I own Jake. I own nobody else (well, apart from Mrs. Brambles and Stacey, but they're really minor, so they hardly count). Oh, and some odd bod who doesn't exist yet, but they will soon. Ok, that is all. Enjoy.
Chapter 1
Until not that long ago I was a normal girl, living a normal(ish) life. I lived with my grandparents in their house by the Thames. That was until my dad sort of blew up the British Museum.
My name, by the way, is Sadie Kane, and I'm twelve.
OK, that's enough of that. Where should I start? I suppose I should start with that day at school. The day I caught Jake on the phone saying strange stuff.
It was break, and everybody was meant to be outside 'enjoying the sun' in Mrs. Brambles words. Getting sunstroke, more like. I mean, it was 30+ outside. And I don't care if Stacey and her gang think that it's the best weather ever for a tan (who wants a tan anyway?), in my opinion, it was child cruelty.
So, I went inside. It wasn't much cooler, but it was as good as I was going to get. I was about to go into my classroom to get my water bottle from my locker, when I heard somebody talking inside the room. I peeked through the glass in the door to see Jake.
Jake had brown curly hair, a limp and always wore a green baseball hat with a recycling sign on it. I know, random. Also, for some reason he was allowed to wear his hat all the time, but if anybody else wore one it was a definite detention.
Anyway, Jake was on the phone. Another rule broken. I put my ear to the door so that I could hear him.
"Yeah…no, she doesn't smell like one… it's just… exactly… Look, I think you should come and see for yourself… great… no… right, Ok. Bye."
Calmly, I opened the door and walked in. Jake panicked and turned his phone off, before putting it in his trouser pocket and turning around.
"Hey, Jake," I said.
He seemed to register that I wasn't a teacher.
"Oh, Sadie, um, hi. What are you doing here?"
I went over to my locker and twisted the lock to put in my code. 15-43-16. "I was about to ask you the same question."
"I needed to phone my mum. You?"
"Water bottle."
He nodded. I thought about his conversation on the phone. Not that I know much about phone calls to mums, but it didn't sound anything like the sort of call you would make to your parents. She doesn't smell like one. What on earth?
I took my water bottle out and locked the locker.
"Are you coming out?" I asked.
"Oh, sure," he said, putting his phone into his locker. "So, doing anything nice this summer?"
"Not really. Dad and Carter are coming over."
"Carter?"
I realised that Jake was new this year, and didn't know who Carter is. "He's my older brother. Dad is an Egyptologist, and Carter travels around the world with him, so I only see them twice a year. Summer and Christmas."
"So, who do you live with?"
"My Grandma and Granddad. When my mum died, Gran and Gramps fought with Dad to get me living with them. They took it to court and everything."
"Oh. Right. I'm…I'm sorry about your mum."
"Thanks, but I don't really remember her enough to miss her."
"Oh. So, where did you live before your mum… you know?"
"America."
He looked at me, surprised. "Seriously? You really don't sound like it." He looked at his watch. "We better go, in case a teacher comes."
I nodded. If Mrs. Brambles caught me in the classroom when I shouldn't be, it would be another detention.
I'm like a magnet to detention. Either the teachers hate me and have ganged up against me, or (Carter's theory) it's all my fault. OK, I know that wearing combat boots really doesn't help my defence, but I really defiantly think that my theory is right.
I looked at the clock on the wall. One more hour. One more hour and I would be going home for the holidays.
Then Dad and Carter came. They were late. As usual.
"Hello sweetheart!" Dad said as I opened the door. Muffin, my cat, jumped out of my arm and sniffed Dad's bag. He always has it with him. I ran over and gave him a hug. Then I looked at Carter.
"Oh, hi,"I murmured. He's two years older than me, and looks completely different. He's like Dad, an African-American. I'm apparently more like Mum, but in my opinion she's far more beautiful. Gran and Gramps have got a whole room dedicated to her, full of pictures, toys, certificates and stuff like that. I personally find it really sad. In a bad way.
