This is my novel for NaNoWriMo, finally up. The chapters are very long (about 3000 words), and I'm going to post the whole thing in thie thread, one chapter at a time. So here's chapter one, enjoy!
CHAPTER 1
Dear Diary,
I go my Biology test back today and, like always, I got the highest score in the class; 97%. It was an easy test, though I couldn’t do the last few questions because the principal wanted to talk to me. It wasn’t anything major, just an exchange program he thought I might’ve been interested in doing. I wasn’t.
Charlotte’s stuff is all over the floor. I’ll have to talk to mum about getting her to clean it up. There’s no point in talking to Charlotte herself- because she hates me- but talking to mum might possibly lead to something.
Hmm… there’s someone knocking at the door. That’s odd. It’s 10pm. Well, it’s probably Tom- He went over to his girlfriend’s house and probably forgot his key. He is such an idiot sometimes. Weird, mum’s calling me downstairs. Well, bye.
Annabell.
The small girl of 13 locked her diary and jogged downstairs, pulling out the hair tie that ws keeping her chestnut brown hair in a plait. Her family, minus Tom, were sitting in the lounge room, with a taller man in a police uniform. Her dad, David, and her mum, Lucy, were sitting together on the couch, obviously worried and confused. Her 17 year-old brother Ethan was typing away on the family laptop like always, not paying any attention to anybody else and Charlotte was sitting on the ground, flipping through a fashion magazine, gasping at some points, but overall, not interested in wht she was looking at.
“What’s going on?” Annabell, more commonly known as Anna, asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I’d like to know,” Charlotte mumbled half-heartedly, not really being that interested, before squealing and showing her parents a picture of a new top she’d like. For a 15 year old she could be very dramatic.
The policeman cleared his throat to get the families attention, and began talking.
“Is Thomas Cole here?”
David shook his head. "No, he went out with his girlfriend a little while ago."
The police man nodded slowly and sadly.
"I'm so sory. But we think, no, we know, your son is dead. He was found with a shot to the head in a park."
David and Lucy were unable to speak for shock, and just shook their heads. The policeman pulled out a picture of the found body and showed the family, who all agreed that it was Tom.
“We think it’s a suicide, but there’s no evidence apart from the way he’s sitting and the gun in his hand, which could very easily have been placed there. Think, would your son have any reason for doing this? Kids?”
Anna considered the facts, trying to come up with a reason about why her eldest brother would do such a thing, but she failed. Sure, Tom wasn’t perfect, but he was popular, had a nice girlfriend and did pretty well at school.
“Are you sure it’s him, officer?” Lucy asked.
The policeman nodded. “You've confirmed it. I’ll be returning to the office now. If there's anything you wish to know, just call and ask for Seargent Ryan. I’m so, so sorry for your loss.”
David showed the policeman out the door and Anna returned to her room. She had two assignments due the next week, one that she hadn’t finished and another that she hadn’t started, but only because it was only handed out that Friday.
“Ethan, can I use the laptop?” Anna asked, her arms full with pens and paper, preparing to begin her Sports assignment.
“No,” Ethan mumbled, hunched over a shooting game. “I’m using it.”
Anna sighed and twisted her head to face Lucy, who was mesmerized in shock.
“Mum, there’s an assignment I haven’t started and I need the laptop to do it. Please make Ethan get off. I mean, he’s only playing a game.”
Lucy nodded silently and Ethan closed the game down, grumbling at the same time. Half of his life was spent on the laptop, and he hated it when people took it off him.
“Shouldn’t you three be in bed?” David asked when he returned to the lounge room. Charlotte agreed, noting that she needed her beauty sleep, and went to begin her long night routine. Ethan shrugged and mumbled a, “suppose”, and retired to her room. Anna, usually the first to go to bed, didn’t say a word as she surfed the net, looking for information about Equestrian riders.
“Anna, it’s bed time,” David said. “As in, stop using the laptop and get to bed.”
“But I’m doing homework!” Anna said, annoyed at the interruption.
David sighed and shook his head. “Anna, go to bed now.”
Anna saved the pages she thought useful onto her USB and went to get changed. Charlotte was still in the bathroom, so Anna kneeled down and clasped her hands together, saying a short prayer and then banging on the bathroom door, wishing her 15 year-old sister would hurry up.
“Will you be quiet?” Charlotte complained, swinging the door open to let her sister in. she was almost done, just smoothing out her mud-mask. Anna rolled her eyes and grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste, nothing running through her mind apart from the vainness of her sister and that big Algebra test on Monday she had to study for.
