Category: Winter 2015

Chapter 1 just getting started

My name is Zayel Smith. I’m ten years old. I live in New York. I go to Hunter. I have four siblings, two brothers and two sisters. Their names are Kennan, Alex, Hannah, and Daniella.  Here are some adjectives about my siblings: Hannah: mean and bossy.  Kennan: thinker and chatter box.  Daniella: dumb and weird.  Alex: Focused and humorous.I’m  the youngest. Some of us do not get along. I like Alex the best because we’re almost twins and he’s very funny.Hannah is the worst because she’s the oldest. She’s bossy and annoying. For an example, one time Hannah stepped on my ankle because I stepped on hers by ACCIDENT and then she stepped on mine ON PURPOSE. Sometimes she kicks me out of the room when she’s watching a show that she thinks is too inappropriate for me.

When summer comes, I want to go to sleepaway camp because I want to get away from most of my siblings. I like my mom and dad because they don’t get mad at me that much. But it’s fall, and that means it’s three more seasons to go! The good thing about fall though is that I get to do things that my older sister doesn’t get to do, like tennis practice, and Hannah is old enough to walk home by herself, so I get time away from her. Like we go to a different school. I like my school because I really like math and they give a lot of math and their food/lunch is very good. But lots of the time the math is really easy. At school I have a lot of friends. My best friends are Isabella and Caroline. We get along pretty well. It’s different from my older sister because they’re not bossy to me and they don’t do things that my sister would do. Isabella is forgiving and Caroline shares.

Right now I’m having dinner and so far it’s been pretty good, and we are eating burritos. And we haven’t been fighting.

“Today we found out all the mistakes we made on our math test, and I got two wrong,” I said.

“That’s horrible,” said Hannah. That made me feel mad.

“But you got four wrong and that’s even worse,” I said.

Then Hannah said, “But our math is harder and I’m only four years older.”

Mom said, “Let’s talk about something else.”

But we didn’t listen to Mom.

Mom said it again then Hannah had an idea and then went silent because she was thinking if she would do her idea or not.Her idea was…

Chapter 2 bad for Zayel and good for Hannah

Hannah went in my room when I was in my bed (i’m the youngest so I go to bed first.)Looked around my room and then saw what she was looking for. She tiptoed to my desk and gently picked up my homework and ripped it! Then she tiptoed/ran out of my room. Then she pretended to be like she didn’t do anything. Then she did some of her own homework and then went to the living room to watch a show. The next morning, I woke up and started getting dressed. I was walking to get out of my room and I realized that I saw strips of paper on the ground. Then I looked on the back of some of the strips and it looked like it had some typing on it and some handwriting on it. I didn’t realize that it was my homework until it was the afternoon. I looked around in my desk and I couldn’t find it and I asked my mom and dad to help me find it, then they couldn’t find it. Then I asked my sister where it was and she said, “I don’t know where it is but I went in your room to check on you.” Then I still didn’t realize that it was my homework and Hannah had ripped it up. When the school day was over, I came home with a bad attitude because that was the homework that I had finished and it was due today. Then I went to the living room and my dad and my mom were on the living room couch. I told them about my day and they almost forgot to tell me where my homework went. They said that it’s on the floor because I don’t think you realized it because the scraps of paper on the floor are the ripped up homework.

“But I don’t know who ripped it up.”

“Ask all your siblings if they know who ripped it up and tell them to be honest with us or else they will get punished.”

I went to all the rooms and looked for all my siblings. I found three of them but I couldn’t find the last one. I found Alex and I found Kennan and Daniella. Alex was in his room. He said he didn’t do it. Kennan was in the living room watching TV and he said, “I didn’t do it!” Daniella was in her room. I asked her, “Did you rip up my homework?” Daniella said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I believed her because she usually tells the truth.

I still didn’t know who it was. I counted on my fingers and said out loud, “Kennan, Alex, and Daniella but not Hannah. Now I think it might be Hannah.”

chapter 3 getting closer to the end of the homework mystery

I looked around the whole entire house and couldn’t find Hannah, but then I finally found her. And I said, “Did you rip my homework?”

And she said, “I’m too old to do things like that.”
Then I walked away and then I remembered that the adjectives that I think of all my siblings are Daniella – dumb and weird, Kennan – a thinker and chatter box, Alex – focused and humorous, and Hannah… mean and bossy. I went back to my mom and dad and told her that I think it’s Hannah.

“I think you should go talk to her,” I said to my parents.

“we’ll go talk to all your siblings, just in case,” they said.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said.

Then I went to my room and looked in my desk. I found more ripped up homework. I looked around my room and I found more. Then I went back to my parents and said, “I found even more ripped up paper.Can you come look?”

Then my parents came to my room and said, “That sure is a lot of ripped up homework. I think I should go talk to your siblings right now.”

My parents went to Kennan. He said, “No.” They went to Alex. He said no too. Then they went to Daniella and she said “No.” Then they went to Hannah and Hannah said, “I thought that was regular paper.”

“Shut up, Hannah!” said her dad.

“YOU shut up!” said her mom to her dad.

My parents kept on arguing. In that time Hannah snuck out of her room and went outside to play. I didn’t see.

I tried to stop my parents from arguing. “You’re supposed to argue with Hannah, not each other!”

Then I pushed my parents aside. When I did it I punched my parents by mistake! I ran into my room and went under the covers of my bed. I heard my parents’ footsteps coming closer and closer to my room. Then I finally heard the door open and I heard my name being called.

Chapter 4 Actually getting Hannah in trouble

My parents came into my room and they picked up the blanket that I was hiding under and threw it across the room. I was surprised that they didn’t get me in trouble. Instead, they were actually looking for Hannah.

They asked me, “Do you know where Hannah is?”

I said, “No. I didn’t see.”

So my parents went in all of the rooms and hiding spots. As many places as they could possible find. But they didn’t find Hannah. Then they started to get a little bit worried. Then they went downstairs and asked the doorman to see if he saw Hannah come out.

“Yes, I did see Hannah,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that she went northeast, which is the way to the park.”

In the meantime, I called Caroline to see if she had the homework and she could email to me. Caroline came over and brought me a few pieces of the homework that I needed.

Caroline said, “I’m sorry I didn’t bring all the homework that you needed but I brought a few pieces.”

So they both called Isabella and Isabella came over and brought her the rest of the homework that I needed.

I said thanks to both of my friends for bringing me my homework.

Downstairs my parents went northeast, knowing that was the way to the park. Then they found Hannah. Hannah was running and playing soccer with her friends. My parents ran onto the field that they were playing on and grabbed Hannah out of the game.

“Let go! I’ll walk by myself if you let go!” Hannah screamed at the top of her lungs.

They let go and as she started to walk by herself she went back to her game. My parents ran back and grabbed her again and didn’t let go this time. Then Hannah felt embarrassed because her friends saw.

Hannah said, “I’ll say sorry if I can go back to my game.”

“No,” said my parents. “First apologize to Zayel. And we might let you play with your friends.”

Back at the house, I was playing with my friends, and I heard a knock on the door. I got out of the room and went to the door and said, “Who is it?”

My parents replied, “Your parents.”

I opened the door and there were my parents and Hannah. Hannah apologized and then tried to go back downstairs to the park. But my parents didn’t let her go. They grabbed her arm. In the meantime, I was making a sign for her room that said “Hannah Keep Out!” But this entire scene took a long time.

Hannah’s behavior got better and better as the year went by. She stayed out of my way. For example, Hannah always left my room when I was ready to do my homework. I ended up getting a good grade in math class.

And now it’s finally summer! Now I get to go to sleepaway camp! But I might miss my family a little bit. Even Hannah.

The End

I have a secret. A really important secret. Nobody can know. My secret? I live in a closet. A small closet, with a door in the back. Behind that door hides a world full of adventures. And that world, that’s where I live. In a closet.

Once you realize you have a Closet World accessible closet, a robot is created to make it look like you’re not a crazy teenager locked in a closet.

Other people live there, too. My best friend’s name is Hannah. She lives in a closet in Arizona, but she practically lives in Closet World.

Anyway, today Hannah asked me if I wanted to come back to Arizona with her. Apparently she found her closet key and is able to swap places with her robot so it looks like I’m a friend from school. Hannah’s one of those techy kids who can figure everything out.

When we get to her house, she holds onto me and swaps places with her robot, who’s right outside her house. Hannah walks to her front door with my arm still cuffed in her hand. Her front door is freshly painted a soft shade of purple, with a gold and shiny doorknob.

“It’s real gold,” she informs me as I stare in awe. “You can feel it.” I slowly tap the smooth gold. It feels just like Hannah’s shiny light brown hair with natural blonde highlights that’s currently in a tight bun. She’s been growing it out since she was 10, and that means 6 years worth of hair! When she sits, her hair is down to her knees. My hair is nothing compared to hers, 8 inches of dark brown hair, faded blue dip dye at the bottom, leaving the bottoms bleached.

“You can open it.” Hannah says, interrupting my thoughts. I reach for the shiny knob, then I turn it, but it stops me.

“Locked.” I say. I feel the knob as she pulls out her keys from her bag.

“Sorry.” She says. She unlocks the door and we go inside.  We go down a long hallway painted paper-white that has drawings of trees that have labels for grades K-10th.

“I draw one every year,” Hannah tells me as she sees my amazement towards the pictures. “I enter them in the Arizona National Tree Drawing Contest. I’ve won every year.”

“There’s a-” I pause while making my voice all goofy “-tree drawing contest?” There’s a brief moment of silence, then we burst out in laughter. Our friendship just works that way.

“What’s all the racket down there?” an older woman’s voice says from the top of the staircase. Hannah leads me to the top, revealing her mother. Her mom has straight blonde hair that goes a bit past her shoulders. Her eyes are icy blue with anger. Her nose is long and narrow with a point at the end. Her freckless face is pale as the white painted walls.

“Mom, this is a friend from school,” Hannah says as if it was true. She’s such a great actress.

“What’s your name, dear?” Hannah’s mom asks politely. I don’t know what to say. Should I reveal my identity to this stranger I just met, or should I lie?

“Um, I’m Violet,” I say. Hannah glares at me and I shrug.

“But everyone calls her Ivy, right Ivy?” Hannah steps in. I nod even though it isn’t true. My real name is Ivy. It’s not that everyone called me that as a nickname, it’s just that it’s my real name.

“Flowers,” Hannah’s mom says. “Pretty. So, Ivy, where are you from?” I stop myself from saying Closet World, and I take a minute to remember where I’m from.

“California,” I say. “Yeah. In Hollywood, actually.” Hannah’s mom’s smile fades into a frown.

“Oh, what’s the story with that?” she asks.

“Um, I was raised by 2 movie stars… ?” Hannah’s mom doesn’t seem too flattered. She just fakes a smile at me.

“Well, you two can go to Hannah’s room. Oh, and by the way, my name is Mona.” Hannah’s mom, who now has a name, says.

Hannah leads me down a long hallway with lots of doors. We reach one door that has lots of signs. “NO TRESPASSING!” one says. “Property of Hannah B. Middleton” says another. My eyes light up to a handmade one that reads, “Yep, keep going down the hallway. Nothing to see here.” I laugh out loud at the humor of it.

We go into the room painted purple with blue and green lines trailing across the room, overlapping at parts, but also going in opposite lengths of the room. What I like about the lines are that they always are united, even if blue’s at the floor and green’s at the ceiling. I look over behind me and see a flower painted on the wall, every other petal blue, and the ones in between green. I see that the two lines generated from that flower. It’s almost like they’re siblings, two lines coming from the same flower, like two children coming from the same parents.

“So…” Hannah says. “What do you want to do?” I scan the room, looking for games I want to play or books I want to read. Then I look through the open door and see the long hallway.

“A tour of your house would be cool.” I say casually. But in my mind I’m begging, just thinking how cool it would be.

“That’d take HOURS.” Hannah says, exclaiming the hours.

“I’ve got all day.” I remind her. She thinks for a second then finally makes her decision.

“No,” I sigh and sit down on her bed. “We have to get back to Closet World by 9:00. We’re known there, people will start worrying.”

She’s right. Both of us were known for basically just being people. We always say hi to people (on the bus, on the streets, in the elevator, etc.).

“So…” Hannah says. “what do you think of Max?”

“Max?” I ask with disgust. Hannah nods. “No way.”

“What about Theo?”

“Not my type.”

“Ryan?”

“He’s creepy.”

“Will?”

“Socially awkward.”

“Bryan?”

“Doesn’t know I exist.”

“Austin?”

I pause at the sound of that name.

“Okay…” Hannah says. “Guess Austin’s the one.”

“No no no,” I say while stopping her from taking out her phone and calling him. “I paused because I was debating whether to barf or slap you. Austin. Ugh.” There’s an awkward moment of me staring at Hannah and Hannah staring at me for like 5 seconds, then she decides it ‘s about time to speak up.

“I can tell you like him.” her straight face turned to a smirk. I roll my eyes.

“I already told you. I hate him.”

“Sure you do.” She smirks.

“I don’t!” I throw a pillow at her. It had some kind of band on it.

“What’s…” I take a minute to read the front of it. “Glowing in the Day?” I squint while reading it.

“Oh, right…” Hannah says while snatching the pillow off the ground. “You’ve been trapped in a closet for 3 years. They’re a band, idiot.” She whacks me with the pillow.

“Well I’m sorry I’m not a techy nerd like you!” I whack her back.

“Well I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but I graduated college with a masters degree in technology. Oh, right, I’m sixteen. Wanna look at my Harvard acceptance letter from 5 YEARS AGO?” Suddenly I start sobbing uncontrollably. My best friend got into a great college when she was 11, and I dropped out of high school after 10th grade.

“What about those pictures up on the wall, the trees. Aren’t you supposed to be going to 11th grade in 2 months?”

“I skipped a bunch of grades,” she says softly while putting a hand on my shoulder. “After 10th, which was supposed to be 5th, I went straight to college.”

“You know what, I’ll just leave. I’m not a help in your life. This was all a mistake. Our friendship was a mistake. Bye.” I skim the room for her closet, then finally find it.

“Ivy,” I turn around. “Sorry. I know you’re still gonna leave me, but I just want you to know. I’m sorry.” I see real tears in Hannah’s eyes. For the first time in years, she cries real tears. Real, salty tears.

“I’m sorry too. Here’s this 20 dollar bill,” I pull out my last bit of money from my wallet. “You can have it. Though it won’t be much in your million dollar house.” I look around the room at all her expensive things.

“Ivy I didn’t think-”

“Keep it.” I say and then walk to the closet in the left corner farthest from the door. I slide open the door on the right side.

“Ivy,” Hannah says gently. I turn around. “Here’s the key,” she tosses me her key to the door in the back. “I won’t need it.” I wipe a tear from my left eye.

“Thanks for being a friend.” I say then walk to the closet. I see her creepy robot waving goodbye at me. I wave back only because I’m scared it’s gonna kill me.

I move some clothes out of the way and go to the door. I put the key in and twist. When I get through the tunnel, (which is much like the ones leading to airplanes) I see Hannah’s door, blending in with the purple polka dots and black background theme for today. Every day we have a theme, and everything in closet world just turns into the theme. Today the theme is rather dark, black with royal purple. My favorite theme was lilac and teal vertical stripes, mainly because those are my favorite colors. I look down at my skin. Black with white polka dots. In those 20 minutes I spent back on Earth, it was strange to have my olive colored skin back. To be different, and stand out. And my hair, it was brown again. With the bottoms bleached. My hair’s now black with the thick purple polka dots that cover the city from head to toe.

I decide to look behind Hannah’s door. See if there’s a connection to Earth. But there’s just a door. But now I need to find my way back to town, so I can be in my own house again. Not this storage closet with a bunch of doors. It’s not even a closet, just a narrow hallway with doors in the back. I decide to go all the way to the end of the hallway. Maybe I can make some sort of connection to Hannah. Maybe I can tell her I’m sorry for overreacting about the tiniest things. Maybe I can tell her that I really DO like Austin, and that I was just embarrassed. Maybe I can tell her that I want her to be my friend again.

I suddenly feel the need to sit down and start crying. What kind of person am I? Dumping my best friend because I was embarrassed? You overreact way too much, Ivy. A little voice in my head convinces you. I bet Hannah never wanted to be your friend in the first place. Another tells me. More voices with negative thoughts join in, increasing the speed and volume so that all I can hear is negative thoughts.

“STOP!!!” I scream at the top of my lungs. For once, they stop. I lay down on my right side. I hear a cracking noise, then remember the keys Hannah gave me. Well now, they’re broken. Thanks to me.

I wipe my eyes and get up to start my journey to the end of the hallway. I walk for minutes. Hours. I finally come across a door with the name, “Ivy Sinclair” imprinted on it. Out of anger, I rip the door out of the socket. My vision starts to go black. Then all at once, it vanishes.

Before We Get Started

“Ready?” Aliyah Goldstein asked her co-worker, Dennis Root. They were partners on the designing job for Verizon, using Dennis’s big imagination and Aliyah’s artistic talent. They were the perfect team. But we must go back to deep, deep history.

On the first day of ninth grade, Dennis saw her baby-blue eyes and that hair, the brown beachy waves and the natural, blonde highlights, oh, how he loved her hair. Her olive-colored smooth skin along with her makeup-free face. Her best feature, in his opinion, was her clean language, but her soothing voice (it reminded him of honey) wouldn’t make sense any other way.

“Okay, let’s see,”  said the busy tech designing teacher, while looking down at his many paperworks. “First we’ll have… Aliyah Goldstein and Dennis Root?” the teacher looked up. “Stand up if it’s you.” The two nervous teens nervously stood up, unaware of what they would be in for. Let’s go into deeper history.

Aliyah was born on February 4, 1978. Her parents loved her with their whole hearts, but one day she heard something about some sort of car crash, and refused to hear more. Her father always wanted her to be an electrician, no matter what kind of electronic she was making. To this day, she still remembers her father’s exact words: “Grow up. Do something with your life. Become an electrician, for any kind of electronic.” It wasn’t the kind of, “Oh, grow up. Just go do something with your wasted life.” It was encouraging, and made her believe that even if they WERE dead, her father would still be proud.

Dennis was born on July 7, 1978. His parents are both 100% alive and healthy. His mother is a nutritionist and his father is a doctor, so he has no choice but to be healthy. His parents will make him. Still, at the age of 35 (as of April 2014), he lives with his parents. They want him to take on a profession other than designing cell phones, but — unlike Aliyah — he stuck to his profession. Now, back to ninth grade tech.

“Okay, Aliyah and Dennis will be partnered-up since they’re  both new. Everyone else, find last year’s partner.” From then on, it’s history. The two naturally clicked, and then got a job working for Verizon.

“As always,” Dennis replied. Their rule: improv. No scripts for who says what or anything like that. Improv.

“This,” Aliyah said while displaying the new phone model, “is the Veri Tech Smartphone-” she paused. “-slash  Hologram Mini-Tech. The device folds up so it can fit in somebody’s pocket. ” It went on, and at the end of the presentation they got a standing ovation for their presentation.

Dennis was happy about the ovation and noticed all the smiling faces, but what he didn’t notice was the CEO talking to Aliyah.

Chapter 1

That night, Dennis went home and was excited to tell his parents about the ovation. They were happy to hear, because the duo’s work didn’t really get used. Ever.

“Know that girl, Aliyah. She seems pretty nice. How’s the relationship going?” his father, or should I say, Dr. Root asked.

“Well, there isn’t much of a big relationship. We’re friends, just that,” Dennis confidently replied. Although, deep, deep down inside, he did have some feelings for Aliyah, he wasn’t going to admit that anytime soon.

“Aliyah seems nice. We should invite her over and get to know her. We’re sure she is a great designer,” his mother genuinely told him.

“Yeah, well the creativity is mainly my part, and the art is mainly her part,” Dennis was a bit ashamed that it was sort of  like that he was making the great ideas and she was just doing all the work.

“Well, it looks like it’s time for rest, Dennis,” Dr. Root let him know.

“Aw, but pa! It’s only 9:30!” Dennis complained like a 7-year-old. He hasn’t exactly grown out from childhood.

“We’re gonna have a big day tomorrow, and sleep is what we need.”

Dennis wasn’t going to argue, his parents would just win. He stumped into his room, not dropping the 7-year-old act. In fact, he basically was a 7-year-old. He had posters of super heros plastered on his walls and had a spiderman bed set. A superhero-loving 35-year-old (as of May 2014), that’s Dennis Root for ya.

***

“Please welcome our head designers, Aliyah Goldstein and Dennis Root.” The CEO presented the duo to the board of Verizon to present their new design. Aliyah basically presented the whole model, since Dennis was staring at her the whole time. She had the same 14 year old face: baby blue eyes, brown beachy waves with natural, blonde highlights, olive-colored skin, but now with some lip gloss and brown eyeliner, and a voice like honey.

At the end of their, er, Aliyah’s presentation, they got a standing ovation from the board members. Dennis was surprised that they were the head designers; none of their work had even gotten a single clap before this. But a standing ovation from the CEO, that was a big deal.

At the end of their 10:00 p.m.-6:00 a.m. shift, Aliyah spoke to Dennis about some very important business.

“There’s a job offering up for us, and even though they’re good and everything, it might not be exactly what we want, we’re a team, and we have to agree.”

“What’s the job?” Dennis asked.

“It’s in the building department; we build what other people design.”

“How much more money?” Dennis was all questions. Though, he didn’t care about money that much.

“They said they’ll get back to us on that.”

“How about we think about it for now.”

“Ok.” And there, then they both simply left.

That night at dinner, Dennis spoke to his parents. He explained every detail of it, them not knowing how much more money, and the building department, everything.

“Dennis, if it’s more money, then take it. Money is very important, and we don’t want to miss our chance of getting more.” Dr. Root was a very selfish man, and sometimes Dennis was ahamed they were related.

“Dad, not everything is about money. If we take it, we’re closing up a spot for the less fortunate to make money. And we’re pretty good designers.”

“Dennis, sweetie. Your father makes a point. Money is what we need right now, and we both made the mistake of early retirement, so please. Take it.” Mrs. Root just agreed with her husband.

“Why do we even bother asking their advice? My parents just want money, money money, that’s all they care about. What about what makes their son happy? What about helping others? But no, it’s just money,” Dennis spoke to himself, although his parents were listening closely. “Goodnight.” Dennis spoke directly to the selfish relatives of his who shall remain nameless. He left the conversation at a negative note and went towards his room.

“But Dennis, it’s only 9:30!” his father called after him. It really depended on the conversation that decided what happened at 9:30.

“Well that’s too bad!” Dennis yelled without turning around. He heard a loud bang on their old wood table. Dennis remembered what people said about his father when they were young: David bangs the table when he’s mad. Now that brightened up his day.

I stepped down the stairs to the restaurant. Of course, to meet Aliyah. We had been dating for five years now, and it was about time. I tried not to look like an amateur, dressed in my younger brother’s suit. At the age of 41, I don’t think I should stay forever alone. Besides, we were meant to be.

“Hi,” Aliyah shyly said. She was so cute like that. I pulled out one of the wood chairs for her to sit. I sat in my own chair, and we discussed the menu.

“I want the caviar,” I said to nobody in particular. I was paying. I wasn’t telling her what to get me.

“The bouillabaisse looks good,” she commented. After we were almost done eating our French cuisine (forgive me I didn’t take French), I decided to do what I’d be waiting for since the first day of ninth grade. I got down on one knee and-

“Aliyah Goldstein, will you marry me?” I let the words quickly slip out of my mouth. An awkward silence fell over our table for two.

“So… will you?” I asked again. She better say something.

“No.”  Her hushed tone was part of what was so heartbreaking.

“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Dennis sat up in his bed, breathing very, very heavily.

“What the hell is going on up there?” he heard his father ask from downstairs.

“Sounds like Dennis had a nightmare,” his mother said. He heard her rush up the stairs to his room.

“Dennis sweetie, what happened?” Part of what he thought was so annoying about his mom was that she was so kind. Even though he liked kindness, it was too much for him to handle.

“Aliyah… said… no,” was all he managed to let out of his mouth. His mom did NOT need to get into his personal life. Even between all the heavy breathing, little miss smarty-pants was able to figure out what he was talking about. Exactly. You don’t want your mom to know that you woke up screaming because the love of your life said no to your proposal in a dream, now do you. Well, Dennis didn’t.

“Aw Dennis, it’s ok. Aliyah is a very beautiful, and awesome, and lovely, and way too out- of-your-league girl.”

“Well, dayum. Duh lady!” Dennis screamed.

“And she definitely doesn’t deserve a stupid little nerdy crybaby, take yourself for example.”

“Goddammit mom!” Dennis screamed, and before she could do anything, he ran out of the house.

Chapter 2

Dennis stormed out of the house, wishing for a bunch of things. In fact, he made a list:

Want to have…

-a better mom

-a better dad

-Aliyah

He couldn’t believe he wrote that. But, being Dennis Root, he continued the list.

-a dog

-a wedding by 40

-my own place 😉

He stopped there. He couldn’t think of anymore. Since he had nowhere to go, he decided to go home. His parents were probably worried sick about him. But then he thought, This might be worth the walk. And boy, he was right.

Walking about the streets of Hoboken, New Jersey, Dennis turned onto Washington. Ah, Washington. The original “main street” of Hoboken. But he wanted to go past Washington, to the river. He walked down to Pier A Park, a pier that wasn’t much of a park, that was Pier C’s job. Walking towards the water, he looked at Sinatra Park, and then at New York City, where he worked. Aliyah lived there, in her own apartment with her dog. Oh, how Dennis loved her dog, Lucy.

Lucy was a 2 year old pug that was going to be killed after her 6 months of puppyhood. Thankfully, Aliyah rescued her just in time, along with her 6 brothers and 3 sisters and her parents. After 6 months of that, on the young dogs’ birthdays, she let them go to their forever owners, only keeping Lucy.

Dennis walked south, so he could see Aliyah’s city better. He heard the clock strike midnight, and a bunch of people cheering. The Empire State Building was red, white, and blue. Of course, Dennis thought. It’s the Fourth of July, 2014. That’s 3 days until my birthday. He decided to start walking to fifth street so he could go on to Jefferson and go home. But somewhere along Washington Street he ran into a blue-eyed someone named Aliyah.

“Aliyah,” Dennis said.

“Dennis,” Aliyah said. “this is a pleasant surprise. Fourth of July in Hoboken. Wow. Just, wow.”

“We put on a real show, us Jerseyans,” Dennis joked, and to his surprise, Aliyah laughed. Her neck crouched over and she pulled her hair out of her face while rising back to her full height.

“The view of the skyline is just amazing. Should we go get a better look?” Aliyah asked.

“Sure, follow my lead.” They walked back downtown, and Dennis was a bit disappointed that he couldn’t stop at 7-Eleven or Subway, but that was okay because he was going to be coming home on the same path.

They walked back right in front of the pier. Dennis walked into the park, but then he realized Aliyah wasn’t following him. He turned around and found Aliyah with her arms crossed. Dennis raised his eyebrows and stuck his head out as if he were asking why she wasn’t coming.

“Why can’t we go over there?” Aliyah pointed to Pier C Park. “It seems funner. Yes, everybody knows, funner isn’t a word, but it’s funner to say funner even though funner isn’t a word.”

“Fine,” Dennis grumbled while walking over to Pier C. “That doesn’t mean there’s a better view or anything, all it has is a playground and it’s a bit more West, er, uh. North, er, uh…” He wanted to impress Aliyah with his geography skills, except for the fact that he didn’t really have any…

“North,” Aliyah corrected, realizing he was having a bit of trouble.

“Yeah… right… that…” Dennis awkwardly said. “So,” he said after an awkward silence. “My birthday’s in 3 days.”

“And mine’s in 8 months,” Aliyah sighed. “36 years and almost a half with still no response from my parents,” Aliyah sighed and continued walking. Dennis ran up to her to catch up to her speedy walking.

“Aliyah,” Dennis sighed as she turned her left foot to face him while picking her right one up. She planted her right foot onto the hard concrete. “They’re alive. It’s guaranteed. Trust me.”

“No it’s not, Dennis. None of us know that.”

“Al-”

“They left me 27 years ago!” Aliyah screamed. “Do you know how hard that was? Living on my own at a young age was the most stressful part of my life, Dennis. You’re lucky your parents are there for you. Oh, there’s one thing that was left out about the promotion,” Aliyah told him. They stopped walking.

“Okay, what is it?” Dennis asked confidently, knowing there still would be no way for him to take it.

“It’s in Canada.”

Chapter 3

“Canada!?” Dennis exclaimed. “Ok, now we definitely CAN’T take the promotion. Sorry, Aliyah.”  He started walking faster and faster and faster until Aliyah caught up right in front of the entrance to Pier C Park.

“Think about it,” Aliyah said while putting her right hand on his left shoulder, causing him to turn around. “We’re both in our mid-30s, single, and we don’t have enough money. Think about it, Dennis. We could have a future in Canada. Living in New York City is a bit… much. Plus, I’m all alone. You’re with your parents.” And that’s what the forming tears of loneliness in Dennis’s eyes were for. He paused for a minute waiting for a good reply. Then it hit him.

“Then I’ll feel thankful for being one of the 50,00 cramped into a square mile.” Was all he managed to say with a broken voice. And just like that, he walked in the other direction to go back to his house.

***

When Dennis arrived at home, his parents were asleep, so he could go straight up to his room and go to sleep. But there was only one problem with that: he wasn’t tired. He looked around to find his green iPhone 5c (it came with the job), but it was nowhere to be seen.

Great. Dennis thought. Just great. It’s 1AM, I’m fully awake, and now my stupid phone is missing. He kicked his twin-sized bed and his phone came out from in between the mattress and the frame. He picked it up and layed down on his bed. He opened Wipeout and started playing until, well, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

“Hello I can’t really read this it’s really small but I guess I sorta can read it but like not really, I mean, it’s small but I’m not old yet so I can read it how about you?” squeaked a tiny little mouse on a bright green field. “I really need to have normal dreams,” Dennis said as he scratched his head.

***

“Aaaaaaahhhhh!” Dennis screamed as he woke up. He rolled off of his bed and thumped on his head. “Ugh,” he said shortly after, he felt the large bump on his forehead. Then the little mouse from his strange dream came back to him. He pictured her little gray face with her blue eyes and big ears until he realized: the mouse was Aliyah. Her soft face, and those beautiful, sparkling, blue eyes. Though her voice wasn’t as squeaky as a mouse, Dennis could still feel a bit of resemblance between both their voices. Like how she pronounced syrup, sort of taking the y away and leaving it sounding like “surup.” And although the mouse never squeaked out the word syrup, Dennis could tell that she’d pronounce it the Aliyah way. He was certain.

