from: pewpewpew@nprime.op
to: liberteen@nprime.op
subject: I'm coming to Iowa soon...
time: 04/16/07 4:42 AM

A live demonstration? O.o

from: pewpewpew@nprime.op
to: liberteen@nprime.op
subject: I'm coming to Iowa soon...
time: 04/16/07 4:49 AM

It's just that I've never had anyone offer to masturbate at me. O.o

from: pewpewpew@nprime.op
to: liberteen@nprime.op
subject: I'm coming to Iowa soon...
time: 04/16/07 4:53 AM

Brit,

I'll reserve judgement on whether it's good or bad, if that's okay? It was just unexpected, that's all!

--Missy

from: pewpewpew@nprime.op
to: liberteen@nprime.op
subject: I'm coming to Iowa soon...
time: 04/16/07 5:01 AM

Brit,

Stop the remorse bus right here! It's not a big deal to me at all, really! It wasn't "OMG awful!" so much as "OMG unexpected and weird for LiberTeen to be talking to me about masturbation!" I mean, you're Someone Famous and I'm the anonymous faceless member of the vast sea of fans, so to be singled out for attention like that, and in that way was startling.

*hugs*

--Missy

from: pewpewpew@nprime.op
to: liberteen@nprime.op
subject: I'm coming to Iowa soon...
time: 04/16/07 5:20 AM

Brit,

Okay, I guess I'll buy that. I like you too.

I was going to say something about you only liking me because I'm a nova now, but you cut that off at the knees before I got the chance. Speaking of which, I don't know why you think I'm attractive. I'm pretty plain, really, and I didn't get any better-looking after I erupted.

I really haven't had anyone to talk to about things like this. That's partly because I roll a different way than almost everyone else in my school, and partly because this is not a very large town and if anyone blabbed, it'd be all over town in a heartbeat.

*hugs*

--Missy

from: pewpewpew@nprime.op
to: liberteen@nprime.op
subject: I'm coming to Iowa soon...
time: 04/16/07 5:37 AM

Brit,

Well, I assumed you'd seen photos of me, since we've never met in person!

I like talking to you too. I need to get a little sleep. I have to get up in a few hours for school. >.<

Good night!
--Missy

Marshalltown, Iowa; Friday April 21, 2009, 3:50 p.m.:

Melissa "Missy" Stutzenbach, also known by her nova handle of "Pew Pew Pew," pulled back the living-room drapes and peered into the front yard again. In the adjacent kitchen, her mother Amanda heard the rustle and sighed.

"Stop tugging on the curtains, Missy," Amanda said from the kitchen. She wiped her wet hands on a dish towel and walked to the arched doorway to the living room.

"Sorry Mom," Missy replied, stepping away from the window. The afternoon light caught the highlights in her strawberry-blonde hair, which was pulled back into a short ponytail. Anxiously, she flopped into a comfortable recliner, sitting on the edge of the cushion.

"Your nova friend will get here when she gets here," Amanda said, "Are you sure you've picked up your room?" That Amanda could say "your nova friend" without stopping to boggle over the significance of meeting a nova, let alone befriending one, illustrated how quickly she'd come to cope with her family's new situation. Her teenaged daughter Missy had erupted into a nova only three and a half weeks earlier. Missy was, in fact, the first nova to ever set foot in Marshalltown, and already another was coming to visit from out of town. If Missy hadn't erupted, it was possible that no nova would ever visit Marshalltown. The sleepy town of 25,000 was situated in the middle of nowhere in rural Iowa, an hour from the very minor metropolis of Des Moines.

"My room's fine," Missy said ambiguously. While her bedroom was "clean" in the sense that there was no trash or garbage or dirty laundry laying about, it was still moderately cluttered. Even before she'd erupted, Missy kept busy enough with school and athletics that she could never completely tidy her room. Afterward, it was only that much worse. In addition to the piles of books everywhere, her baseball equipment bag, and a computer desk overflowing with discs and manuals, she had a new pile of nova-related material: her costume, a stack of opened fan mail, a stack of unopened fan mail, and the hefty collection of reference binders that she'd gotten at the Rashoud facility in Minneapolis.

