A/N: Hey, LO/\Es! This chapter is long and I wrote it today and read over it multiple of times - but probably not enough. So if there's typos, please forgive me. I'll look over it when it isn't 12:30 in the morning, dae? ^^;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER-HB67GyLo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's an hour later before the four of us think to head back up to the lake house to wake up the boys and make breakfast. Amber has gotten over her reminiscing and is running along the shore with Rosie, back to being herself. Courtney and I shake our heads, grinning at the fools, and run after them, splashing our feet in the water, the wet sand, the course grass, the cold stone steps. We pause to shake off and rub off as much sand as we can from our feet and put our sandals back on.

Trying to keep our giggles down is a struggle – especially as we try to make chocolate chip pancakes and waffles. I'm cutting up fruit and sprinkling them with sugar. Why the heck is that so hard??

Before I know it, Courtney's dipped her finger in the sugar bowl and wiped it on my cheek. "Hey!" I giggle. To retaliate, I dip my fingers in the fruit juice. She sees what I'm doing, shrieks, and tries to run around the kitchen table but I catch her and wrap my arm around her neck. "Starr, Starr, I surrender! Wait, stop!" she shouts. "Oh, yah, right," I say and enjoy smearing my red fingers over her face. She laughs and tries to bite my hand.

At the stove, Amber's trying to flip a pancake – and fails. The spatula launches the food across the counters and splats on Rosie's arm, stinging her and making a goopy mess. Rosie screams and runs at her cousin with her tongue hanging out. "NO! Sandy, don't you dare me!!" Amber screeches, holding the greasy spatula out like a shield. But Rosie totally ignores her and pushes past Amber's flailing arms to her cheek. "AHH!" Amber cries. But none of us is really being tortured; we're having the time of our lives.

"Wae, what's going on?" Ren walks into the room, bleached hair down and unbrushed, in a baby pink t-shirt and white sweatpants. Amber's attitude and expression changes so suddenly that I feel a slight pang of jealousy. But it's gone as soon as I feel it.

"Good morning, babe," she coos lovingly and playfully. Ren gives her a small smile and Courtney reminds her of the two other pancakes in the pan that are no doubt going to have a burnt side now. Amber gasps and quickly busies herself with the breakfast again.

Ren glances at me. I raise my eyebrows a little and wrap my arms around myself subtly, telling him what he should do. He looks unsure, but he carefully approaches Amber from behind and wraps his arms around her chest and neck gently, peeking at me every second to see if if what he was doing was alright. I smile at him and give him a thumbs up.

Amber looks surprised by Ren's action; I don't think he's ever showed her any affection without her doing something first. Then her face melts into one of love and content and she leans back into his chest. He rests his chin on her shoulder.

It's only a minute later that the rest of the boys seep into the warm and fruity-smelling kitchen. BaekHo's in a tight white tank and blue sweats; JR's wearing a black shirt with a faded picture of the Eiffel Tower and pants that are checkered dark grey and blue; and MinHyun, looking the cutest, is dressed in an over-sized dark blue shirt with a big faded shooting star on the front and matching bottoms.

Then comes sleepy headed Aron – shirtless. Nothing on but baggy black pants. Rosie chokes on the strawberry she was swallowing, Courtney gives him a gangster look that says "So you think you're Mr. Hot-Shot?", and me? I just giggle. Happiness makes me giddy, okay?

Amber looks over at what's going on. When she sees Aron, she raises her eyebrows and twists in a suggesting smile while her lips. Aron winks slyly. I see Ren look confused and more than a little annoyed as he tightens his arms around her. Courtney sneers, "I think you forgot something, oldest oppa." Aron looks away from Amber to ask Courtney quizzically, "What?"

Courtney picks up a fresh pancake casually – like she's going to eat it – but then she presses it against Aron's bare chest. He jumps back, yelling, "You crazy woman, that's hot!" Courtney just smirks and purrs, "That's what shirts are for, Handsome." She wiggles her eyebrows, hops up on the table, and munches on the pancake-weapon.

Aron scowls, rubbing the new light red welt on his chest, and complains, "But I don’t wear a shirt to bed unless there are cameras around."

