I love it! Honestly, it's a great story, and I am really excited to see what happens next. I love your characters as well.

For title ideas. . . well, I'm so bad at this. Maybe: "The Dinner Party" or "Flip-Flopped" (you know, since parents usually rescue their kids, not the other way around). I don't even know.

eeee so good!

cant (literally) wait to figure out what happens next T^T 

um. titles? agh... ill have better ones once i read more but... uh... The Martin Children?

i know that was weak... 

Chapter II

I wake up to silence. Well, almost silence- Trix is still snoring. What time is it? There aren’t any sounds coming from the kitchen, which is odd, because whenever our parents go away, the next day my dad makes one of our favorite breakfast- and I think it’s my turn. That means cinnamon rolls… but that literally always sets of the smoke alarm, so why isn’t it beeping? Maybe it’s earlier than I thought…

Nope. The alarm clock reads 8:30. Wait. What? Eight-thirty? We are NEVER. Allowed to sleep that long. My mom would’ve woken all of us up right now- she is one early bird. That’s unusual…

I sit up, throwing back my blankets and sheets. There’s a head shaped indent in my pillow, and I stare at it as stretch and yawn, pondering why they let us sleep so late. I get up, and pull back the curtains, letting the light flow into the attic room, causing Trix to mutter something about “x equals.” Leave it to my sister to dream about math… I shake my head and hold in my giggles.

I quietly open the door, which is covered in photos of Trix and I with our friends, our siblings, parents, teachers… every photo that’s been ever taken of us, it seems. The stairs are bathed in a slightly eerie glow from the small nightlight plugged into the wall. I flick the light switch, and the landing lights up, creating an even more drastic contrast between the stairs and the rest of the hallway.

I walk down the hall, flicking light switches as I go, peering around corners, searching… but no one’s there. I’m already on the first floor, and I can hear nothing from the kitchen- what’s more, the lights aren’t even on.

I’m starting to get an uneasy feeling in my stomach, the same way I felt in fourth grade when I was supposed to do an oral report, but then I did a written one instead… something just isn’t right. 

I creep to my parent’s bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light, because the huge windows are letting in all the light I need. I (of course) trip over the threshold of the hallway, falling with a loud bang into my parents’ bedroom door. 

Curiously enough, they don’t acknowledge the bang in any way. Okay. Now I’m getting worried, bordering on scared. I pick myself up and knock on the door with my fist. “Mom? Dad? It’s Kitty. Why haven’t you woken us up yet or anything? It’s already 8:30, you know,” I say. When nothing happens, I push open the door…

And scream.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oops. That was just uncalled for, Kitty. “Everything’s fine!” I yell. In a slightly quieter voice, I say, “Well, actually everything is NOT fine, but I’m okay!” raising my voice for the last two words. “It’s a little late for that,” a grumpy voice says from behind me. It’s Ada, with Ben, Lilah, Jess, and Trix standing next to her, rubbing their eyes and glaring at me with different levels of exasperation and anger.

Instead of blushing like I usually would, I- rather belatedly- panic. First I shrieked, then I turned pale, then I turned red, and when I finally got back to my normal color, I was talking in that “I’m-super-nervous-so-I’m-talking-super-fast” voice of mine. “They aren’t here! They’re gone! What do we do?!” I look at them, out of breath for no particular reason. I blink at them. They didn’t seem to be reacting at all. Ada blinks at Trix. Trix blinks back at me. “Why are you all standing around blinking at me?! THEY. ARE. GONE!!!!” 

Okay. I admit it. I sounded crazy. “Is Kitty crazy?” Ben asks Lilah. “Maybe,” she tells him. “I’m. NOT. CRAZY!” I say. This does nothing to dispel Ben’s fears, and his eyes bug out. So do Lilah’s, but she’s pretending. I can tell. “She’s crazy,” she stage whispers to Ben. I glare and took a deep breath. “Lilah and Ben, I am not crazy. Look in the bedroom! NO ONE is in there! And you all saw for yourselves that the kitchen and every other room in this house is deserted except for us.”

Ada whispers something to Trix, whose eyes widen in alarm. “No. No, of course not!” she says, her voice going up almost an octave in outrage. “But maybe…” she rushes off to grab scratch paper and an inky green pen- the only kind she will use for math problems, no matter how many times I tell her that green ink is much too hard to find.

“Spill,” I say to Ada. She sighs, and spills. “I was saying… that maybe we should do what that Dante Phirkep said… go to Drake Pipe & 9nth…” she trails off, knowing her argument was weak. Jess visibly pales. I open and close my mouth several times. Ben tugs at my arm. Lilah looks at each of our faces in turn, her head swivelling like one of those office chairs. 

Just then, Trix bursts into the room. “Good news: I’ve done some research- albeit brief- and there’s only a 45.7% chance that that Dante Phirkep dude is dangerous,” she says, in her analytical voice. “Bad news? There’s a 45.7% chance we’re putting ourselves in danger by going to that place.” Ben thinks this enormously funny:

“The good news is the bad news and the bad news is the good news is the bad news and the bad news is the good news-” he sings. “SHUSH!” roars Lilah. Ben shushes.

