I would love to read it! And once you post, I'll (try) to give you title suggestions, although who knows if they'll be any good at all.

YES. 

yes! i would love to read your story!

Ill try and think of titles once/if i read the first part. 

and im terrible at intros too lol

YOUR NOT ALONE

*starts singing Alone at full volume and dancing wildly* 

Yes, yesh, yas, yee, yeah, si, definitely, absolutely, other words that mean yes

YEAH!!!! *Starts singing 'Ways to be Wicked' from Descendants 2 and dancing with HeroesofOlympus and throws in the Emekittycon Quick-Foot which is where I actually put my left foot in front of the right and vicea versa really quickly while my arms are going in circles slowly* Hey, hey, hey, hey!!

Chapter I, Part I

“What?... No!... yes… of course not!” My oldest sister, Ada, is talking on the phone. I looked at Trix, who shrugs at me. What is she talking about? It’s hard to tell sometimes. 

We are interrupted when- “Kittyyyyyyyy,” Lilah whines. “What?” I ask her, a little irritation in my voice. My eight year old sister is really annoying sometimes. “Play a game with me? Pleeease…”

Ugh. No. Absolutely not. “Um… no thanks, Lilah.” She pouts. I ignore her. “Trix?” a quiet voice asks. Trix turns towards it. “What is it, Jess?” Our eleven year old brother steps forward. “Could you help me with a math problem, please?

If anyone needs help with a math problem, Trix has the answers. “Sure,” she says with a smile. They head up the stairs. Great. Now I’m stuck down here with a bored, annoying Lilah, a distracted Ada (she’s still on the phone), and Ben. Aha! “Lilah, why don’t you play a game with Ben?” I ask her. She opens her mouth to object, but I grab her arm. “Here! Why don’t you two play UNO? I’ll set it up.” After I finish setting up the game, I call up the stairs towards Ben’s room, “Be-en! Lilah wants to play UNO with you!”

He comes barrelling down the steps, nearly trips at the bottom, and skids to a halt, narrowly missing my neat pile of cards. After they start playing, I sprint up the stairs to my room- it’s now Ada’s problem if they start fighting. 

Phew. Thankful that I’ve escaped having to babysit those two, I collapse on my bed, breathless from running up the stairs, down the hallway, and up another flight of stairs- I share the attic room with Trix. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Disclaimers: I had to edit the form a little bit to fit the format of the CB (indents, font, etc. etc.) and sorry it's so short; I'm not finished writing it yet and I plan to post once a weekday and sometimes Saturday, (following Mahriel/Isabel T.'s example). I already have 5 parts written, but to give myself time to write parts 6 and on, they're all about this length. 

I'm now going to stop talking before I start rambling.

Anyways, hope you enjoy it! And again, if you have any, please post title ideas. There isn't any shipping availability yet, but if there ever is feel free to post ideas, or what you think/want to happen next. 

I'm getting carried away again so...

Luminescence out. 

So good so far! It's a little too early to think of titles yet though.

I don't know if anyone is following this or not, but just in case I am taking a poll.

Would you rather I:

a) post extremely short parts every weekday or

b) post longer parts every Friday 

I think from experience that it would be easier if you did B.

B

B

Okay, I have no idea if this is any good, but here is chapter one. (I'm reposting the part I already posted also) 

PS I might make edits to it later on, so sorry for any inconveniences that causes. Feedback is also welcome.

Chapter I

“What?... No!... yes… of course not!” My oldest sister, Ada, is talking on the phone. I looked at Trix, who shrugs at me. What is she talking about? It’s hard to tell sometimes. 

We are interrupted when- “Kittyyyyyyyy,” Lilah whines. “What?” I ask her, a little irritation in my voice. My eight year old sister is really annoying sometimes. “Play a game with me? Pleeease…”

Ugh. No. Absolutely not. “Um… no thanks, Lilah.” She pouts. I ignore her. “Trix?” a quiet voice asks. Trix turns towards it. “What is it, Jess?” Our eleven year old brother steps forward. “Could you help me with a math problem, please?

If anyone needs help with a math problem, Trix has the answers. “Sure,” she says with a smile. They head up the stairs. Great. Now I’m stuck down here with a bored, annoying Lilah, a distracted Ada (she’s still on the phone), and Ben. Aha! “Lilah, why don’t you play a game with Ben?” I ask her. She opens her mouth to object, but I grab her arm. “Here! Why don’t you two play UNO? I’ll set it up.” After I finish setting up the game, I call up the stairs towards Ben’s room, “Be-en! Lilah wants to play UNO with you!”

He comes barrelling down the steps, nearly trips at the bottom, and skids to a halt, narrowly missing my neat pile of cards. After they start playing, I sprint up the stairs to my room- it’s now Ada’s problem if they start fighting. 

Phew. Thankful that I’ve escaped having to babysit those two, I collapse on my bed, breathless from running up the stairs, down the hallway, and up another flight of stairs- I share the attic room with Trix.