After spending two minutes doing her teeth, Anna went back into her room and hopped into bed. She pulled out her Maths textbook and began reading, brushing up before her test. Anna wasn’t used to not getting the highest, or one of the highest, scores in the class. She was the brains of the family, and rarely failed. She hadn’t succeeded at music, and had given it up because she didn’t like knowing that she wasn’t good at something.
“I’m turning the light off,” Charlotte warned, and Anna put the rather heavy textbook on the floor next to her bed and rolled over to her side. Charlotte flipped the switch and the room was engulfed in darkness.
“Char?” Anna asked that night as they lay in bed.
Charlotte rolled onto her side to face her sister. “Yeah?”
Anna sighed. “Oh, nothing.”
Anna woke up to the sounds of crying early the next morning. She rolled over and saw that Charlotte wasn’t in her bed, so she got up and padded softly down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“What are you doing up?” Charlotte grumbled. She was sipping from a glass of water and there were tears stains down her tanned cheeks.
“I heard someone crying,” Anna said. “Was it you?”
Charlotte wiped her face and shook her head, leading Anna to believe that the sobbing she had heard was their mother’s.
“What’s the time?” Charlotte yawned, and Anna looked up at the clock on the wall.
“It’s two am,” she said, and turned around, hugging her arms into her body. It was the middle of winter, and getting very cold. Charlotte gulped down her water and followed Anna back up to their room.
“Goodnight,” Anna mumbled before falling back to sleep.
Lucy didn’t wake her kids up that morning. She knew Charlotte would love sleeping in, but Anna would hate it and Ethan probably would too.
“I can’t believe you let me sleep in till 10!” Anna screamed at her mother when she finally woke up. Ethan had left for school after he got up, and Charlotte was still sleeping.
Lucy put her arms around her daughter and stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry love. You can take the day off if you want, but if you’re sure you want to go to school I can drive you.”
Anna considered what classes she had that day. Really, the only good class she had was science, but her teacher was on the year seven camp so they would have a sub. Anna hated subs.
“I’ll stay home,” she said after a great deal of thought. “Not point in going to school. I can do some homework this way.”
Lucy nodded and offered her daughter breakfast, which was refused. David walked into the house, carrying a laptop case, and Anna stopped walking back up the stairs and grabbed the bag from her father, no uttering even a hello.
“Morning,” Charlotte yawned as she came down the stairs. She reached into the fridge and pulled out a carrot, which she then began eating.
“Morning Char,” Lucy said. “Are you going to school? Ethan’s already gone, but Anna’s staying here.”
Charlotte’s eyes bulged. Anna, staying at home! That hadn’t happened for two years, when she had had chicken pox. Education was everything to Charlotte’s little sister, and it was her dream to become a scientist or doctor.
“Are you serious?” Charlotte exclaimed, happy for the opportunity. “Yeah, I’ll stay. But I think Annabell might be sick. Have you checked her temperature?”
“I can hear you,” Anna shouted from the next room. “I’m not sick, thank you very much. I just don’t want to go to school today.”
Charlotte shook her head and switched on the TV, flicking through all the programs she hated until, finally, she came across a re-run of America’s Next Top Model. Usually David would have told Charlotte to turn off the TV, the rest of the family hated that show, but this time he didn’t.
“Look, girls, if you want to talk about Tom or anything, just come to your father or me,” Lucy said, sitting down on the couch. Her eyes were red from crying the night before, but she wasn’t going to let her family know about it. “The funeral’s in three days. Are, are you both coming? We don’t want to force you to go, but it would be nice if you did.”
Anna and Charlotte were shocked that their own mother thought they might not go to their own brother’s funeral.
“Of course I’m going, mum,” Anna said, and Charlotte nodded her head in agreement. Lucy smiled and held out her arms, hoping one of her daughters would want a hug. When neither of them pursed it, Lucy grabbed the phone and dialed her mother’s number.
“Hello? Mum. It’s me,” she said as Anna typed away and Charlotte continued flicking the TV channels, having gotten bored of America’s Next Top Model. “I have some, bad news. Tom, well, he killed himself… yes, yes. I know, it’s horrible and we have no idea why he did it… he used one of David’s guns… yes, I know they’re dangerous, David is getting rid of them soon… no, he’s selling them on eBay. The money will be good… okay, bye… love you too… bye.”
The conversation ended and Lucy dialed the number of the parents of Tom’s girlfriend. They wouldn’t have known, and his girlfriend, Amanda, had left a few days before to visit her older brother in Mexico.
