Chatterbox: Inkwell

Greetings! I am Wildfire. I'm new to Chatterbox, so here are some things you should know about me.

-hobbies: baking, cooking, reading, writing (obviously), crafting in general (including crochet, felting, painting, etc.)

-favorite food: sushi rolls and dark chocolate (NOT mixed together)

-favorite season: fall

-books I like (too hard to pick a favorite): Runemarks by Joanne Harris, Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer, and The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

Also, I will show off a story I wrote earlier this year.

                    That Wasn’t a Good Idea

“Do you want to go commit arson with me?” Coming from my slightly-older-by-one-year half-brother, Alex, this query was quite tame compared to some other memorable times, such as “What if I decapitated someone? Would the head float if I froze it and put it in the bathtub?” Yeah, I know: bad idea.

This time, I asked him, “Do you have a problem?”

“Yes! I also have a book of matches!” Alex said, enthusiastically.

Usually, I ignored my brother’s terrible ideas, but this time, for our ‘mission’ as we liked to call it; it was, surprisingly, useable. But we wouldn’t just commit arson. The arson would be a side to a main dish of robbery.

“First, we have to be away with the documents,” I said, “and then we can set fire to the house. Your scheme might actually help us tomorrow.”

“Oooo, Violet, can we set a bomb to explode the basement? That would make an excellent fire.”

“No!” I said, cutting off his line of thought. It was usually best not to give in to his dangerous whims because he just got worse afterward, but this time, the arson would give us a getaway strategy. I decided to go to my bedroom, to plan in earnest, alone, without my brother’s outlandish remarks.

My bedroom, like all the non-forbidden rooms in our safe house, was on the ground floor. Bulletin boards and papers covered my walls. My bed was just a mattress on the floor. I plopped down on my bed and pulled a few pieces of paper and a pen off the short table next to me. I jotted down some ideas on post-it notes and rearranged them until they made sense.

After an hour had passed, I had a solid plan of attack to show Alex and my Captain, Sciopar. She was the one who supervised Alex and me on missions for VIA. First, I dialed up my boss’s number. She answered on the first ring. 

“Captain, I figured out a plan for the mission. As you know, the target lives in a mansion with high security, but only at ground level, although the upper floors do have an alarm. If my brother and I can manage to climb the tree next to the bedroom window on the second story, we’ll have an unguarded access point, assuming I can hack into the alarms. From there, my brother will act as lookout. I will sneak across the hallway to the library. I’ll grab the documents, then give them to my brother, who will get out and away. I will set a fire in the library and escape. The fire will cover our tracks and distract the target from the missing items.”

“I assume the fire was Alex’s idea?” she said, amused. “Yes, I suppose your plan will work fine. Do you need any special equipment?”

“No, I’m pretty sure that we have everything on hand.” 

“Alright then, Violet, next time I call you, you had better have the documents ready for my inspection. Remember, Leviathan is not a patient man, and he isn’t paying up front. We have to protect VIA’s reputation.” She hung up. Sciopar sometimes scared me a little, but I knew she would never actually carry out her threats.

I placed the phone on a nearby table and walked over to my brother, who was playing with his chemicals, stolen last week from a scientist hero’s lab. 

Note to self: next time he’s not looking, swap the chemicals for colored water. His black hair already had grayish blond patches and streaks from a bleach accident.

I explained the plan for the second time. “And no, I won’t let you light the fire,” I announced.

“Awww,” he pouted.

“Sorry, but if you do it, we’ll get caught! You’re not subtle.”

I walked away to pack the supplies we would need for the mission: snacks, kerosene, matches, my modified iPad, black clothes, and a lightweight briefcase. Alex packed some items: firecrackers, small vials of bleach, a thermos of dry ice, a lighter, and a smoke grenade. “You don’t need all that stuff. Last time, your bag exploded!” I shouted, exasperated.

“Ugh, fine.” He scowled at me. You’d think he was five instead of fifteen.

The next evening, everything was almost ready to go. Alex and I were staking out the sprawling mansion in a nondescript Toyota. The purplish mansion took up the entire block. The windows were tall and skinny, but curtains covered them, so they weren’t helpful to us. 

I had accidentally dozed off a couple of times. The weather was hot and waiting was boring. I braided and re-braided my dark, wavy hair. My brother was in his semi-serious mood instead of his ‘what will this do if I burn it?’ mood. “Suppose we go up the tree now? There aren’t any guards around the perimeter.”

“Not yet. I’m still trying to hack through the alarm system,” I answered, poking the screen of my iPad. “I am so bored.”

“Well, I do have my firecrackers.” Alex smiled expectantly.

“That would be fun, but it’d make too much noise.”

“Oh, well,” he sighed.

I typed a few more lines of code, and then grinned in triumph. “We’re in! Let’s go!” By this time, night had fallen.

I shut off all the alarms in the building. We changed into our black clothing and climbed out of the car. I tiptoed toward the mansion, nightmarish in the dark. I grabbed hold of the lowest limb of the tree and swung myself up into the branches, with my brother following. 

Uh, oh. I had forgotten that the window might be locked with an actual mechanism. I had forgotten my tools for such a problem. 

Luckily for us, the owner hadn’t remembered to lock the window. I breathed a sigh of relief. “You stay here and act as lookout. I’ll be right back,” I whispered. Alex nodded affirmation. 

I shimmied through the window and onto the floor. I stood up and stepped carefully across the hallway into the library. The documents, the papers we had waited for so long for the opportunity to grab, were just lying on a mahogany desk. I stuffed them into my small briefcase, ran back to the guest bedroom, and handed the case through the window to my brother. “Thanks, Violet. I’m going to put these in the car,” he said quietly. 

“Yeah, good. I‘ll set the fire.” I reached into the tree and grabbed the can of kerosene. I poured it all around the library and was about to strike a match, when I heard an explosion outside. 

My idiot brother had set off a firecracker. I frantically tried to light a match, but my hands were shaking too much. At last, I gave up. I ran into the bedroom and jumped into the tree. Sirens sounded in the distance. I climbed down and sprinted toward the car. Alex, the lunatic, lit another firecracker. “Get in the car!” I shouted, “Before the police arrive!” 

Fortunately for him, he got in without protest. I jumped into the driver’s seat and hit the gas. We sped away.

Giving a report to Sciopar when a VIA mission had gone wrong was not on my list of most fun things to do. She wasn’t too angry, because we had at least managed to get the documents, so she’d get her money from Leviathan. What she did do was take my brother off active missions for a while. He was basically in time out. 

This was not the first time my brother, Alex, had ruined a mission, nor would it be the last.