Going into hiding seemed like the best option. I was able to steal a tent from the supermarket - like I said, forgettable person - and placed it wherever I wanted to sleep.



I became a pretty nocturnal person during my teenage years. There were less people around at night. I’d sneak around the park and swipe leftover hotdogs after everyone had left.



I knew that it was a dangerous place, being this close to Olive’s house, but the graveyard always attracted me. I’d force myself to stay away for several nights, but I always ended up coming back. It just felt good to be there. Like a home.

Look, I know it’s weird, but so am I.



Gundrun Beaker was another regular nocturnal visitor to the graveyard. She came here several days a week to look at her husband’s grave in silence.

Her son didn’t want her to come over that often, she told me. He was busy preparing his wedding and thought that she lived too much in the past.



She did live too much in the past, in fact. Gundrun’s mental stability had been very much shaken by her marriage and the circumstances surrounding Bjorn’s death. I could easily tell so by looking at her. But she was a nice person and furthermore completely harmless. And lonely. Nobody would have believed her stories about the graveyard boy, even if she had anybody who’d listen to her.



The summer I met Gundrun was a pretty harsh one. Wonderful weather, which meant that people would stay outside for a long time. And the little food I could gather spoiled fast.

Oh, hey Lyla! Playing chess with Kristen Loste's older brother Connor. Somehow the game seems to love creating those coincidences, later pictures have Nervous, Lyla and Olive chilling at the same bowling alley. I guess Olive might stake out Lyla and Nervous might stake out Olive?



Eventually, it came to the point where I passed out from hunger. I really thought I’d die.



Then I thought I had died and gone to Paradise.

I had severely underestimated Gundrun’s intelligence. When she noticed that I didn’t show up at the graveyard anymore, she had started to look for me in secret and found me just in time. She had brought me to her house and now she had decided that I was going to stay here.



Obviously, Loki was far from pleased with the idea of taking in some random street kid. But Gundrun showed far more resistance than usual, insisting on keeping me around.



It was her idea that Loki could train me as a lab assistant, and I guess he figured as long as I didn’t break too much, I’d be cheaper than a hired help.



When Loki didn’t need me, I kept Gundrun company. She taught me lots of things and I helped her out when her memory lapsed again - something that happened increasingly often.



Circe - whose nickname “the evil witch from hell” is completely appropriate and well-deserved - didn’t really like the idea of having another mouth to feed, but seeing as I was here to stay as long as Gundrun could have a say in that matter, she eventually came around to the idea of saving the expense of a caretaker for the old woman.

My name was subject to a lot of debate. I had stuck with Nervous Boy ever since Ophelia had given me that name. The way I saw it, she had as much right to name me as anybody. The Beakers, however, did not consider this a valid name. Gundrun was eventually able to talk me out of having Boy as a last name, arguing that I was grown up by now.

I regret to say that the person who eventually gave me my last name was Circe, what with her request that we all “finally drop this annoying subject and get to planning the wedding”. I insisted on keeping Nervous, so Nervous Subject I was - and “the annoying subject” for Circe.


And this is how Nervous Subject came to be a part of the Beaker household.

The idea of Gundrun adopting Nervous came to me when I realized that she would still be around at the time when Nervous moved in. So in this timeline, he actually has someone to protect him from Loki and Circe, which is good. And Gundrun has someone to keep her company.

Anyway, Nervous. As I said before, I made a sim father for Nervous - naturally, wearing the Reaper outfit and named Grim Reaper, because there has to be some consistency in the family tree. He also picks up any graves left behind on lots after the last occupant dies and moves them to the cemetary. I probably could have gotten a Nervous closer to the original if I had used a clone of MaxisNervous as the father, but that would have been creepy.

I've been busy during the last weeks, which explains the lack of updates. This will most likely continue to happen during the summer, but I'm planning to finish this story. I also ran into a scene that just wouldn't let itself be written, and to top things off I made the huge mistake of playing the whole first set of college households for Gen 4 in one go, because I wanted to have as many playable students as possible for the pictures. As a result, I ended up cutting and shortening several plots, because college is so incredibly boring.


Coming up next, the Beaker wedding!