I heard Gran's car coming around the corner. She's gone shopping. Getting out of the car she saw me and smiled. "Sadie, will you help me with the bags?" she called to me. Then she saw Dad and Carter. She slammed the car door and walked over to us, a frown on her face. "What are they doing here?" she whispered to me.
"It's the 25th Gran," I pointed out. Dad always came on two set date, 25th June, and Christmas Eve.
She blinked as if surprised. "It is? Well, I suppose you better get going then. "Glaring at dad, she then turned and walked back to the car.
Gran hates Dad. I can't remember why exactly, but it's something to do with Mum's death.
Muffin rubbed against my legs, then trotted off to join Gran.
"So," Dad asked "What do you want to do?"
"Get an ice-cream. It's absolutely boiling today." I told him. And it was. That's the problem with living in Britain. In the winter, it's absolutely freezing, but in summer it's like, 30°C, which is not good.
So we got into the taxi and went to a random ice cream shop. I got a pistachio; Carter got honey, while Dad just read his notes. At one point I lent over to see what he had written, but Dad caught me in the act, and closing his note, he asked me if my ice-cream was nice. I nodded. Then he looked at his watch. "Right, it's time to go."
"But Dad-" Carter started, but I beat him to it.
"You haven't got some work to do, have you?"
"No," Dad got up, slung his bag over his shoulder, and pulled the handle on his suitcase up. "I thought you might like to go to the movies. There are some good sounding films on at-"his phone rang. He took it out of his trouser pocket, and sighed as he read the text. "Yeah, sorry sweetheart. It's work."
"Dad!" Carter and I groaned at the same time.
"Look, afterwards I'll take you both to that pancake restaurant you like. But this is really important. We'll go to the cinema at Christmas."
I sighed. "So, where are we going?" I asked, even though I don't know why I asked. There's only one place in London where Dad would go for work.
"The British Museum. You two can look around. Maybe you'll discover something you like."
"Yeah," I muttered. "Maybe."
So, we went to the British Museum. Yay. Not. Dad led us straight to the Egyptian section, and past the Rosetta Stone which a bunch of Chinese tourists were standing around. Why on earth are people so obsessed with that large chunk of rock? What's so amazing about it?
Anyway, he led us to the end of one of the wings that led from the part containing the stone. A man was standing there in a cheap and happy suit. Why they are even called cheap and happy? They look sad. Very sad. In a very, very, bad way.
"Hello Dr. Kane, " the man said Dad. Dad turned to us.
"Why don't you two go and explore?" he asked. I was about to come up with a million good reasons, when Carter nodded and grabbed my arm, walking off. A few metres later I pulled by arm back.
"That suit was sad," I told him. He just looked at me like I was crazy, then said, "I'm going to look at the Assyrian Lion Hunt. You coming?"
I shook my head and took my iPod out of my pocket. "I'm going to sit somewhere and listen to this, while you look at the dusty old relics."
"They're not dusty old relics!" he told me, obviously annoyed. "They're really cool!"
"You," I told him, "don't know the meaning of cool." And then I walked off to find a bench.
I had been sitting on the bench for a few minutes, when someone came along who I recognised. Jake. And he had some random odd bods with him. There were two boys and a girl. The girl had blonde hair tied back in a pony tail. One of the boys had curly brown hair and wore a Rasta cap. The other boy had black hair.
I took my ear phones out of my ears.
Jake saw me. "Hi Sadie!" he said walking over towards me, followed by the odd bods.
"Er, hi," I said. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, um..." he looked round desperately at the other people with him, who were looking a bit shifty, as they backed away, leaving him to figure it out. "Er, I was doing some homework."
"Er, Jake," I told him, raising an eyebrow, "One, we don't get any homework in the holidays. Two, we're in the same class, so we get the same homework. And three, why would you bring your friends to do homework?"