“Tom told us he was going to see Amanda,” Lucy said to David before ringing. “But she’s in Mexico. He obviously knew exactly what he set out to do.”
David grunted, but didn’t say anything.
“Dad, the laptop’s not working properly,” Anna complained after a popup box came up with an advertisement. David rolled his eyes and went to ‘fix’ the computer. It wasn’t broken at all, but Anna rarely used it that the slightest thing gone wrong made her think that it was broken.
“I have to go shopping,” Lucy said after a while. “Anybody want to come? Charlotte? We can check out Cotton On.”
Charlotte turned the TV off and went to get changed. To Charlotte, there was nothing better than shopping. She wanted to be a model, but her parents wanted her to concentrate on her education.
“Would you like to come, Anna?” Lucy asked.
Anna shook her head, not turning her eyes away from the screen. She didn’t like shopping very much, and preferred to do well, almost anything else.
“Can you get me Wuthering Heights?” she asked. “I have to read it for book club. If you tell them that it’s for me they’ll give you a 10% discount.”
Lucy nodded and kissed Anna on the cheek, and then left with Charlotte. Anna saved her work, which was just typing up an essay for English, and checked her email. Anna only checked her hotmail account about every week, so usually she lots of junk mail to sort through, and not many real emails because she really only had a few friends.
There was only one real email, from her best friend Alice.
Hey Anna,
You’re not in school. I’m in science right now, but the sub has no idea what he’s doing so he gave us free time in the computer lab. I hate it when they do that. Oh well, after I send this email I’m going to do some more work on the science assignment. I know you said to wait until we were both together, but I’ll just do research.
Well, there’s nothing else to say really.
Bye,
Alice.
Anna closed down the internet and went into the kitchen, grabbing some berry yogurt and walking into her room. She shared the same room as Charlotte, which could sometimes be painful. They got on alright, sometimes, but they were two very different people and there were things about the other that annoyed them. Such as Anna hated it when Charlotte didn’t clean up her stuff and all the clothes and makeup spilled over to her side, and Charlotte hated the amount of books Anna had, so many, in fact, that Anna had to store them on Charlotte’s bookshelf, which didn’t hold that many of her own.
The doorbell rang and Anna heard her grandmother’s voice.
“Now where are my grandchildren?” Anna heard, and then feet coming up the stairs. Anna loved her grandmother, but she didn’t feel like talking to her at that very moment, but she knew that that wasn’t a very good excuse and her grandmother wouldn’t accept it.
“How’s my Annabell?” Lucy’s mother lived near to the Cole’s, after moving from the country after her husband’s death of a heart attack, but she didn’t often see her only remaining family.
“I’ve been better,” Anna said, hugging her grandmother.
“Oh, I’m so sorry about Tom,” tears appeared in her grandmother’s eyes. “He was always such a good boy. Do you know why he did it?”
Anna, who was beginning to cry for the first time, shook her head. The reality of Tom’s death hadn’t set in yet, but Anna knew she would feel it after the funeral.
“Where are Charlotte and Ethan?” Caroline asked as Annabell made a coffee.
“Charlotte went shopping with mum,” Annabell choked on her words, beginning to cry again. “And Ethan’s at school.”
Caroline stood up and wrapped her arms around Anna, doing her best to comfort her youngest grandchild. David, who worked in real estate, had gone to work just before Caroline had come.
The door opened, and Lucy and Charlotte came in, laden with bags.
“Hi mum,” Lucy said, smiling lightly as she put the bags down and hugged Caroline.
“Hello dear,” Caroline hugged her daughter tightly. “How are you feeling?”
Lucy sighed. People usually said ‘okay’ when people asked that questions, but Lucy just couldn’t. She wasn’t okay. In fact, she was far from it. Her eldest son, who was only 19, had gone and killed himself the day before.
“Don’t worry Luc,” Caroline said, rubbing her daughter’s back. “I’m here for you. Everything will be alright.”
Lucy started crying hysterically. “How can you say that mum?” she moaned. “How can you say everything will be okay? Tom’s DEAD! He’s dead, dead, dead, dead, dead!”
Anna handed Charlotte a mug of tea and the two sat down together, watching as Caroline comforted their mother. They didn’t usually get on, but when things went wrong, such as when Anna had failed a scholarship exam the pervious year or when Charlotte accidentally spread a rumor about her best friend and she was dumped by her, the two girls could be very supportive.
“Come on,” Anna tugged Charlotte’s sleeve. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Charlotte grabbed two bags and they headed up to their room.