“I have to do something about this,” Dennis spoke to himself while rolling out of bed. “I have to get Aliyah before she goes off to Canada.” But somewhere in his confused mind, a voice doubted him. Why would you even think Aliyah would take you? You’re a 6 and she’s a 10. Just forget it.  Dennis thought about those 2 last sentences. The longer he thought about it, the more true it felt.

“I’m a 6, she’s a 10. Forget it.” He repeated that over and over again, and then he started to have some fun with it.

“I’m a 6, she’s a 10, she’s so fit, I’m insecure, but she’s comin’ back for more. How did we end up here, in the first place, ya said ya had your…” By the time he got to that, Dennis realized he was singing End Up Here by 5 Seconds of Summer.

At once, he stopped, and heard his phone playing it. After about a second, he sang along with it again. About 6 seconds later, the music stopped. He walked over to his phone and clicked the home button. There was one notification that read: Missed Call Aliyah Goldstein

“She called me! She needs a call back!” So Dennis went and called Aliyah. She picked up immediately.

“Hello?” Aliyah asked.

“Hey, um, there was a call with your name, just wanted to check in and see if everything’s okay.”

“Yeah, everything’s great. Though your voice sounds very tired, or maybe it’s just the phone.”

“Um, let’s just say my bed has been recently slept in by someone named Me.”

“Really, there’s a person named Me? Just kidding. But seriously, check the time! It’s noon!”

“So, what was the missed call supposed to be?”

“Oh, it was probably a butt-dial. Sorry.” Aliyah hung up before Dennis could respond. But how would she butt-dial him? He was Dennis Root. Contacts went by last name. R was pretty close to Z.

But then Dennis realized that there were other loners in the world. People who had only a few contacts. And as cool as Aliyah seemed, he had to accept it: Aliyah was a loner.

Chapter 4

Since the 4th of July was a Friday in 2014, the next time Dennis saw Aliyah was on Monday, July 7th. The 36th turning of Dennis. He got a cake and The Board Of Decision (yes, they capitalized the o in “of.” That’s how serious Verizon workers are) came to celebrate.

Dennis walked over to Aliyah as the red velvet 3 layered cake was being passed out. As soon as the two made eye contact, Aliyah rushed out. Dennis followed her. They went down the block, took a left,  Jay Walked through every road, and then they were at the pier. Pier 26, more specifically.

“What’s all this? It’s my birthday, we’re eating my favorite cake.”

“Dennis,” Aliyah weakly spoke. “My boat’s here. It’s taking me to Canada. You know, because they say a boat instead of about. Goodbye.” Dennis chuckled then turned around to look at, well, something besides his dream girl leaving. When he turned around the boat was far away.

“Aliyah, wait!” he called. But it was too late. The boat had already left. “I love you.”

Henry had to sneak into the store and break into it at night. They had to prepare, to make weapons, like spears and guns. They were all busy working into the middle of the night until they broke in. They went to the orphanage and they started building these things in secret so that way the guardian didn’t see them. They were molding and making metal and very busy melting it, getting supplies to melt it. All of this stuff. They took the radiators out and put them under and started them working again.

They were all super tired by the middle of the night.

Henry said, “It looks like we’ll have to break-in tomorrow night until the fourth day comes.”

His friends said, “Yes, we must do that. We are too tired.”

“We can all sleep in my bed since we’re in my room,” said Henry.

The next morning, somebody starts to scream because they find out that there are guns in Henry’s room. They think that a robber broke in and that the boys killed the robber. So, the guardian ran out of the room and went to go tell the headmaster of the orphanage. While she was away at the office, they picked up their guns and spears and thought there was a robber in the house. The boys heard screams coming from the office. They ran to the office and the headmaster said, “What are you doing up? You know it’s only 6:30am. You know you’re only supposed to stay in the rooms until 7am!” He was super surprised, his mouth was dropped wide open because they had guns and spears. And the headmaster said, “You naughty boys, did you make them?”

“Yes,” They all said.

“Give them to me.”

“No! After we break into the computer store, we’re going to leave earth.”

“Ha ha ha, you’re not going anywhere until you turn 18. You crazy boys! Get back into your rooms, right now, before we start picking you up and throwing you in bed! Now leave!” yelled the headmaster.  “Now!” So, they left Henry’s room through the window, and the guardian made them throw them out the window. Then, when the guardian left, the boys bent and stretched to get through the window. They got their weapons.

“Why do we have to wait until then tonight to rob the the computer store? It’s still closed,” said Start.

They all agreed because it was only 6:40 AM and it was still dark out because it was winter. It was snowing, and they had white snow coats, so no one would notice them. They painted their weapons white, so they would look like snow falling, too.

They had to use the A train to get to the computer store. They used their white-painted hammers to bash into the windows. The alarm did not sound because it was too wet and the snow got into the alarm. The electric circuits went out.

The security guard said, “Halt! Who goes there?”

“It is us. The new security guards!” said the boys.

“Well, while you’re the new security guard, fix that window!”  The security guard yelled. “A robber must have broken in last night.”

“Do we have to?” said the boys.

“Yes you have to,” said the security guard. So they picked up the blow torches from the security guard’s room which were there to fix the window if somebody broke in and started working.

After they fixed the window, John said, “Let’s just steal the computer when the security guard’s not looking.”

And Henry said sarcastically, “That’s a great idea. We’re here to rob the store, not fix a window!”

Then they took the computer off the shelf and out the door so they didn’t have to fix the window again and took the train back to the orphanage. And then they looked up how to build a rocket ship to get away from Earth. They took their big pot out to make the metal for the rocket ship. They took out the radiators once again and started melting their guns to turn them into flat pieces of metal and that was enough metal to build the engine, but they still needed more metal. They snuck into people’s rooms to steal their radiators to melt more metal. And then they got to work hammering the metal, bending it into shape, making the pipes for the rocket ship, and putting in the leftover radiators so that it wouldn’t get too cold. They went to the water room and they took a bucket with them and they took out scoops of water to make steam to heat up the rocket ship, and then they went to go get some paint at the corner ‘cause there was a paint shop there. They bought red and white paint with the money they took with them that they had earned doing chores. Then they took some wood and ashes to make the fire and it became morning and they were allowed to come out of their rooms, but they had already come out of their rooms 33 times that night and they were so tired because they had been roaming around all night that they went to sleep. The maid woke them up an hour later and said, “Time to get up, lazy bones! You know you have to go scoop some water. Your buckets are right on your night tables.” The rocket ship was safely hidden in the closet. They had drilled holes in the ceiling so that it could extend out to the roof. And then they went out and got their buckets and did all of their chores. They got $10.  They said, “We’d better go to a different place, now, because it’s the 3rd day already.

“Ok, 3…2…1…blast  off!” said the boys.

As they were flying away, they felt the rocket ship shake because the Earth had blown up. It shook the whole universe. They knew that Earth was gone. The boys weren’t sad about the people, but they were sad that their homeland was gone and they had to go to a different land.

So, they blasted off to Planet OOsiki BOOsiki. They met some aliens. They landed on the most scary place on OOsiki BOOsiki. There was so much fog, and aliens saying, “We need your braaainnss,” like alien zombies. They looked like human zombies except that they looked like a Hershey Kiss, and they’re made of chocolate like a Hershey Kiss. They said, “We are the rottenest chocolate in the worrrldd!!”

Start says, “I have a great idea! RUN!” So they start running as fast as they can with the rotten chocolate right behind them. They found a little cave and they hid in it. The rotten chocolate ran right past them.

They said, “Phew! That was close. What’s that hole over there?” They went to check it out and they accidentally fell into it! That’s where all the good, yummy, delicious chocolate was.

“Let’s eat,” said John.

And they dove right in. But then, the general said, “What are you doing in that ice cream house?”

And then the general said, “Not another mistake or else you’re gonna go to the dungeon.”

And they said, ‘We can’t go to the dungeon, we’re only 17 years old!”

“No, you’re going to the dungeon. Right now, actually, ‘cause you just complained to the general. Guards, take them away!”

Then, they were locked up in the dungeon. They didn’t really care because the walls were made of chocolate. So, they said, “Eh, we’ve got plenty supplies of chocolate. I don’t know why they call it the dungeon because the candy cane bars look so delicious!”

Little did they know, that the aliens were actually alive there and they would be baked if they tried to bite into one of the walls. The aliens that live there are made of that wall, so they were looking at the boys every single second. John was about to bite into the dungeon, but Henry stopped him and said, “These walls look like they’re trying to look down at us. Do not eat them, no, no, no!” Henry saw a pair of eyes on the ceiling.

“At night we will chomp through the candy canes. We can eat those because they are just stabilizers,” said Henry.

It was getting darker and darker, until finally it was night. The boys hadn’t slept for 33 hours and they were feeling tired and gloomy, but they still said they needed to escape. They chopped into the candy cane bars and they began to escape, but then the guard came. Then they said, “Attack! Eat the guard!”

And Henry said, “We should wipe this place clean and we’ll make it safe for us to live on! We’ll eat every single alien on this planet, including this general. Three, two, one, attack this place!” said Henry and John and then they  tried to attack, but they failed and got sent back to the  dungeon with their rocket. They had a saw in their rocket.  And John said, “these  Ooskee Boosceeins  are stupid.” Start and Henry agreed and said, “We should cut a hole in the top of this dungeon.” Then John said, “You know that’s a bad idea, you know all the rotten chocolate is up there. We need to make weapons out of the candy cane bars if we want to go up there.” The reason they didn’t get sent back to their other dungeon was because it had a loose candy cane. This dungeon didn’t have any hershey kiss things that had ovens looking down at them.

“Okay,” Henry said. “But we don’t have anything to make the weapons.”

John said, “Henry’s right. We don’t have anything to make the weapons with.”

And all the boys agreed. They said, “Let’s make fire, we can burn bars in there.”

And then John said, “We have enough candy cane bars that we can start a fire with them.”

“Okay,” said Henry. “But, we need to build the fire circle. We’ll make a fire circle out of dirt.”

They said, “But, we have to choose somebody to be the fire tender.”

John said, ‘I’ll be the fire tender.”

“Let’s get this fire started!” they said.

They took away the candy bars and rubbed them together until they made a fire and then they took chunks of candy cane bars, about ten or twenty in it, and then they melted it and they had good spears. And John put in another chunk of candy cane and they went to their rocket. They opened the door to their rocket and they blasted off the planet Ooski Booski. They killed all the rotten chocolate and they were out of Ooski Booski.

They were in the middle of space, where they didn’t know where anything was. Their water supply was low. They needed to find another planet fast. Their food supply was freezing.

John said, “What do we do? We don’t have any food or water! We should use the radar.”

They used the radar to look for a planet. They plugged it in and turned on the switch that makes it spin super fast and send vibrations out to find planets. There was a vibration right away. They found a planet, one mile away.  They went to the planet. It was called Hazzumidoom. There was a sign that said, ‘Welcome to Hazzumidoom.’

And they went all the way to the middle of Hazzumidoom until John said, “This planet looks deserted. Does it have another hole like Ooski Booski? I hope not.”

It was cloudy and foggy and there were no people to be seen except for them. Nothing to be seen.

“Now how are we supposed to find food and water? It’s time we took out the super secret supply of food and water. I know we shouldn’t use it, but we have to use it now, we don’t have any food and water.                        ”

But then, they were walking all the way to the middle and they accidentally fell down a hole.

“Ahhhh!” they all screamed.

And then they fell down to the real planet of Hazzumidoom. It looked like it had so much food and water.

They said, “This is the perfect place! Better than Ooski Booski!”

There were red trees and milk streams. There were honey puddles and water bottle trees.

They said, “This is the most perfect ever, perfect, perfect, perfect place in the whole world.”

“Well, much better than Ooski Booski,” John said.

They found a town, a village, that looked very weird. It was in the middle of the forest and there was only a stone house.

There was a person standing outside in the middle of the woods.

All of the boys walked over to him and said, “How are you doing? What’s your name?”

He said, “My name is Mooshi.”

He was an alien that looked human. They knew he was an alien because he was from three galaxies away.

He said, “Welcome. Come in. Have a drink.” His voice sounded like a person that had just choked on a duck. “You shall be my pets.”

John said, “Okay. Um, we don’t want a drink.” He turned to Start and Henry.                           “Anybody have good ideas?”

Start said, “RUNNNN!!!”

They ran and ran until they found the best supply of everything they needed. The guy just let them run. They took some mangoes that were growing on a tree nearby, and then they went back to their rocket.

Chapter 2: Searching for the World

“I think we should really take out the supplies and the secret food,” said John. “But we don’t know the password. The only person who knows it is the headmaster because it’s the heating code to make the heat go.” The boys stole the headmaster’s lock to his office door and made this secret supply cabinet.

Next at the rocket, they found another person looking at it. The person was peering through the window. The boys were freaked out.

“Ahh, help me, save me!” They thought it was the same alien, but it wasn’t.

“Maybe we should blast off,” said John.

“No,” said Henry. “We’re not going anywhere until we get everything that we need.”

The person knocked on the rocketship, and John said, “Maybe we should blast off into the hole.”

Henry agreed. They went to the hole of Hazzumidoom. They went back up to the hole where they went last time. But, this time it had a sign that said, “Hole of Hazzumidoom.”

“How did that sign get there?” They said.

“Maybe it was that person we saw!” John said. “Let’s just go in the hole anyway.” They went back down because there were no food and supplies on the upper level, so they had to go back down, and when they got back down the hole, they decided to go far away from the house with that evil person alien. Now, they arrived at a pond with a duck. The duck could eat them in one little slice. It had sharp teeth. It had laser eyes. It was chopping down a tree with his eyes.

They got out of the rocket and dodged the laser eyes. There was a golden beak behind the duck. The golden beak would do any wish they wanted. They read about it in a book. Then, the duck tried to bite them. It shot out its razor teeth, still attached to the gum. The boys went behind the tree to hide.

John said, “That was very weird.”

“I agree, that was so weird,” said Henry.

Then, the duck was sitting peacefully in the pond.

“We should get that golden beak. One of us can distract the duck in the pond and the other can get the golden beak,” said Henry. “Two of us will be on one side, and Start will be distracting the duck because he’s a very fast runner.”

“No way, no how, I’m not going even near that duck!” said Start.

“You’re doing it or else I’ll throw you into the pond with duck,” said Henry, mad at Start.

Scared, Start said, “Okay.”

So, Start went right over to the duck and said, “Hey Duck, here I am, bet you can’t catch me!”

It glared its eyes at Start and ran after him. Start said, “Come on, you’re too old to play the game ‘Try and Eat the Human’, you waddley old duck!”

By now, it was so angry, it didn’t use its gum technique, it ran after him and tried to use its laser eyes at him.

The two boys stuck around the pond and went in the water and got the beak, and sneakily made their first wish.

“I want that duck to be gone.” And it was gone forever.

Start got safely back to the boys. But then, the golden beak disappeared. They didn’t notice the writing that said, “If you make the duck disappear, the beak will disappear with it. It will wither away to dust!”

“Oh my gosh, this is horrible! I wanted a wish that I could be king of Hazzumidoom!” John said. He was going crazy.

“That’s not important right now. What’s important is that we go lie and down and find some supplies before night,” Henry said.

They had to relax, they sat in the shade of palm tree, sweaty.

John said, “Hmm, it’s been a long time since we’ve been away from earth. I wonder what happened to that spicy korean food that we used to eat Saturday night.”

“Yeah, I wonder what ever happened to the movies we used to watch,” said Henry, sadly.

“I sure miss the video games!” Start said.

They all sighed.

“And I miss the animals,” Start said, as they ate a mango.

They stood up, and Henry said, “We should maybe get a fire going, it’s almost night.”

They made the fire. They cut down a tree with what was left of their saw, and they sat by the fire.

“Are there any animals on their planet? I haven’t had meat in so long,” said John.

Henry volunteered to go hunting. The other two started getting pails of water and getting fruit. When Henry came back, he had a sheep in his hand and said, “I found it over a hill. Let’s roast it.” Then, they all roasted it. They used the wool of the sheep and make beds and they slept all night.

Chapter 3: Exploding Every World

The next morning, they found something very particular. They found footprints on the ground and followed them all the way back to the stone house.

Henry gasped and said, “We can’t go back into this house again! We know it’s haunted by that creepy person who is standing right outside the door like last time.”

John said, “Maybe we should just sneak in the back and he’ll never know we were in and steal the supplies.”

Henry said, “We’ll have to put new supplies in so he doesn’t notice.”

John said, “Whatever, he’s never going to notice that we stole the supplies.”

They saw the person standing right outside the door. He didn’t notice them because they were hiding behind a tree. They took their hammer and broke in. They shattered glass of the window. It looked like a normal house but with lots more food! They took food supply, the guy’s bed, and they snuck off with it.

“Okay guys, I think it’s time to leave Hazzumidoom.” John said.

They went to the top of Hazzumidoom and went out!

They took the radar again, turned it on, and looked for another planet. They went to the planet called Razamkidam. But a cat alien stopped them with slime balls shooting at their rocket! It had an antenna and it was green with no hair. It was about the size of a sheep.

When they saw the cat, they were so surprised that they jumped out of their seats and fell on the floor!

“Get the missiles ready!” said John. “Get ready to fire in 3, 2, 1, fire!”

Then they saw a whole army of cats!

“Uh oh, we’re going to need a lot more stuff,” Henry said.

John said, “No we don’t. We have a lot of water bottles and cats are afraid of water!”

“We don’t know that. These are alien cats, not pussy cats!”

Henry gets so mad at John for always bragging about himself that Henry finally punches John.

John said, “Oh! So you’re being a smarty pants. You get back here and I’m going to punch you in the face again.”

“No you don’t!”

Start yelled, “Stop! You guys stop it now. You know there’s an army of alien cats trying to shoot slimeballs at us! Get… to… your… stations!”

Henry and John stopped fighting and went back to fighting the cats. They saw so many more cats. John decided to blow up the planet Razamkidam in midair. It blew up in a circle and asteroids came flying out.

“Oh no! We just made another asteroid field,” Henry yelled, mad at John for firing the missiles at the planet.

“Oh, somebody’s mad at me for firing missiles at a planet, you big idiot!”

“You are the one that’s stupid for exploding the planet and making the asteroid field!”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Start yelled. “You’re both getting thrown off this rocket!”

Henry and John both stopped fighting.

They steered their way out of the asteroids and the boys started fighting with each other again.

“Okay, if you’re going to be idiots, then get out of this rocket,” said Start.

“Oh? You want to join the fight?” Henry said. “You get out of the rocket, you fatty!”

“Maybe you’re wrong, Henry. And he’s good, you’re bad.” John said.

“You’re the worst one! You’re worse than him, idiot.”

“You think that you’re going to throw me out of the rocket?”

“You’re such a big idiot that you’re going to be thrown out of the rocket, and you’re so faaat,” said Henry in a mean voice and stuck out his tongue at John.

Start said, “You boys! You stop it now! Now! Now! Now! There’s another planet on the radar called Razamkikalagam. We’re going to see if it’s good. We need to stop fighting if we’re going to find another planet.”

When they see the planet Razamkikalagam, they see an army of happy people. They look like they’re smiling and that’s their worst and meanest faces, smiling. The boys try talking to them, but it doesn’t work.

The happy people say, “You will be killed!” The happy people wanted to kill the boys because the boys weren’t smiling which means they weren’t happy.

The happy people saw them, flew over to them and the boys said, “We’re going to take you down with our high-tech guns!”

They shoot the happy people and go onto the planet. The planet looks like a cherry with a stem and lots of red. Everybody on the planet is a cherry except for the happy people.

They talk to one of the cherry people, the wisest of the cherry people and the wise one said, “You can only turn into a cherry if you do not smile. You turn into a happy person if you do smile.”

“But there’s so many cherries and smiley people, I really think this is not the planet for us,” said John.

“Yup!” said Henry. “I think we should leave.” And they left the planet.

They found another planet in the shape of a donut! They landed on the planet, but all they saw for food was donuts. They saw the biggest donut tower in the world. It was 30,000 feet tall. One of the donut people welcomed them to Donut Land and said, “This is a place of donuts. All you can eat is donuts!” He was smiling.

John groaned. “Oh no, I can’t take all that sugar…”

Henry said, “We cannot last off these donuts. We have to get off this planet right now!”

They blasted off. Then John said, “Maybe we should go back and see if they have some fruits and vegetables.” They got back on the planet and then they saw their little donut friend walking around the streets. He saw them and he recognized them at first sight. He was jumping up and down.

“Ooh! Welcome back!” he said. “Maybe you should have a donut, because that’s the only thing on the planet.”

Henry said, “We can stay at your house, but we’re not gonna eat any donuts.”

“Okay, fine, go ahead, leave, I don’t need you here anymore…” He was frowning and his hands were hanging below him. “Get off the planet…I guess I’ll just go to being alone again…”

Start said, “Maybe we should help him…”

And John said, “No.”

And Henry said, “No.”

They blasted off the planet. They found a new planet in the shape of Earth. It looked like Earth, it had things on it like Earth, and it was just like Earth.

Henry said, “Hey, I think we should stay on this planet.”

The people on the planet said, “That spaceship looks very weird with three boys that look seventeen.”

When the boys got off the spaceship, the people asked, “Where did you come from in that rocket?”

The boys said, “We’re from Earth!”

The people said, “You can’t be. This is Earth! We’re the biggest planet in the solar system.”

The boys gasped.

“Welcome to Earth,” said the people. “Since you are human, you are allowed to come on this planet.”

They stayed on the planet forever.

THE END

coming soon…

THE RETURN OF THE DRAGONS

Prologue

I’m Mandy Simon. I’m thirteen, I have brown hair, green eyes, I’m tall, I’m thin, shy, quiet, creative, calm, smart, and a witch.

What? You need me to repeat what I just said?

Oh. Okay.

I’m a witch.

I know it makes no sense, but it’s true. I have the power to bake a boy. All witches have one main power and a bunch of other little ones, and my main power is to bake a boy.

What? That doesn’t  make sense?

Fine, fine. I’ll explain it.

Thirteen years ago, I was born. As the daughter of a wizard and a poor baker, I became a witch. And because I’m boy crazy and a hopeless romantic, I have the power to create a male human through baking. Like, I can turn vinegar into bravery, and sugar into strength. Just tell me your ideal male human, and I’ll bake him! And don’t worry, I’ll do it great. I’ve been mixing up beaus and cooking up guys since I was three. So, sit back, relax, and let me create your perfect bachelor.

Just stop by my family’s Matchmaker Bakery and we’ll turn flour into falling in love!

And, you’ll get to hear about a crazy adventure I had a few months ago.

Or you could read this book.

But don’t tell my mom,  I’m writing this, I’m supposed to be making flyers right now.

(Evil Laugh).

Chapter 1.

Okay. First of all, you should know a little bit about my family. I’m the youngest of ten kids, for one. My siblings are Olivia, Talia, Tara, Fanny, Felicia, Sam, Sarah, Emily, and Nina. Olivia and Talia are twins, and Fanny, Felicia, Sam and Sarah are quadruplets. Emily and Nina are fraternal twins. I don’t understand WHY my parents were willing to have ten kids. Or why they had two sets of twins, a set of quadruplets, Tara, and me. And why did all my siblings end up having white blond hair and crystal blue eyes, just like my mom, while I have dark brown hair and green eyes like my dad, who by the way, ran off somewhere when I was two. So I have nine siblings, only one person to take care of us, no father, and no friends. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I’m friendless ‘cause everyone at school thinks I’m a weirdo. My mom calls it quirky, but I know I’m just a weirdo. Good thing  me and my sisters got pulled out of school.

The only friend I have is Fanny. Of course, the rest of my siblings love me and are nice to me, but Fanny’s the only one who gets it. She’s the only one who realizes how hard it is to be the youngest of ten kids, to look nothing like them, to not have a father, and to be bullied and friendless. She also makes me happy and brings out the best in me. I’d say she’s the best sister ever, but I have eight others, so I can’t. Let me tell you about them. Olivia’s the brains. Her main power is having a brain twice the size of a normal human’s brain. She read War and Peace at three, and Pride and Prejudice at six. To kill a Mockingbird came at eight. She’s been doing physics and chemistry for as long as I could remember. She’s won awards and prizes and trophies for everything in academics. She could walk at six months. Her first word was “obstreperous. ” Honestly, Olivia’s smarter than Einstein. His IQ was 160, Olivia’s is 200. She is smart.

Now I’ll tell you about Talia. She’s the athlete. Her power is being good at sports. She does Track, Soccer, Basketball, Baseball, Swimming, Dance, Golf, Bowling, and Croquet. You name it, she does it. She’s Varsity in all of those sports and all her coaches say she could go to the Olympics now, if she wanted, even though she’s only fifteen. That girl is strong.

Now I’ll tell you about Tara. She’s the creative one.  Her power is the arts. She paints, acts, sings, dances and plays seven different instruments. She does concerts, plays, and art galleries all the time. Her voice is like angels, her dancing is incredible, her paintings are amazing, her acting is perfect, and when she plays her instruments, it’s like an orchestra. She’s so talented that I don’t know any person more talented than her. Honestly, I don’t.

Next is Fanny. She’s a comedian. Her main power is making people laugh. She does corny jokes, adult jokes, kid jokes, bad jokes, weird jokes, prop jokes, knock knock jokes, riddle jokes, you name it, she does it. She has a joke for every person she meets. Like our pediatrician. “Laughter is the best medicine!” she always says. She’s performed skits and stand-up comedy and anything that will make you laugh. With Fanny, nothing’s ‘not funny’. With Fanny, there’s always time for a joke.

Now you’ll hear about Felicia. Felicia is a psychologist. She’s really smart and wise, and she totally understands people. (That’s her main power, understanding people). And she will always listen if you’ve had a bad day.  And she knows lots of metaphors and exercises. She could be a therapist right now. No PhD needed.

Now it’s Sam’s turn. She’s an engineer. She can build clocks, mechanical toys, blenders, she can even fix a car. She’s got a gift with mechanical things. She could totally fix a car, if she wanted to. Her power is understanding how all these things work and being able to build them. She’s really smart.

Now here’s Sarah. She’s a designer. She can make shirts, bottoms, accessories, you name it she can make it. That’s her main power. Clothing design. Who’s next? Oh, yeah, Emily. She’s a baker. She’s the only one of the family who has more of a normal talent, right? Wrong. She can bake cookies in two seconds, cakes, brownies, and cupcakes in one, and honestly, her pastries are the best thing you’ve ever tasted. There’s nothing better than her cupcakes, and her cookies are heaven in my mouth. If you don’t want to believe me, then fine, but you’re the one missing out on her INCREDIBLE, AMAZING, STUPENDOUS, DELICIOUS HEAVENLY SWEETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, I’m calm now.

Now I’ll tell you about Nina. Last but not least, Nina. She’s a copper. Out of all the weird talents, my sister knows about how to be a cop. She’s a genius at finding clues, a prodigy at seeing if people are speeding, and if you put one toe out of the line of the law, she’s got you. My sisters have straaaaaaaaaange powers. Okay. Now that I’ve told you about my sisters, I can get on with the stor-

Uh-oh. Gotta go. I’m supposed to have two hundred flyers for the bakery, and my mom’s really mad I was writing this book instead of making flyers. Gotta run!

Chapter 2.

Okay, now that I managed to get my mom off my back, I can keep writing. But I’m not sure what to write next, because I don’t exactly remember that well what happened at this time. Oh! I remember now! This is when the real fun began: I had just finished a long, hard day of baking boys, and I was exhausted. People had wanted all sorts of kind of guys, and the more you ask me to bake, the more tired I get. So at that time, I just wanted to flop on a bed and do nothing. But when I did flop on my bed, I realized something.

All the time, every day, people come into my family’s bakery and ask for their ideal man. I bake it for them, and they go off and live happily ever after. Meanwhile, I just work and work. But then I realized that I don’t ever think about the kind of guy I would like.

“Oh, wow,” I said to myself. “I can’t believe I’ve never realized this before.” So then I thought, well, what kind of guy would I like? “Well, he’d be tall. With dark brown hair and green eyes. He’d have freckles, too.” Then I thought some more. “He’d be funny, sweet, passionate, sensitive, and romantic.” Then I thought a little more. “He’d be kind and honest, too. He’d also be open-minded and understanding.” Then I thought one last time. “He would also be sympathetic and caring. And going out with him wouldn’t be awkward. And I would be able to tell him anything. I could always confide in him. And when I have a bad day, he’ll bring out my favorite movie, or give roses or chocolates. And most of all, he’d care about me and accept me, flaws and all.” Then, before I knew what was happening, I’d fallen asleep.

The next morning, I’d completely forgotten what I thought about the night before, so I just sleepily stumbled out of bed and pulled on some clothes. I brushed my teeth and my hair and went downstairs. Nina was sitting at a table, using her magnifying glass to look at something on the table. Olivia was at a booth, reading a book about advanced Physics. Emily was in the kitchen, taking out a tray of cookies from an oven with one hand while balancing a bowl of brownies on her head and taking out a tray of cupcakes with another hand out of another oven. Sarah was in a corner, working on our bakery’s uniform on a dress form. Talia was outside, kicking soccer balls. And Fanny was trying to tell a joke to our Yorkie, Cutesicle. (Sarah’s idea, not mine).

“Where are Tara, Felicia and Sam?” I asked my mom, who was sitting on a stool behind the counter in the kitchen.

“Oh, good morning, sweetie! Talia’s painting in her room. Felicia has a meeting with a client that has a fear of clowns. And Sam’s asleep. Why do you ask?”

I looked around at all my weird sisters using their crazy talents. “Oh, I was just curious.” Then, before I could go over to Emily and ask her for a brownie, the wind chime that plays when the door opens tinkled.

I turned around. A tall, brown haired, green eyed, freckle-faced boy walked in. I almost passed out. He walked toward me.

“Hi, I’m George. Are you Mandy?”

For a split second, my jaws seemed to be seared together with cement. “Y-yes,” I stuttered.

“Well, I was wondering if you would want to go out sometime.”

Fanny looked up and scanned George from head to toe. She raised an eyebrow and crawled behind the counter so he wouldn’t notice her. She popped up from behind the counter next to me.

