode. I'm not gonna lie, but she can be a little bitch when she wants to be.

"I can't believe you still do that," Bea mused as she smirked at me. "Wasn't your whole singing career supposed to take care of all of these kind of...problems?" she said, with a little gesture of her hand toward the end. As I recovered from my coughing fit, I flip her the bird and take a good look at all of them.

Bea was at the helm of the crew, consisting of Mike, Luke, Damien, and the rest of the Purple Pandas, but I did see a new edition: Amy.

She rushes up to me and squeezes me till I feel like choking, and her eyes widen in surprise.

"Oh my gosh Lenora, I am so sorry, I didn't mean to hug you that hard, oh shizzlenuts...do I need to get you a glass of water or something?"

At this point I'm crying from laughing too hard.

"Shizzlenuts? Where the hell did you get that one?" I ask.

She blushes and turns away.

She starts out with a mumble: "Um, yeah, that was...yeah, I'm not sure, it's just that-"

"Lenora Moore. I am VERY, VERY, disappointed in you. Earlier this evening, you lectured me about swear words, and here you are, using them yourself and making a good friend of yours feel bad for NOT saying them. If you would like to stay in this house, I suggest you apologize to her this instant, and if you even think for a second that I won't kick you out, I suggest you start packing, because I did NOT become a marine's wife for nothing."

I blink repeatedly and my head slightly turns to where I can see my mom's face. There were many emotions painted there, but one that I could easily distinguish was cold, hard, and clear: disappointment.

I gulped and looked back at Amy.

"Amy, I am incredibly sorry for making you feel bad about your creative display of ingenuity when uttering a substitute for a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, swear word, and I hope you will be able to find it within your heart to forgive me sometime within the near future."

All of my friends (yes, at this point I think I can call them my friends again, even though I can't remember when we had stopped being friends) were dying on the floor, and Amy looked close to tears as well.

I glanced back at my mom, and I could see a smile cracking through the harsh exterior she had put a few minutes earlier.

She turned back on her heels and went into the living room.

Damien turned to look at me and said, "I forgot that you turned into Shakespeare's freaking daughter every time your mom maked you apologize about the newest shiz that you had done."

In response, I smile at him, teeth and all, and he shows me a hand and I take it, but when I do, I try to lift all 140-something pounds of him (I think), but instead of pulling him up, I end up tumbling down onto him.

"OH MOTHER-nevermind," he finishes under his breath.

I look at where my body is placed and, needless to say it's a very awkward place, considering that my knee is right next to Damien Jr., or should I say, Barbossa Jr.

My mom comes back from the living room in a nightgown and looks at us, all piled up on the floor with the door still hanging open.

"I'm not gonna ask," she mumbles under her breath. She looks at me and says, "The heater is on Lenny, and I don't want to waste money on heating this house if you're just going to let it all go to waste. Please close the door before you all decide to snuggle with each other."

I gape at her, and she just walks away in her pink bunny slippers. I hear steady footsteps approaching the house, and I scramble off of Damien and the floor. *As I look outside, I see the one and only: Alexander the Great.

In Alex's hands was a box; a very large box.

A cake box, actually.

I give him a questioning expression, and he gives me back a smile, one that illuminates his entire face.

*He looks right back at me and says, "You'll just have to wait Dora."

I flip him the bird and he just laughs and steps over Bea and Luke.

Everyone else groaned and started picking themselves off the floor while I followed Alex into the kitchen with the soft patter of Amy's footsteps trailing after me.

The kitchen was completely illuminated unlike last time, but there was also one other difference.

There was a ship. A ship on top of the island counter in our kitchen. A delicious-looking ship. The hull looked like it was charred black, and on the ship's mast was a flag. A flag with a white skull, and two bones crossed to make an "X" in the background.

I look at Amy, and I see her and my brother exchanging a glance.

She looks back at me, and by the time that occurs, a trickle of people enter the kitchen with blankets in tow, except for Luke and Mike. Bea tosses me her blanket, which looks like a sack of, I don't know, potatoes? She tells me two simple words, and they were: "go" and "change".

I saluted her mockingly, and said, "Aye, aye, captain."

She grinned at me and said, "You won't be saying that for long, Captain Jack Sparrow."

My face felt like it was about to split into two halves; that's how hard I was smiling.

I went upstairs to change, and the whole outfit was there, including a temporary tattoo of Jack's tattoo, the one on his arm, with a bird and the word "Sparrow" underneath it.

The door of my bedroom opens, but this time, it's not a purple panda or anyone else in my family.

At this point, I don't even have it within in me to cough. So I do the next best thing. I pass out.

**30 minutes later**

I wake up to cold drops on my face igniting sensations within my abdomen. I blink out the water from my eyes, and I blow out the water that landed on my lips, and I see my mother's worried face, along with the rest of the Purple Pandas who are, yep, you guessed it, dying on the floor (yet again), laughing.

I can't even right now.

I look towards the door of my room and I see the cause of my fainting. In the background, I hear my mother asking me whether I'm alright, and all the other necessary questions she needs to ask as a mom, but I tune all of the noise out and I focus on her.

She starts towards me, until she's next to me, and by now, my mother has taken the hint, and she has taken the liberty of ushering all of my friends out the door, except for one.

