Chapter Two: Important Discoveries

Charlene locked front door behind her as she entered her house. She went to her bathroom next to her bedroom.

In the mirror, Charlene looked like a ghost. Her face was paler then usual, and her eyes were red and bloodshot. Her nose was pink and runny. Her mom hadn't come home yet, and Charlene was thankful for that. She didn't want her parents to see her crying. The way the bathroom was built, there was a door in between the toilet and the sinks. The part with the sinks had two doors, both leading to different bedrooms. The door she had come through was from her bedroom. She looked at the other door.

The other bedroom.

That's what they had always called it. The other bedroom, as if to say the name it was owned by would cause the earth to shatter. It might as well, the way her family acted around it. Charlene wasn't allowed to invite visitors to her house, but she knew that if she could, her parents wouldn't let them go in there. Charlene rarely went in there herself. She only went there when she was the most miserable, as if being in there would somehow solve her problems. Charlene put her hand on the sliding door, about to open it, but hesitated. What if this just made her worse?

The paper in her pocket, the poem Wayne had given them, suddenly felt heavy. No, she reminded herself, you didn't steal it. Wayne had wanted them to use it, and even if Finn had said to wait, who cared? Finn couldn't control her. None of the others knew how important it was to her. They were too distraught about Amanda and Jess leaving to even notice her take it. She opened the door and stepped inside the room. It was dusty, as usual. The walls were light pink in a way that wasn't girly, but nice. White curtains covered the window to her left. The bunk bed had unused pink and brown sheets. A chair sat in the corner. A chair intended, but never used, for reading. Charlene sighed. They had designed the room for her, even though they knew she wouldn't use it.

She

Charlene couldn't even think the name. It was sad, being in this room. It was a space of shattered dreams, a place to remind her of the could-have-been's. She would have lived here. She was supposed to live here, too. Charlene looked at her sister's luggage in the middle of the room. Her dad had found it outside by the pool. Her luggage was there, but she wasn't. Where was she? It was as if she disappeared right on the spot. Charlene walked over to the luggage. She opened the front pocket of the carry-on.

She took out the leather journal. On the front were peeled gold letters: HNT. A neon green scarf that was tied into a bow at the side had attached the journal together. Charlene untied the scarf. She opened the book, flipping through the pages. The journal was almost full. She looked at the first entry's date. September 13th, 2004. Her sister's eighth birthday. The writing was completely illegible. Charlene flipped through the inconsistent entries, which jumped from September to December to April. She looked at one of the more recent entries, written almost six years later.

July 14th, 2010

Almost wrote "14July 2010." I don't like the way Europeans write the date. I started out writing this journal like an American, and I will continue until I run out of pages. Which, by the looks of it, will be soon. I don't know what I'll do when that happens. I started this six years ago. It seems weird to finish it. Two more months until school starts. Today was a fête de nationale, the Independence Day of France. But it's something else. Charlene turns 15 today. Or maybe she turns 16. I'm not sure. We haven't talked in so long. Things were finally getting good again. We no longer hated each other. But then she became a DHI. My friends think it's so cool I'm related to her, but they don't get it. Nothing good has happened since the whole "Kingdom Keepers" thing has started. Rides have been destroyed. Relationships have been destroyed. I'm left here wondering why my sister doesn't talk to me anymore. I think they're a bad influence on her. She's not the same person. She's letting her guard down, trusting them too much. She might tell. She can't. But she might. I'm too tired to write anything else.

Charlene tried not to cry, but it didn't work. Tears streamed down her face. She hadn't known her sister had felt that way. She knew her sister was upset, but she hadn't known why. Her sister thought Charlene would tell. Charlene wanted to think that her sister was being absurd, that she would never tell, but she had actually come close to telling many times. She felt bad not telling the Keepers. But she couldn't tell them. Charlene flipped to the second-to-last entry.

November 1st, 2010

I can't believe! Can't believe it at all! My hand is shaking as I write this. But not with fear. With anger. How could they do this to me? Don't they know this is my only home? The house I lived in when I was younger is owned by some else. Ma mère told me she has a bedroom for me, as if she was planning I'd get expelled. She was the one who made me go to this stupid boarding school. So may emotions. Too many emotions. I'd continue, but I think I'd just lose it. Then I might start a real fire.

Then I might start a real fire. Something about that sentence scared Charlene. Like it was a threat. She turned the page to the last entry. Here it was. She unfolded the paper in her pocket. Yes. She was right. The poems were identical, with the exception of the date above it in the journal. So her sister had written it. But that didn't explain how Wayne had gotten it. There were many things about Wayne that Charlene didn't understand.

"Charlene! I'm home!" Charlene heard her mom yell from the front door. Charlene panicked. She didn't want her mom to know she had been in here. She especially didn't want her to know she been through her sister's stuff. Charlene closed the book and retied the scarf around it. She folded Wayne's poem and put it back in her pocket. She ran out of the room, closed the doors, and hid the journal under the pillow of her bed. She had been too worried to notice that the whole time she had been in Holly's room, a pirate had been watching her through the window.

"So, what did you find out?" The girl demanded when she saw the pirate.

"Shh…" The pirate reminded her. They were hiding next to one of the buildings in Main Street. Normally, they wouldn't have had a problem there, except the park didn't close for another 20 minutes. Most of the guests had left, but not all. If their plan was to work, no one could know about it.

"This better be good." The girl warned.

"Oh, it is." The pirate said with a smile. "The blonde is hiding more then just her natural eye color."

"Good. Did you send those brats away like I asked?" The girl asked. The pirate nodded.

"Applied them for some scholarship in Maryland. Maryland! There's no way they can interfere now." He looked at the Cinderella Castle in the distance. Everyone said it was beautiful, but he didn't think so. It was a symbol of goodness, and it had to be ruined if they were to succeed.

"Why do you think the cruise ships are important?" He asked her.

"Because that's where they're putting the DHIs next." She explained. "We have to make sure all five of them are here for it to work." She looked at the pirate.

"So tell me what you found out. And don't you dare leave a single detail out."

A/N: Revision posted March 11, 2011