To create the illusion that she shared her mother's concern about her bedroom, Missy walked down the short hallway to her bedroom door and looked in. The costume atop her pile of "nova stuff" caught her eye and she sighed again. Shortly after she'd returned to Marshalltown, her mother had ordered the costume without her knowledge. It was bright red, made of a stretchy wet-look matrial, and in Missy's opinion, looked absolutely ridiculous. She'd agreed to wear it for a paid appearance at the opening of Jerry Lembacker's new car wash, and while nobody in the crowd seemed to find it too ridiculous, Missy was sure that her mortified crimson blush probably made it impossible to tell where the costume ended and her skin began.

Her father Raymond emerged from the hall bathroom, and he put his arm around his daughter's shoulder. He'd gotten over his remorse at never having had a son as soon as Missy had taken to sports in elementary school. While he was aware on a rational level that Missy was his daughter, he was constantly delighted that he never had to deal with "girl stuff" the way he had initially feared.

"Your room looks fine," Raymond reassured her. At the other end of the hall, Amanda pretended not to hear him. Missy was comforted by the gesture, and relaxed a little. In addition to erupting as a nova less than a month earlier, she'd come out to her family as lesbian just one week earlier. Amanda took it very poorly, but Raymond intervened and provided perspective. One of his best drinking "buddies" and co-workers at the Swift beef plant was a fireplug of a flannel-clad bulldyke, and he'd quickly learned that there was not a damned thing wrong with that at all-- after she'd blackened his eye one night with the butt of a pool cue at Ryan's Tavern.

"We'll set up some sleeping bags in the TV room downstairs," Ray continued, "Since there's not enough space in here for the two of you." Ray was briefly taken by the realization that his little girl was amost grown up, and he wondered where the time had gone. It was the weekend of Missy's senior prom. Missy was about to graduate from high school. Missy planned to go away to college in Ames that August. Missy had erupted into a nova.

The last, he decided, was pretty weird, so he decided not to include that in the list the next time he wanted to reflect on the changes in his only daughter's life.

5:00 p.m.:

For the sixtieth time in the past hour, Missy glanced again at the clock over the sofa. Liberteen was an hour late, and Missy was worrying herself sick. Had she run into bad weather, she wondered. Could she find Marshalltown from the air? Or had--a shudder passed through her--Cyn found a way to ruin their weekend before it ever started?

Missy wished she'd gotten Brit's phone number.

"I can put dinner on hold for a few minutes," her mother Amanda said, framed again in the doorway to the kitchen.

Missy looked up from the recliner.

"Okay, thanks Mom," she replied. "I wish I knew where she was."

"I'm sure it's nothing," Amanda reassured her. "She probably didn't plan on it being such a long flight or something."

Missy nodded, unwilling to share her worry about Cyn with her mother. Even the hint of such a thing would doubtless scuttle the entire weekend, she correctly guessed.

One thing Brittany had to say for commercial flight was that even with its notoriety for delays, cancellations, loss of luggage, layovers, and stayovers on the tarmac that could stretch into the hours, it was generally a lot more reliable than trying to do it yourself, especially when you’ve been doing it for all of two weeks.

Brittany had left Oregon earlier that morning in her eufibre costume and a day bag slung over her shoulder, giving Robert a light peck as she walked out the door. “Have fun”, he told her with a somewhat nervous smile, “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” The conflicted nature of that statement didn’t pass her by, and she giggled as she walked out the door, assuring him that she wouldn’t.

The hours since seemed to have gone completely to hell. First there were the headwinds in Utah, then the rain in Nebraska, to say nothing of apparently having wandered into somebody else’s flight path no fewer than four times, despite her best efforts. And then of course came the problem of finding the speck that was Marshalltown from the sky, something that she was learning the hard way would have been much easier had it been in Idaho or Washington or anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, where things tend to be more spread out. Half an hour as the crow flies outside of Marshalltown, she’d touched down in some outcropping of homes and stopped into a drugstore for a drink, and was rewarded for her break by getting mobbed by the locals. Another fifteen minutes waylaid, and she was late already!

After a few brief but terse photo ops and handshakes, Brittany sped away, finally managing to divest herself of some of Iowa’s local color, this time on the lookout for “the Roadhouse”, Marshalltown’s super-sized gymnasium, quite possibly one of the only structures in town identifiable from the sky. It was only moments before she spotted it, touching down at last into Marshalltown, maintaining a cautious distance that still afforded her the ability to read the streets as she wended through the veins of the small city, following her printed-out directions to Missy’s house.