Sophia Ramirez Guadalupe.

Oh my freaking gosh.

What is she doing here.

She probably noticed the look on my face right now, because she finally decides to help ease my confusion by starting to explain.

She nervously clears her throat, sits on my bed, twiddles her thumbs, and starts to speak.

"When I first met you, I remember myself as being pretty abrasive. After the past two years though, you may not realize it, but you've changed me. You changed me from being a girl that always got what she wanted to someone that actually started to understand, and be kind. But while I was changing into a better person, I had brought you into a world which could harm you in more ways then one. I think that's why I was completely okay with you leaving the music industry, in fact, maybe even grateful that you were leaving; because even though you were a great singer/dancer, your talent didn't belong there. The world that I had introduced you to could do a lot of things; it could make you famous, it could make you a multimillionaire, or even billionaire if you're good enough, but it also had the ability to warp you and your music. It's an industry that could twist all of your strengths to weaknesses. It's an industry that works like a drug, and a lethal one at that. While you're still new to it, you experiment with all the different producers and effects; you look for ways to spice up your music and your dance. Then you start building a tolerance, a tolerance for all the different producers that train you and your voice; producers that want to milk your talent out for instant cash. After you've built up all of your tolerance, you reach your all-time high. You're on the billboards and you're making record deals, but like all high(s), it doesn't last. You crash, and you burn. It's a cycle that never stops repeating. I think all of the druggies can tell you that they've never reached a high as good as their first one, and it's the same in the music industry as well. I'm not saying that all producers are bad, or that everyone comes out like shit at the end of their experience, because that's bull. There are actually people out there that are glad to have been part of the music industry or acting industry at one point of their lives, but I figured that you weren't like them. So...I think what I wanted to tell you after all of this was that I'm sorry for being such a shit friend. I really am. *You deserve a lot better, not someone who thinks that they can get you into the VMA's, because that's not fair to you. I'm sorry for getting you into such a shit place, but that's not the only reason why I wanted to apologize. I also didn't stand up for you today in the cafeteria, and that's not what real friends do. Real friends stick by each others' sides and actually defend them. What I did, I just stood there, and watched that happen to you. I-"

I cut her off by jumping on top of her and pulling her into a hug.

She sniffled and looked at me puzzled. "Why would you still want to be friends with me?"

I looked at her and smiled. She could be so clueless sometimes.

"Sophia, real friends forgive."

She looked at me with thousand of emotions in her eyes along with unshed tears, and hugged me right back.

After a while of just hugging the living daylights out of each other, I finally let go of her and started to go through my clothes.

She got up and said, "Girl, if you even think about putting those clothes on yourself, I might just have to slap you."

I smile at her and say, "It's Captain to you, Angelica."

She mockingly does a bow.

Half an hour later, Captain Jack Sparrow walks out in full costume (and makeup) along with Angelica (Sophia), his former lover.

I make my way to the kitchen and I see a mound of people sitting in front of the TV in the living room watching The Big Bang Theory.

In a thick, British accent I say, "BARBOSSA, MR. GIBBS, THE REST OF YOU LOT, RUSH YOUR HINDS TO THE KITCHEN, THE CAKE WON'T CUT ITSELF WILL IT?"

Within minutes, everyone is in the kitchen, and they're all singing the Happy Birthday song, with some people inserting Captain Jack Sparrow as my name, and others using plain, old, simple Lenora.

When they're finally done with all of the different variations/variety of birthday songs, I finally cut my moms cake, with her snapping pictures/taking videos in the background.

After I cut the cake though, a bunch of hands swipe the frosting off the cake and smear it on my face.

I glare at everyone and they smile back at me, and I huff in response.

I then look over at my ship.

The Black Pearl.

I look at my brother and ask, "How the freak did you even get this? Did you know about," I gesture to all my crew members, "this?"

He smiles and tells me with an accent, "Captain, I don't mean to be rude but, I'm quite hungry and the rest of your crew is hungry as well. I suggest that we eat first and talk later."

I nod my head towards him and sigh. He does have a point there.

I look at my ship and frown.

"It's my ship. Lads, we can't eat our ship, otherwise we'll have nothing to sail on."

Exasperated, Bea exclaims, "Len, I'm starving, can we just cut the cake and get it over with?"

Wrong move missy.

"Mr. Gibbs, it' CAPTAIN Jack-"

I get interrupted by someone's hand slamming my face into the mouth-watering center of my beloved Pearl.

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The first asterisk (*) -  'Alexander the Great' refers to a a famous king/ruler who ruled over a part of ancient Greece. Wikipedia can give you a better description of him.

The second asterisk (*) -  'Dora' refers to a TV show for little children under the name Dora the Explorer. I'm sure you can find an episode of it on YouTube or some other video-streaming site, even though it's meant for toddlers and other young children.

The third asterisk (*) - 'VMA' refers to MTV's Video Music Award and it's an award that is annually presented to "honor the best in the music video medium." - Wikipedia//////You can find more information on Wikipedia.

**AGAIN, if you don't understand the references in this chapter that are not marked with asterisks (*) <--these thingies, then refer to the movie series The Pirates of the Caribbean.**

Picture: Bea Segler

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