I open my mouth to say something else, but Jess beats me to it- which turned out to be a good thing, because he had a much better reason. “Ada, we shouldn’t go,” he says with finality, “because anagrams.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Who’s Anagram?” asks Ben. “No, not Anagram, silly, anagram!” Lilah told him, and proceeds to explain what an anagram is. Trix looks at Jess. “What about anagrams? Are you saying we shouldn’t go because you need to finish that book of anagrams Kitty got you?” she asks incredulously. “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. And I finished that anagram book already,” he says impatiently. I gape. “That was ONE-HUNDRED anagrams,” I say, “and I gave you that book last month.” Although I should have expected it: Jess is a puzzle genius. Oh! That’s what he’s been doing at night!

I’m torn away from my revelation when Jess starts talking again. “Give me your pen, Trix,” he instructs with authority. “What? No! That’s my green inky pen!” she cries- overreacting in my opinion. “Just give him the pen,” I grump. She hands it over, though not without a scowl in my direction.

Jess writes:

Dante Phirkep

=

The Kidnapper

Everytime he writes a letter of “The Kidnapper,” he crosses out one from “Dante Phirkep.” My mouth falls open, and so does Trix’s. “Well then,” I say, my voice a little bit shaky at the danger we just escaped, “It’s a VERY. Good. Thing that we did NOT end up going to Drake Pipe & 9nth.” 

“Very good,” Lilah agrees, “as we probably would have been kidnapped by that creepy dude.” I nearly laugh in relief, but I don’t. Because then I have another revelation, one that’s much, much, much more important than my brother, the puzzle solver. How?

How did they know our parents wouldn’t come back? More importantly, why didn’t they come back? And then it hits me. Full force: wobbly legs, tongue tie, dizziness, headache… all of it. I grab the back of the closest chair and sit down. Everything subsides: The room stops spinning, my head stops aching, my tongue and legs are usable again. I explain my theory.

“How could these kidnappers have known that our parents wouldn’t have come back? And, why didn’t they come back? I think… that the most logical conclusion is that the kidnappers… kidnapped our parents, and were trying to kidnap us too… but we, fortunately, are smarter than they thought. So now, in my opinion, the only logical option for what to do next is to, one, stay safe, and two, rescue our parents.”

I don’t ask if people agree or not, but people say anyways. “I’m with you, but we need a plan,” Trix reasons. Jess nods quietly. Ada says, quietly and rather shakily, “It’s the only way.” Ben is more enthusiastic than anyone else: “Yes! Let’s go get those kidnappers! YOU SHALL BE DEFEATED!” he yells. Lilah giggles, and grabs my hand.

“All… all right then,” I say.

~ ~ ~ ~ 

We sit down at the circular table, the six of us. The table that used to feel so cramped, but now feels so empty. “Why would they want to kidnap us?” I ask. “I… don’t know,” Trix, on my right, admits. “I know,” says Lilah quietly. Usually, we would have ignored her, except for maybe me. 

But now, we all turn to her. “They thought we were someone else,” she whispers. I sit up straighter. “One second,” I instruct. Then I sprint up the stairs, grab my laptop (and my journal, and a pen) and run back downstairs. 

I open the laptop and type in:

Famous Martins

What comes up is surprising, to say the least. There are a bunch of unfamiliar names, but one stands out. 

Letitia Martin

Then there’s a bunch of other random names. I then type in

Letitia Martin

What comes up is: 

Letitia McAlister Martin, well-known former governor of Aigroeg and sister to Lucia McAlister, author of Shooting Star, was…

“Lilah! You were right!” I exclaim. Everyone hurries to get behind me and read. “Mom’s name is Letitia Martin, and they thought she was this Letitia Martin, but she wasn’t, but they didn’t know that, so they…” I trail off, not knowing how to complete that sentence.

“They probably kidnapped her because of that, and Dad was with her, so they took him too… but when they realize what happened they won’t be able to let them go, because they know too much,” Trix completes my thought.

Ben starts to cry. Ada glares at us and picks him up. “Oops,” I whisper to Trix and Jess. 

“Don’t worry, Ben, they won’t do anything bad to them,” I try to comfort him. It doesn’t work. I shrug helplessly, and let Ada take over.

Somehow, she gets him to stop crying, and we all take deep breaths, so that we don’t start bawling as well. “We need a plan. Like, really need a plan,” I tell them. Ada rolls her eyes. “We know, Kitty.” I shrug.

“Just thought I’d put it out there.” 

“Well, do you have one?” 

“No. I said that because we need to brainstorm.”

“Okay, can you two just stop bickering and start brainstorming then?!” Trix intervened. “Yes, sorry,” I say. Ada rolls her eyes and bends over a sheet of paper, a pencil in hand.

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