Page 3 of Surviving You, Scotch and Sammy 1

He points a single drumstick toward me. “Don’t think I’ll forget you said that. First dibs on Sassy. She’s cute.”

I roll my eyes, but then we all look up as my little sister comes tearing through the garage, giggling like a fool while her long black hair flies behind her and our dog yaps at her feet. She grabs her worn and dented skateboard from the far wall, and kicks a spare toward Kari, Marcus’ ten-year-old sister. “We’re gonna go skate. Do you guys wanna come out with us?”

“I don’t wanna skate,” Kari complains and ignores the board Britt kicked her way. Angelo steps around them, and though he has no siblings of his own, he’s used to ours being under our feet all day long. He moves past and plugs in his electric keyboard, completely unfazed by the tiny cyclones.

Marc takes his bass guitar from the stand and strokes it lovingly. “We’ll come out in a couple hours.” He nods toward me. “This fool already has us running late, so we have to practice a little later, but we’ll come out before dinner.”

Britt pouts. “But that’s forever away.”

Kari shrugs her shoulders and turns back to the door. “I wanna go inside anyway.”

Britt is our wild skater, just like me and our brother Alex and all the other guys, but Kari is quiet as a mouse and prefers to sit in her room and read her Babysitter Club books, or sit outside in the dark and stare at the stars. She’s just inherently gentler than the loud Brittany.

“That’s just too bad,” Luc says. “Scram, kiddies. We got stuff we gotta do. We’ll skate with you later.”

Kari’s eyes slit and her mouth moves into a snarl. “You don’t have to be such a grump, Luca!”

Okay, so she’s mostly gentle, most of the time, but she absolutely never tolerates being spoken down to. Such a sweet innocent looking kid, with her auburn hair, curly and wild, and her billion freckles, sure can hide pockets of psycho.

Luc’s eyes turn soft and apologetic, even as his knees bounce with energy for practice. “I’m sorry, Care Bear, but we gotta do this. We’ll come out later, okay?”

“One hour,” Britt bargains and pops her hip. I smile and grab my guitar, pulling the strap over my head and setting it comfortably on my shoulder. Britt’s in negotiator mode, which means we’re all just about to lose.

“Three hours,” Angelo returns quickly, simply because he likes to spar with her.

“Forty-five minutes.”

He smiles down at her sassy self. “Four hours.”

“Two hours, and if you come out later than that, we’ll spray mom’s perfume all over your backpacks.”

Angelo laughs and sticks his hand out. “You gotta deal.”

Britt spits into her hand then takes his in a tight grip. “Deal. I’ll be waiting.”

She leaves just as quickly as she blew in and Kari wanders out slower behind her, then Angelo wipes his hand on his pants and stands in front of his keyboard. “Your sister is disgusting.”

“Yeah.” I laugh. “She really is. She’s the best. Alright. Let’s get started. We gotta get this done, we gotta put in an hour with the girls, Marc’s gotta work, then we’ll go to The Shed. We got a lot of shit to do, then we’re up early tomorrow to go to Dixies.”

“Dixies?” Luc whines. “You need to get over that girl. Plus, your names totally clash. It’s weird.” He pauses briefly as his eyes flare. “But you can’t have Sassy! I already have dibs.”

“Sassy’s all yours, Luc. I’m all set.”

I tap my foot down on my brand spanking new loop peddle to get us started, then I begin strumming my guitar and I sink into the world of rhythm and magic.

I already wrote a song for Sammy Ricardo; several of them, but despite what she thinks, I do know how to keep my cards a little closer to my chest.

– Sammy –

Frederick & Geraldine Ricardo

“So… My friends and I wanted to go to this thing tonight.”

Mom steps across my pristine bedroom, dressed in her ‘stay at home lazy day’ outfit that’s actually basically a skirt suit, pearls, and salon curled hair, and she spins my wide ivory handled hairbrush in her hand. Just like she does every single afternoon, she sits on my bed and runs the brush through my hair without asking my preferences. I’m just her puppet and she’s my master. “No, Samantha. No parties.”

“It’s not a party, Mom.” It’s totally a party. “I just wanted to hang out with the girls.” Lie. I want to hang out with the boy that I so desperately wish I could admit I liked. He’s so hot and really funny and so very sweet. I’m only seventeen, yet he’s already set the bar for men for the rest of my life.

“Where is it?”

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