"You're the worst. Actually, you're worse than the worst, because even the worst person knows that I am not a morning person, and therefore, would not under any circumstances wake me up before the sun is in the freaking sky!"

I raised my hands in surrender, relatively used to Dante's tired outbursts; they always occurred when he was woken up. And he was right. He was very much not a morning person, or even a mid-morning person for that matter. But sometimes there were bigger things to handle than his cranky morning self. The exact situation we were in, being a prime example.

He opened his mouth to start whisper-shouting again, but I cut him off with four short words:

"Kenny's being an idiot," I sighed, putting my hands down from the 'I surrender' position. There was a brief silence as Dante rolled his eyes and made room for me to sit next to him.

"What's he done now?" Dante asked in exasperation.

"I heard him creaking down the stairs a few minutes ago."

Dante's face then creased in disappointment, "Damn it, Kenny!" he exclaimed. I had to shush him and remind him that we were very much not alone in the house.

"Well, do we go after him?" Dante asked uncertainly, after a beat. We'd always talked about what we'd do if he were to finally fly off the rails. How we would react when this whole thing with Leona went way too far. But we'd never expected the outcome to be so... Close. We'd expected something like this to occur way in the future. Like we still had time to prepare or something. But It seemed like Kenny had been bottling some stuff up, leaving us worried and clueless about how to react. I mean, leaving the house in the middle of the night? Does that sound like something he would do?

"N-no..." I trailed off in response to Dante, unsure about what to do. We were the three musketeers. Having only one half of the terrible twosome just didn't work. Making decisions without Kenny - even when they were about him - was like having an incomplete triangle with only two vertices, or a tripod with two legs. We needed Kenny to provide us with a voice of reason, and he needed us to bring him out of his comfort zone. That's why we worked so well. We each brought something to the table. Dante brought his humour and his insightful comments. Kenny: always the mediator and was always quick to challenge our impulsive sides. And me? Well, I wasn't sure what I brought to the table. I don't know if that's because I was completely useless or because no-one is always completely capable of realising their positive attributes until they are pointed out. I'm funny, I guess. Perhaps I'm the sarcastic one. But at that moment, it really wasn't about me.

It was about Kenny.

"Well there's really only one thing to do," Dante sighed heavily. I raised my eyebrows in surprise. We'd only ever discussed this option once or twice.

"We need to get inside his head."

****

"This is just the way things are
We only appreciate the good
When it's gone," Dante paused for a moment. "What do you think that means?"

I frowned at him from the doorway, "I feel icky." I complained.

"Best friend perks mean that what we're doing is no longer immoral, but out of concern for our dear little Ken-Ken," he snapped the book shut and passed it to me. "Come on. I know you've been dying to read it just as much as I have."

I eyed the book worriedly, biting my lip in anxiety. On the one hand, the only way for us to get to know exactly what Kenny was feeling was to see for ourselves - by reading his journal/life story/ sacred document thing. It was somewhat justified to do this if it was solely for research purposes... Right?

But this was Kenny we were talking about. The friendly Asian kid that has a permanent worry line on his face, making it seem like he's perpetually fretting. It took a good six months for us to even have our first conversation. It took my rescuing of the book for him to even notice me. It was the book that brought us together. I didn't want it to be the book that would break us apart.

"Technically, he's never explicitly told us not to read it..." Dante appealed, but his tone became more guilty as he, too, eyed the book warily. Imagining what could happen to us just because of a few pieces of paper held together with glue.

"Maybe we shouldn't," Dante concluded, quickly thrusting the book in my hands. I looked at it skeptically and then placed it - with unmatched care - back where we'd found it, neatly placed in Kenny's bedside drawer.

I sat on his bed in relief, feeling like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. We were almost going to do it. We were almost going to shamelessly invade Kenny's privacy and face the possible consequences of a broken friendship with which the blame would rest solely on our shoulders. We'd be left as an incomplete triangle, a useless tripod, another thing that needs three elements and is incomplete with just two (poetic I know). The more I thought about it the scarier the thought became.

Dante hobbled over to me on his nighttime crutches and sat beside me with an exhausted thump. After a few seconds we looked at each other.