Courtney leans forward so that Aron can't ignore her. "Or if there are fourteen year old girls around," she edits sternly, a hard look in her dark green eyes. We all glance at Rosie whose eyes are as big as saucers and her blush as prominent as the red in her shirt. Aron sighs and walks back out the kitchen, through the living room, and disappears down the hall. We all snicker at his obedience to Courtney.

He reappears a few seconds later in a button down shirt – that's not buttoned up. This stops all conversation. I push the bowl of sugared fruit to the side and sit on the counter. JR turns the chair around so that he's straddling it, folding his arms on the back of the chair, and resting his head in them. We're all anticipating a few sparks to shoot.

Courtney's expression looks wild. "Dude! Did my meaning completely escape you??"

"No, I just decided that I rather be comfortable. Besides, how's this any different than swimming in nothing but shorts?"

"It's a whole lot different! It's totally appropriate and expected when you're swimming – but strutting around the kitchen shirtless with four girls around is quite different." Courtney and Aron glare at each other. But I know that under the surface, they're totally tickled pink by their absurd argument. There's an amused glint in Courtney's eyes and Aron's smirking.

"Alright, Mr. I Don't Care. We're going to do this my way." Courtney suddenly leaps off of the table, grabs Aron's arm, and drags him backwards towards the bedroom the boys were sleeping in, Aron exclaiming the whole while. MinHyun, BaekHo, and JR waggle their fingers at their hyung, totally unfazed by his impending death by Court.

"Okay, I think the pancakes are done here," Amber declares, turning off the stove's flame. Rosie holds up a plate piled high with waffles and I set the bowl of fruit on the table. Ren and MinHyun help set the table while JR and BaekHo are playing Rock, Paper, Scissors for some unknown reason. BaekHo loses a round and exclaims and groans loudly. JR just smiles triumphantly and balls up his fist for another round.

As I pass them to get cups for everyone, I stop, pluck a hair clip from Amber's hair (who looks like she's about to smack me silly), and reach for JR. He watches me with an unconscious little smile, eyes fluttering, as I pull his bangs across his eyes. I hold it to the side and pin them out of his face with the yellow, white polka-dotted clip that I stole.

BaekHo says with his happy grin, "Yah! You look pretty, JR-ah."

JR gets a mischievous look about him and he replies, "And you should too." He gets half-way out of his seat to reach in to Amber's hair for another clip ("Hey!") – a seaweed green one – and snaps it into the front of BaekHo's Mohawk. BaekHo turns to me, asking me to judge his prettiness. I chuckle. "Who looks better: JR-ah or your favorite NU'EST member?" BaekHo says.

I laugh airily. "Oh, that's easy," I say, scooting BaekHo over in his chair a bit so that I can perch next to him. "It's me," I answer with a grin. JR and BaekHo bombard me with "Oh, absolutely!" "There's no competition" "I already knew the answer to that silly question." I smirk and roll my eyes good-naturedly at their over-praise.

We've already settled down to eat when Courtney returns with her victim. We all look up at her smug face, then at Aron's pouty one. She's changed him into a long sleeved, light grey shirt with her Abbey Dawn hoodie zipped all the way to his collarbone.

"I say - you look marvelously dashing, Sir Aron," I comment with an exaggerated English accent. I smear the chunk of chocolate chip pancake in the puddle of Hershey syrup that's on my plate and pop it in my mouth. Next to me BaekHo's asking Rosie for the piece of kiwi on her plate. She spears it with her fork and feeds it to him, giggling. On my other side, JR's standing up and reaching over the length of the table for the pitcher of milk. I complain with a lop-sided smile and push against the chest that's in my face.

Aron smiles gallantly in my direction and bows in the old-fashion way. "Why, thank you, Miss Prince."

Amber laughs. "'Miss Prince'; that sounds contradictory." Aron thinks about it for a second and then just shrugs. He takes the empty seat beside MinHyun. When Courtney's back is turned, MinHyun pulls down the Aron's hoodie zipper down a few inches.

It's almost twenty minutes later when my Blackberry rings. I excuse myself (with BaekHo wailing about his Princess leaving him) to answer the call in the living room. Everyone can still see and hear me, but the room is big and I station myself near the windows looking out over the lake for a bit of privacy.