Now that I’m here and I’ve started this journal, I’m going to take this time to tell you a little bit about myself, my siblings, our home, our parents, etc., etc.

As you’ve probably noticed, there are six of us. Adelaide, (whom we call Ada, because Trix and I couldn’t pronounce “Adelaide” when we were little, and Ada didn’t/doesn’t like the way Addie sounds), my oldest sister, is sixteen, with long, curly auburn- which is just a fancy word for reddish brown- hair and greenish greyish eyes. She’s very tall. I’m not going to go into any of our personalities, because you’ll learn about them soon enough. 

Beatrix, (whom we call Trix because Trix does NOT look like a Beatrix in any way) my twin sister, and I are thirteen, and we look basically the same: brown hair, slightly tinted red (in other words, chestnut), freckles, hazel eyes, and we’re both rather short in height. Our differences are: I wear my hair in one long braid down my back, Trix wears hers in a short bob. Trix is older than me by five minutes, and looks older too. Oh, and I just realized I haven’t properly introduced myself. My name is Catherine, called Kitty, because Catherine a) has two many syllables and b) I don’t like it. 

Moving on: my next sibling is Jesse- most of the time called Jess- at eleven years old. He has short, mousy brown hair and glasses, which frame dark brown eyes. He’s almost taller than Trix and I, because unlike us, he and Ada take after my dad, who’s tall and thin.

Delilah, or Lilah, as we call her, is next: Eight years old, and a very annoying little sister. She’s got shoulder length strawberry blonde hair, usually tied up in two pigtails, blue eyes, and dimples in her cheeks when she smiles. She looks very much like our mom, with her eyes and hair, and her slight plumpness.

Finally, there’s Ben. He is six years old, with red hair that sticks up and light brown eyes. He has some freckles, but not many. Most of the time, he’s got at least one scraped knee, sometimes two.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now. since I’m a terrible artist, and I don’t feel like asking Ada to draw a map for me, I’m just going to give you a written tour of our house, which is not exactly a small one, because of its eight inhabitants.

When you open the front door, you see a living room. On the left, there is a door, which leads to the kitchen/dining area. On the right, there’s a hallway. In the hallway, there are two doors, both painted white. On the left is my parent’s bedroom, and on the right is a bathroom.

If you go back into the living room, the back wall has a set of stairs, which lead to the second story. The walls of the stairwell are lined with picture frames, full of photos and artwork.

The second story is another hallway, but this time with five doors- two doors on either side, and one at the end. The right has a white door with a pale green poster hung on a nail, which says, “Ada’s Room,” and underneath that, “Please Knock,” in calligraphy.

The next door on the right is also white, and it has letters cut out of construction paper pasted on it: D E L I L A H. The D and the E are crossed out with red sharpie, which unfortunately got on the door also. My mother was not happy about this.

Across the hall are two more white doors. One has a light blue sheet of cardstock taped to it, which reads, “BEN,” written with a thick black marker in an underlined script.

The other door has a piece of white poster board, hanging from a nail, with typed words on it. “Jess’s Room.” Jess’s and Ben’s rooms are connected from the inside with a bathroom, although from the outside you can’t tell.

Finally, at the end of the hallway, there’s a doorway, with no sign, because it’s just the stairs, which lead to yet another white door, with a pale purple-blue sign on it which reads “Beatrix and Catherine, enter if you dare,” in my handwriting. “Beatrix and Catherine” is crossed out, replaced with, “Trix and Kitty.”

About halfway up the stairs, there is a landing. On the right of the landing is another white door, this one with no sign. It’s the third bathroom.

Anyways, right now, my parents are at a dinner party. They decided that Ada was now old enough to “babysit” the rest of us, so they didn’t hire a babysitter. 

Lilah and Ben should feel fortunate that Trix, Jess, and I are here to help. Otherwise they’d already be in bed, and Ada would still be gabbering on her phone. I can tell she’s not, because Ada can never resist Ben asking her to play a game. Also, I can’t hear her anymore.

Scratch that. She just screamed. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For a second, I’m still just lying on my bed. Ada shrieks a lot- whenever she’s super startled, super excited, when she’s mad, etc., etc. So I wasn’t really fazed. But then I realized that it was more than that. This was an actual scream. Ada was actually scared, not just startled by me jumping out and yelling, “BOO!” 

As that realization washes over me, I’m kind of like a zombie. I’ve lost all control over my limbs, they’re already walking towards the door… Then I snap out of it. “Come on!” I internally yell. As I clatter out of the room and down the stairs, I shake my head. Get a grip, Kitty! As I rush past Jess’s room, Trix and Jess rush out, math problem forgotten.

I get to the bottom of the stairs and nearly trip over Ada, who is sitting on the floor at the foot of the steps, holding the hand of Ben, who looks like he’s about to cry from fright. Lilah just looks… confused. And worried. “Are you okay?” Trix asks breathlessly from behind me. I jump, and she gives me an apologetic glance, but looks back at Ada.

