To My Readers: To those of you who read The Only Thing Worse Than Dying, don't expect this story to go places soon. In fact, it won't be until chapter four until something truly significant happens. But once it does, believe me, it will be nothing but action, drama, and mystery from there.

Lilo briefly jittered in fright as she felt Stitch pick her up and throw her onto the chair at the kitchen table. Just as she landed in her chair, Stitch had hopped up onto his at the opposite end of the table. This was just in time to see Nani spin around with a bowl of oatmeal in each hand and haphazardly drop them on the table in front of the two. A small glass of orange juice was already in front of them.

Nani spun back and hurried toward the stove where the remainder of the oatmeal was in a rolling boil. She turned off the stove and began whirling the wooden spoon in the pot as fast as possible to keep it from burning.

Stitch picked up his glass of orange juice and dumped it into his oatmeal. After thoroughly stirring it in with his extended claw, he picked up the bowel and dumped the entire contents into his mouth, letting it slide right down his throat without chewing.

Stitch stuck his face in the bowl and swirled his tongue around inside until long after all remnants of oatmeal were gone from the sides. For good measure, Stitch lifted the bowl above his head, closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide. But just before he could drop the bowl into his mouth.

"Ahhh!"

Stitch turned his head to see what was the matter.

Pleakly and Nani were in a tug-o-war struggle with the pot of oatmeal.

"What are you doing in my kitchen?" Pleakly yelled at Nani.

"It's my kitchen! It's my house! And I'm making breakfast in it!" Nani yelled back.

"You're not qualified to make breakfast!"

"Whenever you make breakfast you throw a whole bottle of soy sauce into it!"

"That's because it's good for you!"

"Only in tiny little doses!"

The argument stopped as Pleakly slipped in a towel on the kitchen floor and fell over. The pot was sent flying in one direction and the oatmeal in the other. The both came down onto the kitchen floor not too far from the table.

"Oh great!" Nani shouted, flailing her arms about in the air. "Now how are we going to clean up this mess?"

"Oatmeal!"

Nani and Pleakly turned their heads to see Stitch jumping off the back of the chair and landing in the mess of oatmeal, sucking it up like a vacuum cleaner.

"Well, that's one way." Nani said, folding her arms. "At least this'll be good for a laugh from Lilo. Right?…"

Nani, looking over at her, saw that Lilo hadn't eaten, or noticed anything that had happened. She played with her oatmeal, lifting up a spoonful and then turning it to the side to let it plop back down into the bowl.

"Lilo?" Nani asked. "Aren't you going to eat?"

"I'm not hungry." Lilo responded.

Nani walked over to Lilo and put her hand on Lilo's back. "You had that dream again didn't you." She asked.

"There was someone else there." Lilo didn't raise her head as she talked.

"Lilo." Nani said. "You were delirious, you were imagining things."

"The hospital guy said he saw someone on that ledge!"

"Lilo… You were loaded with morphine. You couldn't have heard anything they were saying."

"There was someone there! I know there was!"

"Gaba?"

Stitch, now finished with cleaning up the floor, stood next to the table looking up at Lilo and Nani, his ears held back and clearly concerned.

Nani turned toward Stitch. "Stitch, this isn't the time to be asking questions. I'll tell you later. OK?"

Stitch looked over at Lilo. She still hadn't moved her head or taken a bite of her oatmeal.

"Uh… Okie-taka." Stitch manage to mutter, and then left the kitchen, but not before taking one look back toward Lilo, still playing with her breakfast.

The sky was solid black despite it being only one in the afternoon. The rain was beating so hard against the windows of Lilo's second grade classroom that she swore they would shatter at any moment.

Lilo looked to her side to see Stitch in the desk next to her intently listening to what the teacher was saying. Why stitch was sitting at a desk in her elementary school was beyond Lilo, as was why he would be wearing circular, thick-rimmed glasses while he was at it.

More confusing was the fact the Myrle Edmonds and her posse of three little yes-girls were sitting in their respective desks the next row up, and still in their hula outfits no less!

However, the biggest mystery of them all was why Lilo's hulking hula instructor Moses would be teaching her language skills in an elementary school while wearing his traditional grass skirt, and in this kind of whether.

There had to be a logical explanation for all of this. Though Lilo couldn't think of any, there had to be one, so she didn't question the sights around her, and just paid attention to what Moses was saying.

"So, it's been about a week now. Everyone should have two books. One English book to translate to Hawaiian, and one Hawaiian book to translate to English. Would anyone like to be first volunteer to show the class what they brought?"