"Are you as happy we didn't go through with it as I am?" He whispered, as if just talking about it was a sin in itself.

"Oh, God yes." I breathed out heavily through my nostrils.

A few more moment of silence.

"We're waiting for him to come home aren't we?" Dante asked, defeated.

"We are now," I replied conclusively.

"I'm not going to be getting any more sleep tonight, am I?"

"It depends on when he gets home, but no, probably not," I answered sympathetically, quickly patting his back.

"Damn you, Wu," Dante cursed under his breath.

"Nice rhyme," I commented with a grin.

"It just fits," Dante replied proudly, laughing a little.

Suddenly we both heard a loud creak.
Seeing as we lived in a community care home, it could have been a lot of people, but somehow, Dante and I looked at each other and knew who it was. Maggie, doing her rare nighttime calls where she checks on each of us in the middle of the night. The exact night that Kenny decides to go AWOL. Damn Wu, indeed.

"Quick!" I whispered to Dante, as the creaky footsteps were approaching faster and faster in our direction. "Pretend to be Kenny and get under the covers. I'll turn off the light and roll under the bed with unimaginable stealth. Go!"

Within seconds, Dante was wrapped up in Kenny's sheets and I'd bounded across the room to turn off the light. Maggie's footsteps could be heard all-too clearly now, and I knew she would be here in a few seconds. Taking a -literal - leap of faith, I dove down and rolled as quickly as humanly possible, safely hidden from view just as the door opened.

I already knew it wasn't Maggie by the way in which the door itself was opened. Maggie was careful, yes, but she always opened the door with unmistakable authority, the way she did everything else. She always had an air of superiority about her, but then again, I suppose that's what you need when you're the main carer of 12 kids and 3 questionably responsible adults. All in all, I knew it wasn't Maggie because the door was opened hesitantly, as if the person was unsure about whether to come in. The fact that it was creaky didn't help much either, but then again, virtually everything in the home creaked a little.

Dante seemed to sense this too, and I saw a very slight movement in the mattress above my body. Even under Kenny's bed was spectacularly clean. I usually don't know how to feel about Kenny's ruthless cleanliness, but now that I was in close contact with it I was eternally grateful. If this was Dante's room, it would have been a whole other story.

"Kenny?" I heard a whisper. It was breathy and barely audible, and definitely not Maggie. I wasn't even sure that I'd heard it the first time. It took a second try for me to figure out who it was.

"Kenny?"

Dante rose from the bed at the same time that I rolled from under it to turn on the light. At our sudden movement, the girl seemed frightened but thankfully did not scream. Instead, she was stiff and her eyes were abnormally wide. Her lips were stretched into a terrified grimace, and she was frantically stroking the sleeve of her superman print pyjama T-Shirt.

"Dana? What are you doing here?" Dante said, his voice dripping with confusion at Dana's impromptu arrival.

I edged round her slowly to indicate that I wasn't going to do anything untoward, and quickly snapped the switch on, shedding light (haha) on the full situation.

"This is Kenny's room, right?" Dana asked, squinting as her eyes only just started to adjust to the light.

"Yeah, so how come you're here," I whispered back, getting right to the point.

For a moment, Dana's eyes held that sort of child-like fiery defiance, the kind that makes your eyebrows crease and your mouth shrivel up into itself. The kind that gets stamped out of you and replaced with silent existential crisis once you understand more about the world and why everything's the way it is. The look that comes when you don't yet understand why life is hard, but you know it is because you've been through it.

And then it drained out of her. Like she'd had second thoughts about screaming at me like she looked like she was going to mere seconds ago. She sighed, looking defeated, and went to sit on the bed next to a bewildered Dante. It was turning out to to be quite the Monday morning.

" I know what you all think I am," Dana stated factually. Knowingly. "You two and Kenny."

I grabbed a chair from Kenny's work table and sat down inquisitively (yes, I can convey emotion through the way I sit). Dante, too, looked utterly confused.

"And what's that?" I asked eventually, when she didn't elaborate.