“Here’s your book,” Charlotte thrust a Borders bag at Anna and pulled her diary from her bookshelf. Taking a pen from her schoolbag, Charlotte sat down on her bed and began writing at top speed.
Heya Diary,
Tom killed himself. Wow! I never thought I’d write that sentence. I always thought I’d be the one to kill myself. Tom had everything going for him, I’m just a slut. I haven’t seen Ethan since last night. Mum let me and Anna have the day off. Anna stayed home. Can you believe that? She actually stayed home!
I don’t feel well. I feel like crap. Complete and absolute crap. I can’t believe Tom’s dead.
Goodbye,
Charlotte.
Charlotte put her diary back on her shelf and turned to look at Anna, who was reading Wuthering Heights at great speed.
“Are you alright?” Charlotte asked Anna when she put her bookmark in her new book.
Anna shook her head and rolled over so she could see Charlotte easier. “I feel sick. What about you?”
Charlotte shrugged. “I feel horrible. Do you…?”
“What?”
Charlotte shook her head, sighing. “Oh, nothing really. Just forget it.”
Anna nodded and closed her eyes, falling asleep quickly despite all the sunlight shining into the room through the window. Charlotte walked out of the room and went to watch TV.
“Hello Charlotte,” Caroline said, sitting down next to her eldest granddaughter.
“Hi grandma,” Charlotte mumbled. She really didn’t feel like talking to anyone, and unlike Annabell, she would show it without being worried she was being rude.
“I’ve got something for you,” Caroline smiled, pulling out a small bag and passing it to Charlotte. Inside the bag was a little box, which held a locket.
“My mother gave me that locket,” Caroline said as Charlotte brightened up. “You look after it, now. It’s a precious family heirloom.”
Charlotte nodded, thanking her grandmother and putting it around her neck.
“Thanks grandma,” Charlotte hugged Caroline and the two began talking about how Charlotte was getting on at school.
Ethan came home at lunchtime, skipping the rest of school.
“How are you, darling?” Caroline asked.
Ethan shrugged. Nobody at school knew yet, but David was intending to call that afternoon, and there was to be a section on the news about it.
“Are you hungry, mum?” Lucy asked, walking into the lounge room. She was trying her hardest not to get too emotional, and was acting like it was just any other day.
“No thanks, dear, but Ethan here might like some. And where are those daughters of yours?”
Lucy shrugged and went back into the kitchen, intending to cook her family a big dinner. Caroline dragged Ethan into a conversation about school and work. The seventeen year-old, who would have preferred to be at work, politely answered his grandmother’s questions, and then left, saying that he had a test to study for.
“Yes, yes,” Caroline agreed. “You go study. Get good grades and then get yourself a good job. Oh, you lovely boy.”
Ethan grimaced as Caroline kissed his cheek and got away as quickly as he possible could. He slammed his door, which woke Anna up, and sat on his bed, head in his hands, and began a sobby-crying thing.
There was a knock on Ethan’s door and Charlotte came in, sitting beside Ethan and resting her head on his shoulder.
“Why did he do it?” Charlotte asked after getting sick of the silence.
Ethan shook his head. “I have no idea. I guess we’ll never find out, really. There was no note or anything.”
“I think I’ll go to school tomorrow,” Charlotte said, standing up and walking over to the door. She opened it a little and turned her head back to face Ethan. “But that’s no promise. How many people know?”
“Nobody,” Ethan said. “But dad is going to ring the school tomorrow, so everybody will know by the end of the week.”
Charlotte nodded and stepped out of her brother’s room, crossing the landing and entering her own room, where Annabell was singing horribly out of tune to one of her old 80’s cd’s and drawing in a large sketch book.
“What do you think?” Annabell put down her grey-lead and showed Charlotte her drawing. It was of Tom, Ethan, Charlotte and herself. Annabell wasn’t the best drawer, but she was better at art than at music.
Charlotte, who was quite talented at designing and textiles, but not so much at drawing, peered closely at the picture.
“It’s nice,” Charlotte said, taking the sketch book from Anna. “But why aren’t mum and dad in it too?”
Anna shrugged. “I don’t know, they just never seemed to fit into the lives of all of us. Despite the age differences, we could all hang out and be close, but we were never much of a family,” Annabell sighed. “Maybe this will change that.”
Charlotte nodded and handed the book back. She agreed with Annabell and turned the cd off, getting sick of the horrible music and the sure to be returning soon horrible singing.
Gender:
Points: 890
Reviews: 516