Chapter 1 – Erin’s POV

I sighed, resting my head on the back of the seat in my mom’s car as my twin sister Marta texted away on her EnV Touch. Mom gave an exasperated sound from the front seat, “Oh cheer up, Erin, this is going to be fun!”

“Oh yeah, sure,” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes, “Oodles. I mean, who wouldn’t love being taken away from their friends, their home, their lives?”

“Maybe it would be more enjoyable if you were a tad less cynical about it,” Marta said, but I saw a glint in her emerald eyes (she’s a splitting image of our mom with her mousy brown hair and green eyes while I take more after our dad with my mahogany hair and grayish-blue eyes) that told me she was as upset about this as I was.

“Oh yeah, I’m sure it would.” My sarcasm was in full swing, but I gave Marta a look to let her know that I was sorry about being in such a bad mood about this. She nodded to show me she understood and turned back to her phone.

Let me explain; Marta’s and my dad left our mom when she had us at 18 years old; he apparently wasn’t ready to be a dad quite yet, so he’s never really been a part of our lives. Our mother has worked as hard as she could all our lives to support us as an accountant for a local insurance company in our hometown of Silver Hills , New York. That is, until our grandmother died and left everything to our mother, including all her money and her huge house in LA (our grandfather was a very influential foreign diplomat before he was killed in the bombing of 9/11 ). So, our mother forced us to pack up all our things and quit her job at Relph to move out to LA and start all over with our lives instead of selling the house and upgrading our quality of living back home like any normal person with two 17-year-old daughters would do. We actually have an older half-brother named Cody that lived with us for a while when his mom died (apparently Dad kept himself busy), but he’s 22 now and moved into his own apartment , so I don’t really consider him part of this whole moving situation. We are currently driving to said house, and I’m not looking forward to seeing this.

Deciding to save Mom and Marta the hassle and suffer in silence, I shut my mouth for the rest of the trip. Once Mom had pulled into the driveway of the house, I felt my jaw drop; I’d forgotten how much money Grandma and Grandpa really had. The house was an elegant Italian-style villa with three floors, four if you counted the remodeled basement that was fully equipped with a Wii, Xbox 360 , PS3, a 42-inch plasma screen, and a massive library of pretty much every video game and DVD known to man . The rooms on the second floor, which I took to be bedrooms, had balconies that made it easy to get onto the roof if need be. I closed my mouth and smiled a bit, Okay, it’s a really nice house. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

After getting all our stuff loaded out of Mom’s car and the moving van that had actually come all the way from New York, Marta and I went to our second-floor bedrooms to unpack and rest for a little while. I had to admit, they were pretty cool.

Mine was a good-sized room with teal walls and ash gray wall-to-wall carpeting, a bathroom that connected Marta’s and my rooms as well as leading out into the hall, a walk-in closet with sliding mirror doors, and a skylight right in the middle of the ceiling. My bed and desk were in there, too; my bed pushed up against the same wall as the bathroom door, opposite the closet, and my desk to the left of the large French doors leading out onto my balcony. A new dresser was in there, too, pushed up against the same wall as the closet. I dropped my suitcases on my bed and went out onto the balcony to check the view of the front lawn, down the sloping driveway, and out over the LA skyline. I smiled again, Okay, maybe I was wrong about coming out here.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door leading into the bathroom and Marta’s voice came through, “Hey Sully, you in there?”

“C’mon in, Mousy,” I said, tearing myself away from the window and going back over to my bed to start unpacking my bags.

She opened the door and came in, then started looking around, “Not bad, not bad”

“What’s yours like?” I asked, unzipping one of the suitcases.

“Pretty much the same, just flipped around and the walls and carpeting are blue and white”

I nodded, “Nice. You unpacked yet?”

She shook her head, “Nope, just wanted to see your room first. Now that I have, good-bye” she then turned on her heel and left my room, allowing me to finish with my unpacking and start personalizing my room.

Marta’s POV –

“And… there!” I grunted out as I stuck the last poster up on the wall around my bed. I’d been standing on my bed to get all the posters up, so I just fell down onto it, relaxing at the idea that I’d finally finished up with my room. Right as I was chilling out, there was a knock on the door leading out into the hall. “Come in!” I called, rolling over to see who it was.

Mom came in with a smile on her face, “Just wanted to see how you were doing with getting your room set up”

“Just finished,” I said, sitting up and crossing my legs Indian-style to face Mom, “You checked in on Erin yet?”

She shook her head, “No, I just want to give her some more time to adjust first”

Just then, there was a knock on the bathroom door. I knew it was Erin, so I just called for her to come in and turned as she opened the door. I was surprised; for seeming kind of down and out a little while ago, she seemed to be in a pretty good mood, or as we like to say; chipper, chipper, chipper, chipper, chipper. Not only that, she’d changed out of the gray tank top and baggy black sweat shorts she’d been wearing when we got here into a black ribbed tank, knee-length gray camo shorts, low top black Converse, and her signature hat; black with a white peace sign. The silver Celtic design on her favorite necklace shone against the tank, and I noticed that she was wearing the shark tooth necklace that Cody had gotten her when his band, Life of the Party , did a gig up by Niagara Falls.

She smiled, and I noticed for the first time she had her skateboard rested on her foot, “I’m gonna skate around for a little while, check out the neighborhood a bit. Any time you want me home by?”

Mom shook her head, obviously as happy and relieved at this unexpected turnaround as I was, “No, I was probably just going to order some pizza and wings for tonight, since Elaine doesn’t start again ‘till tomorrow”

“‘Elaine’?” Erin and I chorused, giving Mom identical confused looks about hearing the name of our grandparents’ maid.

“She’s still working here?” Erin asked curiously.

Mom nodded, “When Grandma died, I told her she was more than welcome to leave and to find work somewhere else, but she told me that she’d been working here too long and it’s become a part of her life, so she’s going to keep working here in exchange for a room”

I whistled, Looks like we’re going to be living much better than I thought. I just hope school is okay once it starts up.

Suddenly, there was a barking noise from the hall and Wishbone , our Jack Russell, sprinted into the room and started jumping up and down with excitement, Looks like he’s excited to be out of that cage. “Oh, but could you walk Wishbone while you’re out?” Mom asked, “He’s been cooped up as long as we have with this move”

Erin nodded, “Sure thing. C’mon, Wishbone!” she said to the puppy, and the two of them disappeared through the bathroom door in a flash.

I turned to Mom once they were gone, “Well, looks like she’s in a good mood”

She nodded and smiled, “Why don’t you wander around the house a bit? I don’t think you girls have been here for a good 10 years”

“Too true,” I agreed, standing up, “If I get lost, call my cell”

I heard Mom laugh quietly as I left the room, planning to start exploring the rest of my new home.