“She’d love to go out sometime!” Fanny said. “Right Mandy?” Fanny said.

“Um-um-yeah,” I muttered.

George beamed. “Great! I’ll pick you up tomorrow at six. Will you be here?”

“Yeah, I’ll b-be here.”

“Awesome. See you soon.” Then he walked out of the shop.

Sarah, Nina, Olivia and Fanny all crowded around me. “What was that all about?” They said in unison.

“I don’t know! He just came out of nowhere.”

“You have any idea where he came from or how he knows your name?”

“No! He just-” I stopped.

“What?” Fanny said.

“Well, last night, after work, I just went up to my room and realized that I have the power to bake a boy, and I bake boys for other people, but never thought about  the kind of guy for me. So I thought of my perfect boyfriend and went to sleep. Then he just… showed up!”

“Mandy! When a fantastical sorceress born with the blessing of engineering a male human through pastries, that fantastical sorceress can never create a male of her own through the power of imagination, or the male she invented through imagination will be born out of magic and wonder!” (Of course, this was a comment from Olivia).

“WHAT?” We all said in unison.

Olivia sighed. “A witch that has the power to bake a boy can’t dream up her own or he’ll come to life. It’s a side effect of having a non-magic being for a parent.” Mom glared at Olivia. “I mean…a wonderful little quirk! Right, Mom?”

Mom shook her head and drove her attention back to me. “So…you just made up the perfect boyfriend for you and he just showed up and asked you on a date?”

I nodded.

“I do not understand magic,” my mom said, and walked away.

My sisters drove their attention to me again. “I can’t believe a guy asked you out! We have to help you pick an outfit! Oh my gosh, can I do your hair?”

“Well, if this is going to be a conversation about sexist and superficial face goop, I’m going to do some algebra problems.”

“I’m going to the highway to see if people are speeding,” Nina said.

“Well, I’m going to help Sarah help you get ready!” Fanny squealed.

So Fanny and Sarah steered me to where Sarah keeps her makeup and hair stuff. Fanny wanted to give me clown face paint in case George had a sense of humor, but Sarah wouldn’t let her. Sarah gave me purple eyeliner and curled my eyelashes with some eyelash curler thing and put on some blush, but I don’t know what affect any of that stuff have. (I might be boy crazy and a hopeless romantic, but that doesn’t mean I understand makeup!) Then they put three hundred different kinds of lip gloss on me for an hour until they decided that they liked the first one. After that you would’ve thought they would be done, but they had barely started. They spent nearly four hours trying different hairstyles on me before realizing they hated them all and that I should just wear my hair the way I wear it everyday. Then the actual important part: the clothes.

I went into my closet and emerged with a short, light green tank top and jeans. Sarah took them into her room and returned empty-handed.

“Where are my clothes?”

“Mandy, don’t tell me you seriously thought I would let you keep those? Oh my gosh, why do you think I hate you? Sweetie, relax, I burned those clothes. Literally burned them.”

I frowned at my sister. “Fine, what would you prefer, Miss Queen of Fashion?”

Sarah inspected my closet. “I think it’s time I show you my closet.”

I didn’t breathe for a full minute. “Your clo-clo-closet?”

Sarah nodded. She gently tugged my arm in a dark room. She shut the door and flicked on a light. For years, if I stepped within even six feet of Sarah’s closet, she would give me an electrical shock for two minutes. (We’re witches, so it doesn’t kill us, but it still hurts. A lot.) So obviously, this room was off-limits. You go in without Sarah’s permission? You just signed your own death warrant. And now, after thirteen years, I was in it. And being in it now, I suddenly felt sorry for Dorothy when she found Oz, because she couldn’t find Sarah’s closet instead. It was fifty times bigger than six football fields put together. The walls were painted in order of the colors of the rainbow, in a wavy pattern. It had 500 different kinds of televisions all over the walls with beanbags of every color of every shade all over the room on the floor, with a pool table in the back and a ginormous basketball court. There was also a Mcdonald’s and a KFC. And there was a escalator that lead to a room two hundred times bigger than the room with the Mcdonald’s, the KFC, the pool table, and the basketball court. The entire room just had clothes clothes clothes clothes clothes clothes clothes clothes CLOTHES! Every single inch of it had clothes. Not one part was empty. All there was was clothes, clothes, clothes.

As I gazed around, not moving, breathing, or doing anything else, Sarah disappeared into a corne. When she came back, she was dragging a rack of clothes behind her.

“Okay, Mandy. These are all the clothes I have that are good for first dates. Pick one.” There was a pleated denim dress, a strapless light blue dress, a red knee-length dress, a jade blazer with a denim bellbottom, and a flower patterned skirt. I looked at all the clothes thoughtfully. I didn’t really know which outfit to pick. I don’t know anything about fashion, so I was kind of stuck.

But finally, FINALLY, I decided that I wanted the blue strapless dress with the jade green blazer. So I put on the outfit I chose with the makeup Sarah wanted to put on me and I put on my favorite high-tops. Sarah thought I looked perfect, and Mom said I was stunning. Olivia said that according to a recent study at Stanford University, I appeared to be what the male population desires. And Fanny, of course, said: “Sarah’s done it! She’s waved her wand, said Bippity, Boppity, Boo, and changed you into a princess! Or, a really pretty teenage witch. You look good either way.” Then she gave me jazz hands.

Chapter 3.

Everyone who’s had or has a boyfriend/girlfriend knows that your first date can turn into your worst date in two seconds. That’s why the best thing to do on your first date is go to a movie. It melts anxiety and you can say you only have the money for one popcorn bucket as an excuse to hold hands in case you reach into the bucket at the same time. So George and I went to see The Amazing Spider-man. It was awesome and we both loved it. And, luckily, we held hands in the popcorn bucket! Yes! And while he walked me home, he let me wear his jacket when I was cold. And then, when we were at my door, he asked me out to play mini golf next Saturday. I said yes and dreamily walked inside.

Olivia, Nina, Emily, Talia, Tara, Sam, and Felicia were totally weirded-out and did not understand, but Sarah, Fanny and my mom totally got it. We spent hours giggling, whispering, and squealing. I know that sounds girly, but I’m not really like that. I’m a little girly, but most of the time I don’t act all sexist. Sure I’m boy crazy and a hopeless romantic, but what I wear is totally tomboy, and my favorite hobbies are using my power and playing soccer. Not to mention I don’t understand fashion or makeup. But when you have your first date, being girly is allowed.

So I went to Sarah’s closet and decided to wear a red peplum with jeans and my favorite hightops. Then I resumed giggling, whispering, and squealing with two of my sisters and my mom. The next day, I didn’t pay attention to the customers at the bakery. I kept talking in this high, soft, floaty voice. Everything I saw was pink and had butterflies flying around it. And I don’t remember one thing a person said unless it was about George.

All my sisters tried to stop me from acting all weird, but nothing worked. But then, Mom had an idea. She took an enormous bucket of ice water and dunked my head into it. Then she shouted “SNAP OUT OF IT!” in my face through a bullhorn. I jumped about a foot in the air and then fell on the floor and fainted. When I woke up, my nine sisters and my mom were staring at me, confused and worried. (Well, Olivia wasn’t really confused. She never is.)

“Hi-hi guys,” I mumbled, shakily standing up.

“Are you okay?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, I think so.” Everything was back to normal. I wasn’t all weird and gross and day-dreamy.

“You’re sure okay?” Sarah asked. I nodded. “Great, Mom. She was finally perfect, after thirteen years, and you broke her!” Sarah stomped off in anger and frustration, and my mom and all of my other sisters but Fanny followed her. Fanny and I looked at each other for a few seconds, and then laughed. Then we went to Sarah’s closet and watched TV while sitting on Sarah’s beanbags. We laughed and joked around and didn’t mention George once. And, to tell you the truth, not thinking about George made me really, really, really, happy. Whenever I did, I started to have a panic attack. So Fanny thought was it was a good idea to pretend George didn’t exist. And it was a good idea. Well, it was a good idea at the time. Later, I realized that it was one of the worst ideas ever.

Chapter 4.

Sorry last chapter was so short! But I had to rush because Mom was on my case about writing this book instead of working. Anyway, this chapter is about my cliché, gross, and totally TV three-week relationship with George. My second date with George was only a couple days after our first date, so didn’t have a long time to prepare. Before the date, I was a nervous wreck. I couldn’t breathe normally, my heart was going at the speed of sound, and my voice kept cracking. Even Fanny, who always knows what to say, couldn’t help me. Mom told me there’s no reason to go crazy over a boy. Nina, Sam, Talia, Tara, Emily and Felicia didn’t care. Olivia told me that most teenage girls feel uneasy with a handsome male specimen, so what I was feeling was normal. And Sarah — shallow, gossiping, self-centered, drama queen Sarah — said: “Mandy, I know what you’re going through. On the first couple dates you have, you feel stressed. But the best thing to remember is that boys aren’t worth you feeling unhappy. You’re supposed to be dating George because he makes you happy, right? So break up with him if you need to, okay?” Shocking, I know, coming from Sarah. But I realized she was right. So was Mom. If George made me feel anything but happy, I should break up with him. Besides, life is more than boyfriends and crushes.

So when I heard somebody ring the doorbell, I marched straight to the door, prepared to break up with George.

I flung open the door and said: “George, we need to-” Then I saw it was a mailman with a package.

“Delivery for Mandy Simon.”

“That’s me,” I said. I signed something and took the package. I brought it to Sarah. Fanny and her were in her closet, playing Air Hockey.

“Hey guys, look what I-” I looked at them closely. “You guys didn’t tell me you had an Air Hockey table!” They blushed. I decided to ignore and I continued. “I got a package from… George.” The two stopped playing. I ripped open the package. Inside was a brand new Windows 8 computer. I pulled it out, opened it and turned it on. There was a video on the screen. I pressed play. It was George.

“Hi Mandy! Sorry i couldn’t play mini golf with you. I got busy at the animal shelter. You see, I volunteer with orphan animals. Anyway, I’m going to be pretty busy for a while, so I was wondering if we could date through videos on this computer. Email me if you want to do it!”

And the video ended.

I looked at my sisters. “No. I say no. I’m not going to date him. He can have his computer back. I don’t want it.”

“Um, Mandy, there’s something else in here,” Sarah said. I looked in the box.

“An opal necklace?”

“That’s real opals,” Sarah said. I believed her, because if anyone knows about accessories, it’s Sarah. “So are you going to do it?”

I took a deep breath, sighed, and opened my Gmail account.

The next few weeks dating George through a computer was really weird. I would have to go on a romantic picnic by myself and talk to a computer, or go on a horse carriage ride by myself with a computer, and it was fun, but really weird. It was the strangest (and only) relationship I’d ever been a part of.  I got to get to know George, and he got to get to know me. It was cool, but a little (okay, a lot) cliché. We would giggle constantly, and he would keep sending me presents, and I felt like some sort of girl in a TV sitcom. You would’ve thought it was perfect, but in reality, it was the worst. Talking to a computer screen just makes you feel weird, and I felt like I wasn’t really getting to know George. I felt like a weirdo with a computer. So, after a while, I realized that I had to break up with him. So one day, I started a Facetime chat and then started to say, “George, I’m really sorry, but-we-we have to-”

“Break up?”

I turned around. I was in the bakery at the time, behind the counter, so how could somebody be behind me? Well, you tell me, ‘cause George somehow was there. “George, how…”

“I had to get into the bakery sometime. How else would I be able to hack into your family’s files and destroy your business?”

“Hack-into-my-bui-what?”

“You see Mandy, you didn’t create me. I was born the son of two convicts, who happened to also be magic. I wanted to get a good job, but with my parent’s reputation, it was impossible. So, I knew I had to break some rules.” George gave me an evil smile and continued. “Then I found you. You, a very smart, kind, sweet girl with a rare talent and a great business, who also believed I was a good guy. So, I went along with it and tricked you. I was secretly learning all about your family’s business, planning to destroy it. And then, one day, I managed to get in, and collapse the system. And now, all of this is mine. Say goodbye to this bakery, Mandy. ‘Cause I’m going to take it over and wipe you and it from existence!” I stared at him, stunned.

“But-how did you know so much about us?”

“That opal necklace had video cameras in the gems. I could watch your every move. That’s right, sister. My  power is evil.” Then he started laughing a really creepy laugh. I shook my head and punched him in the face.

“Guys! Come here! Now!” My nine sisters flashed into the bakery. They read my mind and understood what was happening. “You know, George, you may have collapsed the bakery’s system, but guess what? Nine witches against one jerkface equals one jerkface loser.” I gave him a little smile. “GET HIM!” We all flew up into the air at the same time, and our powers went into action. Sam threw gears, screws, and other mechanical stuff at him. Sarah threw some accessories at him. Fanny threw prop comedy stuff at him. And I pelted him with eggs. “Okay, this is not so effective. Switch to elemental powers mode!” We all breathed fire, water, and ice. (Those are witch powers we use for emergencies.) We lifted him up in the air and threw him around with fire. Then we threw him to the ground. “Oh, and by the way, George, we have a backup system. So you did nothing to us. Ha.” We lifted him with ice, froze him, and threw him to the ground. “Turns out two can play at the jerk game, huh? Well, eleven, actually.” We lifted him up and threw him out the door. “And don’t come back!” we all said in unison. Then Mom came in through the back door. “I’m back from town — oh, good you’re all here, I got dinner, and snacks, oh, and unfortunately, Sam, they didn’t have a build-a-car-starter kit-” Mom stopped. “So, did you girls have a nice afternoon?” We flew down. “Yeah, Mom. We had a great afternoon,” I sighed.

Chapter 5.

I know you’re mind is blown after the last chapter and everything, but there’s more of the story. So I’ll keep going.  In the next three days after my breakup with George, I tried to focus on working at the bakery and nothing else. And it kind of worked. My mind was completely into baking the boys people requested. And, after a little while, I felt better about the whole situation. I mean, there was no point in crying over George. He was a jerk and I didn’t need him. And there was one good thing that came from his arrival: I got eight new friends.

EPILOGUE

The eleven Simons lived in harmony. The girls fought from time to time, but that was all. They enjoyed running their bakery and all became good friends and sisters. And one day….

Emily was going through the bakery’s records in their family’s computer files, and she saw something odd. She squinted at the screen. She felt confused. Then, it hit her like a ton of bricks.

“OH MY GOD.”

To be continued…

CHAPTER ONE: The Water Wheel

On top of Mount Forgetfulness, a hooded figure looks down to the bottom. He is looking through the Ultimate Water Wheel, which is just like a regular water wheel except it has scoops on it and uses lava instead of water. The lava travels down and curves around to a place called Town Town where the lava is used in furnaces to make something for a secret government project called Pain. I’m not going to tell you what Pain is yet… because it’s a secret government project.

This is a time where aliens live among humans. A lot of the humans don’t like it and are trying to destroy the aliens. They do not like the aliens because they think that these beings are more intelligent and they want to be the most intelligent beings on earth. Although humans or Yorks are not the most intelligent beings on earth. Humans are only the third most intelligent beings on earth. Number two is dolphins and I haven’t finished reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy so I don’t know what number one is. There is a growing resistance of people with the organization but plotting against it.

The hooded figure’s name is Jongon. He is part of the resistance. He is going to tell officials from Yorkout – the name of the government organization – that Pain has finally been finished. Though as he gets there, he does not only find government officials…

CHAPTER TWO: The Meeting

Jongon is like an acrobat spinning through the wheels. He puts his foot on the top of the wheel so that he never touches the lava. At the bottom there is an abandoned warehouse to his right. The door is blocked off but that doesn’t seem to stop him. He ducks into a nearby grove of trees where there is a secret entrance. Inside, the government officials, Eamon, Honmon and Sumamon, are waiting and all wearing cloaks.

“Son says Pain is done. I have seen it myself,” says Jongon.

Son is another government official. Jongon is his messenger. Son is one of the few government officials that knows about the resistance but he doesn’t know that Jongon is a part of it.

“We saw,” Honmon says.

Sumamon had his tongue cut out. That’s another story. Eamon was having a panic attack. She has those.

“It’s so…” says Eamon

Jongon and Eamon zeta. I don’t know what zeta means so I need to get a dictionary. I’m back and here it is…

Chapter 2 ½ : The Dictionary

zeta – when two people are able to read each others mind.

zoom – to go fast.

Okay, it’s missing a few words, but it has what I need.

Chapter 2 ¾ : Meanwhile back in the book…

“You sure you want to say that?” says Jongon.

“Yeah no,” Eamon says.

“Let’s go!” says Jongon.

And so they set off to the balcony around the corner overlooking Pain. Pain is a lopsided idea to have humans mate with Yorks, but there was an accident in the lab (they thought that they were hostile so used DNA). Somehow insect DNA was mixed in and the result was the basis for Pain. Yorkout thought they could use them to intimidate the Yorks. In short it yorked.

Before Jongon can say something, Eamon turns into her normal look, a York, and flies away. He never sees her again. A York is an alien that can fly and has four points at each of the corners of its body with claws on the ends and a flap of skin connecting the four together which work like wings. They have whiskers and their eyes are red parallelograms, points facing in. The only noise it makes is a kind of high-pitched mechanical raspy screech. Yorks can also shape shift to look like humans wearing cloaks as long as they don’t take their cloaks off, because the cloaks turn into their skin, so they can’t take their cloaks off, because taking their cloaks off would be like taking their skin off. They have a chrome finish to their body except for a small rhombus on their chest. The top triangle is red and the bottom triangle is blue.

As Jongon turns to go he hears a thwomb. It sounds like an arrow being fired out of a bow. He does not turn back. That was no ordinary arrow. It was an arrow with a net at the end, capturing Eamon! Cue dramatic music. Dramatic muuuuusic? All right, skip the music.

CHAPTER 3 by Jongon

A little chat with the governor of Pain: uh, I don’t like to write, so I’m using a recorder thing. And then Mr. Narrator can just write it in for me.

Jongon: Pain is doing well!

Governor: Good. Recently, we caught a York flying in from the balcony overlooking Pain.

Jongon: What have you been doing with him?

Governor: Actually, it’s a girl that goes by the Eamon.

Jongon: Hey, I saw her turn into a York! Guess I forgot to sound that blare alarm that you gave me.

Governor: Then you shall have to oversee the workings of Pain near the balcony for one day. Also, that’s where the York is going.

Random Guy Walking In: I’m gonna use this mind reader to read Jongon’s mind!

CHAPTER 3 ½

Random Guy Walking Into Mind-Reading Device

He is currently thinking: “Oh yeah! I get to save that girl that I met! I wonder if she likes me!

CHAPTER 3 ¾

Meanwhile, back in the conversation recorded on the recorder thingy owned by Jongon:

Jongon: I told you never to use that mind reader thing on me! Let me see that! (Jongon destroys mind reader thingy).

Governor: Great. Now you have to be there for an extra ten seconds!

Narrator: Cue dramatic music.
Governor: Hey, narrator! What are you doing in our meeting?

Narrator: I have a name, ya’ know.

Governor: Yeah, what is it?

Narrator: Uh… narrator.

Jongon: Alright, alright. He’s narrator and you’re governor, and can we just get on with this meeting already!!??

Governor: For that, just go straight to your sentence. And mind-reading guy? Fix the mind reader thingy already!

End recorder thingy recording.

CHAPTER 4

Let’s Rescue Eamon!

By Game Show Host

First off, Jongon, you can either rescue Eamon or would you rather have a neeeew caaaar?! Now let’s get serious, and start working and as Jongon’s back at his job still rescuing Eamon (even though I’m pretty sure a new car would be better). In Pain, there happens to be a bunch of chains hanging from the air, which I was planning to use to lower his new car, and there happens to be a space where you drop stuff in where I was thinking of dropping in his new car, and – the best part is – there’s a Toyota dealership in Town Town. And Jongon is making sure everyone is working as hard as they can, waiting for Eamon to come around, and probably thinking, “Man, I wish I had taken that new car. Then I could’ve used it to get Eamon out of here.”

Ok, out of his mind now… And look! Eamon’s shift is coming around and she happens to be holding the car keys to a new car that she did take, which happens to be parked in the York prison parking lot right next to the Mazarati of Esasopa.

Jongon has just swung into action, taking Eamon’s chains off. And now all of the creatures created for Pain are chasing them, and I’m pretty sure Jongon is thinking, “Man I’m pretty sure I really wish I had that new car now.”

Eamon says, “I’ve been studying you for the last twenty five minutes I’ve been here and I realize they’re afraid of fire and I know where the other Torturons (that’s what they call themselves even though we all call them Flaming Webions) keep all their self-igniting flaming whips.” They are now running to the small cabinet with the flaming Webions next to the chocolates. Time to get my Toyota. I’ll get them. I have picked up them and I am escaping. We are now at Yorkin headquarters. I have handed the mike to Eamon…

CHAPTER 5

Agent Time

by Eamon

So I have escaped Pain. Yay! Yay! Happy day! Somebody get out the cupcakes! I hate it in there. There was, like, zero light except for those, like, Flaming Webions. By the way, have you ever felt a mixture of the lash of a whip and the burn of fire? It’s not a very pleasant feeling.

Now that Game Show Host guy is flying away on his car, which has magically turned into a pony, he has left us with the leader of a secret government project within a secret project within a public government organization. In other words, lots of these people work in Pain except for the people who worked to make Pain and now try to destroy Pain. The man says that if we manage to take out Pain we would take out much of Yorkout. Pain is the new center of the bull’s eye. I am in human form because these chairs are too small for a York to sit in. Plus we can’t really sit. We can just waddle around in York form. This man is trying to employ us as partners to try to destroy Pain and thus destroy most of Yorkout, except for Panic and Anger. The leader of Yorkout is a man named Son.

We obviously say yes and are immediately taken to agent training.

To be continued in Part Two…

Chapter 1.

“I have never heard such a thing before!” I said.

My first name is James, but my whole name is James Leonard Olshansky. But I just prefer Dr. James. The sound I just heard is a type of Frankenstein-ish thingy but instead of Frankenstein I am resurrecting my daughter Clementine. She died in a roller coaster accident *sniff*. Her head got hit, so I made a “magical” machine that will make her live exactly 89 more years. She is twelve years old *UHG* I mean she was twelve years old.

The “magical” machine is made out of the finest metals, wires, circuit boards, and technology. I called the machine: Resurrector 10,200. I hope it works; I spent weeks trying to make this and it will break my heart if it doesn’t. The sound is a tingly sort of fairy sound. I thought the Resurrector 10,200 was working, but I think that the used tungsten, the rusty, cracked wire is broken. The used wire of electricity, the tungsten, just a tiny little filament, wouldn’t make such a huge difference, you would think. But I need it. *Sigh* Think, James think! Of course! The used tungsten from that scientist usually fails with light bulbs! I was supposed to use a new tungsten! Anyway, I talk to myself a lot, but I just think it helps me focus.

Chapter 2.

I think I should get something to eat, I said to myself. Maybe a turkey sandwich, or chicken, eh whatever, I like turkey, but my daughter likes chicken! Maybe I’ll just do eenie minee mo and pick whatever.

*********************** **************************************

“Ooh! Just what I need, a tungsten!” I said out of nowhere, in front of maybe a good 16 people (it’s a small town). I found the part I needed for my “magical” machine in the window pane of the town’s hardware store.  Running to it: “Ah! *pant, pant* here *pant* it is!” I panted.

“Thanks, I appreciate your business,” said a British stranger, starting to walk out the door, with the machine part I need for the light bulb. “NO!!!!! THE ONLY ONE LEFT!” I screamed with a feeling of never hearing my daughter’s sweet voice again, the light bulb can heat up the machine making her warm as soon as she wakes up. I live in Iceland, a very cold area, even though you can just find a hardware store in North America almost everywhere, a little town in Iceland is very different, and the light bulbs just got sold out. Tungsten is also rare, so I guess I cannot hear my daughter’s sweet voice and the funny jokes she made up.

Wait! I found a receipt on the dusty floor of the  hardware store. It says:

1297 Skaroseyri Road

Akereyri, Iceland

11116

1 tungsten: $26.89

Subtotal: $26.89

signature:

Terry M.

Chapter 3

Who’s Terry M.? I thought over and over, wondering if that was the person who bought my tungsten. Maybe I should just ask everyone if they have that name, but at the same time I will see if they have a British voice. ”Smart idea!” I said out of nowhere.

*********************************************************************

“Excuse me, but is your name Terry M.?” I asked.

“Sorry, no,” said the stranger I had asked.

I was starting to think that after the 35 people I asked with all the same answers, no, there’s almost no possible way there can be a person with a British voice called Terry M. in this town.

The millisecond after I thought that, I heard a faint British voice saying “Of course,” in front of an old lady’s house.

”Yes!” I whispered excitedly,”finally!”.

*Pant*, *pant*, I run across the street to the British man while panting, “Wait! *pant* wait!, is that you Mr.Terry M.?”

Now I am following this annoying man asking, “Did you buy the tungsten?!” repeatedly.

Finally an answer:“Yes.”

What’s with the attitude? I thought. Maybe he was answering me all along and I was interrupting him with all of my excited questions.

******************************************************************

We were now in Terry’s house. Then he started the conversation.

“I need this tungsten for my sixth cousin, Corie. She was in a car accident and I need her to be alive again, so I need the tungsten for the only remaining light bulb I have, do you have a problem?” the man explained. I was starting to think that we are alike in that way of wanting our loved ones to re-live, or get resurrected.

“I need it for the exact same reason, so do you understand?” I replied.

“Well, I do. But I have spent thousands for my resurrector, and I accidentally used a dead tungsten for my light bulb and it broke, so I need them so I can warm her up and not let the chemicals and the cold weather of Iceland make her get hypothermia.The chemicals I use are very cold and cannot be interacted with the human body when resurrected.”

“Okay,” I replied, freaked out that the man had almost the same reasons to get a new tungsten as I did.

“Well then, you can go get some in the hardware stores of the United States of America,” the annoying man said.

“I’m not going to go to the United States just to get something at the hardware store that will probably not be found!” I said with an impatient sort of voice.

“Well then, I guess you won’t resurrect your loved one after all, as I am keeping the new tungsten for myself only.”

I paused with silence. He really wants me to go to a hardware store in America, maybe I can get a lightbulb, and just get this over with, or maybe I can just deal with my daughter’s loss—wait! I can just order the light bulb on the internet!

***************************************************************

4 weeks later.

 “Dad?…”

*Gasp* “It works!”

“Father! You made me die! How dare you let me go on that rollercoaster!” my daughter said, so angry to the point that she was turning red.

“Honey, I have waited so long to hear your sweet voice! And you just scream at me?!” I screamed angrily at my daughter. “Do you know how much I missed you?? Isn’t heaven nice though?” I said, feeling guilty for some reason, while fixing my hair (so she doesn’t think I’m a maniac).

“Father *cough* heaven is beautiful, but I kept on falling through clouds *sniff*. I got some bruises,” Clementine said.

I was starting to think that she was going a little crazy, falling through clouds in heaven.

“Qwertyuiop-asdfghjkl-zxcvbnm-whejyuiop-asdfghjkl-zxcvbnm-jjsj!!!”

“Oh my god!” I said in fear, ”my daughter’s having a seizure!!”  “Hey-irebgierfw-dad-dad-adad-eeeeeeey!!!” screamed my daughter.

1 week later.

“Dad, can I get out of the hospital?” my poor daughter said. I felt guilty somehow. I think it’s just the thought of me bringing her back, then having to be dragged into a hospital. I even hated them, the lights make me lightheaded, and other annoying things like that. “Father!”

“Yes?!” I said, so surprised and scared at the same time that my shoulders were tense.

“You didn’t answer me when I asked you if I can get out of the hospital, seriously, all I have been eating is cold powdered mashed potatoes,” my daughter said in a depressed way. “Don’t you worry, we will get you out of the hospital,” I said. “I’m going to ask Dr.Sandler,” I said in a low voice, so my daughter could relax.

***********************************************************************

I left the hospital and told my daughter I would be back soon, before the argument with Terry M.

“I cannot believe that you resurrected your daughter! I was going to do it first!” the insolent man said. I held my breath and closed my mouth shut, before I was going to punch him so hard that it would leave him a mark for years. I bet I was the only one to actually shut him up, he just kept on talking with no sense on how his sixth cousin, Corie, should have been resurrected first, before my daughter. I was starting to think that he is sick in the head and I was wasting my time on this person.

“Bye,” I said. I opened his front door, then walked outside.

“Wait!” said Terry M. His sentence ended with a door slammed shut.

”That’s it,” I said, I may be crazy (just slightly) but I am not spending any precious time on this person.

                                                          Chapter 4.

I was now back at the hospital, BING BING BING BING

“All patients stay put,” an alarming microphone said a couple of times after the bings.

“Daddy!” Clementine screamed with all her will.

“Honey!” I screamed back, ”It’s okay!“

I ran as fast as I could. “No,” said an insolent ‘guard.’ More like, ‘I want your daughter to die again’.

“I. Need. To. See. Her!” I screamed.

“Sorry, I don’t want to do this but, in your daughter’s shape, we can’t let her get out,” said the stupid, insolent man. *Crack*.  I gave the stupid man an uppercut and he passed out.  Perfect, I thought, I can sprint right past him.

Chapter 5.

I was now holding my daughter in my arms, she passed out because she got really alarmed and was not feeling well.

***********************************************************************

I was at my house, and I put my daughter on her bed, I kept her impression on the bed. I do not know why, but thank god she wasn’t paying any attention to it.

“Dad?” she said tiredly.

“Yes, honey?” I ran to her bed and was surprised that she woke up.

“Um, where am I?” I was astonished.

“Honey, you are in your house, remember?” I said, terrified that she completely lost her memory.

”Oh yeah, it’s just that I kind of forgot, but you don’t have to worry.”

I was ignoring her attempts to calm me down. I was actually worried, but I said: “Of course I don’t have to worry,” just so she could not be anxious.

I had a smoked chicken sandwich for lunch, moist with mayo, and just wonderful, it was one of my daughters favorites.

***********************************************************************

“And here we meet again,” said Terry M.

I tried running across the street, trying to get away from the man, hair up, British accent, I cannot stand him, not to mention that he was…(let’s just say, “off.”) I was going to the grocery store, but after, I’m going to my lab. I think my machine is messing my daughter up. Thank goodness Terry M. wasn’t trying to follow me, but that was odd, he usually tries to follow me, maybe he just has mood swings or something.