With a heave, Brittany at last touched down at the house Missy’d described and consulted her watch. She was already over an hour late. Way to go, Brittany, she cursed herself. I’m sure you’ve really made Missy feel safe by not even being bothered to show up on time. A self-conscious bolt of reflection seized her, and with a fumbling hurry, she slipped off her goggles and checked her image in the window of the sedan parked in the driveway. She hoped desperately that the flight hadn’t made her look ridiculous, but her own assessment of the situation was less than favorable. Desperately, the tried to smooth out the errant strands of unkempt hair that had escaped from the simple tie she’d used to tame it and wiped what looked like the remains of an insect off her jawline. She remembered all the photos she’d just taken and cringed. Oh, wonderful. Late, windblown messy hair, and crusted in bug guts. Way to make a first impression. She produced a wet-knap from her bag and smeared it quickly across her face, thankful that she’d at least had the foresight not to wear makeup today. Satisfied as best as she could be with what she saw in her reflection, she looked at her smile once before turning away and climbing the last of the steps up to the front door.

Modesty, she chided herself as her knuckles met the door, and with a hurried thought, adjusted the length of her skirt another three or four inches down and hid her natural cleavage beneath a sheer veil she stretched across the top of her bodice. Footsteps could be heard scurrying up to the door before she’d even finished knocking, and she realized how eagerly she’d been expected. Without having to even think about it, a look that was equal parts prostrated apology and radiant sweetness overcame her, and the door swung wide.

Missy opened the front door and then froze momentarily, overcome by a bashfulness unlike anything she'd recently experienced. Despite being a nova herself, Brittany was the first nova she'd met socially, and Brittany's nova-caliber physical beauty overwhelmed her. Missy continued to stand framed in the open doorway as she took in Brittany's appearance. Despite being disheveled from the long flight, Brittany was still stunning beyond compare in person. The difference between a photo of her online and seeing her in person was like the difference between shooting someone and just throwing a bullet at them.

"Hi," Missy began breathlessly and wide-eyed, "You're here! And, in costume. . .!" Missy hadn't expected that. Missy wore blue jeans and a sleeveless volleyball polo. Stockinged feet peeked out from under her flared jeans.

Her father Raymond joined her, standing midway between the foyer and the kitchen wearing khaki Dockers and a golf shirt, and casually holding his first Miller of the night. The petite Brittany was obscured from his sight by his taller daughter, but he thought that he noticed the swirl of a flag-red skirt.

"Well don't just stand there hon," he chuckled, "Invite your friend on in!"

Brittany winced slightly. She wasn’t sure if Missy was pleased or if she was simply shocked. “I…um, yeah, I…is that okay?” She smiled a bit and hugged the other girl gently, having to reach up to do so. Missy had a good few inches on her, something that Brittany realized, at that moment, was unbearably endearing, and she looked up to meet Missy’s gaze with all the bashful vulnerability of a first date. Between feeling totally gross from the flight, finally meeting Missy face-on, and very suddenly being put in a position to meet her family and be invited into their home, she was, in fact, feeling awfully vulnerable, but persuaded herself to reaffirm her confidence, at least while she was in Missy’s parents’ home.

Stepping out from behind Missy with poise anew, she smiled over at the handsome, homey man in the adjacent room, inviting her in. She waved her hand gently to the man, genuflecting slightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stutzenbach!”

Raymond involuntarily waved back, nearly sloshing his brew. My God, he thought, To be eighteen again.

"Good to meet you too, Brittany," he said pleasantly. Ray took a half step toward the kitchen to meet Amanda as she joined him and reminded him that thirty-nine had its advantages, too.

Missy recovered quickly, returning Brittany's hug. Despite having seen her online and in photos, she'd expected Brittany to be taller. Her height advantage counteracted Brittany's one year of age advantage, and Missy felt more like Brittany's peer again.

"Come on in," Missy said, unconciously echoing her father's instruction as she ushered Brittany inside. "You're just in time for dinner. Are you hungry? We're having--" she hesitated, remembering that her mom had just cooked enough for two adults and two novas, "--we're having a lot." Missy smiled.