He looked at me, worried. "It was, er, extra home work. Extra curriculum stuff. And, um, my friends had come over for the holidays. They're sort of wanted to come."
Strange friends, I thought. Who in their right mind would want to come to this dump?
"So," I asked, trying to sound interested. "What's the homework on?"
"Er... ancient civilisations. Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, those sort of people."
I nodded.
The blonde girl was looking around. Then she saw the glass doors with The Parthenon etched in it. Her eyes widened. "Oh my gods!" she exclaimed. Then she grabbed the boy with black hair and ran off toward the door. "Sorry!" she called over her shoulder.
Oh my gods? Gods? Plural of god? Who on earth was she? Anyway, before I had much time to ponder over this, Jake said something. "Sadie, are you even listening?"
"Hmmm? Oh, yeah sure. Why wouldn't I be listening?" Then, "What did you just say?"
He looked at me. "You weren't really listening, were you?"
I shook my head. "Not exactly." I admitted.
"Well, as I was saying, she's sort of obsessed with architecture."
"Yeah. I can see."
Then Jake turned to the other boy. "Grover meet Sadie. Sadie meet Grover."
Grover? What sort of name is that? What on earth did he do to deserve that sort of name? And what parent would be that cruel?
"Er, hi Grover." I said. "Cool name."
There was an awkward silence while we thought of what to say next. But before either of us had a chance to open our mouths, the black haired boy came back though the glass door.
"Can you two save me?" he asked Jake and Grover. "She's started talking about angles and confusing stuff like that. It's really hurting my head!"
Jake sighed. "Alright." Then he turned back to me. "Um, it's been nice to see you."
I nodded stiffly. "Same. Well, er, bye then."
"Bye," Jake replied as he started to walk off.
I put my ear phones back into my ears.
Then somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped and turned around. Carter was standing there.
"God Carter, you scared me."
"Sorry," he said, not sounding very sorry at all. "So, who were they?"
"One of them's a friend from school. The others are his friends."
"Just a friend?" he asked.
"Yes. Just a friend."
"Sure?"
When he saw the annoyed expression on my face he cracked a smile. I rolled my eyes. "You are really annoying," I told him.
He sat down next to me.
"So," I asked "did the dusty old relics bore you?"
He shook his head. "No. They are really cool, whatever you say. I just came to tell you that Dad's done."
I stood up, and Carter soon did the same. I followed him towards where Dad was standing, looking at a piece of stone with loads of hieroglyphs in loops on it. He turned around and smiled at us.
"So, do you two want to go and get a pancake?"
We got the taxi back home straight after the pancake. Gran stood in the doorway, arms crossed, frowning.
"You're late," she said as Dad and I got out of the taxi.
Dad ignored her and gave me a quick hug, before getting back into the taxi. "Bye sweetheart," he said, then closed the door.
"Bye Dad. Bye Carter."
I waved goodbye and watched as they drove around the corner, before following Gran inside. "Well," she said as she closed the door. "At least we've got that out of the way."
Well, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Before you go, I need to tell you a few things. Well, actually, I don't exactly need to tell you, but I would like to. Numero uno (no idea why I've suddenly turned Italian): I do not, I repeat not share Sadie's views. The British Museum rules! Two: sorry this chapter was quite long. The rest of the chapters will probably be about this long, so it will probably take me quite a while to type them up. Three: there shouldn't be any spelling mistakes (thanks to my incredibly annoying editor who I will call Blob as they would kill me if I called them Bob) If there are, well, I would say blame them, but they might torture me with hot irons and nice stuff like that (yep, we're really good friends.)
So, anyway, please read and review. Reviewers will get free imaginary hot chocolate with marshmallows. And if you're really strange and don't like hot chocolate and marshmallows (no offence), you will get a free imaginary pancake. And if you don't like pancakes, you are really odd (again, no offence intended, but who doesn't like pancakes? – actually, don't answer that one.) Any tips on how to improve will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading and I hope enjoy the next chapters!
