Chapter 1-The Fifth Generation

Chapter 1- The Fifth Generation

Kellan was just plain hungry while Princess bemoaned her lost love. Katia ideas always happened when everyone else was on another topic. Geneva openly grieved, but not for her father: for her lost innocence. Hale soberly contemplated his future, and Naval was sorry for his wife. Geneva and Naval had already decided to move out. It was best this way. They needed to start their life together on their own terms. Plus, the house would be a little crowded with Hales girlfriend Whitley moving in after the ceremony.

Whitley was the daughter of Strawberry and Angelo Blue. Consequently, she was another by-product of Jackson’s dallying, just not a direct one. Whitley was born after her half-brother Rowan, though until it all came out when he was in High School, she’d never known.

What Whitley had known was that her mother always seemed to be begging for trust from her father, a man Whitley had adored, though privately was disappointed in due to his inability to blindly love her mother. Now, though, she was leaving that all behind for the geekiest guy in school.

Hale loved to think ghosts were real. He said there were bad ghosts, good ghosts, and spirits merely in limbo. He said they walked at night, moaning, looking for a place to rest. He was going to prove to the world that they were real. Whitley knew that any man so dedicated to something so utterly ridiculous also had the ability to be totally dedicated to her. That, Whitley thought, was worth bestowing her heart upon.

The first night she had moved in, she expected Hale to be more than ready to take charge and show her where they would be sleeping. Poor Hale was clueless to his girlfriend’s question. He realized that he’d overlooked something in the arrangements, but wasn’t sure quite what.

‘Surely he’s not THAT clueless,’ Whitley thought. ‘For PlumbBob’s sake he’s the valedictorian!’ Sadly though, she was not mistaken and had to let him know what the arrangements could possibly entail.

At least he’d figured it out pretty quickly from there.

Hale was in for a real ride with Whitley, though he understood more about her than she did about him.

He knew that she could be a little clueless, too. Sometimes, she’d forget that crowns had been out of fashion since elementary school.

Sometimes, she’d nearly forget where she lived, or who she really was.

Often, she’d get so lost in her music she’d forget everything, letting it wash away in the sounds coming from her very soul.

But Hale loved her dearly and vowed to himself that he would protect her from the ghosts, and from himself if need be. He’d seen what his father did, what any man who took a woman as a partner was capable of inflicting. He’d be extra careful to guard his prize.

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Life had settled back down for the present. At first, Hale decided he’d become an inventor extraordinaire. To begin, he went to the junkyard looking for scrap. He was quite dismayed that he might have to dig for it through big, dirty piles and so decided to use some TNT one of his relatives had left lying around the house.

Hale HATED himself for blowing up nearly all the contents of the Junkyard, including himself.

The people working in the tiny junkyard office hated Hale for it too.

Instead, he took up sculpting. He was absolutely desperate to get out and start hunting ghosts, but his mother was adamant that the family’s artistic heritage must come first. So he began his toils with a thought in mind about improving his life. The honeymoon suite in the family mansion had the absolutely cheesiest furnishings in the entire house. Not to mention, that the attached bathroom was the smallest bathroom in the house, and it was meant for two people! Then there was the added horror that the toilet in said tiny bathroom was the worst toilet in the house, too. Hale thought of himself as just that, hale and hearty, and was not about to let some cheap little toilet stand in his way.

So he sculpted one. He intended to give it to Whitley for a wedding gift. Though in Whitley’s mind, the entire house, cheap toilet and all, was nicer than either of the houses her family had lived in. She thought the toilet was just that, a toilet.

Big brother Esher had visited a few days earlier at Katia’s invitation. Katia and Kellan were having a little problem of their own; their bus driver.

 

Esher was even a little disturbed to find Kellan painting a picture of said bus driver in all red hues, with a great big ‘X’ slashed through his face. He decided to play it off as a joke, though, until he could talk to Hale privately about his concerns.

Kellan had approached the new family patriarch with his own solution, a car of his own. Hale had dismissed Kellan’s request as some new hormonal thing. Katia and Kellan both seemed to be raging balls of hormones lately, and it was easiest to just chalk up most everything they said to bollocks.

 

Kellan and Katia wondered if they’d even make it to graduation. Kellan was a little more unbalanced than anyone other than Katia realized, and such episodes only served to further amp up his intensity.

 

Kellan’s plans usually centered on making more money, as well as overthrowing the “rule” of current heir: Hale. Katia thought such things were simply evil. She understood why Hale was going to take over the family empire. Esher was too meek and shy to garner the respect such a position demanded, and Kellan just didn’t need to. It’d be wrong, and most of the town would probably descend into anarchy.

 

Unfortunately, Princess’ absorption in her work for the last several years meant she didn’t see all that was going on around her. She thought Katia was boiling a tempest in a teapot and that Kellan was harmless. Princess just knew that his plans were merely misguided attempts to fix something. Katia just knew something else entirely. She had already resolved to break with her brother the moment she was old enough to leave the house.  And with Hale’s engagement to Whitley, the wedding taking place the very next day, she was poised to step right out the door.