*************************************************************

I am at my lab, and for no apparent reason, the machine is acting up. Now all I have to do is turn it off, or destroy it because my daughter is not going to die again, I said to myself, proud that I accomplished the dream of bringing my daughter back.“Hallo! Hallo Hallo!” screamed the resurrector 10,200.

“Oh lord!” I screamed,”what-are-you-and-who-are-you!” I screamed, the resurrector actually had teeth, red eyes, and large creepy crawly legs.

“I am going to kill all of your loved ones in life—as in your…daughter!” Life kind of froze, and I was stuck, feeling faint, I collapsed.

Chapter 6.

>CLEMENTINE’S POINT OF VIEW<

So enough about my father, I am Clementine, and even though my father gave a sort of definition of me, he doesn’t know much. I actually love turkey sandwiches, but for some reason, he just forced me to have chicken, he said it’s healthier for you. Anyway, after that incident with the roller coaster, someone in their right mind would never do that again. I just hated the feeling of being in that roller coaster. After seeing my  best friend on a different ride, my father always thought I should (imitating his voice) “go by the tradition of going on a roller coaster in the summer.” Then guess what happened—I was in the middle of a free fall, one of the most exciting things on a roller coaster ride is a free fall, or at least it’s supposed to be. Then I fell out of my seat and bam! But anyway, back to the story:

After I heard a robot say that he was going to kill all of my father’s loved ones, such as *gulp* m-m-me. I just heard a thump, then that was it, I called the number 911 (I think I am starting to remember certain details, and remembering how to use gadgets). I wished I didn’t panic or had anxiety, or think that there was a robot that my teacher Mr. Dannie Mendenhall made to make my father pass out and take my unfinished homework that I kept under my bed. He is a teacher from before I died, but I am not going to school now, because of my memory, but I am going to go soon. Anyway, here is what I said to the police when they came, and here is what happened:

*************************************************************

“After I forgot about where I was, my father was going to the grocery store,” I explained to the officers.

“Ye sure this happened?” Replied the Southern-ish accented officer, I wasn’t sure what the accent was.

” Yes, I am sure (for some reason I remembered that,but nothing else) I think my memory is definitely getting better,” I said  sarcastically.

“Okay child, y’all are gonna get into trouble once I know you are lying. I know you remember, you just don’t wanna tell me,” said the officer. It was sad because he didn’t know my tragedy, and didn’t know that I kind of lost all of my memory, but it’s getting better slowly. You just need the right amount of patience and enough to

let the days when you forgot where the bathroom is just pass.

**********************************************************

“Ooh!” I said in excitement, I spotted macaroni and cheese in one of the cupboards in the kitchen. I love macaroni and cheese, so while the officers are looking at the creepy machine that I was basically born out of, to look for clues of how it made my father pass out, I’m going to eat. Such an ordinary life, I thought sarcastically to myself. *Sigh*

“CLEAR!” an officer said out of nowhere, at least for myself- I had no clue on what they were doing with all of the rooms and the machine, all they told me was, “Don’t worry, we will find your father and then we will see what that machine is used for.” I was holding my breath at the last nine words: we will see what the machine is used for. I didn’t answer because I know what the machine is used for- but my father will never forgive me if I give away the magic of resurrecting.

Here is what the machine is made out of: even though it is made out of the finest metals and blah, blah, blah-it still had a turkey tray, strapped onto another turkey tray with duct tape, and it had a light bulb, under the two turkey trays, with a whole bunch of sciency stuff, like tubes and wires and circuit boards. It was like a mix of cheap and sciency, did I also mention the toothpicks?

My father picks his teeth, because he says it helps him concentrate even better when his teeth are clean, so he can do his work, I just don’t understand him sometimes.

“The man’s waking up!” an officer said surprisingly, I was surprised too, my dad is waking up from a monster machine making him faint, I ran down the steep stairs of the basement, breathing in the grimy air (more like 90% dust,and 10% air) “AAH!” I tripped and I was now rolling down the stairs-feeling faint, like my father. I fainted.

Chapter 7.

>Clementines point of view<

“Honey! Are you alright?!” my father cried. I never saw him with so many tears. I could make out him crying but… “It’s okay honey! Daddy’s here, I’m okay!” my father interrupted my thinking.

“I don’t know, the girl just started running down those stairs and fell, I didn’t know what to do, thank god you woke up,” said one of the officers.

”Yes, thank  god  I woke up-by the way, how did you find out that I fainted?” my dad asked another officer,

“Oh well—(UGHUM)—I just found out because your daughter called 911, and I just (the officer started having a British voice) UGHUM and I certainly heard the robot scream and…” said an unfinished officer.

“Wait, did you have a British accent?” asked my father, “because I just heard a similar voice and…”

“NOOOOOOO!” said the officer. BING BONG BING PING PING. The officer was shooting all over the place. I think my father angered him.

”NO,NO NOOOOOOOO!“ screamed the angry Terry M. I was terrified and hid in one of the corners of our large basement.

Chapter 8.

>Back to Dr.James Leonard<

I was so terrified by the fact that Terry M. was shooting all over the basement, I think Terry M. is trying his best to kill my daughter.

But he didn’t know how much my daughter and I can fight, he doesn’t know us, and he is just a crazy, sick man that is trying to ruin our family, he also mentioned that he wanted his sixth cousin Corie M. to get resurrected before my daughter. But really, who cares if my daughter gets resurrected first or if my daughter gets resurrected after his cousin?

“Let’s go,” said the demanding Terry M. “we shouldn’t care about these people, I know them. The man just knocked out himself for attention, and his daughter is just fine. Plus, who bloody cares about these turkey trays! It just doesn’t make sense!” Cops these days, they bloody care about a sick daughter and an insolent man who just knocked himself out, Terry M. said to himself.

The other officers looked shocked, and were  so scared that they just followed the commands. One was even shaking, and saying “Y-y-yes sir” and “o-of -course officer Terry”.

“Wait- wait!” I cried. I really wanted the cops to discover why this machine is trying to kill my daughter and why it is going crazy, but I was too late, they left the house, and slammed the door while they were at it.

“Daddy! Daddy! I missed you so much! I have no idea why you got knocked out!” said my daughter. I ran to her, and grasped her in my arms, it made me cry. I was terrified also, but I quickly wiped my tears away, and said: “you don’t need to worry, we won’t let that crazy machine knock me out again. I have a plan.”

“What is the plan?” She replied,

“Well, I am going to destroy the Resurrector and everything will be fine,” I said, not saying my thoughts, but what I was thinking is that Terry M. must have controlled the resurrector. I am certainly baffled by the thoughts of Terry M. trying to, I guess, get revenge for what I did—but what I am wondering is if he’s ever even had the time to resurrect his sixth cousin, but I am not quite sure. I should spy on that crazy man and find out the hard way, instead of asking him, but it would probably be even harder to ask than to spy on him. Because he’s not quite sane, and the man will probably just ignore me or say that it wasn’t fair that I resurrected my daughter before his cousin, and even then ignore my question.

I was overly thinking, and thank god my daughter asked if I could braid her hair, or else I would’ve kept on thinking about Terry.

I was not so sure on how to braid hair, but Clementine taught me how, and I got it after a while.

*************************************************************

“Pot roast!” I said to my daughter. It was the next day of the incident, and we are having pot roast for lunch. I thought it should just be an easy day after everything that had just happened. Halloween is on October 31st, and it is a month away, so it is pretty cold, about 39 degrees Fahrenheit. In the middle of my pot roast I heard the phone ring, brriiing! brrring! Then I picked it up, but Clementine interrupted me.

“Daddy when is the pot roast done?”asked my daughter.

“I don’t know honey!” I tried screaming across the room, then finally I hear an answer on the other line.

“Hi, you are invited to our secret society, and we are going to have a meeting,” said Terry M. “Be there and I will tell you everything, even the reason why I was shooting all over your basement and screaming ‘no.’ There is a reason for everything and it’s a better reason than your reason of resurrecting your daughter first before my cousin,” Terry said under his breath.

I felt like a kid; I wanted to hide under the covers, he wanted to meet me in a “secret society” and “explain” why he did everything but I didn’t know what he was going to do, and I did not know what to say. But I am going to go there anyway, I thought.

“Can you answer me? I am inviting you to a secret society!” screamed the impatient Terry M.

“Yes, I hear you,” I answered. Then hung up, sighed, and thought, this situation is never going to end.

Chapter 9.

I do not even know how he got my house phone number exactly, but I am a little anxious, maybe I just told him what the number was when we were still “friends” for about a week, before everything turned to heck (or as my daughter would say, when  everything went to mush).

********************************************************

I am on my way to the secret society (using the address Terry—you know what? Instead of saying ‘Terry M.’ I should say ‘Terry Mad’. It sounds better, don’t you think?)

*******************************************************

I am waiting at the front door in the underground secret society. I just really hope he is going to go through another mood swing, just so he doesn’t feel like shooting all over the place, that’s if he even has a gun. I am starting to feel nauseous, and extremely worried because I have no clue what he is going to do after he opens that door. Screeeech I hear, and I see the door open. I am terrified because I am face to face with Terry (Mad).

“H-hi” I say to him.

“Hello” Terry replies,”come in, and I will explain everything.” Terry said this in a disturbing voice, sort of like an evil British voice.

I was now in a seat, and Terry was standing up right in front of me staring down right at my eyes, my face was numb, I was shaking-and I was terrified.

“I know you’re shaking, and I know why. You’re scared, you think I am terrifying, but I like that. I feel like I’m in control” Terry M. said, he started to stare at me.

“So what was the reason for you to shoot in my basement?!” I screamed.

“It was for a good reason!” Terry screamed back.

I jumped off my chair in anger, and screamed: “Then what was the reason!?” I was turning red, and I grasped Terry’s neck collar.

“Okay! Okay! I will tell you once you stop doing that!” Terry screamed, but I held his neck collar a little longer for revenge. Then I finally let go, and I waited for him to explain why he did such a thing in my basement. “The reason why I did that is because my cousin never got resurrected, and my family is blaming me for everything. They are depending on me to resurrect her, and I didn’t, so I thought that I should knock out your daughter, hide my cousin’s actual body, and just say that the resurrector kind of changed her a bit. Then take your daughter home.”

I was bright red, and I was ready to end this. “Trying to use another human body is cruel,” I said and punched his face repeatedly.

He struggled and screamed, “YOU’LL END UP IN A VERY HOT PLACE AT THE END!” screamed Terry, “AND I WONDER WHAT THAT PLACE IS!” he screamed sarcastically.

I just kept on, for revenge, and for anger, until he collapsed, and said:

“I now cannot see my family, they will find out and you-you’ll end up in jail for this.”

“I JUST WANT TO STOP THIS!” I cried with dozens of tears running down my cheeks, and making their way down my chin. I sobbed and kept on wiping my tears, ”I DON’T WANT YOU TO STEAL MY DAUGHTER AND I DON’T WANT YOU IN MY LIFE!” I kept on punching, then I stopped, and I left him on the floor, looking at him, I kept on looking at him. He wasn’t breathing. I was still crying.

“I DIDN’T NEED TO KILL YOU!” I cried. Blood was running down his face like tears, and I felt so angered at myself and had feelings of guilt.

Chapter 10.

I drove home

*************************************************************

My daughter asked what happened and I answered : “It’s dealt with, don’t worry.”

“Okay!” my daughter smiled. “How about we have that pot roast?”

“Okay” I answered, and I felt a huge relief off my chest, and that was it.

BREEONG BREEONG NEEEER NEEEEER NEEEEEROOOOOOOOO. I saw the flashing colors of America, red- white and blue, “Wait a sec!” I told my daughter. I walked down the 12 steps of of house and opened the door,then I was shocked because I heard a police officer say: “Are you Dr.James Leonard Olshansky?” Is this about Terry M.? Am I in trouble? I was asking a whole bunch of questions in my head.

“Y-y-yes I am, do you have a question?” I answered  “Do you know this person?” said the officer, he showed me a picture of him.

THE END

There is a ten-year-old girl, her name is Brittany. Brittany lives on a planet named Mars and she is a vampire. She has blonde hair, blue eyes, and if you can imagine her, she would have pale skin. Sometimes, she gets mad and angry and she gives people bad, bad dreams on her planet. Giving people bad dreams is beyond her control. These people don’t know that she has powers so they just don’t bother to say anything about it because they don’t know.

Her mom is also a monster, and her dad has many brothers. They have another child named Alex. He is a werewolf. Brittany always does experiments on Alex. Her experiments are games for them. One of the experiments is blowing him up. She goes to the store and gets potions.

So Brittany one day Brittany went to the store to get potions. When she was going to the store, she sees a six-year-old girl. She was crying because she was afraid of the dream she had. And she said, “I wish I never had bad dreams.”

Brittany was really sad about it.

So Brittany finally got to the store. She felt bad that she couldn’t do anything about giving people bad dreams. She said to herself, “I wish I didn’t give people bad dreams.” She was sad when she came to the store.

When she was at the store, she bought some potions for her experiments with her brother. And then she saw another monster. He was bluish greenish with yellow in the middle. He was six feet tall! He wasn’t from her family.

She asked, “Who are you?”

And then he said, “I’m a kidnapper,” and he kidnapped her.

He had four arms, he had six eyes, and he had a huge mouth. Brittany was screaming and screaming. The monster put duct tape on her mouth.

So finally he got home and he taped her to a chair. And he wanted to steal all the powers from her family and all the money. That’s all he wanted, and then he would let her free.

She said, “No!”

The monster said, “Huh?” He was very mad. He let her watch TV and then when she got distracted, he pulled her hair and put her in a box she couldn’t escape from the box. She used her magic. First she kicked the box and punched the box, then she pushed the box with both hands and accidently burned the box. She got out, but then she saw the monster walking by.

She had to fight the monster. She was feeling angry because she had two obstacles. The monster was very hard to fight. Since he had four arms, she had to grab onto his arms and swing him around so he could fall. She needed to throw all his air out of him so he could die. She tried to use her powers. It worked. She destroyed the monster and she felt for it and she was mad that she felt bad for it. Once again she gave people bad dreams. And she said, “Oh no, oh no!”

She went back and she got cornered by the monster. She had a knife and she used it to slice all his eyes open. It was very painful and disgusting. It made her feel awkward. She grabbed all four arms and swung him around. When he fell, she put her foot on him and he didn’t have any air left in his body.

So then she went home and saw the magic hourglass in her room. She said, “What can this do?” A crystal ball surrounded the hourglass. She had to wait until the hourglass flipped over three times. Each time it was done, she flipped it over. Then she finally got the most powers in her family and she used her powers to take away one of her powers that was giving people bad dreams. Then she moved to a planet named Mn and she loved it so she could control her powers.

THE END

Chapter 1

Grunt listened to the boring story. Grunt wanted to be outside playing with the big, loud wolves rather than staying inside a dusty and dark cave. He knew that the reason why his parents were staying in the cave was because they were scared of the outside world. They only went out when they had to hunt. The rest of the day was spent just sitting down and sharpening rocks on the cave walls or drawing pictures with the tar.

Grunt was nibbling on the raw lamb that he, Grunt, had caught. The family knew that since Grunt was not afraid of the outside, he could just get the food for them and they could just stay in the cave for as long as they wanted like a bunch of overfed pigs. Grunt was hardly listening to the scary story. Everyone in the tribe except him was listening. Grunt was laboring and making spears and making tents for the hunting party who hardly ever went hunting. Grunt was so good at hunting because he tamed a couple of the wolves to help him hunt. He was also known besides Grunt as Friend of the Wolves because every other caveman’s enemy was the wolf. Man and dog were not best friends; they were the worst of enemies.

Grunt came to the conclusion that he would rather be listening to the story than doing all the dirty work for the tribe. He crawled over to the fire and listened to the Old Caveman tell the story. Grunt laughed when the people shivered and drew back in terror and surprise. It seemed like the same story kept them being afraid. The same old story led them to the same reaction. He thought that it might be reasonable for them to be scared the first time, but why be scared if you heard it all your life? The cavemen knew every word of the story and they were still shrieking at some of the violent parts. He then grunted in caveman dialect. It roughly translated to, “I want to learn how to shiver.”

The old man said “If you can’t shiver, you don’t qualify as a true man. You have  always been odd. You have not learnt how to shiver by now. All these men and boys who are shivering have gone out into the world to do so. If you want to learn how, get off the floor and go out into the world!” That day he vowed that he would learn how to shiver.

Grunt wondered that maybe his life could be more scary than this story. Maybe doing that would teach him how to shiver. He was starting to think that maybe if he made his life interesting, he could teach himself how to shiver. So he snuck toward the boulder at the cave entrance which was blocking the way out. He squeezed through a tiny crack beneath the boulder.

Outside, the light was fading. The sun was lowering and it was beginning to snow. In the distance he heard a wolf howling at the edge of the moon on the horizon. Within five minutes, the sun was gone. But so was Grunt. He was wondering where the sun goes after it sets, so he headed west. He was running, trying to keep up with it. He wondered what would happen once he got to the other horizon. So then he stopped. He knew he had reached the next horizon. But he didn’t see anything different. He just saw an icy stretch of water, showing the last rays of the day. He looked around. He was standing at the top of a very tall, chalk cliff. The sun was there, on the freezing water. It was glinting like gold under torchlight. Grunt knew he could go no further, so he turned back. Then, his eyes widened as big as the sun. The pack of wolves had smelt him out!

The wolves were cornering him. He tried to calm them, but these wolves looked far from taming. Then, he pulled out his crude stone knife. Grunt knew that the chances of surviving with a mere stone knife against a pack was very small. He didn’t rush towards the wolves. He would wait for them to come to him. The wolves realised that if he was not afraid of them, then he wasn’t a weak target. The wolves backed off.

He tried to shiver about this close encounter, but he didn’t shiver. He stomped his foot on the icy rocks.

When he returned home, he received a lot of scorn. Grunt said, “I was just trying to learn how to shiver.”

But the Old Man said, “If you want to learn how to shiver, go out into the world. Then you will learn how to shiver by the end of a day.”

Chapter 2

So, for the second time in half an hour, Grunt was out in the bitter cold having no idea where he was going. He just kept walking south. He knew that if he went down it would get warmer, so he just kept walking and walking and walking and walking. Then, he fainted. He was extremely cold. He woke up in the morning under six feet of snow. He continued his journey south, determined to learn how to shiver.

Soon, winds from the west were whipping up the snow, so he had no sense of direction. The snow was thickening in his eyes, and his hand and tongue were red with cold. In the distance, he saw a cave. The cave was pitch black, blacker than night.

Grunt, without thinking of the consequences, stepped in the cave. Then, a wolf jumped out of the darkness!

Grunt realised that he either would have to become friends with this wolf or he would have to invade the cave and push him out into the snow. The wolf snarled at Grunt, and Grunt snarled back. No, he could not make friends with the wolf because the wolf would not give him enough time to before the wolf consumed him. Grunt realised that he was becoming less patient for the wolves. Anyway, now that he was out in the wild alone, everything was his enemy.

Grunt was a very strong caveman. He was not an adult yet, so he didn’t have the strength to throw the boulder at his cave into the air, but he was still very strong. He got to high-ground, which in this case was a rock. The wolf could not get up there. The wolf was ready to jump into the air a soon as Grunt would.

Grunt jumped, and kicked as he did. This resulted in a couple of shattered teeth for the wolf. The dog left the cave, limping. Grunt could see the red stain of blood pouring from his mouth on to the fresh snow. Soon, the wolf disappeared into the cloudy blizzard.

Grunt realised two problems. He had no idea where food would be at this time, because he had never hunted in those condition and where would he get water. In his old home, there had been a cool mountain spring. Grunt set his sights on exploring the cave. To do that he needed to find a fire. He knew how to make fire. He had a chunk of flint in his pocket. He saw two thick logs at the edge of the darkness.

The logs were lit, and the fire that was roaring was nice and cozy. The cave was huge, and the fire shone upon a waterfall. This waterfall was going into a hole in the cave below, which was were the water flowed into a deep, dark, ravine. After a long day of exploring, Grunt fell asleep.

Chapter 3

Grunt realised that he had still not learned how to shiver. He had heard absolutely horrible stories about the south. He had to go there. He heard that there were these strange and wicked creatures called “Humans”. The humans called them Cavemen. That was offensive, thought Grunt. They were the Neanderthals. He would prove to them that these tricky and cunning people would make him shiver, and he, Grunt, would conquer all the land. Grunt smiled a toothy, evil, grin. He had traveled miles away from home. Cavemen can travel at a surprisingly fast rate: 20 miles per hour. The cavemen literally powerwalk.  Grunt had traveled something around 300 miles. He had left his cave back in the area where the city Oslo is to Stockholm. Stockholm is where Grunt was sitting in his cave.

Grunt got up from the ground and picked up his flint and headed outside of the cave. He started journeying South. Then a stampede occurred.

It was no regular stampede. Today our stampedes resemble that of wildebeests charging across the African country and buffalos charging across the fields of America. Back then, the stampede was of huge, bulky mammoths. Their great horns were very dangerous and in the north they were aggressive to cavemen.

Grunt realised that he had no choice but to run for his life. The beating of the feet got louder from the mammoth and they were crashing into one another and having fights amongst themselves. Grunt stopped running. He looked at the mammoth. Two huge mammoths were fighting to become the leader of the tribe. The biggest mammoth executed a blow upon the other mammoth. The other mammoth attempted to get the mammoth which had hit him back but that mammoth simply deflected it. That is exactly what the biggest mammoth did until the other mammoth was so exhausted that he felt on the ground. The mammoth comrades moved on with the new leader leaving him in the snow to get up.

The mammoth continued on to stampede. Grunt got out of their way and cautiously went to the mammoth. Grunt held back with his hands but then quickly he touched the ivory horn of the mammoth. The mammoth was suddenly alert. His eyes fluttered open. But when the mammoth saw him, to Grunt’s surprise, the mammoth did not attack.

The mammoth picked himself up and stared down at Grunt with huge black eyes. He softly cooed to Grunt to come and touch his horn. Grunt did not know that the mammoth had asked this but he still thought that the cooing sound was inviting him to touch the mammoth. So he did. Grunt had an idea. He could ride on the mammoth to get to the South and conquer the humans. Then he tried to climb up to the mammoth. The mammoth showed no resistance. So then he kicked the side of the mammoth gently and the mammoth went roughly on the same direction he wanted to go. South. They rode for hours and hours. Finally Grunt saw something memorable. He saw a huge unfrozen ocean and in the distance he saw what is

today mainland Europe.

CHAPTER 4

Grunt realised that he could not take the mammoth with him. Grunt also realised that he had a problem. He had no idea how to swim.

Hey you,

Do you want to hear a story about a girl (me) with an extremely pathetic life? If yes, you have come to the right place. So sit back and relax, and make sure to strap on your seatbelts because here we go.

Hi, I am Sophie, and let me tell you some things about me:

1. I live in a family of four kids.

2. My dad and mom passed away.

3. My best friend lives far away so I email her a lot.

4. Nothing is more important to me than my pet puppy named Sweetie Pie.

So anyway, I was sitting on my bed Friday night petting Sweetie Pie and listening to the song “22” on my newest edition record player, until I heard my grandpa call, “Dinner time kids!” and we all came down to dinner. Here are my siblings, all in order, and how they act: My big brother, Andrew is so lucky. He is nineteen and hasn’t moved out yet. He will go to college late because no one accepted him. He is lucky because:

1. He has a girlfriend. (Hey, I tell you, it is kind of fun to have a girl in the house that is not my annoying big sister.)

2. He is the oldest. (You know, being the oldest sounds cool. If I didn’t know my grandpa any better, I would think he liked Andrew the best.)

3. Because my grandpa MIGHT like him best. (He can be bossy, yell, get what he wants, break the rules, etc.)

My big sister Talia, is, like, so annoying! She can really bug me. And worse, she doesn’t REALLY care. If she did care, she would blame it on Andrew when she does something wrong like drop me on the stairs when I was a baby. Andrew and Talia. The thought of them in the same sentence makes me say, “Uh-uh.” Anyway, all she cares about is her BFF Georgia, boys, and makeup. She is eighteen and will attend college soon. She is going in the middle of the year. Grandma wants to carry on the tradition because our dad moved in the middle of the year and so he attended college late, so we are doing that to Talia.

My brother, David, is, like, just there to be there. In my own words, I just call him selfish. All he does is eat, sleep, talk (not much), feel things, and talk on the phone. He is not a normal person at all. He is seventeen and is wierd.

Then comes me, the awesome sibling, who saves the day and turns the saddest day into a happy one. Who makes Grandma smile and Grandpa laugh. And yet, they don’t do it to anyone but me. Except when Grandpa mumbles, “Dangit, Helen, do I have to be nice to this brat?” and I don’t know why. I’m fifteen. The age of all ages. Taylor Swift even wrote a song on it.

“Sophie! Dinnertime now,” Grandpa yelled. I grunted. He was not – N-O-T – in a good mood.

“Why Edward, was all good in business at the corner store today?” asked Grandma.

“Eh! Barely made fifteen dollars,” whispered Grandpa. I ran down the stairs. Not that I was interested in their conversation, but I was hungry, very hungry.

“Hi, Sophie,” smiled Grandma. See? I make it work.

“Hi, little mouse,” frowned Grandpa.

“Hey, Soph. Soph, what’s up, girlfriend?” shouted Talia.

“Umm, hi?” I said.

“Smooch!” Whoops! Not a scene I want to look at. Andrew and his girlfriend, Valerie, were kissing. I wasn’t in the mood for some love and cracka-lackin in my meal so I acted with attitude and groove. As Talia says.

“Kissy kissy! Is that my hello?” I asked with attitude.

“Oh. One second Val, I need to greet my sis. Hi Sophie. Kiss kiss,” he said. Sometimes, I just HATE that guy. Smoochin away.

“Pork is dinner,” announced Grandma.

“Thanks for the quote-unquote ‘announcement’ but I got a diner date,” Talia said sarcastically.

“Alright if no one will ask me ‘who?’  then I’ll say it. Since no one bothers to ask what happened in summer school you missed the excitement that I am president of student council. I am interviewing someone. I am pretty upset that even Sophie, the obnoxious one, didn’t ask me what I am wearing,” whined Talia.

“That’s wonderful, Talia,” smiled Grandma.

“Except the part where you accused Sophie and Andrew of being obnoxious. What did they do wrong? So grow up,” frowned Grandpa. See? He’s got my back. In a good way. I ate my dinner.

“Okay, guys, I’m leaving. Love you, Grandma. Grandpa, I’ve got to say, for your second granddaughter. Give a woman her respect.” And with that she turned around. Grandpa raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I’ll give you respect. I’ll hold the door open so any time you want,  you can exit the family,” snickered Grandpa. Did I mention that it’s tradition that when Grandpa raises his eyebrows it means he is mad? Oops! “Helen, do me a favor. Prepare some mulligan stew so I can crush my anger away?” asked Grandpa.

“Coming right up,” smiled Grandma.

Whoops! Not the scene I want to see. This means we will have a family talk.

“Valerie,” I bugged.

“Hi, Sophie. What’s up?” answered Valerie.

“Hey, Sophie. Could you do me a favor? Just stop bugging my girlfriend?” chuckled Andrew.

“Oh, I like it,” smiled Valerie.

“I like it,” changed Andrew. Well, that was odd. We went upstairs. Oops! I forgot to tell you my secret. Before Valerie and Andrew were boyfriend and girlfriend, me, my bff Gina, and Valerie were all BFFs. Just to not upset Andrew, hahaha! We haven’t told him.

“Whenever Grandpa asks for mulligan stew he wants to discuss something. I have a secret device where I can hear what he is saying without getting an angry face at me,” I explained.

“Cool. But Andrew?” she asked.

“We’ll let him suffer,” I answered.

I took my special two-person earphones, plugged them in to the phone, and we listened to his conversation.

“Guys, please put Talia on the phone,” we heard on the secret device and guessed that was Grandpa talking.

“Hey guys. You know, it’s my job as interviewer to…” we knew that was Talia.

“Take her off,” Grandpa commanded.

“That’s the face I don’t like to see,” I nodded.

“So we have some exciting news for the family,” Grandma announced. We couldn’t believe Andrew and David (not really David) weren’t talking. They were probably speechless. Since when is family talk exciting?

“Your grandmother got a job in California as a waitress!” we thought that was Grandpa again.

“California.” We guessed it was Andrew’s voice. “No, Grandma, don’t leave us in Westport,” he whined.

“Guess what? You are moving with us!” Grandma said.

I unplugged my earphones immediately.

“Gina!” Valerie and I both shouted. She lived in California! If we were moving there, we could all see each other!

“Pinch me,” I cried with joy. She pinched me. Wow, that wasn’t a hard pinch.

“Let’s email her,” I suggested.

I grabbed my laptop.

To: Gina Forgeive

From: Sophie & Valerie

Dear Gina,

Please reply immediately because this isn’t just a hello from Westport. You will NOT believe this but my grandma just announced she got a new job in California and we are moving. We love you and we can tell you the detes (Town, address eg).

Sincerely,

Valerie and Sophie

“Good?” I asked.

“Perfect,” she replied. Now there was only one more thing to do: call Talia and tell her the great news. I hope I mentioned I HATE my sister. But I thought it was the right thing to do.

“What are you doing?” asked Valerie.

“Telling Talia,” I answered.

“Haha funny joke. Really, what are you doing?” she asked.

“Shh. Hi Talia,” I said.

“Hey guys, you know, as an interviewer and president for city council I am sometimes busy. It would be my honor to read your voicemail. If emergency, call at 914-327-2419. Thank you.”

Ugh. So that’s the stupid voice mail my sister has.

“Talia. This is an emergency! We are moving to California because Grandma got a job. If you think you are thinking this in your mind I will repeat… we are moving to California! So bye,” I messaged.

“Let’s go,” urged Valerie.

“Shh,” I whispered as we headed down the stairs. They were still talking. We listened.

“We are moving in August to Los Angeles and I feel bad that the two people not at the meeting are Sophie and Talia because their friends live in the same neighborhoods,” smiled Grandpa.

I gasped. Valerie gasped. We ran upstairs and emailed Gina again.

To: Gina Foregeive

From: Sophie

I am moving to Los Angeles on August 1st. Looking forward to seeing you.

-Valerie and Sophie

We went downstairs.

“Hi guys,” I smiled.

“I’ll email you and Talia the big news,” Grandma assured.