“Great!”, she returned. “I actually haven’t eaten all day, only a drink about a half hour out on my way in. Oh, Missy!” she laughed, bracing her hand on Missy’s shoulder gently. “There was rain, and fighting against the wind, and bugs, oh gawd, Missy, the bugs! Trust me, you’re better off not flying. I must look like a mess!” Her eyes purposely met Missy’s as they strolled to the kitchen, the look on Brittany’s face a total endorsement of the sincerity of her statement that at once rendered it objectively completely untrue. “I’m sorry I was late”, she said softly. “I hope I didn’t worry you.” She knew she probably had, but didn’t want to give that fear validation by assuming it so plainly in front of her parents.

Brittany left her sack in the foyer, seeming the most obvious place for it, and took advantage of the fact that she was bringing up the rear to shorten her cape to a few short feet from her shoulders, having learned long ago that long, flowing capes and sitting down rarely mix well.

As they entered the kitchen, Brittany spied Missy’s mother, and gave her a polite smile. From what Missy had told her about the last several days, she admitted she had no idea how to behave around Mrs. Stutzenbach. She didn’t want to seem affable or cold, but she hardly wanted to seem saccharine, either. Mr. Stutzenbach seemed genuinely glad to have her around, but his wife could still easily be another story, and with as much emphasis as Missy seemed to indicate she placed on appearances, chances were that if she didn’t like Brittany, she wouldn’t show it. Still, certain conventions of courtesy were nearly immutable, and the warm, open atmosphere of Missy’s home, which reminded her so much of her own back in Montana, was quickly putting her at ease. “Hello, Mrs. Stutzenbach”, she smiled, casting a glance towards the well-stocked dinner table. “Thank you for having me for supper in your home, ma’am. Everything looks quite wonderful.”

"No worries," Missy quietly lied to Brittany, acutely aware of the importance of maintaining perfect secrecy around the subject of Cyn. Reluctantly stepping away, she helped her mother remove the covers from the bowls and dishes of food.

Side-by-side, it was plain that Missy took after her mother's leggier and leaner features than her father's lantern-jawed and thoughtfully-browed ursine aspect. Amanda had defied the group norm for her friends and not become a typical overweight sedentary Iowa mother. Her age was difficult to guess as a result, and she frequently passed for mid-to-late twenties. Her fashion was typically up to date as well, without being jarringly out of her age range. "I'll dress like a Land's End model when I'm forty-five, and not a minute before," she was fond of saying. Amanda would laugh as if it were a joke, but the underlying meaning was quite serious. Old age would have to capture her; she would not embrace it willingly.

"Okay," Amanda said, setting the last of the pot lids onto the counter, "Everyone have a seat already and we'll dig in. We've got a smoked ham, a pork roast, baked potatoes, salad, baked beans, cooked carrots, dinner rolls, and broccoli with cheese." Amanda took the seat closest to the business end of the kitchen. Ray sat at the other end, leaving opposite-side seats for Missy and Brittany.

Missy had opened the refrigerator and retrieved a pitcher of iced tea. Joining everyone else, she set it on the table and took her seat. Missy smiled shyly to Brittany, as if to suggest that something amusing (or embarassing) was about to happen.

"We don't say grace," Ray explained amiably to Brittany as he forked a cartoon-thick slab of ham onto his plate, "So help yourself and don't be shy to ask for anything you can't reach. Can I get you some ham or pork roast?"

Brittany returned Missy’s gaze with a pleased smile at her father’s declaration. She still felt uncomfortable navigating the perilous territory of how to behave around the customs of others, especially when she was a guest in their home. Saying “grace” before a meal was a concept that had remained foreign to her until the age of ten, an ignorance that precipitated a rather awkward mealtime at the home of a childhood friend. She’d since taken an ever-waffling position of simply remaining respectfully quiet during such exchanges between people and the mythical man in the sky they for whatever reason felt beholden to for their prosperity, and finding that she could easily dodge that potentially very awkward bullet in this already somewhat volatile situation relaxed her considerably. “Thank you”, she smiled to Missy’s father, who was unaware that he was not being thanked for the simple invitation to serve herself. “I’d love a little of both.” She smiled courteously as Ray slabbed a few weighty pieces of meat onto her plate before serving herself a few eager, nova-sized portions of everything else that sat on the table, decorum demanding she take somewhat less than she knew she could eat.

