Shawn gave Ralph a pointed look, making sure his head was turned in such a way that Bobby would only see the back of it. He found himself hoping Bobby’s forgetfulness held. “Yeah, so let’s go see our new neighbors!”

"Circus?" Bobby asked in a tone of curiosity.

There was a long pause, as if Bobby's mind was struggling to make sense of things. He grunted once or twice and then his face scrunched up. Finally, his face broke out into a smile.

"Oh brother! I love the popcorn." He announced. "I bet the neighbors have popcorn." He proclaimed, all happy and smiles.

"See?" Ralph said, focusing on Shawn. "He's getting more and more like this. He's b..b..b..b..becoming a...a...a...forg..for..forgetful."

"He's...dumb. He's getting dum..dumber." Ralph said. "We used to not talk about...about..about...him. But now we can. In fr..fr..front of him."

"Talk about who?" Bobby asked both Shawn and Ralph. And then, he stuck his head over to the window to get a better glance outside. "The neighbors?"

"See?" Ralph said, pointing at the back of Bobby's head with one hand, using the other to hike up his own pants which were slipping down in a manner that made him look sloppy.

He pointed towards Bobby with an index finger.

"Dumb."

Shawn looked back and forth between Bobby and Ralph. "Why's this happening to him? He wasn't like that before... He felt worried - had he doomed Bobby by trying to keep him away from the Circus?

"Well, its because the truck just came in." Bobby answered, looking out the window at the moving truck in front of the house down the street. It was an answer, but it didn't fit the context of the conversation Ralph and Shawn were having. It was like Bobby was adding some kind of inappropriate tangent.

"I th..th..think it's just getting w..w..worse." Ralph explained to Shawn in a somewhat bitter way. His face scrunched up.

"Y..you just ha..haven't noticed. You've b...b..been..been..been...been...been to busy with all of your movies." He quipped resentfully, the tone coming out in the same angry way it came out when Ralph complained at the dinner table when Mom brought Shawn's knew movie role to light for the family.

"Mom wants me to do those, Ralph. I just want to make sure Bobby's all right." Shawn squinted at his absentminded friend, worried about his memory. "Hey Bobby, what's your name?" It was an absurd question on the face of it, but Shawn worried he wouldn't be able to answer.

Bobby turned around.

"Bobby." he said. "And you're Shawn."

"And that's ummm...ummm....ummm.....Ralph. Sorry Ralph, Ha! I almost forgot your name!"

"Great, thanks Bobby!" Still, the fact that Bobby didn't recognize that it was an odd question to ask in the first place concerned Shawn. He looked over to Ralph with an unsure look, as if asking 'do you know what we should do about this?'

Ralph shrugged, reading Shawn's interpretation. "I don...don...don..don't know what to do." Then he paused as if seriously listening to Shawn.

"Maybe we jus...jus...jus..just watch it." He finally suggested.

"You're right, Ralph." Shawn nodded seriously. He was worried, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Mom and Dad were acting weird before, and then they went back to normal, more or less by themselves. Maybe this would be like that. "I won't be around to watch him all the time, 'cause Mom will want me to do movie stuff. Can you be a big boy and let me know if he gets worse?"

Ralph's shoulders slouched as if tasked with a burden. "Yeah.....alright." He said, kicking the rug with one foot as if he was just assigned more homework.

"It's wh..wh...what I've been doing. I don't think there's any...any..any...any...any...any thing else we can do about it. Not unless your gonna go back to the Baby-Monster and try to fix it." Ralph thought outloud, clearly talking about Crowley.

"When y...y...y...y...you go off to do the movie, are y...y...you gonna be gone long?" Ralph asked, wanting to know how long he might be saddled with this endeavor without Shawn.

Shawn wondered if this problem was the result of Crowley's berry drink, or using Melinda's key, but he didn't want to complicate things further for Ralph. So he kept quiet about that little fact. "I don't think it's a location shoot, so I should be back every day. If they're doing stuff in the evening, I might even be here to help most of the day."

"School's starting soon." Ralph said, as if warning Shawn that he might miss it. Ralph hadn't really been there during the formative years when Shawn missed a lot of school. Really, he hadn't even been there for long when Shawn went to the special school that allowed a lot of kids to miss school because most of them were little actors and actresses.

"You gon..gon..gun..gonna miss it if you're on a movie?"

"I don't know...Mom signed me up for special school where I can miss it for doing a movie before, but I don't know if she's doing it again." Shawn wasn't great at school, so hopefully he'd be able to miss a bunch of it.

Ralph groaned as if hearing bad news. "I don't wan..wan..wan..wan..wan..wan..wan..wan..wan..wan...want to do it all. I'm always doing it all." Ralph complained after one of his long stutters.

Doing more to assuage Ralph seemed to be another growing demand that was placed upon Shawn, after doing well on the movie, doing method acting, doing well at school for Dad, ensuring Bobby didn't remember, ensuring Bobby didn't get worse, making sure the Griffix was fed, keeping up with who was in the neighborhood, and doing tasks for the Order just to name a few.

Shawn felt like he was the one doing everything, and Ralph was being selfish by complaining about the one or two things he needed to help with. But he couldn't yell or complain about it or anything like that to anyone. He had to act like the good boy, or at least seem like it. "You're doing so much, Ralph. And you're doing a really good job, like you're a big boy. I'm sorry I'm having you do all this, but you know it's important, right? I wouldn't ask if you weren't the only person good enough to do it." And so the gulf between his thoughts and actions continued to widen.

"Yeah." Ralph said. "I kn..kn..know I'm still important." Ralph said begrudgingly. "But it's still n..n..not fair."

He looked around.

"You wan..wan...want to go see the new neighbors?"

Shawn gave Ralph a reassuring smile and a friendly pat on the shoulder. It wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t their choice, really. “Sure - should we take Bobby along?”

"Where am I going?" Bobby interjected. "We're going somewhere?"

"Ugh.." Ralph sighed, giving Shawn a look as if he preferred that Shawn handle the increasingly forgetful Bobby.

Shawn tried to match Bobby's vaguely enthusiastic energy, trying to keep Ralph happy by getting Bobby focused on him. "C'mon, we're going to meet our new neighbours!"

OOC: Shawn Joins Thread

Delilah: Target Number One