Here we go again!
I really hope you enjoy reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it!
I plan on updating my other story 'Better times will come' today as well, so please check it out when you're done reading this chapter ;-)
It was Thursday night when Maddie decided it was time to follow through with the plan. She left her room, walked down a flight of stairs and came to a halt in front of a closed door. She knew that Jasper was in there, so she knocked on the door once and waited for him to allow her to enter. When he did, she walked inside.
"Jasper?"
"What's on your mind, Madeline?" Jasper queried and put the glue, which he was holding in his hand, down onto the white desk. He liked model ships, and whenever the house was silent enough he enjoyed putting the ships together. He said it would relax his mind - whatever that meant.
He turned around on his desk chair to face his sister and waited for her to answer.
"Can I go hunting?"
"Now?" That surprised him. She went hunting on Tuesday, and they had a trip planned for tomorrow. Vampires could go two weeks without drinking blood, but they made Maddie hunt twice a week. Therefore it was hard to judge by the colour of her eyes alone if she was really feeling the need to feed or not.
"Yes, please." She nodded her head.
"What about our trip tomorrow? Can't you wait another day or is it really that bad?" He was slightly concerned; they couldn't sent her off to school when she wasn't well fed - it would be too risky. And Esme and Carlisle wouldn't be too impressed if the baby of the family wasn't taken care of.
"I'm thirsty," she replied, bottom lip protruding and puppy dog eyes showing.
"You may go, of course. I don't want to keep you here when you have to hunt. Who is going to accompany you?"
"I'll ask Emmett!" she exclaimed happily and stormed down the hallway until she reached the door to Emmett and Rose's room. She didn't even bother to close Jasper's door behind herself.
"Em! Wanna go hunting?" she shouted and hopped from one foot to another, knocking a weird rhythm on the door.
"Sure thing!" he answered and opened his door immediately.
"Jasper? Emmett is taking me!" she called.
"Yes, I heard that. You two aren't exactly quiet," Jasper remarked dryly.
"Sorry! Bye!" Maddie called out and Emmett laughed.
They left promptly, and Jasper - well, Jasper could go back to working on his model ships in peace and quiet.
Two hours later they returned home. Maddie bent down to take her shoes off right at the front door - she really didn't want to clean the house before Esme came back home. When she straightened up again, Alice was suddenly standing in front of her.
"Woah, Alice!" Where did she come from?
"You'll stay home tomorrow!" the pixie said and pulled her sister over into the living room. She pushed Maddie gently down into one of the big, comfortable armchairs while she sat down on the cream-coloured couch facing her.
"Huh?" Alice wasn't exactly precise most of the time ...
Alice cleared her throat, then explained, "A classmate of yours will have a little ... accident during your French class tomorrow."
"Huh. What kind of accident?" Now that wasn't fair. School was so boring and the moment something exciting would happen, Maddie wasn't allowed to be there to witness it.
"She'll pick her nose until it starts bleeding," Alice replied with a slightly grossed out facial expression, clearly remembering what she had just seen in her vision.
"Ewww." Maddie shuddered - she didn't want to witness that. "Okay, no school." Then she quickly asked, "Hey, which girl?"
Alice giggled. "Wouldn't you like to know."
"Yes! I don't want her touching me with her bogey-fingers! That's just ... nasty!" Maddie exclaimed in a disgusted tone.
"I don't know her name, so I cannot tell you. But you can't go to school tomorrow, sorry."
Haha, sorry ... that was awesome!
"Can I stay home alone?" A small, hopeful smile played on Maddie's lips. Never before had she stayed home on her own, neither here nor at the Denali's - it would be a welcome change.
"No, you can't." Jasper had entered the living room at that very moment and sat down next to his wife, putting an arm around her shoulders and kissing her on the cheek. Alice looked up at him with a smile on her face and leaned into his embrace.
"... okay? Who's staying with me then?" Please say Emmett, please say Emmett, please -
"I will." Crap.
"Let me choose!" Maddie whined - she didn't want Jasper to stay with her.
"No. You'll choose Emmett, and then he'll most likely take you shopping and to amusement parks and I don't know what all."
"No, he won't!"
"Madeline, this is not up for discussion."
She leaned back, crossed her arms and pouted. That obviously didn't make an impression on Jasper; he was completely oblivious to his sister's sulking. He just sat there, his fingers intertwined with Alice's and had only eyes for her, his wife.
When Maddie realised that she was quite unsuccessful with her pouting, she tried a different approach. "But I've been good the last couple of days." she said softly.
"That is true, try to keep it that way," Jasper commented.
He could feel Maddie's disappointment right then. He didn't mean to make her miserable, but he just didn't trust Emmett to stick to Maddie's grounding.
"Come now... is it that bad if I stay home with you?"
"No ... but I want Emmett," Maddie replied in a saddish voice and played with the hem of her shirt - which had blood stains on the front due to the deer she had beheaded half an hour ago.
It would be perfect if the two of them could stay home all day. They would have so much more time for their game - and for cleaning up, of course.
"Let's go upstairs, you really should get changed," Alice piped up, grabbed her sister's hand and pulled her up the stairs.
As soon as they reached the top floor, Alice whispered, "You and Emmett shouldn't play that game, someone might find out."
"But we would start in the morning if Emmett stays here!"
Alice looked her sister straight in the eye for a minute, then said with a mischievous smile, "Let me do your hair every morning for two weeks and I help you."
Interesting.
"One week," Maddie bargained.
"Do you want me to just talk to Jasper or do you want me to change his mind?" Alice had seated herself on Maddie's desk chair and let her fingers drum on the table, all the while smirking at her sister.
Maddie sighed. "But two weeks? Come on, Alice, be fair."
"All right, two weeks and you'll wear what I tell you to."