Respectfully waiting until everyone had served themselves and passed a few minutes eating, Brittany at least chirped up, “So, Mr. Stutzenbach, Missy tells me that you work at a local beef processing plant. How do you find the work there?” The question was eager and sincere, but she silently wondered if she might be out of her depth. She cast a sidelong glance to both Missy and her mother, giving a passing worry to the thought that Mrs. Stutzenbach might bristle even more at a young, beautiful nova chatting pleasantly with her husband than with her daughter. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d have been accused of being a homewrecker by virtue of simply being pleasant. The meat packing industry, however, was something she knew a little about, thanks to her interest in the American labor condition, and hoped that her knowledge in the area might serve as an area to showcase the aspects of her character that didn’t involve masturbating on camera or condoning consensual incest.

Ray nodded and gestured with his fork to Brittany to indicate that he'd heard, but he finished his mouthful of potatoes before replying. Amanda spoke into the gap:

"Ray's a general at Swift," she explained, not mentioning that Swift was a beef processing plant. "He's a supervisor of supervisors on the production floor."

"We're doing okay at Swift," Ray added, picking up his glass of iced tea. "We have the usual challenges, but we get 'er done." While truthful, his answer was obviously less than complete. Boasting that they'd killed 80,000 head of cattle and cut them up into steaks in the preceding week was not good dinner conversation.

"We, uh, actually don't talk a lot about dad's work," Missy explained. "We learned a long time ago that most people don't like to hear about what goes on there while they're eating." She smiled impishly. "Some of the words put people off, like 'neck breaker.'"

Amanda's focus softened, as if she were thinking of being somewhere else for a moment. She'd been in this conversation before, and knew what Ray and Missy were about to do.

"Bung gun," Ray said, upping the ante. He watched Brittany's reaction.

"Viscera dropper," Missy countered.

"Back saw," Ray replied, savoring the words.

"That's enough," Amanda interrupted firmly but good-humoredly, putting a sudden end to their game of verbal chicken. She knew that if she'd allowed, her husband and daughter would soon be talking about piles of cow heads and boxes of kidneys.

"So, yeah, that's what I do." Ray summarized. He glanced at his wife, who nodded. He continued. "We know what you do, too, Brittany; but you're here eating dinner at our table, so you can probably guess that we're okay with that." Ray's expression was open, but guarded. Amanda, on the other hand, looked as if she'd bitten into something sour. Whatever they had decided as a couple, it had clearly come only after serious discussions. Ray squeezed Amanda's hand, reaffirming that they were a couple.

"Yeah, there's been a little bit of drama this week," Missy understated. She'd come out to her mother as lesbian, but once Amanda had gotten over her initial surprise, she'd adjusted her viewpoint reasonably well.

Whatever had happened in the Stutzenbach household in the preceding week, the four of them--the two thirty-something Generation X parents, their tomboy recently-erupted only daughter, and her prom date patriot and libertine nova friend--were all seated around the same dinner table. Amanda had been considering this very line of thought as she considered the surreal tableau and realized how much her family had changed in the past few weeks.

"Yes, we have our challenges," she smiled, "but we get 'er done."

Brittany smiled impishly all the while at the father and daughter Stutzenbach’s exchange. Missy was right; most people tend to get mildly squicked by that kind of conversation, especially at the dinner table. Brittany wasn’t among them. Her father, bless him, was a loudmouth cur who enjoyed a good hunt, and while Brittany hadn’t spent any appreciable length of time on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse, the physical butchering of for-real animals was something she was no stranger to, the end result being that Brittany was neither afraid of nor ignorant of the most visceral aspects of where her meat comes from. She sat sifting through her own mind in a shameless effort to join in on the fun when Mrs. Stutzenbach put a jarring halt to the exchange, and at that point Brittany decided that a little discretion was in order. For her part, she hoped the fact that their discussion in no way upset her meal and her request of more dead pig once the quiet had descended again upon the table spoke for itself.

“My father hunts deer and foxes in Montana, Mr. Stutzenbach. He’s taken me along a few times, too. I think he always wanted a son”, she giggled good-naturedly. “I knew how to clean a rifle from the age of twelve. Mostly I was just curious as to how your end of the industrial sector is holding up in this area. It’s shameful how many jobs have been exported away from Americans over the last few decades.” She shook her head somewhat bitterly, but with an academic calm. “I haven’t been there, of course. I can’t pretend to know what it’s like. My father was a military man, retired. But all you have to do is read the statistics, look at the facts. It makes me feel a portion of some great national shame that so few of us can afford to do so well. Millions of Americans aren’t fortunate enough to become anything better than working poor.” Brittany cringed internally, realizing she may have just committed a social faux pas in the way of polite dinner conversation. There were happier things to talk about than radical social reform and socioeconomic disparity. “Sorry”, she said apologetically. “I sometimes go on without thinking about where I’m headed. Anyway. I’m happy to see that you’re dong so well, sir.”