"Hello?" I say into the phone.

"Starr, it's Mother."

"Oh, hey, Mom. Morning. What's up?" I say cheerfully. Her question catches me off-guard, though.

"When's the last time you've seen Juliet?" she asks. I freeze. I haven't heard Mother sounding like this in a long while. "Um," I stutter, "yesterday, before my friends picked me up."

"You didn't see her leave the house?" Mother's about to lose it.

"No. Mother, what's going on? Where's Juliet?"

"I don't know where she is! She didn't come home for dinner last night – or at all. Her cell phone's in her room so we can't contact her and she didn't tell any of us that she was leaving the house." Mother's voice starts to sound choked and I panic.

"Mother!" I cry out. My voice echoes in the big room and I glance over my shoulder at the kitchen. There's an empty space between the counter and the cupboards that lets people look out into the living room; JR, MinHyun, and Aron are gazing at me from the table with concerned expressions. Everyone's cleaning up after breakfast, but they stop when they notice the three boys sudden lack of movement.

"I don’t – I –" Mother blubbers on the other end. She's short of sobbing outright with heaving, gasping breaths. Oh, Lord, where did Juliet go? The selfish brat; she's making Mother and Daddy worry! "Mom," I say soothingly. "I'm sure she's fine. Did you call around? Maybe she crashed at a friend's?"

"No, we already asked all of her friends and nobody's seen her." I grit my teeth. It's that gang she's been hanging around. They're responsible for this mess; I can feel it in my gut. I clench my fist and it into my sweatpants pocket.

"Well, there're these girls that I've seen her with. I don't think we know them yet."

"What girls?" she sniffs. "Oh, one second –"

I wait on the other end while she talks to whoever interrupted. I look back over my shoulder at my friends. JR's leaning his hands on the counter and has turned his full attention on me. Ren is asking MinHyun something and he shrugs, confused. BaekHo absently steps down from the kitchen to come sit on an armrest of one of the couches, trying to understand what's going on. The look on Courtney's face is cautious.

There's a click on the phone and Mother's voice fills my ears again. "Starr?"

"Yah, I'm right here, Mother. Did you hear something about Juliet?"

"No, no, Daddy was just asking if you knew where she was." She sniffs. "Tell me about these girls that you saw her with." So I describe the type of girls that are in this group, how many I saw, and who I know.

"They don't sound like good news," Mother comments after I'm done. She's gotten a hard edge to her tone. I nod, then remember that she can't see it. "No, they're not."

"So you think she might be with them?"

"Yes."

Mother sighs. "Okay. Well, I think Daddy's about ready to call the police now; I had wanted to last night but he hoped that she would sneak home at some point." Mother sigh shakily and says, "I'll let you go, honey. You're coming home soon, right?"

"Yah. We were just finishing up breakfast." My brows are furrowed in anxiety. Juliet's not this stupid, is she? To run away with girls she hardly knows? To stay out all night and scare the crap out of our parents? And she knows about Mother's childhood. Our grandparents would walk out of the house, leave my mother and our aunt alone for weeks, and then waltz back in whenever they wanted to like absolutely nothing happened. They did that constantly. Mother never wanted to go through that kind of thing again, to have family walk out without a word.

"Okay," Mother says. She sounds exhausted. Of course she does – her and Daddy no doubt stayed up all night waiting for their baby to come home. So that they can yell at her and ground her while at the same time cry tears of relief and tell her how much she worried them. But it didn't end up that way. "I'll let you go. Come home safely, Starr. There will be police cars in front of the house when you arrive, okay? So don't panic."

"Yes, Mother."

"Okay then. I love you. See you soon." Then she hangs up. I let the hand that's holding my cell drop to my side. BaekHo gets up quietly and lays his hand on my arm. "Starr-ssi, what's wrong?" he asks softly. I look up at his caring face and nearly start bawling. I want to do nothing more than fold myself into his strong arms and let him comfort me. He reminds me so much of David in his big brother-ness.

I hold my head high, though, despite my instincts, blinking away the blurriness in my vision, and turn so everyone can hear.

"My sister is missing."