“Y-yes, I think so,” Ada says shakily. “I just got startled…” In my opinion, that was more than startled, but I don’t mention it. Meanwhile, Kitty’s talking to Lilah. I pivot around to the rest of us and relay what I’ve heard, all in one breath (it’s a talent). “Lilah-knows-what-happened-the-lights-went-out-and-there-was- -a-bang-and-then-the-lights-came-back-on-and-there-was-an-envelope-on-the- -floor.” Jess and Trix stare. 

“I’m sorry, what now? I didn’t catch that,” Trix asks sarcastically. I sigh, the way I always do when people can’t tell what I'm saying. I mean, honestly. I’m not talking that fast. Unfortunately, I’m forced to repeat myself- slower this time. It’s mildly irritating. “I said, Lilah knows what happened. Apparently the lights went out, there was a bang, and then, when the lights came back on, there was an envelope on the floor, and then Ada screamed.” 

“Thank you for translating,” Ada would have said in her sarcastic, teenage, big sister, I’m-older-and-better-than-you way, but she didn’t. Instead she just nods, her eyes trained on something on the floor. It’s a white envelope. I pick it up, open it, and pass it around to be read. It says:

Dear Martin Children,

Your parents are not at a dinner party. They never went to a dinner party. There was no dinner party. They lied to you. Instead, they ran away. To where, I do not know. Please report to the facility called Drake Pipe & 9nth at the address 860 9th Street at 9:00 sharp tomorrow to find out the rest of our information on this horrible event.

Sincerely,

Dante Phirkep

Underneath is a heavily crossed out sentence, so layered it’s no longer legible.

Lilah takes my hand and looks up at me, eyes wide with confusion and disbelief. Trix and I look at each other, not knowing what to think. Those statements are obviously a scam. But… what was the whole “let’s cut of their power for a few seconds and make a thump” scheme? Just to scare us? I couldn’t believe that someone would go to all that trouble.

Jess frowns slightly in concentration, the way he looks when he’s figuring out a puzzle. (Jess is, by the way, a puzzle genius). I wonder what he’s trying to figure out… This whole thing is just so… odd! I mean, scaring a bunch of kids and trying to trick them into going someplace is so pointlessly random. Why would someone do that? 

I’m interrupted before I can think more about it: Lilah is tugging at my arm. “What?” I ask her, more gently than usual, because her eyes are wide with confusion. “It’s not real,” she says. Like she was trying to convince me. Or maybe she was trying to convince… herself? I bite back my retort, instead saying, “Of course not, Lilah, do you think I’m crazy?” 

I make myself laugh, even though my mind’s still elsewhere. “Well then. Let’s all go to bed, and then in the morning, we can tell them all about this crazy letter,” Ada says, in an oddly convincing fake cheerful voice. She, like the rest of us, has a lot on her mind. Trix and I hurriedly second and third that thought, because even though I’m sure this is nothing to worry about, something nags at me, just letting me know what I've already realized: “This is so wrong.” 

Now Trix is saying it too. I’m lying on my bed, and she on hers. “Why would someone do something like that just to scare us? It makes no sense. It’s entirely pointless! I don’t understand why someone would even take the time to come up with such a complicated scheme to scare six kids? They get nothing from it!” 

Aaaand now she’s ranting, and I don’t stop her, because one, I totally agree with everything she’s saying, two, it’s a big pain in the butt to interrupt Trix in the middle of one of her rants (although people say it’s an even bigger pain to interrupt me in the middle of a rant), and three, I would only interrupt her if she was being too loud and/or annoying, which so far she’s being neither.

Well. Now she is. “Trix,” I say. When she doesn’t respond, I yell, “TRIX! Hello? It’s Kitty. Stop ranting please. You just said the same thing three times in a row.” Trix blinks at me and closes her mouth quickly. And then opens it again. “Kitty, why did you interrupt me? I was in the middle of a really good one!” 

I sigh. See what I mean? “You were going to wake Lilah and Ben up!” I excuse myself. I hadn’t included Ada or Jess in this statement, because Ada always stays up late on the phone, (I would know. Once, I went into her room to ask if I could borrow a book, and when she didn’t reply to my whispered “Hello?” I thought she was sleeping. I snuck in, grabbed the book, but before I could get my butt out of there, she’d said, “Kitty? What are you doing in my room?! OUT! No, Una, I’m not talking to you, just my little sister…” and proceeded to chase me out of there), and Jess always… well I don’t know what he does, but his light always goes out after ours.

I’m busy speculating what Jess does when he’s staying up late, so I don’t notice until Trix throws a pillow at me that she’s saying something. “What?” I ask, startled. Trix rolls her eyes at my spaciness, before repeating herself. “I said, I’m turning out the light. Is that okay with you?” 

“Oh. Yeah. That was not worth throwing a pillow at me, though.” She promptly turns out the light. 

I roll over. Won’t we have a story to tell Mom and Dad… they’ll hardly believe us. I smile to myself as I fall asleep, not knowing how very wrong I was…