Maddie's jaw dropped. "What? You just made it worse!"
"Oh." Alice pretended to think about that. "Did I?" she said with mock horror.
Then Maddie whined. "Alice ..."
"I've always wondered what pink bedclothes would look like on your bed," Alice mused.
"NO!" Maddie shouted panic-stricken and jumped onto her bed, hugging her dark purple blanket protectively to herself. "Okay, two weeks hair and clothes. But you convince Jasper to let Emmett stay with me tomorrow. Now."
Whoa, that pixie really was a mean negotiant.
"Deal!" Alice squealed, jumped up and hugged her sister close. Having siblings was great!
And Alice indeed managed to change Jasper's mind ... Maddie had no idea how (and she did so not want to find out), but it worked and that was all that mattered at the moment.
And Thank God it had worked - Maddie had ordered a big package full of everything they'd need for the next day via Internet. With Emmett's credit card, of course. Luckily she remembered in time that she couldn't use Carlisle's or he might find out.
Friday morning started off great. Maddie and Emmett watched cartoons, while Jasper called Maddie's school and excused her for the day. She had a bad case of the common cold and couldn't even leave the bed - poor thing.
Their siblings left the house when it was time for school; so now it was time to play.
There was only one problem: The delivery man hadn't shown up yet. Ugh.
But finally, around eleven o'clock, Maddie heard the distinct sound of a car approaching. It was definitely not a car she knew, so it had to be her package arriving. And lucky her, it was.
Out of sheer joy, she nearly ripped the door off its hinges when she opened it. Humans were slow; Maddie shifted from one foot to the other until that delivery guy was finally standing in front of her after twenty-nine long seconds. She signed the ticket and wished him a nice day.
"Emmy!" Maddie called from the foyer after closing the door behind herself, a big cardboard box resting on the floor next to her.
Her brother rumbled down the stairs just seconds later and looked at her expectantly.
"Tiny?"
"Look," she said and grinned from ear to ear.
"It's a box," he said matter-of-factly.
"Ugh, Em, open it!"
So he grabbed it and carried it over into the kitchen where he placed it on the counter. Then he looked through the drawers for a pair of scissors.
"Just rip it open, come on!" Maddie was growing impatient.
"Well, if you say so." He grinned and opened the box in one swift motion and looked ... confused.
"What is that? !"
"Streamer spray." Maddie grinned.
"Oh my ... fifty cans? Are you planning what I think you're planning?"
Maddie grinned and nodded her head in excitement. "It is time for the ultimate streamer spray fight!"
He laughed out loud, picked his sister up and spun her around in a circle.
"Fantastic!" he cheered.
"Blue or red?" Maddie asked after he set her back down on her feet again.
"Blue, of course," Emmett replied while pressing a blue spray can protectively to his chest.
"I'll be red, then."
"Are we playing outside? That way we don't have to clean up afterwards, you know," Emmett suggested. Well, only if they would play far away from the house ... if they would play in the backyard, they would still need to clean up.
"Em, I'm grounded. You know we had to promise to not leave the house. You can't just break a promise."
"Well, no problem. We battle in here, then."
"Exactly. Just have to be quick about the cleaning up part, Alice warned me."
"What did she say?"
Maddie started explaining. "We shouldn't break anything and clean up very quickly. Well, she said we shouldn't do this in the first place because somebody might find out, but whatever."
"Fair enough."
"How do we do this?"
"Let's hide the ammunition around the house, then I can start kicking your butt," Emmett suggested.
"You wish!" Maddie was giddy with excitement - she would win this time!
They met in the living room fifteen minutes later when everything was well hidden. Maddie had put her cans in her walk-in closet, under her bed, in Edward's jacket that hung on the hook in the closet next to the front door, in the cabinet under the sink, in the toilet, under the pillows on the couch in the living room, in the oven, the fridge, the flowerpot of the indoor plant which stood in the foyer, ... you get the idea.
Twenty-four cans of hers were hidden all around the house - the last one she had kept in the pocket of her baggy sweat pants. These pants were awesome - why wouldn't Alice get that?
She had changed back into them the moment her siblings walked out of the door. You cannot do a streamer spray battle in a cord skirt, now can you? Her hair - well, she couldn't change anything about that. Alice had slightly curled Maddie's hair this morning - it looked quite nice, actually.
"Ready?" Emmett asked, when Maddie walked back into the room.
She just nodded her head in response - a big, sly smile plastered across her face.
"Steady?" Emmett inched closer towards the back of the armchair.
Maddie jumped behind the couch, so the backrest would offer her protection.
"GO!" Emmett shouted, drew his can and started to spray in the direction Maddie was hiding.
She waited until he stopped spraying, then she looked over the backrest and attacked.
They were having a blast, chased each other through the entire house, including the garage and the patio. That was still a part of the house, right?
Three and a half hours later, Emmett and Maddie had nearly used up all of their ammunition. The streamers were covering the inside of the house from top to bottom; it looked like colorful spiderwebs, spun by a very gay and shitfaced spider.
But the two were so caught up in the game that they didn't really notice anything else around them, like what their home looked like, or even what got broken while they were storming through the house.
Yes, two picture frames and one vase were lying in broken fragments on the ground. One cupboard in the kitchen was missing a door and Maddie's desk chair couldn't be recognised as a chair anymore. Actually, that wasn't too bad.
The end of the battle was close and it was normally the best part - it would show if either Emmett or Maddie won.
So they ran back into the living room for the grand finale when suddenly a sound met their ears.
Car doors being shut.
Maddie and Emmett both stopped dead in their tracks.
Then ...
approaching footsteps.
They looked at each other, eyes wide with shock.
If they were still human, their hearts would have stopped beating right at that moment.
And then ... the kitchen door opened.
Tee-hee, ... wanna take a guess at who's coming home?
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