Then, after a little chitter chatter, this is the story of us playing monopoly. And somehow Grandpa always makes us play his way. Rules of his way:

1. Jail:

If Grandpa gets put in jail, he can pay one dollar to the bank. If anyone else goes to jail, they have to pay fifty dollars to the bank.. If Grandpa wants to automatically pass jail three times, he puts ten dollars in the bank. Anyone else pays two hundred dollars.

2. Properties:

If Grandpa wants to buy a property but he has no money, he doesn’t have to do any type of math like mortgaging. He may just grab 200 dollars from the bank. Anyone else has to mortgage.

Mortgage:                           

If anyone but Grandpa would like to buy a property, they must do the math of subtracting their properties on the board to find the exact amount.

Houses/Hotels

When you buy a property, it will give you the information of the cost. If you have a monopoly, you may put on a house or hotel. The cost depends on the property. It will say it on the card. However, for Grandpa, he may put houses without a monopoly for only the brown, blue and orange properties.

What Grandpa needs:

Three dice

20 of 1, 5, 10, 20, 100, 100 of 500

He always is the money bag

What you need:

Two dice

5 of 1, 5, 10, 6 of 20, 100 1 of 500

Multiple choice pieces

I know, right!?!? He is so unfair. I don’t even have to tell you who always wins. Whenever you know who wins first he shouts, “Monopoly!” and then he says “Go to bed kidlets.” But to top all that, at the same time Talia came running in.

“Hey Grandma, congrats to the job! So psyched to move!” smiled Talia. I had never seen her so happy since… ever! Except. well, maybe when I was born. And I always love to hear the story when she was so loving that she was having a baby sister that when I was one years old, she put eye-shadow on me and told my mother that I should get the hang of it because when I’m older I should be a make-up freak like her.

“What are you guys playing? Some Grandpa monopoly?” asked Talia.

“Yes, Lia, now put your stuff down and you can tell us all about the meeting,” chuckled Grandma with joy.

“Okay, I guess I will hear all about the meeting,” I fakely grinned.

“Go to BED!” screamed Grandpa. I went to bed. Upstairs I could hear Andrew watching the football game and Valerie was sitting there eating popcorn. I felt bad for Valerie. She could do so much better picking a boyfriend. If I had to pick someone right now you know who I would pick? I always love to prove my friends wrong inside my head so to be funny I took out the list of my dream man and started to stare at it:

Notes on dream man:

Dreamy blue eyes+

Wavy blonde hair+

Cute smile+

Good sense of humor+

Likes me as much as I like him+

Can take my pathetic life and flexibility even when I goof = Eric

Eric IS NOT my crush but we share some pathetic coincidences. He fits all these details and I know they are very rare to fit (at least the last two sentences). I mean, he is a prince and I’m a girl who has fantasies about him. But to Eric, I am a princess in disguise. I think. But I am in the mood for fantasy. “Me and Eric kissing in a tree, goodnight, princess me,” I muttered.

“Buzz! Buzz!” Ugh! Shut up computer. I needed to sleep. My eyes flickered open. Sweetie Pie licked me. “ Love you, Sweetie Pie, but why did they ever program it to do that?” I asked myself. When I was younger, me and Gina programed my computer to say when I got an email, “Buzz! Buzz! You got mail! You got mail!” now I regret it. Speaking of Gina this was her email:

To: Sophie Resnick

From: Gina

OMG! So sorry for late response, there is this boy, Theo, and he can’t stop emailing me so I decided not to bother checking my email. So psyched. My same neighborhood! Email me the following when you can:

What time is the flight:

Which airport will you land in:

What is the address:

When I know all that, we can visit each other. Also, I meant to tell you someone named Rosa will call you. Don’t ignore. She is my BFF in my California school. But when you move to my school, we can all be BFFs!

Love,

Gina

With all that in my brain, wow, was I really confused! Reasons:

• I think she forgot it was not all about her.
• She is too obsessed with me (I kind of want her to take a chill pill so we can hang out).
• Who is Rosa and did she replace me?

I quickly called Valerie.

“I have news,” I said.

“Ugh! Sophie! It’s 6:00. What’s up? Good news or bad?” she asked.

“First of all, Gina responded. So at 7:00 come over and read it. Second of all, we might be replaced by someone as BFF,” I told her.

“Sounds like an emergency. See you in a few! Also, when I get there, I will have to spend time with Andrew. He is feeling left out. Okay? I’ll get to you,” shouted Valerie.

I hung up on her. Whatevs. She was not seeing the point. Suddenly, I got a call from Rosa.

“Hi,” Rosa said with what sounded like a smile.

“Hey,” I answered.

“So I hear you are Gina’s OLD friend. I feel so bad. I felt like I was teaching a dog to talk. You probably told her nothing about the real world,” she said sarcastically.

“Oh, okay. Gina is such a good friend. She told me about you. She talks about you a lot,” I smiled back.

“I know, right? I am so cool as a friend. I think you are now her and my BFF. When we were doing our handshake, which is so clever of Gina to make up, boom chicka BFF, right?, so anyway, she said she missed you but I remind her of you. And to get over you, she has me as a replacement,” boasted Rosa.

I started to cry. I made up the boom chicka BFF for me, Valorie, and Gina! I was being replaced. I quickly said, “Talk to you later. Got to go,” and hung up. I cried and cried. I went into Talia’s room and knocked on the door.

“Yes,” answered Talia.

“I need advice,” I whispered.

“Braces look better than retainers,” interrupted Talia.

“No! Have you ever been the third wheel?” I asked.

“Yes! I have never been a second wheeler on a bike for like ever. You know I have training wheel difficulties. Don’t bug me Sophie!” answered Talia.

“No like in a threesome of friends,” I explained.

“Math and friends in the same sentence? You must really need advice,” smiled Talia as she FINALLY let me in!

“So I have two friends,” I started.

“Ugh! Are you and Sammie STILL friends!” interrupted Talia.

“No! Not since kindergarten. Talia, listen. So my friend Gina moved to California and she met a girl named Rosa. Now I am being replaced,” I explained.

“Two questions. First of all, what does this have to do with Sammie and Gina?” asked Talia.

“It doesn’t! Just my other friend and her were all friends,” I whined.

“Okay. Number two, why do you need advice? Great, Rosa sounds like a foolish name and is not very punctual but I don’t see MY part in the story!” answered Talia.

“Ugh! What should I do?” I asked.

“I say be BFFs with Rosa and forget Gina. It sounds like she forgot you!” suggested Talia.

I shrugged at her. It wasn’t a bad idea. But again, she didn’t know who she was talking about.

“GINA? No no no no no she is my best friend. But thanks,” I smiled.  I emailed Gina.

To: Gina Forgeive

From: Sophie

Got the call from Rosa. Call me when you can!

-Sophie

I wanted to tell Gina how coconuts she was that she even thought about talking to Rosa at all. She so betrayed me. I couldn’t believe it, so to express myself I wrote her a letter in the mail.

Dear Gina,

I got Rosa’s call. I thought the ‘boom chicka BFF’ was OUR handshake. For starters, you replaced me and told her all of me, you and Valerie’s secrets. I know it is rough stuff in California but could you please, please, please tell me why this is happening?

Love,

Sophie

I tried not to cry. Sweetie Pie barked. “Oh good girl!” I sniffled, grabbing a tissue. Sweetie Pie went over to my desk and grabbed a piece of paper. I turned it over. It was a picture of me, Valerie, and Gina. I crossed Gina out and put the words “With Rosa” under her name.

“Sweetie Pie! You want me to walk you, don’t you?” I guessed.

“Arf!” barked Sweetie Pie. So I grabbed her leash and went for a walk.

Along the walk, Sweetie Pie saw a dog, the same breed as her. They looked so similar.

“They like each other!” exclaimed the owner of the other dog.

“Her name is Sweetie Pie. What is yours?” I asked. The owner looked exactly my age and was so pretty.

“Her name is Angel Pony. And I am Lily. What school are you going to this fall?” she asked.

“Hi Lily. I am Sophie.  Are you new in the town? I am going to be going to this school called Rumbling Acres. You?” I asked.

“I am new! I am also going to Rumbling Acres! Gee, I thought I would never make a new friend but here I am,” explained Lily.

Angel Pony licked me. Sweetie Pie licked Lily.

“Hey, what’s your email? Mine is LilyLargsburg@yahoo.com,” she said.

“Sophie922@gmail.com,” I answered, smiling.

“I’ll email you” said Lily.

“Okay, bye Lily!” I grinned walking back towards my house. I was so happy that I wanted to scream. When I got home, Valerie was with Andrew.

“Hey Sophie,” greeted Valerie. I pulled her towards the stairs.

“So what’s this Gina business?” asked Valerie. I told her everything that had happened today.

“And she was so friendly to me, her name is Lily” I explained.

“Lily? Largsburg? You have got to be kidding me! I know a Fifi Largsburg I met just yesterday and wow! She seems so cool!” shouted Valerie. My computer buzzed.

To: Sophie Resnick

From: Lily

Dear Sophie,

What is your address! I might be able to come for breakfast tomorrow morning? Nice meeting you with Angel Pony and Sweetie Pie. Your dog is the cutest! Since this is my first year at Rumbling Acres, could you help me out with answering these questions?
Who are the kids I should watch out for?

Who should I sit with at lunch?

What are the classes that I should pay attention to?

Do I need lunch money?

-Lily Largsburg

Valerie read the email and I wrote back,

Dear Lily,

My address is 1245 Ocean Beach,  Solana Beach Cove.

1. Don’t worry who you sit with. I am always open.
2. Don’t ask me! Whichever subjects interest you. Just pay attention in math because they have this test and I got a C for not paying attention.
3. Luckily, our cafeteria lets us use our accounts or gives checks on our lunch. No money needed.

-Sophie

P.S My friend knows your big sister

Chapter 1

The Buying Day

Michael, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon Jackson wanted to get Nerf water Super Soakers and frisbees so they can take a break from singing but all the Nerf water guns were sold out/expensive. The frisbees were so big that they only had a big size. And it’s too expensive.

Michael, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon Jackson were looking for another thing. They were looking at some nerf super soakers. They wanted to buy them so they could have a water gun fight. One was little, one medium, and one was big. You could take off the bottom and the back of the big one. The bottom was where you put the water and the back just made it look bigger or smaller. The small one looked like you could do it with the trigger but you couldn’t. You just pump it and water comes out. You put water in at the very top and back. The medium one had a very long aimer. It also shot with the pump. They all did. It had effects that made it look long.

Michael, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon Jackson wanted to buy the guns but they ran out of money. They spent all their money on the Xbox 360. It was $249.99. That’s like nine hundred dollars!

Chapter 2

Aladdin’s Cave

The Jackson 5 left the store. Their voices hurt. That was good because they wanted to buy water guns because it hurt to talk. They were going to a cave that was rich so they could find Aladdin. If they found Aladdin, he could get them money so they could buy all the toys in the mall. They went to a cave near the store and found a magic mirror that said, “To Aladdin’s Cave”. Michael, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon jumped through the magic mirror and it came with them. Michael picked it up. When he pushed it against his hand it shrunk.

“It could do that?” said Michael.

Michael picked it up and put it in his pocket.

He was looking for Aladdin in the cave with the Jackson 5. It was full of treasure and they were looking all over the cave. It was 300 miles wide and deep. Then they walked 300 miles deep and 150 miles, because of a magic mirror. They saw a magic lamp. Michael picked up the lamp and poured it out like a magic teacup and Aladdin came out. He said,” You can only get three wishes,” in French.

They found a speaker to translate English into French. The speaker was in an emerald and Michael got a pickaxe so he could pickaxe the emerald. He got it.

They all made their wishes. Everyone wanted at least $300. So they wished for all that money. The second wish was a ginormous frisbee. Their third wish was a big castle.

They became king, king, king, king, and king and knight, knight, knight, knight, and knight, and bishop, bishop, bishop, bishop, and bishop, and prince, prince, prince, prince, and prince.

Michael, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon played with the frisbee. They played fetch. They all took turns throwing and fetching.

When they had finished playing with the frisbee, they went to the mall and bought every single super soaker.They brought all the toys from the mall to the castle. Yo it’s big, it’s rad, it’s brown and it’s made out of everything. It’s a thousand feet in every way, high to the side, wide… The castle can teleport. They went inside and played frisbee.  They were hot from playing frisbee, so they used their nerf super soakers to have a water gun fight. Everyone lost and everyone won.

They were having so much fun they didn’t even miss singing.

Chapter 3

The Breaking Toys

The Jackson 5 were playing with their toys. They had a cloning machine they bought with all the money they had and then when they were playing with their toys, something very, very, very, weird happened. The toys came alive! They all went in the cloning machine, even the Jackson 5. Then all the clones were doing the same thing as the people who cloned them were. They had a big fight. One person got hurt. It was Marlon, because he broke his bone. The frisbees were throwing themselves like a blade in the sky! The water guns were shooting like a bullet!

They were glad they cloned themselves. They wanted to get out because they missed singing. They wanted to go back to Aladdin. The toys were trying to block them so they couldn’t get out the door!

Chapter 4

The Happy Ending

They couldn’t get past the door. They went up to the tippy top of the castle and they found a secret ladder. They tried the lamp up at the tippy top of the castle and the only words said, “too high up. You can only do it in Aladdin’s cave.” They tried to go down the ladder and it was Aladdin’s cave! The same as they always went in. But Aladdin moved the cave under the castle. They used the lamp and it worked. They wished that all their toys would not be alive anymore. And for a thousand parachutes so they could freefall. And their last wish was all their voices back!

Once they got their voices back they went on a concert stage and sang.

“ABC! Easy as 123! Simple as do-re-mi, ABC, 1-2-3, baby you and me, girl!”

The End!!

Hi everybody, Hillel here. I’m going to tell you about another war. We had to arm and train an army so we could destroy the rebellions of the cat war. See we destroyed the cat army but the regular cats on the planet of cats apparently were armed by the government and were prepared to fight if the actual army lost, which they did, so we had to fight a bunch of untrained citizens. There was a council meeting of what else we should do. As I am the head of the CIA, I was invited so that’s where I was going. Finally, I got there. “Hello General Hillel, take a seat,” General Avraham said, “We were just about to discuss a nuclear attack on the planet of cats.”

“Why would you do that? We know that there are some innocent cats who do not support the war we can not kill them,” I said.

“War calls for some sacrifices,” said General Avraham.

“I will not have the military kill innocent people,” I said. I was getting worked up by then.

“I will not kill innocent people,” I repeated. I could tell by the looks that I was getting from the other Generals and Admirals at the meeting that I was reddening at the ears, which happens to me when I am getting mad.

“It would be barking mad not to plan a nuclear attack on the cat army,” replied General Avraham.

“No. What would be barking mad would be to plan a nuclear attack. There are thousands of innocent cats who didn’t have anything to do with the cat war or what is going on with us and the cat army. We can’t just kill them all,” I said.

This was really getting out of hand. You cannot just go around killing innocent civilians. I thought that when I got home, that I should tell my mom and dad all about this conversation I had with my brother. My mom and dad thought that I was right. They said they would talk to my brother and make him see sense.

Most of the Generals and Admirals agree with me. Now, with the Generals and Admirals at my side, I went to another council meeting. And now the council board finally saw me right and we did not bomb cat world. Little did I know that General Avraham was with his closest members of the army and the CIA right then planning a secret nuclear attack, even though the council had denied his request for a nuclear attack. I did not even notice when he didn’t show up for the next few Council Meetings, I just had too much on my hands.

I’ve been having to think up ways that I can attack the cat army without having to bomb them. I’ve been talking to some of my highest-ranking generals and most of them say that that the best idea would be to do what we were doing then and there: use our army because even if they have more soldiers than us, they are untrained. For instance, General Mcgeorge was saying that we were beating them as it is, why stop now. But my conscience told me that they were going to start training as well.

I was going to visit my brother (We made up. Avraham gave in.) and have lunch with him. We were in the middle of chicken when the phone rang. brrrrrrrrrrrring. “I’ll get it,” said Avraham.

I headed to go to the bathroom. But then I overheard my brother on the phone.

“Okay, we’ll do it next week,” my brother whispered.

There was a pause where I couldn’t hear anything.

My brother answered back, “We will secretly bomb the cat planet two weeks from now.”

I knew what was going on. I had thought that my brother has seen sense, but then again, I should have remembered that he was always a stubborn man.

I grabbed my coat and raced out the door. I got home and quickly informed my closest

colleagues. And we decided we would build a secret bomb shelter for all the normal citizens.

Meanwhile Avraham had not been showing up to work which probably meant he

knew that I knew that he was going to bomb. But I could not deal with that now, because we needed to secretly, as not to be attacked, build a bomb shelter. We sent a team of builders and a good 500 tons of bedrock, tools and supplies. We loaded them all to a big spaceship with a bunch of little capsules because if we took just the big spaceship down, the cat army would definitely see. We had to take the tools in one capsule. The bedrock took up seventy capsules. All the people went in one capsule. I couldn’t think straight. My brother was maddening me. I didn’t see how I could be related to this oppressor.

My Admiral came to me. “I hacked into your brother’s phone calls,” he said. “Your

brother’s plans are going faster than your brother thought would happen.”

“So we have to accelerate,” I said.

“Yes, but that was what I was also going to tell you. Some of our builders also got attacked by the cat army, but they didn’t find out about what we are building.” he said.

“I can not believe it. How did the cat army find out?!” I said.

He did not have time to reply, because we just saw Avraham’s big warship. It was huge and there was a nuclear bomb. Oh-No! He’s attacking! I had an idea. I turned on the microphone. “Avraham surrender or we will open fire!”I say into it.

“No!”I heard Avraham’s voice say.

“I am landing my ship! You will have to kill me, too!” I say while landing my ship!

I waited for Avraham to fire but he didn’t. “I will let you build your bomb shelter and then I’ll bomb.”

I couldn’t believe it.

The

End

First a question mark went to work and got one hundred dollars a day. Then he asked everybody one question, and everybody kept getting it wrong. The question was, “What candy cannot go anywhere on time?” The only one who got it right were the presidents. Everybody else on earth got it wrong.

Then, he asked a kid a question. The kid’s name was Jacob.

“What candy cannot go anywhere on time?” the question mark asked.

The question mark also said, “If you get the answer right, you will get a lot of dollars!”

Jacob said, “Can I have all the dollars?”

But, question mark said, “No! You have to figure out the answer first.”

So, Jacob didn’t answer it.

Then question mark asked all the other kids, but they got it wrong.

One kid said, “A candy cane because he can’t walk.” But, that was not the right answer, because he could get on a wheelchair and go on a school bus and go to the school so that was not the right answer.

Another kid said, “M&Ms but he can slide.” The third person said, “Air heads, but he can fly.” Then the question mark asked a parent and the parent said, “Taffy. But, the taffy can get wheels and then he could drive like a car.”

“That was not the right answer. You do not get a lot of dollars. It’s time to say bye-bye.”

Then question mark asked another parent and said, “Ice breakers. He’s a wheel, so he could just use one wheel to get there.”

The third parent said, “Gum. But he can make an airplane.” So, the question mark said “That was not the right answer.”

So he asked the presidents and all of them said, “Chocolate! Because at the end it says l-a-t-e. Late!”

Then the question mark gave an equal amount of money to each of the presidents. He felt good because the presidents should know everything because they had a good education.

The End

Chapter #1  No! Not Ruby!

It was Saturday, and Emily was tired. “Emilia!” cried one of the orphanage ladies. The orphanage ladies mostly spoke spanish, which was very difficult for the orphanage girls. Emily was 8 years old, her birthday was September 12, and she lived in an orphanage. It was the year 1890. She’d been there since she was 2. Her parents were killed by the latest invention, the hair dryer. It fell in the bath and her parents had forgotten to unplug it. The name of the orphanage was Ragged Orphanage. The orphanage was in New York City on the Upper West Side. The orphanage lady always woke her up very early to do her chores. She needed to sweep the floors and scrub the windows.

At the orphanage, all the girls had to wear the same clothes. Their clothes were gray dresses. All the girls slept in a big room on beds made of itchy wool.

Emily got out of bed groaning. She got dressed and went to go fill her bucket with water. She watched as the other orphanage girls went to fill up their buckets. Emily was friends with all the orphan girls except for one girl. Her name was Joanna. Joanna was bigger and older than Emily. She had red curly hair and brown eyes. Emily was always being bullied by Joanna.

“Hey!” yelled Joanna. “Thats my bucket!”

“No, it’s mine!” Emily yelled.

“Niñas!” cried one of the orphanage ladies. All of a sudden the door opened. Everybody stared. Somebody walked in the door. Not many people came to Ragged Orphanage. It was a lady in very nice clothes. She was wearing a big yellow dress and a big hat with flowers on it. She had lots of freckles and very blonde hair. She was also very tall.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Jane Wreath.”

“Hello!” said the girls in unison. They all wanted to be the one to be adopted that day.

“I want a girl with blonde hair,” said the lady.

Half of the shoulders in the orphanage dropped.

“And I want the girl to have curly hair and blue eyes,” said the lady.

Did Emily have blue eyes? But curly hair? No. Emily was very sad. The lady looked at Emily’s best friend Ruby. “That one!” she said. “I want that one!”

Emily felt her heart stop with pain. When somebody got adopted at the orphanage, the girls had to clap, but not many of them felt like it. Ruby smiled.

“Go pack your bags!” said the lady.

All the girls came with her as she went to pack her bag. When they got up to the room, Emily said to Ruby, “I’m so sad you’re leaving!”

“It’s okay! I’ll come to visit,” said Ruby.

But Emily was not so sure. Many of her friends had said that but never came to visit.

“Well, I really have to go now,” said Ruby. Then Ruby, carrying her bag, went downstairs. After a moment, Emily followed. Everybody clapped as she left. Joanna gave Emily a long, mean, smile. She could tell what Emily was thinking. Emily was thinking that she would never see her best friend ever again. Tears started to well up in her eyes.

“I guess it is time to start my chores” whispered Emily. She picked up her bucket and her mop and started cleaning.

Emily was mopping the floor of the bedroom that all the girls slept in, when one of the orphanage girls, named Haddie, stopped what she was doing because she saw that Emily was really sad. She came over and gave Emily a hug.

“Thanks,” said Emily.

“Sure,” said Haddie.

Haddie was new to the orphanage and she didn’t have many friends yet. Haddie was 6 and she was a small girl with very blonde hair and blue eyes, just like Emily. She had a small squeaky voice, too. She was very shy, but she was also very kind. They hadn’t really talked much before.

“You know, you’re not so bad,” said Emily.

None of the girls were really fond of Haddie. They all complained that she was so small, but Emily didn’t mind. They thought it was strange that she was the one that had to clean the high windows and not the tallest girls. It was harder for the taller girls, but Haddie was so small and light that it was easier to climb on the ladder to the higher windows.

“What do you mean?” said Haddie. “All the other girls like me, too, don’t they?”

“Well, honestly, they’re really jealous that you’re the one that gets to clean the high windows and not them.”

“Oh,” said Haddie in a small voice.

“But don’t worry, I’ll be your friend,” said Emily.

All the other girls were jealous of Haddie because when somebody cleaned the high windows, the orphanage ladies prized them by giving them their own bed for the night. Because not only did all the girls sleep in one big room, but two girls had to sleep in one bed. But for Haddie, sleeping in bed with two people was no big deal. The other girls tried complaining to the orphanage ladies that they needed the bed more than Haddie, but it didn’t work. The orphanage ladies just sat there, nodding their heads no, while munching on chips.

During the day, all the other bigger girls tried to trip Haddie and make the orphanage ladies think that Haddie was clumsy.

“Stop tripping me,” Haddie would say.

And then, the orphanage ladies would come and the bigger girl would say, “I didn’t do anything.” The orphanage ladies still didn’t believe any of the bigger girls. The bigger girls were Sophie, Casey, and even Joanna. Joanna was the worst of all. She wouldn’t just trip Haddie, but when the orphanage ladies came, she would pretend that Haddie had hit her.

She would moan and clutch her hand to her arm. She would yell, “She hit me, she hit me!”

The orphanage ladies would just yell in their Spanish accent, “Back to work!”

Emily was very tired of Joanna. She tried explaining to the orphanage ladies what really happened, but the orphanage ladies could not understand a word and thought that that meant she wouldn’t listen and so they yelled at them, “Back to work!”

One day, when the girls were all taking a stroll in the park, as they did every day, except for in the winter, Emily found a little lizard. Emily had a brilliant idea. She put the lizard in her pocket and they headed off back to the orphanage. They ate their dinner and then Emily went upstairs to master her plan before Joanna came up.

The next morning, Emily woke up to Joanna screaming, “There’s a lizard in my pillow, there’s a lizard in my pillow!” Her face was so red, it was like a very ripe apple.

Joanna ran downstairs screaming to the orphanage ladies, but since they always knew that she was faking Haddie hitting her arm, they didn’t believe her. Joanna came back upstairs stomping. “I’m going to get you back,” she said to Emily. Joanna knew it was Emily because in Joanna’s opinion, everything that went badly was Emily’s fault. But Emily didn’t believe she would do something just as bad.

They did all of their chores and went to the park again that day. Then, it was time to go to bed. Emily knew that Joanna was planning something bad, because right before she went to bed, Joanna gave her another one of her long, mean smiles.

Emily woke up in a pile of the orphanage ladies’ pickle chips. She was so angry at Joanna because Joanna knew that Emily was allergic to pickle chips.Emily knew that Joanna had done this because there were crumbs all over her face. Emily’s face was covered in red and her arms and legs stuck out into thin air. Emily got out of bed and stomped over to the bed where Joanna slept. Well, at least it seemed like she was stomping to Emily, but she was really limping on one foot.

“Joanna!” She screeched.

Joanna woke up, pretending to act normal. “I didn’t do anything. Oh my goodness, look at you! What happened?”

“You know what happened,” Emily said. “You were the one who did this.”

All of a sudden, the orphanage ladies came into the room.

“Emily!” They yelled. “What were you thinking?” They said again in their Spanish accents.

Emily pointed one wrinkly finger at Joanna. Joanna gasped in a very unreal way. The orphanage lady shook her finger ‘No.’ Emily gave a sour look to the orphanage lady. The other orphanage lady pointed toward the bathroom. Emily knew what they meant. Everytime she got all weird because of the pickle chips, she had to take a bath with not water, but tomato juice. She thought the tomato juice was so stinky that she always had the orphanage ladies give her a clothespin to put over her nose.

They had Emily sleep in the backyard that whole week while Joanna got to sleep in Emily’s bed and the person who slept in the same bed as Emily had to sleep with the person who slept with Joanna, so that Joanna got her own bed. The orphanage ladies were mad at Emily because they thought she was blaming it on Joanna, but they didn’t really know that it was really Joanna’s fault.

Just then, Emily had an even better plan. After she took the bath in tomato juice, she went and got a paper and pen. Then, she wrote on the piece of paper. At the top, she wrote: Advertisement. Then, after that, she wrote: Joanna (orphanage girl, $ 1,200) Hurry! Before she gets sold to someone else! When she was done, she went downstairs laughing and pinned the sign up to the pole next to the orphanage. Surprisingly, the next day a tall, plump lady came to the orphanage.

“I saw the sign, and I want to adopt this Joanna. Here is the money, now give me the girl.”

Emily had done it. She was so surprised and she was so happy. This time, she was happy that Joanna would leave, and so she did not clap, even though the orphanage ladies said they had to. This whole time Joanna was pale in the face.

Chapter #2  Carrie

The next few days were a dream come true. But not for very long. A couple of days later, a new girl was delivered to Ragged Orphanage. She was very tall and skinny. She towered over Emily. Her hair was very curly and blonde. She had very sharp, brown eyes. Emily knew she would be competing with this girl too.

“Hello,” said the girl in a very sharp voice. “I am Carrie Brown.”

“Why do you have two names?” Emily asked.

“What do you mean?” said Carrie. “Everybody has two names, a first and a last. Don’t you know that? Everybody knows that.”

“I don’t have a last name,” said Emily. “But I might get one when I’m adopted.”

“What do you mean, ‘adopted’?” said Carrie. “I was told I was coming to a palace. Not an orphanage! Lead me to my room, immediately.”

Emily led Carrie up to the big bedroom where all of the girls slept.

“Well, where’s my room?” said the girl.

“Well there’s your bed. You’re going to share a bed with me now.”

“What?! This is the worst place I’ve ever been to. How long have you been here?”

“Six years,” Emily said.

“Well, I’ve been here six minutes.” Carrie took her large suitcase and unpacked her beautiful clothes that many of the orphanage girls didn’t have.

“Here’s your uniform,” Emily said, handing her a grey dress.

“I don’t wear uniforms,” she said.

“Well, you do now,” Emily replied.

Carrie snorted. “Fine,” she said.

“What is that?” Asked Emily, pointing to a pile of coins that Carrie had.

“Money! Doesn’t anybody have some here?”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“Well, I’m rich,” said Carrie. “Or was. I come from London. My building burnt down. I lived in one of the most beautiful houses in the whole country. Now, I’m in an orphanage in New York. This place is filthy! You use this money to buy things,” said Carrie. “For example, food.”

“I get my food at the orphanage by paying with these,” Emily scooped up a handful of the buttons she had in her bag. Carrie looked disgraced.

“This place should be better by the time I get adopted,” said Carrie.

“Mind if I give you a new nickname?” Emily asked,

“Like what?” Carrie replied.

“Mrs. Fancy Pants.”

“What do you think?”

“Um, yeah?”

“No!” Carrie yelled.

“Oh, and here are your buttons,” Emily said, smiling. That night Emily fell asleep watching Carrie sleep in her very formal way. For her first day, Carrie was not so bad. Emily woke up to find Carrie sewing a flower on her grey dress. Now Emily liked Carrie even better. After a few days, all of the other girls were sick of Carrie and Emily, because every day they only hung out with each other. Every time one of the orphanage girls saw Emily and Carrie, they groaned and buried their heads in their hands. Emily just smiled while Carrie went red with rage. The next day, when the girls went on their stroll through the park, Emily found the most cutest thing she had ever seen. It was small and fussy. Then Emily realized it was a hampster. She scooped it up in her hands and pet its head.

“I am going to name you Mis. Alice Fur…”

“— KK!” (Emily had nicknamed Carrie). “When you have two names, what do you call the last one!?”

