Disclaimer: I don't own Flowers in the Attic, nor do I own the wonderful, beautiful characters, nor do I own anything but Diana, my own character.
Author's Note: Um… read it. Review it. Be brutal. I had a hard time writing this because I was so indecisive throughout the whole thing, so that explains anything weird. And typos—if I have any, I am very sorry. I hate when other people have typos, so please just overlook them. Thanks!
Chapter 1: Strange Family
Diana looked up from where she had been sitting for the past half an hour. Standing and brushing off her skirt, she froze at the sound of voices. At first she couldn't hear what they were saying, so she moved forward as quietly as she could. Stopping about ten paces from the road, she saw through the trees five people, two who looked like they couldn't be older than four. Straining to hear, she finally made out what the older boy was saying.
"Cathy," he said, looking at the girl who was standing near him, "take that worried look off your face. If God didn't plan for people to grow old, and sick, and to eventually die, he wouldn't keep on letting people have babies."
Diana watched as the girl who must be Cathy blush and look away. Diana smiled as she remembered her own brother's ability to almost read her mind. As the family kept on walking, Diana followed as silently as she could, trying to listen as they talked. She caught a few things here and there, but it didn't explain what these strange people were doing in her small Virginian town. Her own family was rich enough to own one of the larger houses, but her father had recently lost his business to another, and now money was tight. Diana cringed as she remembered why she was out here to begin with. Her mother and she had had a fight when her mother had told Diana and her brother they might have to leave their big house. Diana had thrown a little girl's spoiled tantrum, and had run out of the house. Finding herself outside of the town, she had cried for the loss of her home and for guilt for yelling at the mother she loved dearly.
"Don't wanna go where we're going," she heard one of the smaller children whine. Diana wondered again who they were, where they were going, and where they were from. The other small child began to wail, and Diana was slightly relieved, because she had just nearly tripped, and had gasped. But the child's yells had covered her noise. More cries came from the little girl, and she tried to pull away from the girl holding her hand. At that moment, the moon came out from behind a cloud, and Diana saw that the girl couldn't be much older than her twelve-year-old self, and the boy not much younger than her fifteen-year-old brother.
After about ten minutes, Diana began to get bored with their lack of conversation, but was still curious about who these strangers were. They all had luscious blond hair; hair that Diana envied almost immediately, for her own hair was dark, almost too dark for her fair complexion. She had always wanted blond hair, because her mother's hair was blond, but her father's hair had been dark, dark brown, so she had inherited the latter. She looked more closely at the woman, trying to place her. There was something about her face, her hair, and her basic presentation that struck a memory cord in Diana's brain. She walked silently behind the family of five, envying, wondering, and almost forgetting to be quiet. She was broken out of her reverie when she realized where she was—in front of the looming Foxworth Hall. Even as she thought this, the woman leading the four children said the same thing. Telling her children that this was her ancestral home, Diana froze and tried to muffle a gasp. Again the woman's familiarity came into her mind, and she knew this woman was a Foxworth. The family stopped and turned around, but the woman and the boy kept going in an instant. But the girl, Cathy, didn't.
"What was that?" she asked. She held both of the younger children's hands, and they were trying to tug her forward to get her to catch up with the other two. Diana prayed she would keep going, but at the same time, she was entranced by this girl's face. Her mouth, and her nose, and oh! Her eyes! Why, she looks like me! Diana was more and more uneasy as her mystery family continued on. Having seen the woman, the boy, and Cathy straight on, she was sure they were Foxworths. There was no other solution. The girl looked like her, and she herself was distantly—although how distantly she didn't know—related to the Foxworths. She had been to parties at their house, too, and she didn't know that Malcolm and Olivia Foxworth had had a daughter. Diana knew that they had had two sons, but this woman must be their daughter, for she had her father's hair from when he was a younger man, and the Foxworth blue eyes.
Turning away, the girl followed her mother and brother as they approached the house. Hoping to hear more about these long lost Foxworths, Diana continued to follow, although she was quickly running out of trees to hide behind. She hoped the bushes and other greenery around the Hall would be enough to conceal her presence.
"Is there a lake near-by for ice skating, and swimming?" he asked, looking around as he spoke.
His mother gave him the queerest look before she answered, but no one noticed but Diana. "Yes, there's a small lake about a quarter of a mile away," she said, and then pointed to tell where she meant.
