The Preacher's Daughter

CC's POV
After our interview, we meet up with Bryan Stars over by the bus. He's going to be joining us again for part of the tour, so we grab our canvas folding chairs and set them up in a circle outside the bus, to catch up with each other.

"So who's the girl?" Bryan asks, looking over at my sister, who sits between Jinxx and me, playing with her Rubix Cube in a bored fashion.

"I'm Grace. I'm Chris's little sister," She answers, as she spins the cube in her hands, then sets to work on solving it, "And you're Bryan Stars. I love watching your interviews on YouTube."

"Oh? Well, thank you, but I didn't know you had a sister, CC," he says, looking over at me.

"Most people don't," She replies, quickly flipping the last piece into place, then passing it to me and adds, "Make it harder for me to solve this time."

Taking it from her I absentmindedly play with it, scrambling the colors the best I can as I tell him, "She doesn't much care for the spotlight, but on this tour, I'm going to get her used to it."

"Like you did during the interview today?" She retorts through a laugh, gently pushing my shoulder.

"Yup. You're a rockstars baby sister. You need to get used to it. Especially if we're going to be hanging out more," I tell her as I pass the cube back to her, "It comes with the territory."

"I didn't choose the Mora life, the Mora life chose me," She playfully states, taking the cube from my hands and examining it.

"True, but regardless, as my little sister, you need to learn how to deal with being in the spotlight," I agrue, poking her side as she starts to solve the cube.

She makes a face at my words, showing her obvious discomfort with the idea, but doesn't argue. I watch her spin the sides around and quickly solve the cube. Grace passes it back to me and jokingly says, "You suck at this."

"It's not my fault you're a fucking genius. Maybe I need to get you one of those extra large cubes," I playfully growl, "It's hard to stump someone with an IQ that matches Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein."

"Wait, what?" Jake inquires, looking up from his phone in surprise.

"Yeah, my sister's a genuine genius," I tell him.

"Just because I have a high IQ doesn't mean I know everything," She retorts, rolling her eyes, "And I would be okay with that."

"Then it's settled and no one said you knew everything," I argue, "But what you do know, you excel at."

"What all do you know?" Andy asks, lighting a cigarette, while Ashley leans forward, clearly interested in the conversation.

"Tell them about what you would do in study hall, your sixth grade year," I order, smirking at her.

She sighs deeply, then says, "I got easily bored with the curriculum at school, so I would do my homework, then grab the dictionary and read."

"Wait, you read the dictionary?" Andy demands, as if he couldn't believe it.

"Cover to cover," I reply, "And that's not all."

"Then I read the English-to-French dictionary, taught myself Japanese, then tried my hand ato Russian and when I got bored with that, I borrowed Tay's mom's medical dictionary," She adds with a shrug of her shoulder.

"And seventh grade?" I inquire, arching an eyebrow at her.

"I finished the medical dictionary and moved on to botany, which is the study of plants," She replies, "That took me a while, because of how many plants there are, but I finished up halfway through freshman year."

"Holy shit," Andy murmurs.

"Were you ever placed in special classes?" Jinxx asks.

"Nope, because my grades didn't reflect my intelligence," She explains, "I got average grades in school except for in art, music and language, which confused my teachers. Especially during my freshman year, when I showed up with a copy of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World."

"What's so special about that?" Bryan asks, confusion marring his brow.

"It's a college level book," Andy states, blinking in awe.

"Yep and in her free time, when she was in the Eighth grade, she would read Paradise Lost," I add.

"My favorite quote from Paradise Lost is, 'The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven'," Grace softly recites, boredly picking at her chipped nail polish.

"Damn," Ashley murmurs.

"There's a lot of truth in that though," Jinxx whispers, gently nodding his head.

"Amen," Grace replies, then stands up and walks over to the bus, heading inside.

"I knew she was smart, but damn," Andy says, shaking his head.

"No kidding," Ashley adds, as Grace walks out again, stumbling slightly on the last step. Ash reaches out to catch her and she shyly thanks him, before closing the door and walking back to her seat.

I shake my head. She may have been named Grace, but she is far from being graceful.

"Shut up," she tells me, shaking one of the bottles in her hand and begins painting her nails in a pretty dark, royal blue, with a gold metallic color for the accent. She's always changing up her style throughout the day.

It reminds me of when I helped her clean out her locker at the end of her Freshman year. It was more a closet than a locker, though.