“A last name.” Carrie replied.“Anyway, I am going to name you Miss Alice Furball.” The little hamster squeaked. “I am going to have to sneak you in,” Emily said again. That night Emily woke up to find the hamster running around like a mad dog all over the orphanage bedroom. It was squeaking like the loudest hamster she had ever heard. Everyone else was awake staring at Emily. Everyone knew it was Emily. It was so obvious because as soon as she woke up she gasped, “Miss Alice Furball, my hamster!”

Carrie was frowning the most out of all of them. As soon as she glanced at Carrie, Emily saw how upset Carrie was. She gave Carrie a little smile that made Carrie even more upset. All of a sudden, things got even worse. The orphanage ladies came into the room. The hamster all of a sudden jumped on Carrie. Carrie screamed and hollered. “Oh, what have you done, this hamster, ow ow ow!”

Now the hamster was going mad like all he ever wanted to do was jump in the orphanage and scare all the girls to death. All of a sudden, the hamster leaped on one of the orphanage ladies and bit her right on the finger. The orphanage lady shrieked and hollered in pain, just as Carrie had done. The orphanage lady fainted; all the orphanage girls except for Emily rushed over to her. The other orphanage lady walked over and grabbed Emily by the neck. Then, she noticed why the orphanage lady knew it was her. Carrie was pointing with her trembling finger straight at Emily. Emily burst into tears. She wished that it was still 8 days ago when Joanna was there. She wanted things to go back to normal.

The orphanage lady tossed Emily out the window. “Run away!”

Emily had damaged her leg very badly from falling out the window and could not walk. All of a sudden, the orphanage lady was still watching out the window, this other lady came over. She leaned over Emily. “Are you hurt?” she said.

Carrie came racing out the door to Emily’s side, as well. “Are you okay?” she added as well.

“I’m fine,” Emily said. “But, who are you?” she said, looking up at the other lady.

“My name is Mrs. Victoria Spivonson.”

Emily smiled up at her. “My name is Emily. I”m from the orphanage up there.” It seemed to be very high because Emily was lying on the ground because she couldn’t get up.

“I know,” Mrs. Spivonson said. “I watched that lady throw you out the window. I will take you if you like.”  Mrs. Spivonson decided to adopt Emily because she saw how badly the orphanage ladies treated her. “I will take you both.” Emily and Carrie both smiled at each other. They had very big smiles.

After a couple minutes of silence, Emily added, “Can I bring Miss Alice Furball, too?”

Mrs. Spivonson gave her a questioning look.

“Oh, just the hamster I found in the park.”

“What side of the park?” Mrs. Spivonson said.

“Umm, the West side, I think,” said Emily.

“How did you ever find her? And how did you ever guess her name?”

Emily gave Mrs. Spivonson a questioning look in return.

“Oh, that hamster belongs to me. I lost it in the park yesterday. But, you can have her now. Well, now I found my hamster and two girls while I was looking for my hamster,” Mrs. Spivonson said.

Mrs. Spivonson went inside the orphanage to adopt them. Carrie turned to Emily, “I”m sorry,” she said. “That just really hurt when that hamster bit me. And why didn’t you tell me about that hamster?”

“It’s okay, Carrie. I should have told you about the hamster sooner. I was just afraid that you would tell the orphanage ladies even then.”

“You know I wouldn’t do something like that,” Carrie answered.

That night, Emily and Carrie found themselves on their own beds in their own room. They said it was the happiest day of their lives.

The End

One day, in a land far away, there was the spookiest town of all. The town of Dendrum. There was a person named Doctor Heesagam. He was the most evil person in the town. He used to run around and steal from people. But then one day, a dragon lived in a mountain just around their town. Doctor Heesagam couldn’t go outside as much as he used to because the dragon was looking for meals every day. When someone would go outside, he would snatch them up for a snack. The dragon was evil and red with blood all over his teeth. He had blood-red eyes. He always had a good view from the top of the mountain. So, whenever people went out, he would go snatch them up with his dripping blood teeth. He used to be a nice blue dragon until somebody tried to kill him. It turned blood over his teeth, blood over his eyes, and he turned red. Then he started attacking people.

He would always fly around the city, looking for something to eat. His bloody teeth used to make puddles of blood. Then, one day, in a graveyard, a zombie came out from a grave. It was climbing out of the dirt and went into the town, but the dragon saw it and ate it for dinner! Nobody in the town ever saw the zombie.

Then, one day, out of nowhere, came another little thing. It was the most scariest thing, a green thing with wings. Another dragon! When the red dragon saw the green one, it flew down and said, “This is my territory. Run off. Get another town.”

The green dragon said, “No! I called it. I saw it first.”

“I’ll battle you for it!” said the red one.

Then they had a fight. The green one turned as red as the red one, and as bloody as the red one. The people in the town saw from their houses and said, “Woah, that is so cool!”

“I wonder who will win?” said one of the town’s people.

They both were as strong as one another. So they said, “Hmm. I think it’s time we bring out some weapons.”

They brung out some dragon weapons. Dragon missiles, dragon everything. They had a fight with those, but neither of them won.

The green one said, “Ugh. You made me so bloody. I’m leaving!” The green one left and the town’s people learned that the dragons were hurt, but not very much hurt. But they had more blood than ever. They were making the lakes blood red.

Doctor Heesagam said, “This is so bad for the town! I can’t even go outside until the blood dries up. Which is going to be a million years because of these fighting dragons! They’re not even dead and look how much blood they’re making!”

Doctor Heesagam went outside and the red dragon swept down and took him to his cave.

“I’ll go get the carving knife ready,” said the dragon.

“Hmm… nice place here,” said Doctor Heesagam. “I wonder if the dragon has any jewels for me to steal.”

The cave was dripping water because there was a lake right on top of the mountain. There was lots of rocks hanging down from the top of the cave. It was kind of spooky because there were bats flitting around everywhere– vampire bats!

Doctor Heesagam was very scared because the dragon said he was going to get his carving knife. He was shivering. He was running from wall to wall but he was not screaming, so that way the dragon didn’t know what he was doing or what he was up to. He said, “Hmm…” and ventured into the dragon’s part of the cave. He thought that maybe he should jump out of the cave, but it was 3,000,000,300 miles down to the little town. “I can risk getting hurt, or getting eaten,” he thought. “I’d rather get hurt than be eaten!” Then he jumped down.

The dragon came out and said, “What! Where’d he go? Oh, whatever… I’ve had enough meals today.”

While the dragon was talking to himself, Doctor Heesagam was falling at a very intense speed for a very long time. He fell for about an hour and then he hit the ground. He wasn’t hurt because his coat was like a parachute. “Oh boy, I better get inside right now!” he thought. He went to his lab where he was experimenting with lava. He was trying to make iron with this lava but the materials kept melting. So he said, “I guess I’ll just experiment with lava just to see if it can melt every single thing in the world! `Hmm, what if I test it on one little scale?” He found the scale of the dragon outside and he dropped it in the lava. It melted faster than 1000 and 25th notes! “Hm,” he said, “I wonder how long it would take to melt the whole dragon? I can’t climb the mountain, because it’s 3,000,000,300 miles high! It’s too high. It’s a google plex. How am I ever going to get up there? The hovercraft won’t get there… The engine would be out of gas once I got to the foot of the mountain! So I just have to climb. And I don’t know how to do this but I’m going to do it.”

Doctor Heesagam went and tried to find the elevator in his humongous underground house and he found it in his closet and it was buried underneath a pile of dust; a dustinator which makes people sneeze! He took the dustinator and he said, “Won’t need this again!” and threw it in the lava. There was a secret passageway in the closet that leads to above ground. He found the escalator and said, “Up you go!” He pushed the tub of lava on the escalator and the escalator did the rest of the work. Outside he said, “Oh boy, now I have to pick up an escalator… like that’s going to be easy! I don’t even have my grappling hand anymore, it’s buried in the cemetery somewhere…” Then he realized that he didn’t have his remote to make the escalator shrink! He said, “Well, the tub of lava won’t help… so I guess I just have to pull it up.” He took it step by step. First, he took the leather off the escalator, then he took the metal. Then he put it all back together again by the side of the mountain. It was the middle of the night, so Doctor Heesagam knew the dragon was sleeping, because he could see the smoke from the dragon’s snore. He put the escalator next to the mountain and pulled up the lava. It took him about 30 minutes to get up the mountain on the escalator. He poured lava all over the entrance of the cave and said, “Nighty nighty, dragon. It will be your last!”

It was daytime and one of the dragon’s legs burned off because of the lava. “Ahhh! You got to be kidding me! I am going to destroy the whole town until I find the person that did this!” screamed the dragon. He gets a peg leg made of diamonds and gold and he starts flying. “I feel like a bat that’s carrying a zebra. Ugh, this has got to be the worst day after. I am going to get the person who did this! And I think I know who it was… Doctor Heesagam!” Then he dove into town and said, “Hmm, maybe I should start with this house.” He ripped open this shack that had nobody inside, just these old logs. “This must be a lumber place. Looking for the person that did this could be very hard… I need a better searching team.” The dragon had no friends, but he knew he needed help to find Doctor Heesagam. Doctor Heesagam was down in his lair, sitting and relaxing on his nice warm, sofa. Meanwhile, the dragon was out in the town ripping up all the buildings.

Dr. Heesagam thought, “Wonder what all that noise is? Maybe I should use my telescope. Eh, whatever… it’s Saturday. Relaxing day. And hobby day. Maybe there’s something I’m forgetting… Oh yeah, I have to send the bomb to space to blow up a satellite. Hm, I think that maybe I’m not so sure about this, but I think I should send a missile to the dragon’s cave. Oh yeah, that’s perfect.”

He aimed the missile right at the mountain while he was still sitting in his chair.

The dragon was like, “Hm, I wonder what that is?” He flew toward the missile but dared not touch it because he was afraid it would attack. “I wouldn’t want to touch it on the tip, but look! There’s fire coming out of the back, oh wait, that’s air. It’s probably not a dragon, probably just human technology.” The dragon flew down, but little did he know that the missile was heading for his cave! Once it hit, the explosion was so loud, the army thought that they were being attacked so they got out their tanks and missiles and aimed it right at the dragon. 3, 2,1, and all the tanks fired at the dragon! But the dragon flew off just time.

The dragon was, flying, flying, flying. Dr. Heesagam saw him and fired another missile but it missed him again! But it hit his cave again.

The dragon wasn’t too upset because his usual home was up in space. But this cave was his summer home, so he said, “Let that cave be blown up! At least I still have a home on Planet Reese.”

The dragon was so mad because he saw another missile going toward the cave, so he picked up a tank and threw it at the missile. The missile split in half and all the explosives fell out.

Dr. Heesagam was walking outside. The dragon saw him and was like, “THIS IS THE LAST TIME YOU WILL SEE PLANET EARTH AGAIN.” The dragon’s voice was so deep that it froze Dr. Heesgam’s blood. He was so nervous that he nearly fainted. But he had something in his pocket: it was a shrink ray. He took out the shrink ray, and although his hands were shaking, he pointed the shrink ray at the dragon. But it missed! It hit the mountain and shrunk the mountain to the size of an ant. The dragon picked up the mountain and said, “How am I supposed to live on this thing! It’s the size of an ant and it has a steaming spot on it.” The dragon threw away the mountain and it flew up in the air and landed on a satellite which destroyed the whole town’s radio, television, and lights. Everything went out; it was a blackout.

“What have I done now?” Dr. Heesagam groaned with his hand on his face.

The dragon was stomping around but he couldn’t see anything because it was midnight and now the town had no lights. So it made it super hard to see Dr. Heesagam. Then Dr. Heesagam tip-toed away from the dragon. He was shivering when he got inside his house and he sat on his sofa which was freezing!

“This is the worst blackout ever.”

The dragon was stomping around saying, “Why do I have to walk around? But it’s the only thing to do…” He was walking in circles. He was so mad that he almost crushed a house! He was walking, walking, and then he found this little house that had not been crushed. It wasn’t Dr. Heesagam’s house, but he thought it might have some supplies, so he crushed the house and saw what was inside. There was a humongous axe that was about 5 feet long, with a blade that was about 7 feet long.

“Hmm, this could do,” he said. And he walked and walked and found a small patch of the town which had not been destroyed. It was sitting there perfectly. He said, “One of these two homes are Dr. Heesagam’s.” So he opened up a house that had nothing in it, it was just a wood supply store. He opened up the next house, it was just cement. He didn’t know this, but he thought that underneath those 5 layers of cement was Dr. Heesagam’s house. Though he was underground, Dr. Heesagam had plenty of air.

The dragon thought, “What is a layer of cement doing there? This must be Dr. Heesagam’s roof, because if there’s nobody on top, he must be on the bottom!”

He starts digging. His claws dig up five feet of dirt. He sees something creepy. A skeleton! Just a skeleton with handcuffs on it. He didn’t know, but he was digging up a house that used to be an old prison. He saw 15 people that had handcuffs and were dead.

“Ugh, I dug up the wrong house.” But little did he know that under the prison was Dr. Heesagam’s house.

So the dragon walks along the road, stomping around like a maniac, so angry that he breathes his fiery breath. He sees something, a commercial sign that says, “Kill the Dragon! Go to the Army and sign up now.” He got so mad that he picked up the sign and threw it at a tank. Of course, the tank exploded. But then another tank came and fired at the dragon’s diamond peg leg. He screamed, “Ahh!” and falls down.  “You will be killed, Doctor Heesagam, once I get my claws on you! You shall never be alive. You shall not be in the cemetery. You will be in my mouth!” The dragon was so mad that he nearly destroyed the whole town. He seized this other town that was sitting there peacefully, and they were even more scared than the other town. The dragon thought that Doctor Heesagam was hiding in the other town, but really he was under the jail cell.

All Doctor Heesgam was doing was sitting in his ice chair and trying to go to sleep but he couldn’t because it was too cold. The lights came back on and the heat came back on.

“Oh that’s great,” said Doctor Heesagam. “Now my ice chair turned into a molten lava chair. Well… I better get working on the invention that I must finish.”

He took a tube of lava from his lava tub and he poured it into a gun.

“This gun will be good, because it will be called The Molten Lava because it will turn the dragon into molten lava.”

He left his house and went in to the woods to find the dragon. He couldn’t find him in the woods but he could find him in the next town over. He saw the dragon ripping out the houses.

“That silly little fool dragon… he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s just ripping up his own strength. I’ll aim this gun at him…”

He aimed it by accident at a house and he shot it. It hit the house. It turned into molten lava.

The dragon said, “Hmm maybe Doctor Heesgam’s mansion finally blew up and now he’s dead!”

But little did the dragon know that the house was abandoned and nobody lived there. So  all the explosion did was burn off the dragon’s skin and turn it into a blue dragon.

“What? I’m blue?” The dragon said. “Now I have to be nice… And eat vegetables.”

Doctor Heesagam was like, “Hmm, I didn’t think he would turn blue. But now I can’t kill him.” He walked home very mad.

THE END

The eerie music started to play. That’s how it all started. It was all downhill from there. And then I couldn’t believe what I saw: a piano appeared in the middle of the room. I can’t remember what happened next, but I had a strange vision that an alien came into the room and started playing the piano. I woke up in a hospital bed wearing a blue and white flowered hospital gown in a room with a guy who was wearing a white lab coat and with hair that looked tossed about, like the hair of a mad scientist. Suddenly he started hitting me with questions.

“What is your name?!”

“Where do you live?!”

“Who are your parents?!”

“How old are you?!”

I tried to speak. I really did. But nothing came out.

“Speak!!! Tell me everything!!!”

Then I remembered that I had been taking sign language at Corral Academy for the past three or four years. Corral Academy is a private school specializing in sign language. My grandfather is deaf, and it was the closest sign language school around. And the best.

“Do you speak sign language?” I signed.

And he signed back, “Of course I do. Where do you think you are?! The land of the English-speaking people?! Now, tell me EVERYTHING!!!”

My name is Chloe and I am fourteen years old. My mother disappeared in 3021 when I was 7 years old in a mysterious incident with aliens.  Or maybe it was yesterday. I am not thinking straight right now. Ever since, I have been terrified of aliens and unexpected things. Then it was my turn to ask the questions.

“Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here? Now you have to tell me everything.”

“Please!! Do you know why can’t I talk?” He just stood there, staring at me like I was the craziest person he had ever seen. I stared back at him. Then I went crazy.

“Why aren’t you saying anything about it?!!!!!!!!!!!?!”

I started chasing him around the room with flailing arms.

“YOU PROMISED!!!!!!!!!”

“Yes, but—”

“NO BUTS!! THERE ARE NO EXCUSES!!!”

“Calm. Down.”

“YOU WANT ME TO CALM DOWN?  TELL ME EVERYTHING THEN!!!!!”

“Okay, okay fine.”

“You are at the Inner Galaxy Hospital, address 1563 Inner Galaxy Way, Bunchen, Yilo Galaxy. I am a psychologist, sent by the board of the galaxy.  You are here because the aliens you saw captured you because you saw them at work, trying to get samples of humans to clone them. Your mother came here seven years ago because she saw them as well.”

“So then why didn’t the other people who saw it come here?”

“There were other people who saw it?!  AND YOU ARE ONLY TELLING ME NOW?!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Take over the world.”  He said into a thingy that looked a little like a walkie talkie as he left the room, “And do it quickly.”

Ok. I know that there is a possibility that  my mom is somewhere in this building. If she is, she would probably know exactly what to do. I remember when I was little she used to give me all the advice I could ever want. She was the best. Just the thought of getting her back got me  excited… But right now I had other things to think about… I looked out the window, thinking  about the day mom disappeared. It was a really nice day out and I woke up thinking that everything would be perfect. When I got home my mom was nowhere to be found. My dad said that she went to the basement to do the laundry and never came back. The security cameras got fogged up mysteriously, but you could faintly see the shape of  what looked a little bit like aliens, like the ones that I saw. I wonder what mom would say the story was. It would probably be different from her perspective. Why am I thinking so much?! I HAVE TO FIND HEEERRRRRRRR!!!

I started looking  for the psychologist.  I needed him to find out why I couldn’t speak.  Anyway, it felt like there was a wool sweater around my vocal chords. I hated it. I saw the front door that he went through and tried it to see if I could get through it. It was locked. Great. Ohmygosh!!! There was a grate that I could go through maybe if I tried… No, that’s a pathetic Idea. My friend, Violet, taught me how to pick locks once. She said that one day it would come in handy, but at the time I didn’t see how it would ever come in handy. Now I understand what she was talking about. I took out a bobby pin from my messed–up bun and started to fiddle with the lock. This one seemed to be harder than the rest I had done. Maybe it required some other kind of password in addition to a key. Since this was in another galaxy completely different from the one I’m used to living in, maybe they had completely different crazy technology that we do not have so maybe this lock was going to be much harder than all of the rest that I’ve tried. Probably. But I hope not. This would be so easy if I could have just undone the lock, found my mother immediately standing out the door waiting for me, and we could just talk out a plan to escape here and come back to our world. That would just be so much easier. But, unfortunately, this is not a fairytale, where everything turns out perfect in the end and everybody lives happily ever after. There is no such thing as happily ever after to me because there is no such thing as perfect. If only. Click. I heard the sound of the door opening, only to find that there was another door, waiting for me like a prize for getting one door open. Who knows how many other doors there could be. This was going to be a hard thing to accomplish.

“What is your password?” A robotic sounding voice said.

Passwords  are usually something that the person who thought up the password thinks about very often, or something that is close to their heart. Or maybe a number combination, like the address or something. Let’s see. 1563galaxyhospital. Yes. Maybe that would work. Let me try it.

“What is your password?” a robotic voice repeated.

“1563 galaxy hospital,” I said.

“Wrong password,” the robotic voice repeated.  I wondered what the password could be, if that wasn’t it. 1563. Maybe that’s it. Let me try.

“1563.”

“Password correct.”

Great! Now I needed to unlock who knows how many more doors. This door had a keypad on it for a lock with numbers on it. I typed in the numbers 1563 and the door didn’t budge. I knew that it was a four-number combination, definitely. I wondered if it was a word and numbers corresponded to the letters in the word. Let’s see. I knew that the galaxy is Yilo galaxy, whatever that was. The Y is the 25th letter of the alphabet.  The letter I is the 9th. L is The the 12th and O is the 15th. Now I take the first number of each number, and I have my password. Let’s see. 2911. I immediately punch the code to the robotic voice. I silently cheered as I saw the door open. Inside of the small room there was a strange painting done with ultra-color technology. I took it off of the wall to look at it. Beautiful.  I noticed for the first time that there was a small safe that had a clue pinned on it — ”Think of your mother.”

I thought of the nickname that I called her—Mamaw.  I typed her nickname in and it opened and inside there was a note. It said, “I am in a la, come to save me!! If you do not, the whole human race will be in danger!!! – Mamaw.”

Great! Now I had a clue!  I couldn’t wait for the happily ever-after. Inside of the room there was also a keyboard that looked like it had wires that connected to the door.  The door looked like it was unlocked, so I tried it to see if it was open.  No. It was not open.  I turned on the keyboard (I play piano in music class at my school) and started fiddling with it. Suddenly I got an idea. What if you had to play a certain melody on the keyboard and that was the pass code to get through the door?! I thought of the address again. 1563. If A was one, B was two, C was three, and so on, then that could be the key!!!!!! That meant that the melody must be AEFC!!!!!!!!  I played it on the piano. Wow. That is such a strange sounding melody. Yet, it sounds strangely familiar. I was trying to think where I had heard it when suddenly it struck my mind. The sound that played on the piano when they took over my house! I was so happy I found this melody. It was probably the key to open the door I played it over and over again at the fourth time, the door opened. I went through the door to find a small room and in that room there was a boy, about my age, standing there, looking trapped.

He had long black hair, he was tall,  and he was wearing the same gown that I was wearing, except mine was much more dirty and ripped by now.  He hadn’t noticed me at all.  I wondered if he could talk, unlike me.  He looked as if I had seen him before, like the melody on the piano. So strange and familiar, it was scary. I didn’t know what to think, but I better do something.  But what?  I finally decided to get his attention by going in front of him and signing: “Can you talk?” So I did, and he signed back.

“No, I can’t talk.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“I’m from here. Aren’t you?” he asked.

“I’m from planet Earth,” I said.

“I heard about that. In my school, they talked about that,” he calmly signed to me.

“How old are you?” I signed.

“54 moons old,” he signed.

“How long is that in years?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but one moon is about 1/4 of a year, I think.”

“Oh cool we are about the same age!!!”

“Cool!”

“How did you get here?”

“It’s a long story. You?”

“It’s a long story.”

There was a door with a metal lock that looked easy to pick. This one looked easier than the rest I had already picked. They probably made it easy to pick because if we got through all the other locks, we would probably get out from this one somehow.

“Do you know how to pick a lock?” Jacob signed.

“Yes. Do you want me to pick this one?” I signed

“Yes.”

“Ok.”

I fiddled with the lock with my bobby pin.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh… Got it!!!!!!!”

I stared at the vast universe that I could see. It was amazing. It was like standing in the middle of the Universe. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There were so many colors. It didn’t look like this in all of the pictures that I had seen. It was mostly green. It looked more like the Northern Lights than what it actually was.

I signed to him. “Is this where you lived?”

“Yes, but there’s more to it than that, but I’m not sure if I can tell you. I have to get to know you a little bit better before I tell you.”

My hands hurt from signing all the time. I wished I could have my voice back. It was so weird not to be able to talk. I was starting to forget what it was like to talk.

We started to walk around and look at what was around me instead of the sky. It looked like it would never end, like I was on top of the world. The sky was endless. I was going to find where my mom was. I thought about the clue that my mom had left me.

“Jacob, there is something I have to tell you,” I signed.

“Yes?” he signed.

“My mom is somewhere outside here. In a lab somewhere. She is trapped and she needs my help. You live here, so you should know. Do you know of any labs around here?”

“Yes, I do. There are two in the area. The closest one is about 5 quims away.”

“Okay. That’s not that far. I can do that. Come on let’s go.”

We started walking and walking and finally, we reached somewhere that looked like the end of the Universe. It was fast, black, nothingness. There were hundreds of parachutes stacked next to it.

“You have to jump,” signed Jacob.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I signed back.

“Here I’ll show you,” and he jumped without a parachute.

“Wait, you forgot a parachute.” I was longing to be able to talk because I didn’t want to lose my companion. We were starting to be friends.

Great, now I had lost two people along my adventure. I guess I had no choice. I had to jump in order to get to the lab and find my mom. I grabbed a lime-green parachute, strapped it on my back, and jumped.

I landed on a tiny island of isolation. There was one teeny building. I suppose that was the lab. It was a 5-foot, modern building, kind of like a teeny, tiny version of the Empire State Building. I circled the building once or twice to try to find a door. There was only one window stretched around it like a band. I decided to try and break in. Hopefully, this was the right lab. I wished Jacob was here. He  might know a better way to get in. Luckily, I had my pen knife with me; I never leave home without it. I used it to cross an x on it and then I broke it with my fist. Ow, that hurt. I wish I hadn’t done that. Maybe my mom would have some ointment or something. The last time she had taken care of me when I was sick or helped me when I wasn’t feeling well was 7 years ago.

There was good-sized hole for me to go through. I climbed through it and the inside was so much bigger than the outside. I was amazed. There was something that looked like a full-size ferris wheel. There was nobody in there. I climbed on the ferris wheel, thinking that maybe it would lead me somewhere. The second I set foot on the first gondola, it started to move, fast. I climbed inside frantically as it was moving. I was hooked on by two-feet, but my head was hanging down. This was the scariest thing I have done, even scarier than the parachute. It stopped when I was at the very top.  For the first time I saw a secret door in the ceiling. I pushed it to see if it would open, and it did. I climbed up there and inside was a room that looked like a lab. Inside strapped up in a chair was… my Mother!!!

Chapter nine:

I wanted to scream SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BAD!!!

I could see from the look on her face that she could see me. I frantically started  to untie the knots in the rope that was tying her in the chair.  I undid the cloth that was tying her mouth shut. I hope she could talk. “Can you talk?” I signed. My mother went to the same school I go to, therefore she knows sign language.

“No” she signed. She frantically started to sign to the aliens. “Give us our voices back or else I will tell the whole world about your evil plot!!”

“Yeah right. Nice try, but no way.”

“And we are not kidding. I have my all-galaxy cell phone on me.” I signed to them. “I am a close friend with the ruler of the world’s daughter!!” I said to the aliens. I hadn’t told them before because I wanted to know that my mother was safe first. All of a sudden, I didn’t have that feeling like there was a wool sweater around my neck! “Mamaw?” I stood in shock for a moment. I never realized how great it was to be able to talk!! “Come on, Mamaw!!!!!!  Lets get out of here!!!”

And so we ran, faster than the wind, onto the ferris wheel, out through the broken window, and onto the island and the vast, neverending, universe above us.  I strapped into a parachute and I started soaring. “Mamaw, strap into that parachute!” She did, and she quickly caught up to me. “So, mamaw, tell me everything!!!  Starting from when you left, long ago.”

“Some aliens kidnapped me, because I saw them. They made me mute, so that I wouldn’t complain. I then learned, by eavesdropping, that they were going to use me to make evil clones that appeared human but were evil to use against us. They have been trying for years now, without succeeding. I have been messing up their equipment and they have not figured me out. Thank you for coming to get me. I can’t believe you found that note. It was the only time the aliens left me unsupervised.”

I then told her what happened to me, every single little detail. I was so happy. I felt this sort of descending feeling. I looked down and saw planet earth below me. How did the parachutes know where to go? Our city was getting closer and I could see our building.  Suddenly our parachutes disappeared and we were free falling. Finally we landed, safe and sound. We walked up the stairs to the third floor and we went into our apartment. The first thing we saw was my dad.

We automatically all embraced each other in a big hug. “What happened to you guys? It was scary—my wife disappeared and then my daughter—what was I supposed to do? Where did you go?”  So we told him the whole story, and it was a happy ending for everybody.That night was scary though. I put on some music to listen to, and suddenly all that I heard was that creepy melody. I tried to stop the music, but it wouldn’t stop. It just kept playing on and on.  Finally I just threw it out the window and I never heard that melody again.

Now I am 21 years old, and I recently thought of something. What ever happened to Jacob? So I looked his name up on the computer and it said that he was the youngest person ever to go to outer space but disappeared mysteriously. Then they said he recently appeared again, and was asked many questions for that matter, but he refused to answer any of them.  I am glad he is safe. That was what he wanted to tell me.

Once there were two mice. The wife was Japanese and her name was Fumi and the  husband was Nepali and his name was Hasan. They were always arguing about whose culture they should live by. And since they lived in a Buddhist temple, every morning they saw people in the temple who were always dressing in robes.  They wondered what they were doing in the temple. The mice always heard people talking in their native language.

So, one day they went to a library and when they were looking around they saw an abandoned pup (a baby mouse) in a basket! So Fumi freaked out, and said to Hasan “We need to save that little pup, please Hasan please!’

So when Hasan said okay, Fumi jumped up and down, then picked up the pup.

She ran home and started buying a crib, blankets, and toys for the pup at Mice ‘R’ Us. While Hasan was still looking for the books in the library to translate the languages that the people were talking. Fumi loved how the pup looked. She was beige and white.

When Hasan came home with the books (How to Speak Chinese) he said, “Why don’t we keep the baby for a little while and then we give her up for donation?”

“How dare you say that! This is my pup now. You have no say to give it up for donation, especially since she’s a live pup. Not a toy! Why don’t you want to keep the pup?” said Fumi.

“Because it’s too much responsibility. If we do keep it, when it grows up, it’s going to be Nepali, not Japanese.”

“Stop calling her, an it. And she is  going to be Japanese, not Nepali when she grows up,” said Fumi.

“Are you even going to name it?” asked Hasan.

“Yes. She is  going to have a Japanese name, not a Nepali name,” said Fumi.

“How dare you name this pup a Japanese name” and then Hasan just got so mad that he stormed out of their little hole and right into the big temple.

When Fumi saw that Hasan stormed out, she quickly put the pup down in the new crib, that she bought yesterday. Then she ran to Hasan, and grabbed his tiny arm. But as soon as she grabbed his arm, a big person saw them and screamed.

“Ah, a mouse!!!”

So when Fumi heard that she ran back to their hole, still gripping onto Hasan’s arm. When Fumi and Hasan got in their little hole Fumi said, “We have to get out of here so the humans don’t call someone to kill us, and find a new place to live.”