Diana remembered a quaint little lake where her brother, his friends, and Diana has gone before, sneaking around the stiff necked Olivia Foxworth, laughing at their triumph the whole time. Watching the family circle around to the back of the house, Diana followed, feeling grateful for the clouds that covered the moon, and simultaneously covering her presence. She stood back as the family silently walked up to the back door, not even knocking as it opened, and a woman Diana recognized to be Mrs. Foxworth let them in. As the door closed behind them and they were inside the dark house, Diana let out a groan of disappointment. It wouldn't have been beyond her to sneak into the house and follow them some more, but she had heard the lock click as they went in. She sat back under a small tree and looked up at the large house, hugging her knees and watching the small amount of light as it moved through the house. Mrs. Foxworth must have been holding a candle, because Diana was able to trace her movements, and she saw that they ended in the very corner room on one end of the house. The curtains were closed as soon as the light entered the room, but Diana decided she would come back the next night and see what she could see. Perhaps she could make friends with the pretty girl with the blond hair, and the nice looking boy with the bright blue eyes. Until then, she would have to endure her mother's worries about Diana being out at "all hours of the night." There was no doubt in her mother's mind that Diana had a secret lover that she went out to see at night, when all Diana was doing was clearing her mind and getting some time off from her big house and her mean step father.
Walking back home, Diana began to drag her feet. Worrying about what was in store for her when she got home, she glanced behind her at the dark Foxworth Hall. It's already cold tonight; those little kids are going to be real old in that corner room.
As she approached her own large home, Diana noticed that her living room light was still on. She stopped and looked up and sized up her house as an outsider. You know, we only use like ten of the twenty rooms in this house, maybe moving won't be so bad, she thought. And she was right; her family didn't even have to heat half the house, because it was only herself, her brother Dominick, her mother, and her stepfather. Her stepfather was not her favorite person, and neither was her brother most of the time, although they had their moments. But she loved her mother like no one in the world, and she was feeling guilty again, not just for yelling at her, but also for having been gone for an hour.
But more than anything, she was worried about what her stepfather was going to say about her being late. She was doing her best not to remember the last time she had come home later than she had said, although then she had been with a boy—their first date, but they didn't last long—and this time she had been alone. But he won't buy that, she thought grimly. Walking up her front walk, she braced her insides, took a deep breath, and opened up her front door.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" Jumping out of her skin, Diana looked around for her stepfather. Already her façade was falling apart, and she was beginning to shake. "WITH ONE OF YOUR BOYFRIENDS, I'LL BET!" Stepping out of the shadows, he was very obviously angry, as if his tone hadn't already informed Diana of this. A rustling noise coming from the front stairs made Diana look out of the corner of her eye and see Dominick, standing back until he was really needed. He knew how she hated to be rescued, but he also knew that his presence gave her strength because she knew she had backup.
"Please, I don't even have one boyfriend, thanks to you," Diana retorted, knowing she was digging her own grave.
"Good, I like to know I am stopping any sinful acts you might have the chance to follow through with any boy you meet." His voice had cooled, and he was looking dangerously calm. This was even worse than when he was yelling, because he was known to strike at this stage. But that didn't stop Diana from rolling her eyes and snorting, making for a very unladylike pose.
"I'm not a little girl, but I'm not 'sinful' either, dear stepfather," Diana pointed out. The way he talked a person might think Diana had been caught doing something immodest with a boy, but she never had. She had only had one boyfriend, and it was only a little fifth grade thing. It made Diana want to laugh sometimes how he overestimated her. She was only twelve, for God's sake!
"You know what, dear, dear stepfather? I'm tired. I've spent the last hour sitting in the woods, thinking about moving. Yes, that is what I was doing," she said to the disbelieving look on his face. "And I've come to this conclusion: I don't mind if we move, as long as we don't move very far. I still want to go to school here, and see my friends, and such things." Diana saw that her side step was working, and she was proud of herself. The trick is with her stepfather, she's found out, is to tell him what he wants to hear.
"Fine, to bed with you. You've gotten out of this one, but there is to be no more late night excursions, you hear me?" He gave her his evil eye, and Diana nodded obligingly.
In her room, Diana breathed a sigh of relief. Slipping out of her day clothes and into her short nightgown, she sat at her window seat and looked across the lard field that separated her house with Foxworth Hall. From where she sat, she could see the window where the light had stopped, but she couldn't see anything now. She couldn't make out any light, but it was too far away anyway. Slipping from her room and into a hall closet on the main floor, she grabbed a pair of binoculars. Sitting back onto her window seat, she looked through the lenses. The house appeared much, much closer now, and she could make out the window perfectly. She saw nothing for the first five minutes, and was about to give up when there was a rustling of the drapes. Leaning forward so that the front of the binoculars touched her window, she watched as the girl who was Cathy peaked around the side of the drapes, moving them as little as possible. Her pretty face was twisted into a worried and fearful frown, but a pair of boy's hands pulled her away gently. Diana concluded that the hands must have belonged to the girl's brother, and that they weren't supposed to be looking out the window.
Waiting another ten minutes with no avail, Diana finally set down her binoculars and lay down in her bed. Staring at her high ceiling, she did a little more wondering before falling into a sleep that would carry her through a restless night. Dreams of little mice in a big attic caused her to wake repeatedly, and the feeling of being trapped weighed upon her like a thousand pounds of granite.
Well, that's it for the first chapter. What do you think! I need to know, because I am having trouble with the next chapter, because I can't decide where Diana comes in. But she will come in; I'll make sure of it!
Jordie