-Memory-

"Don't judge me. I keep a lot of stuff in this thing," Grace says, spinning the magenta lock on the outside of the grey locker, then pulling it off when it opens.

"Don't tell me your lockers a pack rats wet dream," I tease, setting down the file boxes as she pulls up on the silver latch and playfully glares up at me.

"Yes and no, but at least I know how to organize it," She replies with a smirk and steps aside so I can see what she's talking about.

She had tie dye contact paper all along the inside, with a pretty purple for contrast. A small, blue-framed mirror, corkboard and dry-erase board on the inside door and below that were pictures galore. Four stackable locker shelves, alternating in blue and orange on the bottom part, with matching fabric bins.

The top bin held extra school supplies, the second bin held makeup bags and all kinds of accessories, the third one had two neatly folded outfits, and the very bottom was used for textbooks. The very top of the orange shelf had trinkets I'd sent to her, trinket boxes mom had gotten her, filled with jewelry and a tiny blue vase held makeup brushes. There was a rectangular wolf dream catcher in the back, hanging from one of the three hooks and the other two held chains with all the Hello Kitty keychains I'd gotten her on them.

The small, built-in shelf at the top of her locker was filled with extra reading materials, a couple Happy Bunny pencil cases, a calendar she had made special with pictures of all of us and a small photo album full of pictures of mom, her, the guy's and me.

"Why do you keep all this stuff in your locker?" I ask as we start to pull everything out.

"Because I like to have you and mom nearby when I'm at school," She explains, carefully removing the pictures on the door and folding the tape in, "I don't get to see you guys as much as I would like to, so this way everytime I open my locker, I can."

A pang of guilt runs through me at her words, as I grab the books from the top shelf, then a piece of paper and a picture falls out. I carefully place the books in the box, then pick up the paper and photograph, quickly realizing it's the letter I'd sent her from Australia and the picture of the guys and me on the beach. The guys held up handmade signs that read, "Wish you were here!" and on my hand I had wrote, "Miss you, Graceland!"

It's true. Because of her father, we don't get to see each other very often, and usually when we do, it's supervised. On rare occasions, like today, we can sneak out and see each other without being supervised, but those are few and far between.

"I love that picture," She whispers, looking at it from over my shoulder, as she pulls the accessories from the door and sets them in one of the boxes, "I used it as a bookmark after I got a couple copies made."

I pass her a sad smile, knowing how she feels. I always have a picture of her and mom with me, usually tucked away in my wallet. It about killed me when I lost my wallet on tour, and I was over the moon when I got home to find it waiting for me on the table with everything still inside.

When we finished cleaning out her locker, we loaded the marked boxes into my SUV and I took her to the beach. That was the day Ashley taught her how to surf and I had a new picture for my wallet.

-end of memory-

I look around, seeing that Grace has disappeared again and then I realize, she's not the only one. Ashley's missing too, and all the guys are laughing at something.

Following their gaze, I find a bare-chested Ashley chasing my sister around the parking lot. Upon closer examination, I see she's wearing his vest as she teases him, calling out, "Catch me if you can!"

"Oh, I will! Don't you worry!" He calls back through a lighthearted laugh.

"Good luck!" She retorts, spinning around midrun to face him and says, "Nah nah nah nah nah!"

I can't help but laugh as I cup my hands around my mouth to shout, "What the hell are you supposed to be? The egg thief in Spyro?"

She sticks her tongue out at me, going cross-eyed as she continues to run backwards.

"She's definitely a clothing thief!" Ash yells to me while she sticks her tongue out at him now.

"Not my fault you're an easy target!" She quips with a teasing smirk.

"That's actually really impressive," Jake states as he shakes his head, "I don't know many women who can run in heels, let alone run backwards in heels."

"That's my sister," I proudly reply, "Wild, hyper and multi-talented."

"So a female CC," Andy says with a chuckle, "No wonder they get along so well."

"What do you mean?" I inquire, arching an eyebrow at him.

"Are you blind?" Andy demands with a snigger, "Ash is crushing on her, just as much as she's crushing on him."

Huh? I look back at them as she squeals, Ashley gaining on her. She turns around again, but slips on some loose pebbles that line the pavement, falling backwards.

My heart leaps into my throat because if she hits that pavement...She doesn't have time to though, as Ash swoops in to catch her. They smile at each other with relief, breathing heavily, and I can suddenly see what Andy's referring to.

My best friend and my little sister, huh? Well this tour just got a whole lot more interesting.

Notes