American Girl: Can't I Just Be Chloe?

By the time I got back to Joe’s, Nick, Selena, and Rebecca were gone. It was just me, Joe, Kyra, and Quinn. There was no need for Joe or Kyra to ask why I was here; they both knew. No, it was Quinn to ask me about that. He’s five, meaning that he doesn’t really understand the whole election process. He will when’s older, but definitely not now when he’s a precocious five year-old “Chloe, why are you staying here instead of at your own house?” Quinn asked.

I sighed. “Let’s just say that Uncle Frankie caused something to happen to me and my family yesterday and I really can’t deal with my mother at the moment,” I explained to him.

“What did he do?” Quinn asked.

“You’ll understand someday,” I said. “Now, go play.”

Quinn disappeared to go play as I asked him to and I was given the chance to turn back to Joe and Kyra. “I really do not wish to have to explain to the triplets, Quinn, or Rebecca what’s going on. There must be some way for me to fix all of this so that my life can go back to the way it was. I know I hate my mom for spending so much time in D.C. while I had to be raised by my father, but I guess a part of me wants my mother to be happy. We all know how much good my mother really did for California and, no matter how much I hate to admit it, Rosetta Fletcher needs to be back in the Senate. Craig Roberts cannot be a part of that, at least in the sense that he must not be taking my mother’s place in the Senate. I merely won’t have that, no matter how much I don’t want her to do this. My mother, to put it simply, is a welcome alternative to seeing Mr. Roberts in the Senate.”

“And what are you going to do about it?” Kyra asked.

“I need to find out for sure if the results were as tallied. Somehow, I think that Victoria had something to do with her father’s win, like she switched everything out to make her father win. I think she made her father win to make my life miserable. Earlier today, she told me that she knew exactly who I was from the moment she saw me. Not in so many words, but she knew. Just like she knew that I’ve been in love with Frankie for the past two years,” I explained. “Everything I’ve tried to keep from her, she figured out on her own and I have a bad feeling that things are only going to get that much worse if I don’t fix it.”

“In what way?” Joe asked.

“We continue with the original plan to prove to Frankie that Victoria is nothing more than a Video Girl, but, in the process, I’m going to ask Kevin if he can help me find out what the results of the vote were. If we can find out that, then I can be sure that my mother really was beaten. I need to know,” I explained. This was the only thing I could do to be sure that those results were real. Something inside told me that Victoria was manipulating the system so that she could profit from what was going on. Betsy, Teddy, the Jonas family, and I were not about to let that happen. That was why we were busy getting this thing on Thanksgiving ready and it was the reason that I was so intent on doing it. We only had fifteen days to get all of this together for the Thanksgiving exposure. Then, Frankie would realize just how much of a Video Girl Victoria really was and how much Frankie had ruined our friendship over a girl he obviously knew I didn’t like.

“We’ll just have to try that then,” Joe said.

As I sat there talking to Jyra, all I could think of was Frankie and how he was going to react to everything that I was trying to do. After Betsy gave birth, Frankie told me he no longer wished to be my friend. He sided with Victoria over me. That wasn’t right. Soon though, Frankie was going to realize just how much of a mistake he really made. And, I was not about to forgive him that easily for everything that happened; I couldn’t.