"I dunno' why we have to do this?" Myrtle sneered at Moses, turning her head and folding her arms.

"Yeeaahh!" her yes-girls followed suit.

Moses sighed and put his hand to his head.

"Because Myrtle," he said, "the best way to preserve one's cultural heritage is to learn its traditional language. We all need to know Hawaiian or else our culture will die off."

"What's so bad about that?" Myrtle continued to scoff at Moses. "I mean it's the twenty first century Moses! You know, the age of globalism? The world doesn't have room for stone age, backwater cultures anymore."

"MYRTLE!" Moses yelled out at he slammed his fist against his desk. After a few seconds he put one had in front of him and the other to his face.

"Myrtle." Moses talked, trying as best he could to keep calm. "If you're not interested in preserving Hawaiian culture than you can go ahead and doodle or somethin'. But there are plenty of otha's in here who are so don't ruin it for them OK?"

"Hmmp." Myrtle scoffed one last time. "Lets go girls. We're going to go off and join the post-modern revolution."

"Yeeaahh!" the yes girls all said in unison as Myrtle left her seat and they all followed her out the door.

Stitch growled at them under his breath as they passed, but they paid him no mind.

"Someday I'm gonna get her." Lilo muttered under her breath as they passed, but they paid her no mind either.

"So, now that that's ova'." Moses said as soon as all four of the girl's had left. "Who wants to be da' first to shere their books."

Lilo immediately turned around and raised her hand as high as she could. When it became too painful to raise it any further, she frantically waved it around in the air.

"Well Lilo." Moses said. "since you seem to be the most enthused about this, you can go first."

Lilo stood up in her seat, books in hand, how they suddenly came to be in her hand was not known, but she didn't care at that point. She walked up to Moses' desk with her eyes closed and a huge grin covering most of her face.

Lilo set the books down on Moses' desk and he picked them up to inspect them.

Moses looked at the first book, a typical children's book with less than twenty pages. "No Malihili Ohana, A family of Strangers. Good choice for your Hawaiian book Lilo, I used to read this when I was a kid.

"Now let's see what you got for your English book" Moses picked up the second, much larger and more ornate and gothic looking book and stared at it confusedly.

"Brahm Stoker's Dracula?"

Lilo nodded her head at Moses, still with her eyes closed and huge grin.

Moses put down the book. "Lilo, this is WAY beyond your level. This is the kind'a thing you'd do for a college thesis."

Lilo opened her eyes and her grin turned into a frown.

"I'm sorry." Moses continued. "But you'll have to find anotha' book."

Lilo lowered her head and grabbed Brahm Stoker's Dracula from Moses' hand. Slowly, she walked back to her desk and sat down.

Moses' and other students continued talking, but Lilo paid no attention to them. Instead she looked out the window.

A flash of lightning through the storm illuminated something in the distance that she couldn't quite make out.

Lilo continued to stare for a few more moments, another flash of lightning reveled, a bit closer than before, a silhouette.

Lilo's eyes widened and her lungs froze. She couldn't move or breathe no matter how badly she wanted to.

Another flash of lightning reveled the silhouette in a dark trench coat and fedora right outside the window.

Suddenly the lights went out. Nothing could be seen or heard, not even the rain made noise anymore. For the longest time all was silent dark, until the voice of a creaky old man called out.

"Lilo!"

"Lilo!" her teacher called out from across the room and she jumped up from her seat behind the desk.

It was the middle of a bright, shining day in Lilo's second grade classroom. Her teacher was a skinny redhead woman clearly from somewhere in southern California. Myrtle and her team of yes-girls was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Stitch. That was because she left him at home to watch TV or something.

"Your poem Lilo?" The teacher asked.

That was right! Today the students were all supposed to bring poems about someone that had some sort of influence in their lives.

Lilo looked down at a wrinkled piece of lined paper with a few poorly scribbles lines in blue ink. She had thought up and written this in less than a minute before class when she realized she didn't have anything.

Lilo grabbed the piece of paper, and hesitantly walked up to the front of class.

All the students stared at her intently.

Lilo cleared her throat, unwrapped the paper and began speaking.

"This poem is dedicated to a woman who influenced my life. I call it, Linda Tripp.
Ahem…
Linda Tripp.
Greasy hag!
Smells like mayo'!
Fascist bag!"

The next thing Lilo knew, she was in a cab heading back to her house.