So Hasan started packing his bag, Fumi’s, and the baby’s bag. Hasan and Fumi put on their bags, and Fumi also put the baby’s bag on. He put the baby in the baby carrier on Fumi’s chest. Then they quietly walked out of the temple. then they walked quietly in the shadows so people can’t  see them.  They were trying to find a place in one of their friend’s houses for a little while until they could find a park to make a burrow in to take care of the baby, and live in.

They started to walk to their friend’s house, which was in a grocery stand in Japantown.

“Why do we always have to be in Japantown and not go to my friend’s house who is Nepali?” said Hasan.

“Let’s stop arguing. We have to find some place safe to keep the baby,” said Fumi.

“How about now we just name the baby?” said Hasan.

“Okay. How about we name the baby Chika.”

So Hasan said okay.Then started to get settled in to their friend’s house.Then Fumi said “This is my friend Annie.”

But then Hasan said in a loud voice “Annie only has Japanese things.” Then Fumi said “Stop screaming Chika’s sleeping.”

“Okay,” said Hasan, “why don’t we start unpacking”

“Okay,” said Fumi in a low voice. So they started unpacking. Then Fumi said “You know i think we are going to live in the library.” Right then, a cat heard them squeaking. He stuck his hand inside of the hole and tried to get Annie.

He caught Annie in his paw. Annie screamed for Fumi and Hasan to help her while the cat laughed evilly.

“Help me! The cat’s got me! Fumi! Help me!” Annie screamed.

Fumi picked up baby Chika and put her back in the baby carrier. The baby was crying. Hasan started packing their bag again with their clothes, books, food, papers, blankets, pillows and all of the stuff that they had in their house in the temple.

Instead of Hasan only putting on his backpack, he put on Fumi’s and Chika’s too.

Then, they started running after Annie. Annie was still screaming for Fumi and Hasan to help her. Her screams became faint because the cat had her in his mouth and the cat was going further and further away.

The cat screamed, “You will never get her back. I am going to feed her to my kittens.” Then Fumi screamed “NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!”

At the cat’s house, which was a dome made out of a whole bunch of leaves in Central Park, he put Annie in a cardboard box and put a rock on top so that she wouldn’t come out.

“We will have her for breakfast tomorrow,” said the cat to his kittens.

“Why can’t we have her now? I’m hungry. I didn’t like the dinner we had. Robin legs make me nauseous,” said the youngest kitten named James.

“Well, you can have some of the leftover crow from yesterday.”

“Okay, fine,” said James in a sad voice.

“Okay, good because I was planning on making scrambled eggs with mice tomorrow,” said the father.

When Annie heard that, she knew she had to do something. Once she heard that all the cats were sleeping, she chewed a hole that was as big as a dime, squished through it, and ran away. Then in the morning the father cat went to take Annie to make her into scrambled eggs, when he saw she was not there.  Then he saw the little hole she made, and screamed, “Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!”

“Where is that mouse??” said the dad cat.

Then James said, “Dad, we are going to have mice scrambled eggs today yyyaaayyy!!!!!!!!!!” Then the father cat said in a small voice.

“Well the mouse some how ran away”

James said, “Wwwwhhhhhhaaaaattttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Then the father cat said “James don’t talk to me like that! You’re in time out.”

Then James said, “Okay” in a sad voice.

Now back to Fumi and Hasan.

Now, they were in a library. They looked for Annie for a day, but couldn’t find her. They looked in people’s houses to see if the cat was there. They looked in playgrounds and office buildings.

“I hope it wasn’t my fault that Annie got caught by a cat,” said Fumi. “I hope she is not dead,” said Fumi, holding Chika and rocking her back and forth. Fumi was chirping really loudly.

“I don’t think she is dead. Maybe she escaped somehow and is alive,” said Hasan. “Think of the good stuff that’s happening. No cats can come in the library so no cats will kill us.”

“Okay, but I’m still worried if she is dead or alive. Okay, that makes me feel a little better”said Fumi.

“See, there’s always good in bad times,” said Hasan.

Fumi said “Wow, Hasan you have not said a word about our culture.”

“Oh yah” said Hasan. Just as Hasan said that, Annie’s voice called out, “Fumi, Hasan, can you hear me?!”

“Oh my gosh Hasan, that’s Annie!! Annie! Annie! Annie! Annie! We are here!”

“Fumi, Hasan is that you?” yelled Annie.

“YES! It is me Annie, we are in the library!” So, Annie started running to the library. “Is Chika safe?”

“YES!”said Fumi.

“Hewo” said Chika, as Annie ran into their hole. As Fumi jumped on Annie and hugged her, Hasan said “YAY”.

Then Annie said, “Wow, you guys you have not said anything about your culture”

“Oh yah,” said Fumi and Hasan together. Then they all sat on the sofa and started talking about their adventures.

THE END

Siblings bring each other closer together

and learn from each other every day, this story is an example of that.

Hope you enjoy.

Everyone has a story. Mine starts off in New York City. At a house — my house. My house is cozy and appropriate for four children, my little brother Owen, my older sister Brooke, my oldest brother Logan, my little brown cockerspaniel-poodle doggie named Maggie, and me. We all live together as a family. But there was only one thing missing in our happy, crazy little, well, big family. Our parents.

***

The morning started off a usual. Owen complaining to me: “Lilyyy I wanna play, I don’t wanna go to school. Its boring!” he would scream. Then meanwhile Maggie jumped on my lap I would complain to my sister: “Brooke, will you stop brushing your hair? Its already brushed! Help out with the others!” And Brooke would complain to Logan: “Logan. Please don’t be so messy! There are other people in this house look around, this place is a mess!”

And Logan had no one to complain to, so this is what he would say: “ Owen, you will have fun and learn at school, Lily, help Owen get ready since you already are, Brooke please stop brushing your hair and help me clean this house.” So we would do what Logan said, eat breakfast, and head to school. I wonder how it would be if an adult were in charge.

***

I get off the cab and head to my school,  John A. Lowan Secondary, I get out my ID card I need to enter my school:

Lily Aldrin

Birthdate: 2-18-01

8th Grade

I hand it over to the secretary, Dawnica, she’s actually pretty nice. Then again, I have no friends so I guess talking my school secretary is the only option left. Although there is this girl, Jennifer Blue, who is nice to me, but she is best friends with this this other girl Emma Greenbaum. Like I care. Okay maybe I am a little jealous.

***

“You are lucky you have Mr. Sheeler,” says Dawnica. as I start to enter the school.

Let me explain. I go to private school.  Ever wonder how we have enough money for that, and for food, and for our apartment? Mr. Sheeler was great friends with our parents. So when my parents left, Mr. Sheeler did not move in with us, but gave us the money that we needed in order to live.  And Dawnica being my “friend,” I told her about him. I smooth-out my uniform: a white blouse, navy blue skirt, and nude tights. I quickly say bye to Dawnica and head to my homeroom.

***

I guess now’s the time I should tell you about my parents. When I was about one year old, my father Theodore Aldrin went off to Haiti to study fossils that were found. Unfortunately, when a tsunami  occurred my father drowned and died, my mother was in a horrible position in life with four children. Things got worse a year later. She found out she had breast cancer. Luckily, it did not affect her too much. Until she found out she was pregnant. When Owen was born my mom died.

***

When I got home, Maggie jumped onto my lap as I sat down and started doing irritating science homework. Soon, when I finished, my brother came into the living room. He dropped his backpack and waved a letter in the air.

“What’s this?” I said.

“It’s my acceptance letter,” he said.

I replied to him “for what?” even though I knew what he was talking about.

“For Yale,” he said.

“Logan, I know this means a lot ot you, but you can’t just leave us here.”

“Lily, I”m not just going to leave you here. You have Brooke and Mr. Sheeler,” he said.

“But we need you!” I said, then stomped to my room.

***

When I got to my room, I threw myself on the bed and started crying. First, my two parents are dead and now my oldest brother who is basically like my dad? It’s all so unfair. Why me? Why not some other red-head?

“Ugh, keep the drama to William Shakespeare.,” Brooke whined when she heard me crying.

I sit up on my bed and said, “Brooke, ugh, why do you have to be such a teenager girl? Won’t you for once see how life is for me? For us?”

“Logan’s leaving!” I screamed at her.

Then I broke down into tears.

“He’s going to college!” I sobbed.

Then for the first time, Brooke took her headphones off, looked up from her computer, sat down next to me and hugged me.

***

Friday, December 25th, the day of Christmas, was the day Logan started packing. Most kids would start next September, but Yale invited him to start in the second semester January 5th. Packing would be quick for him. Being himself, Logan packing up means quickly throwing everything in his room into old Fresh Direct Boxes that he found in the basement. Mr. Sheeler had bought us a Christmas tree and bought each of us a present. Owen got a stuffed dinosaur, I got a sock monkey for my collection, Brooke got a pair of headphones, and Logan got a laptop. Of course. Everything was going by so quickly. Logan was leaving in less than a week.

I woke up to the smell of pancakes and Maggie licking my face meanwhile jumping around in my bed.

“Breakfast is ready!” Logan called. When we were all sitting down, Brooke said, “Now, who is going to make our pancakes?”

Logan rolled his eyes, again.

“Aren’t you gowna miss us? Why you woll your eyes?” said Owen playing with his pancakes.

“First, Owen, don’t play with your food, eat it. And second, I wish you guys would understand how exciting is is that I’m going to college. You haven’t even said congratulations once!”

There was silence.

“Congratulations,” said Brooke sarcastically.

***

That night, Mr. Sheeler called. Owen picked up the phone.

“Helwo-o, Who iiis it?”

“It is Mr. Sheeler,” said Mr. Sheeler with his typical German accent.

“I want to play with my stuffed dinosaur. I’ll give it to….Lilyyyy,” Owen yelled.

I rushed to the living room to grab the phone. I grabbed the antique phone sitting on the desk right next to the Christmas tree. Owen would always call my name when Mr. Sheeler called because I was Owen’s favorite. I answered the phone. “Hello Mr. Sheeler,” I mimicked his German accent.

“Hello Lily. I just wanted to let Logan and your family know that I have paid for Yale. And tell him congratulations…”

Quickly, I said, “Okay, bye.”

Usually, I have long conversations with Mr. Sheeler about when he and my father were searching for fossils in Germany…Boring! But this time, I hung up quickly because Logan was leaving in 5 days and I just wanted to get the thought out of my head. I swing into Logan’s room and said, “Sheeler paid for Yale,” then I sat on my bed and thought I’d had enough, I had to get out of here. I put on my shoes, my coat, and went out to Central Park. The snow was falling. I fell onto my back and just rolled around. I looked up and thought about where I was right now. I was thirteen. I had three siblings. My parents died and my oldest brother was going off to college. I started to cry. Then I stopped myself. I mean, I should be grateful that I have three siblings and I have a German man supporting my family financially. And I mean I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if my brother went off to college. Eventually, I’m gonna go to college. I lay there in silence. Then I got up and went home.

It was January 4th, the day Logan left. Everyone had said goodbye to Logan and I went with him to Grand Central station. What I felt was so hard to explain. My heart hurt and I felt like I wanted to cry, but when I tried I just couldn’t.

Before I knew it Logan said, “Oh! There’s the train!”

I saw it in him that he felt like jumping around. Meanwhile I just wanted to fall back and pretend that I was in a world where my parents never died and Logan never went off to college…

The sound of the train woke me. I just had to face reality. Then I looked over to Logan, finally I saw the sadness in him I had been waiting for. Logan looked at me. I looked right back at him.

“Logan, um, good luck,.” I said.

He smiled at me. “Thank you, Lil… Ill miss you,” he said softly.

“Ill miss you too,” I said, looking up to hold in my tears.

He hugged me, then picked up his bag and got on to the train. Just as the train left I forgot to say something. I started running after the train. I stopped myself. Then I shouted at the top of my lungs,

“LOGAAN! CONGRATULAAATIONS!”

Once upon a time there lived a banana man. He was stuck in a swamp. It was muddy and slimy and squirmy. It smelled dirty and mushy. He wanted to get out. Then suddenly he saw a big lizard and he was so scared that he wanted to jump out of the swamp right away and behind him was a whole pile of candy. So he wanted to stay in the swamp for a little bit longer. He was nervous to jump over the lizard, because it was so big and had sharp teeth.

Banana Man wanted to eat the candy and the lizard wanted to eat him. He tried to go around the lizard but he couldn’t move that fast. He tried going under the lizard, but he couldn’t see anything and then the lizard got stuck too so he couldn’t eat the banana man and the banana man couldn’t eat the candy. Then the lizard pulled on the ground so he got unstuck and then almost caught the banana man. But the banana man got unstuck too and grabbed the candy and ran out of the swamp. But the lizard was still following him. The lizard caught the bag of candy but not the banana man. The banana man caught his tail but he didn’t catch the candy.

“I don’t think that’s a regular banana afterall,” said the lizard and he heard the banana man scream and then he grabbed the candy from the lizard’s mouth and jumped off the lizard and ran. “Oh man,” said the lizard putting his hands down, touching his feet with his tail curled up.

When the banana man ran, some of the candy fell out and when the lizard ate the candy he realized that it was better than a banana man. And the banana man realized that the lizard thought he was a regular banana but the lizard did not care because he had candy.

Isabelle likes cheese and she is a white mouse. She wants to be the best gymnast in the world so she can get a cheese trophy. It is real cheese and you don’t have to peel the wrapper off first because it comes off for you. And then you could eat it yum yum yum.

There is a competition one day and you have to jump over the obstacles to get to the trophy. If someone gets stuck in the obstacles they can’t win so whoever gets there first wins. The mouse thinks she will win because she’s already done something like that and she knows how to do a full back handspring with no mistakes.

Some people think she’ll win like her family and her friends.

This is what the obstacle course looks like: there’s a spring board at the beginning and one person stands on one side and one person stands on the other side and when someone jumps on it the other one swings up. After that there are the bars and after that you have to swing on the rings  and after that you have to get on the first ledge and then you have to stand up and climb the rock wall and then you get to the cheese trophy!!! But there is another part where you have to do whatever they tell you and if you don’t you are out.

Isabelle has been practicing for five years.

On the day of the competition Isabelle felt excited. She stretched and warmed up. Her family and friends came to the competition. Isabelle thought she would win, but there were other mice there that were good gymnasts. At first the judges tell them all to do a round-off. Then they told them to do a back handspring. She made no mistakes! Then she started, and swung up on the springboard. she did a good job. The mice clapped! When she got to the two bars on the side that you had to push up on, she got up. But then when she got to the rock wall, she fell! She had gotten to the fourth rock, and her hand slipped. She fell onto her feet.

Isabelle still thought she could win. There were rock walls on the side so she could climb up the rock wall and they’re very short so she got up and she went again. She finally got up the wall! She was so happy! She won, even though she’d fallen! People clapped! Her family stood up and cheered and yelled her name.

Then she smelled cheese. The trophy was as big as a mouse! She was the same height as it! She took it home. That day, she had it for lunch.

She was going to do gymnastics next year, too.

THE END

BOOK ONE: The Endless Fight

There once was a planet called Bobo, and the planet was a very happy planet and everyone there had a lot of fun but there was this other planet named Nani that only had junk on it and wanted to take over Bobo.  However, the Bobos were the bad guys and the Nanis were the good guys.  Bobo didn’t have any heroes or anything but Nani had a hero called X.  He had all the powers you could think of, so Bobo decided to make a fighter robot and it took them a year to make it.  But the Nanis saw the robot so then the Nani king called Nani declared war.

They had a huge fight but more of the Bobos got killed than the Nanis because X was more powerful than the robot.  So then they made a bigger robot that could fit all the people on Bobo. They called the robot BoboBot. It was bigger than X though he was still more powerful.  The robot blocked all of X’s strikes so X made this machine that shrank someone, so he shrunk the robot and all the Bobos still in it. But the robot could still do a lot of things but its strikes were too little.  X was going to step on the robot but it could move very fast, so X was busy chasing the robot but the people started to get tired of using their hands to move the controls. X trapped them in a corner and he crushed them but Bobos ran out all over the place.  X killed so many that there were only 15 left so the ones that were left made a huge invisibility cloak and they put it over all of them and they shot at X with invisible bullets.  But X was still too powerful so he made something so that if you hit him with a powerful bolt he gets stronger, so he defeated the 15 Bobos and the Nanis won.  The Nanis went to war because the Bobos stole all their gadgets and everything because they wanted to be powerful. But a pregnant woman who was special because she could glow in the dark had had X as a baby, but then the Bobos captured X’s mother and they killed her so that’s why the Bobos are the bad guys.

After the Nanis defeated the Bobos, they rescued X’s mother and X gets married to a superwoman whose dad is Nani. So X becomes a prince. Nani is a powerful planet, and Bobo blows up.

The End.

BOOK TWO: A New World Is Born

The Nanis lived happily ever after but what they didn’t know was that the Bobos had put a little seed in the equator of their planet that would make another planet grow when Bobo blows up.  As a consequence that became a very powerful planet, almost as powerful as Nani.  So Nani built a lot of robots in case X died, because the planet, called The Underworld, was very powerful. X prayed to God that he wouldn’t die, then he went out and fought without anyone noticing and he blew half of the planet up with his powers. But X’s servants were really mad because he didn’t let them know that he was going to fight the planet on his own, and he got badly injured and they sent in their Xbots. They could fly, and they had so many gadgets and they have 1000 lives and there were a million of them. They all went into battle but the Underworld didn’t know that the second half of their planet was going to be blown up, so while the Xbots were heading toward the planet, the king – called the Evil Lord – saw them in his tower. His tower was so high and you don’t know how high it goes. Up high, he saw the Xbots and he crawled into a secret cockpit and then he took 2 machine guns in his hand and he blasted all the Xbots.

Luckily, X had a great idea; he put force fields around Xbots. Chunks of the other half of the planet started falling and many people died.  No one was ready, except for the Evil Lord, so the whole planet blew up and X got 1000 more wives and they had a big party with a lot of food and all the people became fat.

The End.

BOOK THREE

After everyone gets fat—the only person who wasn’t fat was X and the Nani king—everyone just kept eating more and more so they blew up. After that, there were only two people on the planet; the Nani king and X, so it was a very lonely planet, and other planets thought that Nani was an evil planet. They thought it was a junkyard planet. They threw all their junk on half of the planet.  X and Nani were in trouble so they had to come up with a plan because even though  X had a lot of powers, he did not have enough to destroy all the other aliens on the other planets.

Unluckily, they found a baby left right next to the equator, but then X touched the baby but it rolled into the equator and all of a sudden the equator blew up and there was only 3/4s of the planet left.  Nani and X kept searching for the baby for 12 years until they came to a piece of light which got bigger and bigger until it was a person made of fire, so he became X’s son. Soon Nani died and the planet was no longer called Nani; it was called                            because it didn’t have a name.  That planet would explode in 10 minutes because it had nothing on it, so X and his son named Lava Boy left the planet when it was about to blow up. But then they found a planet that was captured and it was called Lava World.  All the people were made of lava so X took over the world, and then one of the scientists freed the world so nobody was locked in cages. They thanked X for rescuing them.  They turned him into Lava X.  They had a big celebration and the planet was renamed Lava Nani.

The End.

End OF Series!

Chapter One

Once upon a time, there was a dolphin that lived in the sea. Her name was Ginger. Then she saw an octopus coming close to her. Then she saw a bunny on the shore. And then she went back under water. She looked for seaweed. She couldn’t find any. She didn’t have any breakfast, so she was going to starve if she didn’t get this seaweed. She dug all the dirt on the ocean floor, but she still didn’t find any seaweed. Then she looked up on the surface to see if there’s any seaweed, but she still couldn’t find the seaweed. Then she saw a stingray. Stingrays were her enemy. She swam far away from the sting ray. And the stingray couldn’t find her.

“Maybe I’ll go back to the stingray and talk”, said Ginger. She wanted to talk to the stingray because she wanted the seaweed first. Then she talked to the stingray.

She said, “Can I have the seaweed first?” But the stingray already found the seaweed. The stingray ate half the seaweed, and put all the others on the ocean floor. He just put them on the ocean floor. Then Ginger ate the other half.

And then Ginger swam back to her parents. She wanted to have a sleepover with her friends, but her parents said no. Then she asked five more times, and her parents still said no. They said no because they thought she needed to wait a little more to go to a sleepover. She could only go to a sleepover with her cousins. She was disappointed. Then she went back to bed.

Then the next day came. Then she asked her mom again, and dad again. It was her birthday. She turned five. Her grandma and grandpa bought them food. She didn’t want her mom and dad to see that she was getting food then, so she took it to her friend’s house. If she was gonna go with her parents then she was gonna tell them that she wanted to go to her friend’s house, so she wanted to use the new food to lure her parents. She ate her breakfast, and she played a puzzle. And then she went to the playground. She ate her lunch. Then she got her mom and dad’s favorite food, to lure them to her friend’s house. Mom and Dad’s favorite foods are salad and spaghetti and meatballs. They recognized it was the friend’s house and they take her back home. Then she got her mom and dad’s favorite food and tried to lure Mom and Dad to her best friend’s house again. But Mom and Dad recognized it was her friend’s house, so then they took her back home again. Then she ate dinner. Then she went to bed.

Then she saw a shark, and she ate her breakfast quickly. Then she ran away from the shark quickly. The shark chased her when she tried to sneak over to her friend’s house. Then the shark chased her back to her house. Then she tried again but the shark chased her back to her house again. Her parents were eating breakfast and they didn’t see it happening. Then she tried to chase the shark away but the shark kept chasing her away. And then she gets her mom but her mom was talking on the phone. Then she asked her dad but her dad was having some coffee. Then she tried to chase the shark away again but the shark kept chasing. Then she swam away from the shark and the shark kept chasing her. So then she tip-toed quietly and the shark didn’t see her.

So then she went to her friend’s house. She already packed all her stuff so she could go. Her mom already called her friend’s mom so she could go but had to wait two more years. But Ginger didn’t want to wait. So she went to her friend’s house and when she got there she said hello to her friend and her friend’s mom asked, “Are you seven yet?” and Ginger said no.

“I thought your mom told you you have to wait till you’re seven.”

“But I already packed all my stuff!”

Then she said, “Go back home and keep your stuff till when you get to be seven.”

Chapter Two

Ginger’s friend was already seven but they were still friends. Then Ginger’s friend’s mom said, “Just go back to your home now.”

Then Ginger said, “What about I stay here until I’m seven. I have all my clothes here.”

“Just go back home now!” Ginger’s friend’s mom said.

Then Ginger went back home. She felt really disappointed. Then she asked her parents if she could go again.

They said, “No no no, wait until you are seven.”

So she tried again, but her parents just said, “No, no, no wait until you are seven.”

Then she ate lunch. She had carrots and celery. So then she tried to tell her mom and dad she’d do all her chores but they said no no no. Then she promised she would clean her room and she would do everything for her mom and dad.

And they said,”Yes but clean your room now.”

But she didn’t want to clean her room and they said, “Then you will not go unless you clean your room. If you clean your room right now you will go the day after tomorrow and you will stay for three nights.

So she cleaned her room and her mom said, “In neat piles not under the table and over the table.” Ginger cleaned her room and made it into piles. Her mom said, “Don’t put piles on the pathway to your bed.” Then Ginger put them on the place where no one will check not on the pathway to her bed. And her mom said, “You can go to the sleepover. But here are the rules: no tickling under their chin, no running and pretending to get hurt, no ripping their pillows when you want the feathers of the pillow to come out, and no jumping on the bed. And those are the rules you have to follow. If you wanna go stay with rules if you don’t want to go then don’t stay with the rules.”

Then Ginger said, “I’ll stay with the rules.”

Then she went to the playground. Then had naptime. Then had playtime. Then had snacktime. Then she had dinnertime. And last but not least, she had bedtime. She slept very well. Then she woke up her mom and dad.

“It’s the day! It’s the day!” She said.

“Not today,” her mom said,” tomorrow is the day.”

“Hooray hooray!” Ginger said.

Tomorrow.

“But that takes too long!

“It won’t take so long,’ her dad said, “just a double 24 hours.”

It was five o’clock in the morning then five o ten and five o twenty and five o thirty one.

Then Ginger said, “But I don’t want to wait too long.”

“Don’t worry,” her dad said, “I promise you will be going to your friend’s house tomorrow.”

Then she got very disappointed. Then she talked to her baby sister. Her baby sister’s name was Valentina. Her baby sister was six months old. “Ga ga ga” she said to her sister.

Her sister said back, “Ga ga goo goo.”

Then her dad drank coffee and her mom talked on the phone. Then she shook her rattle.

Chapter 3

Then she ate breakfast and then she played with the puzzle. It was a safari puzzle. After the puzzle she read a book. The book was about nursery rhymes. She liked Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and The Wheels on the Bus. Then she went to the fair with her mom and dad and baby sister. There was apple juice and seaweed. You had to grab the seaweed out of the apple juice. She lived in a cave.

She went on the ferris wheel. Then she went on the roller coaster. She was not scared at all and she went on a ride called Tornado that was spinning a lot and spun really fast and then she went to eat ice cream. Her baby sister ate ice cream in a cup. Ginger got banana ice cream. Her baby sister got lemon sorbet. Valentina was scared of some rides but some rides she wasn’t scared of. Then she had lunch. After lunch she went on more rides. Valentina went on the little truck ride. Valentina’s favorite color was purple. Ginger’s favorite color was yellow. Then Valentina went on the little Indian Beach ride. Then Valentina went on the car ride. Then Valentina went on the train ride. Then Ginger went on the rollercoaster again. Then the mommy and daddy went on the little truck ride with Valentina. Then they went on the rollercoaster with Ginger. And then they went home. Then they ate dinner. Then Ginger went to bed. When she went to bed, she thought about the sleepover. She was so excited.

Chapter 4

Then it was the day of the sleepover. Ginger was going to stay at her friend’s house for three nights. Then Ginger’s mom and dad put Valentina in her high chair. Then her mom and dad ate breakfast. Then Ginger put her stuffed animal in her bag. Then she went outside.

Her mother said,”Not yet. At three o’clock.” Then it was one o’clock. Then it was two o’clock. Then it was three o’clock. Then Ginger’s dad took Ginger out to the car. And he drove Ginger there. Ginger’s mom was sitting next to Ginger’s dad. And Valentina was sitting next to Ginger. Then they arrived at Ginger’s friend’s house. Then Ginger opened the door. She said bye bye to her parents and bye bye to her sister. Then Ginger’s parents took Valentina to the car. Then she went up the stairs.

Then she saw her friend, and Ginger’s friend’s mom asked,”Are you seven yet?”

And Ginger said,”No. But my mom said that I can stay three nights here.”

“Unroll your sleeping bag,” Ginger’s friend said. Ginger’s sleeping bag was green with yellow polka dots. Then they played tag you’re it outside. Then they swam in the pool. Ginger’s friend had a pool. She felt happy. And her friend felt happy. She was excited.

Chapter 5

Then they ate lunch. She felt happy and excited, but sometimes she had to go to bed and not play in the pool. It was bedtime, so she couldn’t go to the pool. Then it was the next day. She ate breakfast. She had cereal for breakfast. Then they played with the puzzles.

Then they went to the fair. First, they went to the bouncy castle. Then they went to the ferris wheel. Then they had two snacks. Then they went on the roller coaster. Then they went to the obstacle course. Then they went to her friend’s house. Then they ate lunch. Then they played in the pool. Ginger felt happy and excited. And then she played with five more puzzles.

She felt happy about the sleepover, but she also wanted to go home, because she had a jacuzzi. She missed her family, and she had a backyard. Then she had dinner and then she went to bed. Ginger already knew that she had a family, and she learned that she wanted to go back to them, and to play with the jacuzzi.

Once upon a time, there was a boa constrictor with fangs as sharp as swords, and he had wings that could make him fly. He lived in a secret fortress. He wanted to destroy everything and rule the world. He wanted everyone to follow his orders. His name was Pythor.

There were a bunch of seeds and a special plant in an enchanted garden – a lot of those special plants. But Pythor asked his army of snakes to destroy all the plants. But he and his army didn’t notice one seed that was not cut, and then the seed started growing and it turned into a boy who could fly. He could disappear somewhere and reappear somewhere else, and he had laser-eyes. His name was Nightwing. Nightwing had a lot of gadgets and weapons because he found materials to make them. He found leather and then he made leather pickaxes and leather swords in case some broke, and he dug for diamonds and then he went right back up and crafted the diamond into a diamond sword. Also, one time he dug for iron so he could get enough iron to make iron leggings, iron boots, an iron chestplate and an iron helmet. And then he built a diamond mansion in the enchanted garden.

Nightwing knew about Pythor and his army. After he had been born from the seed, he watched Pythor and his army as they left, and saw all the destruction they had caused. He decided to put a disguise on, pretending to be a pizza man, and he delivered pizza to them, and then he asked to go to where all the remote controls and weapons and gadgets were. They said, “If you give us eight slices of pizza for free.”

And then Nightwing gave them all the pizza for free and he went to the remote control, weapons and gadgets room, and then he turned off all the remote controls because they were on and that was charging all their computers so they could look at whichever place they wanted to destroy next. Also, he put a pizza in the remote controls and it jammed the machine so you couldn’t turn it back on. Then he disappeared and reappeared in his diamond mansion.

Meanwhile, Pythor was eating his pizza. He was thinking of his next step. He pulled out a map for back-up. He didn’t feel like going to his remote controls. He was tired. He thought he could take over the USA. And he wanted to use all his weapons and gadgets to hypnotize the president to help destroy the USA.

Nightwing was having a baby. He used some of his powers to put into the baby’s heart. Nightwing named him Redhood. He wanted the baby because he was lonely. He had no one else like him. Redhood quickly grew into a boy. Then Nightwing put a forcefield around the galaxy, and his son was busy protecting the president. He traveled to the US and went to the White House in Washington, DC. He disappeared from the enchanted garden and reappeared in the President’s office. And he told the president to put on super spy binoculars. The president said that he would because he heard about Nightwing and Redhood in the newspaper and he knew that they were good and that they were trying to fight for justice.

Meanwhile, Pythor was launching his ships to the White House and Redhood was protecting the president. But then the president’s army attacked Pythor’s army. Pythor’s army was using weapons like swords, shields, and daggers. They were using all their vehicles. Meanwhile, Nightwing was looking at the battle and he knew he had to help, so he went over to the White House and used his weapons to help the president’s army and Redhood. Afterwards, Nightwing had a big battle with Pythor, and they were fighting with all kinds of weapons like swords, shields, and daggers. Nightwing took his steel rod and let him have it! Then Pythor hypnotized Nightwing. He told Nightwing to kill Redhood. But then one of the guys from the president’s army knocked Nightwing out and he wasn’t hypnotized anymore. Nightwing tripped Pythor and electrocuted him, so then he said, “I must regroup, but I’ll be back someday!”