Feeling more than a touch awkwardly out of place, Brittany rolled things around on her plate for a moment and hoped desperately that dinner was about to be officially commenced so she could stop feeling like such an idiot.

Ray, Amanda, and Missy alike were all momentarily stunned by Brittany's unexpected outpouring of patriotic protectionist pro-labor proletarianism. Pained, Pew Pew Pew paused to ponder her predicament.*

"Yes, I do hunt," Ray said slowly, dodging the contentious issues of social and economic justice. "I like to bow hunt for deer in the early season on Mark's farm-- the one where you're four-wheeling tomorrow. He's my brother." The Swift beef packing plant which Ray helped manage employed many Mexican immigrant workers with dodgy papers. It was an unspoken rule in Marshalltown that the topic need not be mentioned. He glanced to his wife, and caught her return glance. Where did that come from? their eyes asked each other.

"The ham's really good," Missy said into the awkward pause, cutting another bite from the thick slab. Missy watched Brittany and wondered if she uttered these kinds of outbursts frequently. She resisted the urge to crawl under the table. "It came out really juicy. The ham, I mean."




(* Sorry.)

"Sure did." Brittany swallowed, shoving another mouthful of ham into her mouth as an alternative to wincing in embarrassment. She'd clearly either touched on or approached a topic that was less than welcome at the dinner table, and dutifully backed off as quickly as was reasonable. "It's, um...really good", she grinned somewhat sheepishly, her eyes plainly giving away her realization.

A few more polite utterances were exchanged over the quality of the meal, but Missy and Brittany both silently agreed to remain virtually mute for the remainder of the meal as a means of further avoiding any further social gaffes on Brittany's part. Brittany was reminded that she was trying to endear herself to these people, and being her usual, firebrand self might not serve her best at the moment. She thanked Missy's mother again for the wonderful meal and offered to help clear the table and clean the dishes as an attempted gesture of friendship. Mrs. Stutzenbach seemed to appreciate the offer, but declined.

Missy, her guest, and her father shambled back out to the living room, the awkwardness of dinner more or less over, but still leaving a vacuum of what to discuss in its place. "So!", Brittany chirped in. "I saw a Dairy Queen a few blocks away on my way in, Missy. You feel like heading over there for some ice cream? My treat!" If nothing else, at least it would give her a chance to get Missy alone and apologize.

Ray was momentarily taken aback, but he winked conspiratorially to Brittany.

"You're not a mind reader are you?" he asked good-naturedly, "Because that is exactly what I was thinking-- minus the 'your treat' part I mean." Ray considered treating his daughter and her friends to ice cream as one of the perks of being a father. "I'll be right back."

Ray returned to the kitchen, leaving Missy alone with her new friend. Missy glanced toward the kitchen to make certain her father was out of earshot, then she tiptoed closer to Brittany.

"Wow, that was awkward," she giggled with nervous relief and smiled. "I'm glad that's over with. No matter what else happens this weekend, it'll be better than that." Missy could already taste the Peanut Buster Parfait.

"Dairy Queen will be cool," Missy explained out loud, "On Friday nights practically everyone in the neighborhood is there." What Missy left unsaid was that the local hot-rod auto club and motorcyclists gathered there as well. She wondered briefly if it would be any different now that she was a local celebrity.

A giggle came out of Brittany's lips as Mr. Stutzenbach joked with her and walked back to the kitchen. She had to admit, Missy's dad seemed to be a pretty decent guy. And cute, too.

Missy consulted the kitchen to make sure her parents were out of earshot before leaning over to Brittany, her voice just above a whisper. "Wow, that was awkward. I'm glad that's over with. No matter what else happens this weekend, it'll be better than that."

"I'm really sorry about that", she smiled apologetically. "I hope I didn't give any offense. I was trying to show your parents I'm more than just a vapid teenage idol, and I guess I kinda bombed." Her eyebrows knitted themselves into a self-depricating, regretful little smile, but Missy smiled back at her, setting her at ease.

The Dairy Queen sounded deliciou