Everything Awesome Starts With "A"

Chapter One

It was a dreary day, two weeks before school let out, while ten year old me, Alicia Jason was sitting in the window seat in my room.

I was waiting for something, anything to happen. Then, it happened. I looked out the window, through the mist I could see that someone was looking at the creepy old house next door. I could vaguely make out five figures, two men, a woman, two children; I couldn’t see if they were boys or girls because of the rain, fog, and the clouds covering the sun.

I was ecstatic, finally someone besides those teenagers on Old Tree Street that always treated me like a baby. Then some scary questions came up in my mind, what if they didn’t like the house? What if they had boys? What if it was so creepy that one of their kids slipped into a coma? What if their children were allergic to wild grass or something else that they couldn’t get rid of. I hoped that they were fine with the house.

“Please buy it.” I prayed silently.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A week later I was walking home from school, trying to ditch Roger Melentine.

Roger was a brown eyed, red haired, freckle-faced creep. He’s my age but nowhere near as mature. He always stalked me on the playground and (occasionally) on the way home from school. On that particular day he was wearing a red, white, and blue striped shirt that made him look like a worm, and throwing pebbles at the unlucky kids who passed by him.

“You’re a shame to the country,” I told him.

He stuck his tongue out at me and I suddenly wondered if he ate the worms that he often dangled in front of the Primary kids’ faces.

“You’re also a shame to your home planet.”

Roger looked confused.

“You know,” I said. “Mars.”

He glared and turned his pebble launcher (also known as that skinny thing he likes to call an arm) at me.

I wanted to punch him right then and there, but the principal came out and shot me the evil eye. She loves Roger for some strange reason. I guess they must both come from the same planet.

Roger gave me a smug look and made a noise that sounded sort of like, “Snerforfal.”

I supposed it must have been a word of the Martian tongue. “Inatassi,” I answered.

Apparently that must have meant, “Please, follow me home like a dweeb stalker.”

On my way home something caught my eye. The something that caught my eye was in the yard of the house for sale. I screamed with delight.

Someone had bought the house, and I thought it was safe to assume who had bought it (I shouldn’t have thought it was safe to assume, because last time I did that Roger dumped a bucket of worms on my head) I was about to pinch my arm to see if I was dreaming, but before I could Roger did the honor. I flung around with my hand in a fist, and to my delight I accidently hit him in the gut. That only added to my happiness.

This had to be the best day of my life.

Finally, I got to punch Roger, and some kids were going to move in next door!

I ran home, flung open the door and yelled,

“Mom, they bought the house, they bought the house!”

“What? Sweetie, what do you mean?” she asked, not really knowing what I was talking about.

“Did I forget to tell you?” I asked, taking time to sit down and catch my breath, “Well last week four people, a man, woman, and two children came to look at the house next door, now there is a sign in the front yard over there!” I explained then I freaked out at the end.

* * * * *

The next day the first one of the moving trucks arrived, then the painting trucks, then the siding trucks, then the cement trucks, then the roofing trucks, and then the window trucks.

After all the work had been done the house, for once the house actually looked normal.

I had to duck under the shrubbery, which luckily was pretty high off the ground in the back but the front was pretty low.

Two people got out of the suv, two kids jumped out of the car. You have to get the difference between how adults get out of a car and how kids get out of a car, especially after probably hours spent in a stuffy car. One of the kids had coarse layered blond hair with many natural highlights a little under her shoulders hidden under a blue baseball cap, green eyes, pink cheeks, wearing cut off faded jeans reaching just over her knees, and a blue t-shirt with the words: You can’t spell awesome without me.

Her sister was almost completely different, long brown hair in a side pony tail, big blue eyes, freckles sprinkled over her nose, in a short tie-dyed sun dress with white leggings just a little under her knees.

I almost left my hiding place, but instead I waited until they had gone inside then I ran home.

* * * * *

The next morning I went next door to see the new kids and welcome them to the neighborhood.

“Mom, I’m going to go next door!” I yelled from outside of the screen door.

“Fine.” my mom called after me, “Be back in time for dinner.”

“Ok. I will.”

I ran into the backyard, and I what you’re thinking, ‘Why the back yard?’ So I’ll tell you, there’s a break in the backyard’s fence. First I ducked into my mom’s over grown garden. I peeked in their yard. The two girls were in the backyard, the one in the sun dress was reading a book, the other girl looked like she had gone down to the creek since her legs were soaked.

“What did you find?” the brown haired girl asked her sister

“A creek. Bugs, and other cool stuff like that.” The blond girl answered

“Bugs. Yuk.”

“I think that stuff is cool.”

“You’re weird.”

“Am not!”

“Are to.”

“Am not!”

“Are to.”

“Did you see something?” the blond girl was coming over here.

How could I have been so careless?

I jumped out from the grass and said, “Hi! I’m Alicia.”

The girl smiled, and now the other girl was coming over, “Hi,” the blond girl said, “I’m Claudia, this is Vanessa.”

“Hi.” Vanessa said.

“Are you two twins?” I asked them.

“No, stepsisters.” Claudia told me, “Lots of people ask that.”

“Would you like to come over?” Vanessa asked

“She’s a grammar freak. That means she won’t say ‘Wanna come over?’ For some reason she thinks it’s funner than talking like a human.” Claudia explained

“Funner is not a word. It’s more fun.” Vanessa told her sister.

“Funner is to a word.”

“Is not.”

“Is to.”

“Is not.”

“Is to!”

“Do you two do this a lot?” I asked.

“Sorry about that, well do you want to come over?” Claudia asked me.

I had gotten lost in the debate of if funner was a word or not.

“Sure.” I answered, “There’s a break in the fence right over here.” I told them and stepped through.

“What do you want to do? There are fish in the creek, woods full of hollowed out trees and meadow. I’ve lived here for five years and I haven’t explored half of it.”

“Sure, let’s go.” Vanessa agreed

“Yeah, it would be fun.” Claudia said, starting to walk to the woods

* * * * *

We walked for about twenty minutes till we came to the thicker part of the woods where about twenty five million trees had hollowed trees. (Well, twenty. Vanessa was counting.)

I said I thought I saw a small hut about a half mile away. We were just about to run over and explore it when I looked at my watch. Five thirty. I had to get back for dinner and they probably had to get back too.

“Hey guys, we’ll have to get back. We’ve been out here for about half an hour, and it would be awful to get stuck out here in the dark. Let’s meet out here tomorrow morning. We can meet after breakfast. We can pack lunches and stay out here even longer.” I started planning the next day.

“That sounds like a lot of fun. We’ll meet at the break in the fence.” Vanessa agreed.

“Yeah, I second it.” Claudia said, “I’ll bring my binoculars too.”

“Great! Now let’s go.” I reminding them we had to leave for dinner.

Hehe, I love my book! Because it is AWESOME!!