"You think I'm some stupid little girl that doesn't know the world. But I'm not. I took care of my dad for two whole years before I got stuck in here. Two whole years. I probably know more about the world than any of those adults out there. Don't write me off just because I'm young," as she spoke she was staring at the ground determinedly, as if she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince us.

"None of us think you're stupid. You're one of the smartest kids here," I protested soothingly.

"True Dat," Dante agreed. "You're a pretty smart kid."

"Yeah, and that's exactly what I am to you. A kid. Someone you feel like you have to protect or console. That's why Kenny won't ever look at me in that way, isn't it? He's embarrassed that some little kid has a little crush on him. Well I'm not little. And it's his loss."

By this time she was looking up and staring at both of us expectantly, daring us to try to disagree with her.

We were both stunned to silence.

I'd never thought of it from her point of view. Dana had always been just something to tease Kenny about. The butt of a joke that seemed funnier at the time. I'd never even considered that she may think her feelings for Kenny were real. And I felt like crap because of that.

I cleared my throat and began to speak. "Listen Dana, you can't blame Kenny for not having the same feelings as you.. Okay? We all know you're a fantastic human being, but Kenny probably feels like he can't connect with you because your age difference means you don't have that much in common..." I trailed off as I was starting to lose my point.

"He's right, D," Dante interjected, at just the right moment, "these feelings you have are probably just you adjusting to yourself. You have so much time to discover who you are... Don't waste it by pining over some older guy that you wouldn't truly be happy with. You like the idea of Kenny. Not the real him,"

"Very profound, Dante," I commented supportively.

"It's what I do," Dante winked cheekily in response.

"But, see, that's just what you don't get. I think Kenny's amazing. He's smart and funny and he doesn't treat me like a little kid. I've done all the growing up I need to do. I had to the moment my dad started getting sick and when mum stopped coming home. I'm mature. I just wish Kenny could see that."

A few tears had started to roll down her cheeks and I felt like I was being stabbed in the heart. She was just a girl  that wanted to be noticed. The situation wasn't anyone's fault, it was just the way things were. But then I started to question why things were the the way they were. Who made these rules so rigid and immovable? Who said that the feelings of a ten year old girl that had to grow up too soon were any less genuine than a thirty year old woman about to get married? I knew that she wasn't specifically crying because of Kenny any more. More because she was tired of being overlooked just because she was younger. Tired of her ideas being written off or criticised because people thought she wasn't mature enough to handle anything yet. It's kind of like how I feel sometimes, about everything. Like I can't belong until I've reached a certain age. Like my life is nothing until I've had my defining moments. But looking at Dana, sitting on the bed of her absent crush and silently crying at three A.M on a Monday morning , I learned that there was nothing better than the moments we were in now. That we shouldn't let anyone or anything else define us, but use our actions to define ourselves. And I learned that from a ten year old girl.

Dante patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. She furiously wiped away the tears she'd let show, as if any sign of weakness was despicable, and shrugged.

"I suppose there's nothing to do about it now,"

I then smiled brightly, suddenly optimistic despite the dismal mood, "I have every faith that you'll find someone else that suits you better. Kenny just isn't that person."

She sniffed and looked up to me, "that's exactly what Ayah said."

Dante's eyebrows creased in surprise
and confusion. "You talked to Ayah? The new girl?"

Dana smiled slightly as she recalled the recent memory, "yeah. I gave her a tour of the house a few days ago. And we passed by you guys and I let it slip that I thought Kenny was really smart and stuff and she started giving me advice about it. She said that there's not only one person for everyone and that sometimes the heart trips up on the way to the right person. She said that I would eventually find someone that suited me much more than Kenny, who would be on the same page as me and I'd look back and wonder why I ever worried."

I found myself smiling uncontrollably at her words, "oh yeah? What else did she say?"

Dana thought for a minute, "well, I thanked her for the advice and asked if she'd ever had her heart broken before. She ignored my question - pretty smoothly - and said that it was already broken to begin with. I said that Kenny could probably fix it because he's so poetic and nice, but then she shook her head and said...."

"What? What did she say?" Dante pounced, hanging onto her every word. I was listening too intently to join him.

Dana grinned, "she said she preferred the one with the dimples and the chestnut hair."