Then he disappeared forever.

One day a girl named Alice and her mom wanted to go for a walk. They saw an ice-cream truck.

“Can I have ice-cream?” she asked nicely.

“No way we haven’t even had dinner,” said the mom.

“Can we have ice-cream after dinner?” she asked nicely.

“Maybe if you eat all your dinner,” said the mom.

The girl believed her and so she ate all her dinner. They had mashed potatoes, spinach and spaghetti.

“Now can we get ice-cream?”

“No,” said the mom, “let’s go to the playground, maybe while we’re going if there’s an ice-cream truck, we can get some ice-cream and eat it at the playground.”

But on the way, there was no ice-cream. She looked everywhere. She saw an ice-cream truck but it was too far from where she was. Maybe I’ll get ice-cream tomorrow, she thought.

So they went to the playground for one minute. They only played on the swings. She felt ok about not getting ice-cream because she might get ice-cream on a different day.

They went home. She went to bed.

The next day, after they ate breakfast they played in the playground. They played for one hour. They went on the slide and the swings and the monkey bars. She was tired and she went home and took a nap.

They ate lunch: peanut butter and jelly with broccoli and mashed potatoes. After lunch, her mom said, “Let’s go out for a walk.”

They saw an ice-cream truck and started walking toward it, but the girl thought they were going somewhere else.

“Surprise!” said the mom and dad.

The little girl got mint-chocolate chip and the dad got cookies and cream and the mom got double chocolate. They went to the playground and ate their ice-cream. When the dad was done, he went home and got a blanket for a picnic for dinner. After they were done with dinner they had mashed potatoes again and then they got ice cream again. They got different flavors. The little girl got double chocolate. The mom got mint-chocolate chip and the dad got cookies and cream again. They went to a different ice cream shop. The mom and dad didn’t surprise the little girl, she knew they were getting ice-cream. They all got the same flavor. They all got strawberry. No one had stomach aches because they said yes, because they didn’t get ice cream yesterday.

They went home and had no more ice cream. The girl felt happy. They had a happy time. They went to bed.

The next morning they ate breakfast and they had pancakes with waffles.

“I don’t want ice cream today,” the girl said.

“Good,” said the mom, “because you’re not getting ice cream today after yesterday.”

The End

Gorilla EX knows every single karate move in the world. He does this special move where when he lays his finger on someone they turn into stone. He has a lot of muscles and all the girls like him. He has a six-pack and abs. He lives in a mansion with a pool and water fountain, and he is very rich, and he’s awesome at a lot of sports like basketball and baseball and snowboarding. When it’s winter he turns his place into a hockey rink. He got rich even though his parents were very poor. In his childhood the only thing he could do was inventing. So he tried out for inventing because inventing was the cheapest thing people could do in those times, and he was very young. But he learned how to invent and he invented this thing that makes people’s mind turn on him. He could control them.

As a high school student he went to visit India for a summer vacation, but there were a bunch of bandits and he didn’t know what to do. He got trapped with a bunch of bandits and fell off a cliff, but luckily he always carries a parachute with him. He fell to a surface and he found his way back to the hotel. But then he checked in his closet where he kept the machine and he saw that it was gone and that’s when he found out about the bandits. They had turned only five people’s minds on them, so now there were fifty-seven bandits (there used to be fifty-two). Now the whole world was going to be filled with bandits, so Gorilla EX started practicing so many karate moves in his mansion and he got stronger and stronger, until he actually looked like a real gorilla. He started inventing a machine that makes him stronger so no one could defeat him. He made a hypno-ray that makes him stronger so he just types in how strong he wants to be and what he needs. So he typed in “Ultra-Strong Gorilla EX” and then he got so strong that when he punched through diamond or brick or bedrock with his bare hands it doesn’t even hurt and it just goes straight through.

The bandits made a villain that was unstoppable. When he touches lightning all of a sudden it zaps and breaks apart and there’s no more lightning. He can control the lightning. The villain looked exactly like Gorilla EX so then everyone started liking him instead of Gorilla EX, and he had an even better mansion with a hockey rink inside and even if it was the summer you could still go on the hockey rink. It made Gorilla EX even more jealous. The villain’s name was Evil X, but everyone thought he was Gorilla EX.

Gorilla EX wanted to find out who was under that costume. He had to spy on him, and when he was spying he saw a poster on Evil X’s mansion that said, “If Anyone Wants to Fight Gorilla EX Then Step Right Up Because Gorilla EX Will Pound Them To Death.” The fight was supposed to happen in his mansion in an arena made of gold.

Gorilla EX got ready. Soon enough he was stepping onto the arena, but there was no Evil X. And then, all of a sudden, something whacked him in the face and almost knocked him out. And then he found out that Evil X could turn invisible, but Gorilla EX couldn’t. So Gorilla EX had to keep his hands up at all times so he didn’t get another punch to knock him out. After a while Evil X got tired of punching and fighting Gorilla EX. Gorilla EX felt that there was no one punching him and kicking him anymore so then he started punching air and feeling if there were any objects in the air. Soon he punched out and all of a sudden he heard a “yowl,” so he started punching to knock Evil X out. All of a sudden he heard Evil X fall to the floor so he felt around for a body. He grabbed him and then he felt his belt and then felt what does what and he turned Evil X back so he wasn’t invisible anymore. He took him to his mansion and put TNT in his mansion and it exploded, and all the people who were rooting for Evil X died. So now it was Gorilla EX’s turn to find out who was under that costume.

He took off all the clothing. He pulled it off and he saw that it was a robot, and then he took his shoes off and saw on the bottom of his foot, “Signed by the bandits of India.” After he found out it was the bandits, he took Evil X’s belt and turned invisible. He snuck into the crooks’ lair because he found out on his belt that it said “Go to lair.” There was a portal that opens up and sends you right to the bandits’ lair. So then, all of a sudden, he got the bandits and then he tied them up and then the bandits were like, “Who the heck did this to me?” As they lay in confusion, he used a special move and turned all of them into stone except for the robot. He sent them flying into an Indian volcano with a thousand pounds of dynamite all around them and they were attached to a man-eating shark. They were sent into the volcano and when the lava touched the shark – which they shot on a rocket – the sharks would eat them because they were sharks that when they get in the lava it makes them meaner. They would eat the crooks when they were all covered in lava. So he sent them off. He also put some lava jellyfish with them so jellyfish would sting them to death if the shark didn’t find them. So the bandits and the robot got double beaten up.

But the people still liked Evil X so he used the mind machine that he got back from the bandits of India and he turned all the people’s minds back so they liked him. And then Gorilla EX became popular again.

King has a money machine and everyone likes him. He’s really good at sports, like basketball. He’s even better than Lebron James. Usually people want Lebron James’ signature, but Lebron James wanted King’s signature. He has more than enough money to make a robot or a rocketship that has a stink bomb and also there’s green smoke that blasts out when it’s launching that stinks. It’s like skunk stink. He has a ferrari that can change into four things: a jet plane, a battleship, a submarine with harpoon missiles and a car that goes in the sewers without being stinky. He can also race the dead. He chooses wisely who he raises. He also has special powers like being invisible and running faster than a speeding bullet, and flying.

Before he got the money, some people were alive before him that were crooks and criminals. By the time he was alive, though, a ghost told the crooks and criminals that a person would have all the money and that he would defeat the crooks and criminals. So then the crooks and criminals went away and became good people. His parents were rich and they bought a money machine, and they let him have it for his birthday. He made a chewable tablet and he gave it to everybody so everyone could live forever.

But there was another team of crooks that didn’t hear the ghost’s warning. They had another team captain. They were worse than bandits. They had special powers. For example, one crook can turn into ice. One guy can disappear some place and reappear somewhere else. And another can shoot fire at heroes. The crooks heard about King and they wanted to destroy him because they knew that he had a lot more money than anyone else had, and he would never give away his money machine, and they wanted all the money in the world. They had money, but they wanted more.

Some people knew they were coming, and they told King and he was not scared. He went to a place where they teach karate and he learned all the karate moves. He even punched a hole in a punching bag without a boxing glove. With just his bare hand.

The crooks lived on another planet. The whole population came to King’s planet. The spaceship landed somewhere near the end of the world. And then they came to fight King at the end of the world, but he had a machine that makes things in one second and he just typed something in and it made a big sword. The big sword cut off the end of the world and the crooks fell down, and he made a replacement of the part he cut off. And all the crooks were falling down and they couldn’t reach. They had hooks that when they push a button it goes on something. They go far, but there was nothing for them to grab on to. They fell to the end of the universe, and they died.

King built a forcefield and he put it around his whole planet to protect everybody forever.

I like sweets because I’m three. My mom never lets me have sweets because I’m only three. She really does not want me to have sweets, but when I grow up then she will let me because she won’t know if I’m walking by the street and there’s a candy shop and I want some. And then I will keep walking until I find the biggest candy and then I will want to eat it. I like candy because I’m a candy baby. I’m a baby that loves candy so much that that’s the only thing I eat.

I’m on the street and I see a big a piece of candy, as big as a giraffe. It’s pink and it smells like candy made of chocolate and lollipops and sugar and gum. It’s a giant gummy. And then I want to eat it, but there’s bad people that stop me from eating it. They are the owners of the candy. They want to stop me from eating it because it’s their candy and they don’t want to share. That’s why they’re bad.

Then, when they’re gone for a second, I carry it home and eat it. My mom doesn’t see me because I’m in a locked room. It tastes like a gummy, sweet as an orange. I eat the whole thing and I don’t get sick. And then I shrink and then I’m only a one-year-old. I turn from a three-year-old to a one-year-old, and then I eat my mom’s gum. The candy made me shrink! Now that I’m a year old, I will stay in my candy room forever so my mom doesn’t see me.

Then I go on another adventure. I’m in New York and I go on an airplane to Disney World and it is so fun. I just enter and I walk five blocks and I take a car for two hours and I find a man holding a giant piece of candy in Disney World. It looks like it is made out of gum, which is my favorite thing. The man is also made of gum, so I eat the man and the piece of candy. And then I come home and eat it all, and then I stay home and then I go to Long Island. I find the biggest piece of candy in the world, bigger than all of the other candies. It is also made of gum, but then it shrinks. It is tinier than a butterfly. It is purple. It has candy glass, and then I eat it and it is better than all of the candies. It is smaller. It tastes like cotton candy. And it is so good! And it turns me back to three years old!

Then I want some of the best candy. There is such a big piece of candy on the street. It is very dirty. I never knew it was dirty. The people who own the candy will give it to me because I act very old but I’m really little. I act like I’m fifteen.

“Can I please have some candy?”

“Yes.” And they give it me for free because I act like I’m an old lady. I’m three but I act like I’m fifteen and I look like I’m older. I have powers to look like I’m older. My mom gave them to me. She doesn’t know I’m a candy baby because I’m always eating this candy in the special room. The dentist doesn’t know I eat candy because I brush really well. I brush really well so that nobody knows that I go to these places and eat all this candy.  Also, I have the power to never forget things. I was born with it.

The next day I go to the dentist, but I do not want to. The dentists might know that I’ve been eating a lot of sugar, and when my mom is talking to the dentist I go away to somewhere else but then everything traps me. The only shop that is there is actually a net that traps me, because the net knows that I love sugar so it closed off all the sugar. But then it traps me because it doesn’t want me to find the sugar. Luckily I had brought scissors and I cut through the nest.

I had to go back to the dentist but then I stole all the sweets from the dentist.

Then I leave the dentist and I go to Disneyworld. And I find another big piece of candy, but it isn’t real candy! So I don’t eat it. Then I go to Italy and I find not candy, but sweets. So I eat them. They are good. Then I go back to New York and I find a new piece of candy, the biggest piece in the world. It smells like gummies and fruit snacks and chocolate chips and candy.

One morning, I get older! I turn into a toddler. I am four! Then it is my brother’s birthday and he is 17. So I go to Disneyworld and I eat a dirty piece of candy and I get sick. I throw up. I throw up every hour for ten days!

So then I don’t like candy anymore. So I never eat candy anymore.

After that, I listen to my mom all the time. I eat broccoli, carrots, beans, and pasta. I am happy to eat what my mom tells me to. I feel better and more healthy. Nowadays when I’m sleeping and I see candy in my mind I just go and sleep with my mom. I dream about candy like every day, but I never eat it.

Then I live happily ever after.

THE END

Once there was a goose named Gawen. Gawen worked for the king, King Basil the bear, as a guard. Gawen loved the king. But something happened a few days ago, when 28 rubies were stolen. King Basil and Gawen were the only ones that had the keys to the castle treasury. And then a couple days ago, 4 pieces of gold were stolen. And then two pieces of silver were stolen. After that, the King wanted to get to the bottom of it, so he called all the guards to tell them about the news. After King Basil had told them the other eight guards looked at Gawen with suspicious eyes. Gawen said that he didn’t do it, though. But King Basil trusted Gawen. One of the guards who was a rhino named Robert stared at Gawen for a long time and stopped to go back to his duties.

It wasn’t really Gawen because a couple of days before, a mouse named Tuck was looking around the village and found himself in the castle where his friend Gawen worked. Then Tuck found a little hole in the floor and went through. He found out that it was a mole hole that was made a long time ago. Then Tuck went right through the hole and he found himself in the treasury. As soon as he got out of the hole, he saw shining gold and silver on an old dusty table in one of the corners of the room. When Tuck saw the rubies, he thought of himself as not a thief but a small, little borrower. And he thought that nobody would notice because they were always left in there, so he took 28 of them and left. He put them near his bed. Tuck’s blanket was an old piece of Kleenex that he found. It wasn’t much. He decided to put one of the rubies at the front of the door when people came in to see them. He fixed up his house by paying people rubies. He bought a better blanket, a little table and a fridge.

The next day, Tuck went back to go see the treasury again. When he came out, he saw the treasure but there was something new there. Instead of a clear room now there were red shiny lasers. Since Tuck was a mouse, he could go through the lasers easily. He jumped over one laser and through another. He jumped over one and ducked under one. He came to a laser that was harder than the others, but behind it he could see the treasure.

Tuck said, “This is going to be harder than the others. Hopefully, I can make it through the lasers.” Luckily, Tuck made it through the lasers.

After Tuck came out of the other side of the lasers, Tuck saw piles of gold and silver. They were piled in different groups. Then Tuck saw something hidden behind a leg of a table that the gold was sitting on. Tuck ran to the yellow, shiny thing that he saw. He noticed that light was bouncing off the yellow object. The light made it look very shimmery and sparkly. Tuck pounced on the yellow shiny thing that he saw and realized that the object was a diamond. But Tuck wondered if it was fake because he had never seen a yellow diamond. Then Tuck realized that it was a yellow diamond. Tuck wondered if it was special because it was a yellow diamond, instead of a clear-whitish diamond.

Then Tuck thought to himself and said, “I think that I could use this myself. I doubt that the King and Gawen will mind if I take one of their precious stones for… I don’t know… myself, because I’m important, too.”

Tuck ran home to get something to carry the diamond. He brought a magic spray bottle that would help him make the alarms disappear, so he wouldn’t set off any alarms. He started to think about what he was doing because if anyone found out, or suspected that Gawen was doing it, he or Gawen would get  in trouble with the King. But then he thought that no one would suspect Gawen to do something like that because he was such a good goose.

He took the yellow diamond and took out another spray can and sprayed it in the air. The lasers appeared again. He then decided to keep the yellow diamond in a very special place. He kept the diamond in a room behind a painting. That secret room was in his bedroom. When he moved the painting aside there was a door behind, and when he closed the door the painting went back in place. Then there were stairs that went down into another room that held special things like the 28 rubies that he had also stolen. He also kept gold that he had stolen from the treasury there. Tuck wished he had someone to share his secret with, but his friend John couldn’t keep secrets.

John was Tuck’s best friend, but he couldn’t keep secrets because he was a blabbermouth. John was a lemur and they met when Tuck was running away from a mountain lion. They bumped into each other and became friends. John helped Tuck get away from the lion and that began their friendship.

The next two days after that happened, the King was getting suspicious and doubtful of Gawen because he was the only one who had the keys beside King Basil. Then the last day that Tuck stole the stones, the King was very suspicious because his mother, the former Queen, told him that she didn’t think that Gawen was trustworthy and that maybe he was the one stealing all of the precious items. She thought maybe that Gawen was trying to make King Basil look funny and bad in front of all his subjects. She didn’t want to think of Gawen as her grandchild because her son was grown up. It was just really hard for the former Queen to take all of this in.

Then the next day, an F.B.I agent came in to solve the mystery of the missing jewels. The king had told him to come and try to find the thief that stole the jewels. King Basil did not want to believe that Gawen was the one who stole the jewels. The F.B.I agent stood near the castle every day. The king told the other guards that he was just a new guard for the caste because the  jewels were stolen even though he was really a F.B.I agent working for the king. King Basil didn’t even tell Gawen that the new guard was actually a F.B.I agent because if it was Gawen he didn’t want him to know that the new guard was actually a F.B.I.agent. The F.B.I agent was a lion and a very fierce lion. The king really did want to tell Gawen but right now he couldn’t tell anybody just in case it might be that animal because then they would know to be more careful so they wouldn’t get caught. “I can’t tell anybody,” King Basil mumbled to himself.

Now today EVERYONE thought it was Gawen. And now the king did, too. They took him to court and everybody was there who was Gawen’s friend. They were all disappointed to see him in court because they thought he had always been such a good friend and helped them out a lot. But maybe they were wrong. Gawen could not believe what was happening to him. He had also thought he was always a good friend to all of his friends and was very nice and tried to be as helpful as he could, and polite. Gawen was also upset at the king and didn’t understand why he was making him go to court because he had always loved the king and Gawen had thought the king had always loved him.

The judge was the king, and he said, “What happened? Why are you here today? Rest your case now or there will be punishment as in YOU WILL GO TO JAIL,” yelled the king. “Confess already.”

Finally, Gawen said “ I told you I didn’t do it your highness/judge” demanded Gawen. “Why don’t I believe you, duck?” Gawen knew the king really knew his type of animal wasn’t really a duck but he had probably said that because he wanted to act rash like a judge and demanding. But Gawen said “Maybe you just don’t know what’s true and isn’t true. That’s sad king and isn’t fair that you are the king and the judge at the same time. I demand that we have a different judge to make it a fair fight,”  Gawen said strongly.

“Are you saying that I’m the one who stole the items? Or are you saying that I’m not being fair to you as a king? Because that is very rude to say to me, the king.”

“I think we have solved our case and a non-FBI agent will take care of you- as in put you in jail- because you have been rude to me and you probably stole the gems.”

His friends got up from where he was sitting and they left. They were disappointed as he was handcuffed and led out the back door by two guards. They couldn’t believe he would do such a thing.

The guards looked at him with daring and suspicious eyes while they wondered why he betrayed all of his friends and the people who loved and trusted him. As they walked out, Gawen realized that his handcuffs were no match for his awesome wings. They were slick enough to slip out of anything. He quickly, gently, and quietly slipped through the handcuffs and flew into the deepest and darkest parts back and forth. He thought that it was a trap but, when Gawen looked out all he could see was the forest. He looked back and saw the guards were following him. They gathered bombs, pitchforks, and bows and arrows to chase after him. The guard contacted the king and he looked out for Gawen at the top of the courthouse.

The king was also disappointed, yet he had this vengeful look on his  face.

The king screamed, “You will rue this day!” His voice echoed and weakened. “I don’t know why you did this. I thought we were best friends. How could you betray me and the subjects?”
He saw all of the guards and their weapons chasing after Gawen into the forest.

Tuck the mouse also wondered what he had done. He thought, “My friend will die because of me. What have I done? I am the one who is actually hurting my friend. Why!!! I betrayed my friend and I am a thief and a horrible person. Why was I so foolish? I am the dumbest person in the world. Definitely. I have to tell the king it was me.” No, I can’t because I need to tell Gawen that I was the one who was stealing and if he wants to tell the king that it was me or I will tell the king it was me.

“I will definitely tell the king what I did, even if they have to chop my head off!!!” declared Tuck. As Gawen entered forest, he could smell damp leaves because it had recently just rained near the forest. Gawen now did not know where he would stay and if he should just admit that he was guilty. He didn’t know what he should do either: if he should turn himself in or just stay there and try to stay hidden.

Gawen decided that he would stay one night to see if he could survive. He bet himself his life if he couldn’t stay alive for one night because if he was caught by the king’s guards that night his life would be over anyway. That night, he heard leaves blowing in the wind. He now knew what people felt like if they were poor. Suddenly, he heard a guard coming close to where he was hiding. Gawen’s heart sank into him.

I am dead meat, thought Gawen.

But then everything was silent. All Gawen could hear was the leaves swishing see was a tail that may have looked like a familiar tail in the leaves.

Gawen quickly scurried out of the cave he was hiding in and he poked the tail he had seen. Gawen heard a tiny, squeaky voice that he recognized as his friend, Tuck. When he looked down he did see Tuck had a cute, little sad face that stared at him with big, brown nut eyes. He wondered if Tuck  was scared of him because he thought he was accused of stealing.

But Tuck wasn’t scared. He slipped out of Gawen’s soft wings and ran up his right wing and sat on his face. “ I must tell you some …. news,” Tuck whimpered.

“If its about the king or anything like that I’m not interested,” complained Gawen angrily. Tuck just kept talking and pretending he didn’t hear that.

“Ok, I was the one who stole all of the rubies and jewels, I am really sorry but you guys are rich and I just wanted to borrow some stuff and I guess I didn’t realize I was stealing until  you were accused guilty.” muttered Tuck.

Gawen gasped as Tuck finished his sentence.

“Now you can tell everybody that I was the one who stole everything,” Tuck said, ashamed.

“I am a little mad at you but you didn’t realize it, so it’s ok. I have a idea,” said Gawen as he whispered the idea into Tuck’s ear.

“Ok,” answered Tuck. That night, Tuck snuck into the castle. Tuck had a walkie-talkie in his little pocket because Gawen had given it to him for his plan. But when he was going into the treasury he didn’t want to sneak in the treasury how he did before because now he realized that he was being a thief before.

But then Tuck heard Gawen talking to him through the walky-talky and saying, “You can do it, Tuck. Just don’t give up!” Tuck did not want to do it again, but he knew it was for his friend so he took a chance and went in the mole hole but this time when he entered it the gap was paved over with cement. Tuck though that maybe the cement guys had come in and cemented the floor in the castle to make it better looking. Tuck wasn’t going to let that bother him because he was doing it for his friend, so he decided to go in a different way. Maybe through the guard’s door. He thought to himself, “Hopefully, I can fit so I can do this for my friend so he can come back and feel safe.”

Then Tuck saw a guard near the front entrance to a door and he thought maybe that could be the treasury door. Tuck saw a bird near him and he asked the bird if he could have one of his feathers. The bird said yes and plucked out one of his loose feathers and gave it to Tuck. Tuck had an idea. He could go up and tickle the guard and grab his keys quickly or try to slide under the door. He decided to try to slide under the door first before trying to get the keys from the guard. He walked over slowly and quietly, so the guard wouldn’t see him, and said to Gawen through the walkie talkie, “Plan 1 didn’t work, so I’m going to try plan 2.”

Now he went more swiftly and smoothly and tried to slide under the door. Then he heard a voice and he looked, but quickly he put his head under the door so it didn’t hit his head.

“Wow,” Tuck said, “I almost didn’t make it, and would’ve hit my head.” This time, there were no red lasers but there were invisible baskets of poisonous food that all animals liked, so if that animal ate it, they would die. Tuck loved eating food, and smelled something, even though  he didn’t see anything. His nose led him to a delicious-smelling food. It was familiar and smelled like cheese but he thought his nose was just tricking him so he tried to walk ahead even though his nose kept smelling delicious food. Then he smelled something that smelled like the total opposite of delicious food. He covered his nose to try to get the smell away. He  thought it was an illusion because the treasury looked almost 40 miles away and before it only looked like a couple of steps away. Even though it looked really far away, he still did the obstacles that he saw ahead of him.  Now there were lasers but instead of red they were blue.

Tuck just wanted to give up because doing obstacles was really annoying, He knew it was for his friend, so he decided to not give up and try to do it even faster. He was going to try even harder and really fast. Tuck jumped over one blue laser, then another. The last two were the hardest because they were crossed and it would be hard to get through. Tuck decided to try to be a lot tougher. Then Tuck said, “I am a ninja!” and then he said, “I can do this!” He did it for his best shot and his body went through but all of a sudden his tail touched one of the lasers because he was so excited. It hit the laser because he thought he was almost through, and an alarm went off and he was terrified. All of a sudden he saw a little hole that he scampered into fast. Then he peaked out and waited to see what would happen. Then he saw the food come up and it wasn’t invisible anymore and all he saw was pastries and cheese and all the stuff he loved but it was still poisonous but Tuck didn’t know that. Tuck couldn’t help himself. He went over and took a bite of the cheese that was his favorite and then ran back into the hole and then there was a passage that he saw that now had appeared and he went in and then he saw a mother mouse and her children and then he said, “Oooo. I don’t feel so good.”

And then she said, “Oh no! Did you eat the food outside? I knew that because one of my family members once did that and got tricked! His name was Peter Fudge Cheese!”

“What poisonous food?” Tuck asked. “I just ate some good looking cheese back there. Hold on, I hear the cheese calling again!” And then he said, “I can’t be late for my date with destiny!”

The mother mouse said, “Oh no! It’s happening faster than I expected!” And then she held up a piece of cheese that was not poisonous and put it in a small box and he went in there fast but he acted very weird and he was like, “Is that you Cheese Goddess?” After he scampered into the box she closed the box tightly so Tuck wouldn’t get out.

Then she said, “Eat the cheese!” So he put his head down and started eating the cheese. It had a kind of medicine in it that made you fall asleep. When he finally fell asleep the mother mouse said, “Kids, can you go get a Kleenex blanket and put it on top of this mouse?”

The little mice said, “Yes, Mama Mouse!” and they scampered along to get the blanket. Then the Mama Mouse went in the cupboard and used her tiny paws to dig inside the cupboard because there was lots of stuff and then she said, “I found what I was looking for!” She pulled out a little, little needle that looked like a tiny, sharp staple. She took it out and waited for her children to get the blanket, then when they came back she said, “Children can you please place the blanket on top of this mouse and I will try to help him.”

Her children put a blanket on Tuck and then went into their room to go wrestle. She took out the needle and gently stuck it in him, but not too deep. She took a blood sample. Then she took it out, quickly but she didn’t thrust it out. Then she tested the blood sample to see what was happening and she saw that it was getting worse and worse, so then she took a version of a turkey baster and put medicine in it and opened his mouth and put a little drop or two drops of medicine in it. He swallowed and woke up and he was fine except he didn’t remember anything about what happened to him. He said, “Hello Miss Mouse! Where am I?”

The Mama mouse answered, “You were asleep because you ate some poisonous food and then I saved you, but you must not remember anything.”

Tuck did remember his mission, he just didn’t remember what just happened to him. Tuck realized something weird must have just happened if he was now in a mousehole that wasn’t his. Tuck went out again and said, “Thank you,” and grabbed the walkie-talkie again and said to Gawen, “plan two has partly worked. There were a couple of mistakes that I made, because I got poisoned, but now I’m okay. So what should I do now? I don’t see the light to the treasury like I did before when I stole the items.”

Gawen replied, “Maybe something’s blocking it, like a picture, so try throwing something on each wall and it’ll fall and the treasure will be behind it. Maybe it’s an illusion or something.”

Tuck asked, “What should I throw on the walls?”

Gawen replied again, “You should throw a torch or something that lights up, maybe, or just try throwing something that’s harder than a stick because a stick could easily snap.”

Tuck looked around and found that there was something hanging in the dim light and he took it down. Tuck said, “It might be the last time I’ll be seeing you if this doesn’t work because the fire spreads all over, it might burn me and the mouse who helped me.” He threw it at the wall, but sadly nothing happened and the fire started spreading. He threw it at the one next to the door but not near the door and it finally worked. A passage opened up and he walked through the passage and the passage door closed. He walked through the dark passageway and then saw the shimmering light of the treasury and took some more things to show the king it wasn’t Gawen and then went back out, and snuck out again with a couple of small things.

The next day, news spread that it wasn’t Gawen and somebody else must have stolen the jewels. Tuck was so happy to be free and alive, he ran back to Gawen, who was still in the same place that he was before. Tuck was alive and had done his mission. Tuck was very satisfied with himself.

Gawen said, “You did good. You may keep the items you just found but when somebody’s not looking, return the other items you had stolen.”

“Can I keep twelve and return the rest,  if that’s okay with you Gawen?” asked Tuck.

“Sure,” answered Gawen, happy.

Just then, Gawen and Tuck realized they had made the king aware that it was not Gawen who stole the jewels, but the guards probably had stopped looking for Gawen and King Basil was probably thinking that he would never find Gawen ever again. Gawen decided to run away because he didn’t know how to fix their problems, and also he wanted to be free and not stuck up in the castle doing duties for King Basil anymore even though he used to really like the king.

“Tuck, do you want to run away together?” Gawen asked.

“Sure!”
They both started  planning to run away. Gawen looked back at the castle where King Basil sat. Gawen wrote a letter and slipped it under the door. It said:

DEAR KING BASIL,

THIS IS FROM YOUR HONORABLE GOOSE, GAWEN. I AM WRITING TO TELL YOU THAT I AM NOT THE ONE WHO STOLE THE JEWELS. I AM ALSO WRITING TO TELL YOU THAT I DO KNOW WHO HAS TAKEN THE GEMS, BUT  I WILL NOT TELL YOU THAT INFORMATION. YOU HAVE DISRESPECTED ME AND I DO NOT WISH TO BE FRIENDS ANY LONGER. I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER THE GOOD TIMES WE HAD AS FRIENDS. I WON’T DISCLOSE WHERE I AM GOING EITHER. TUCK AND I ARE RUNNING AWAY TOGETHER.

SINCERELY,

GAWEN GOOSE

Gawen returned to Tuck and asked, “Are you ready?”

“Let’s go.”

THE END

Epilogue

Twenty years later, Tuck and Gawen are successful scientists and heroes. They are now known throughout many lands and KINGDOMS, including King Basil’s…

DUN DUN DUN!