You know what, screw it!
The stutter is fucking annoying! She can still be shy but I'm not about to write one of those FanFictions with an 85 stutter count!
Amy's POV
"I'll read!" Alistair announced, snatching the book away from a disgruntled Sinead.
Dan Cahill thought he had the most annoying big sister on the planet. And that was before she set fire to two million dollars.
"I'm sorry, what?!" Jake yelped, staring at us increasingly.
"TWO MILLION DOLLARS!" Atticus squeaked, eyes the size of saucers.
Thank you for throwing me under the bus, mysterious voice.
"Listen. In my defense, it was for a good reason!" I argued.
"was the reason you had hypothermia and need to burn it for heat?! Because that's the only logical reason to burn two million dollars!" Jake yelled, pulling at his hair.
"Uh-, well no. But um...you know what let's just let the book decide!" I rambled, my cheeks heating up.
It all started when they went to their grandmother's funeral. Secretly, Dan was excited,
"Dude, what the fuck?" Hamilton asked, pausing to stare at my brother.
"Damn, this book is trying to throw both of us under the bus." Dan muttered grumpily.
"Just read some more, I'm sure it's not that bad!" Nellie prompted.
because he was hoping to make a rubbing of the tombstone after everyone else was gone.
"It did not get better, I was wrong." Nellie deadpanned.
"Omg it's not that weird, keep reading!"
He figured Grace wouldn't care. She'd been a cool grandmother.
"was she? She lied to you?" Cara asked.
"We didn't know she was then!" I exasperated.
"Also it wasn't really lying... she just didn't tell you everything." Nellie reassured.
"or anything." Dan mumbled under his breath.
Dan loved collecting things.
He collected baseball cards, autographs of famous outlaws, Civil War weapons, rare coins, and every cast he'd ever had since kindergarten (all twelve of them).
At the moment, what he liked collecting best were charcoal rubbings of tombstones.
He had some awesome ones back at the apartment. His favorite read:
PRUELLA GOODE
1891-1929
I'M DEAD. LET'S HAVE A PARTY.
"Can I put that on my tombstone?" Atticus asked his dad, who chuckled lightly.
He figured if he had a rubbing of Grace's tombstone in his collection, maybe it wouldn't feel quite so much like she was gone forever.
"Oh shit man, I'm sorry." Jake apologized.
"Language Jake!" His dad snapped good naturally.
Anyway, the whole way from Boston to the funeral in Bristol County, his great-aunt Beatrice was driving like a very slow lunatic.
Dear god
I groaned internally, pinching my nose.
She went twenty-five miles an hour on the highway and kept drifting across lanes so the other cars honked and swerved and ran into guardrails and stuff.
Aunt Beatrice just kept clutching the wheel with her jeweled fingers. Her wrinkly face was made up with Day-Glo red lipstick and rouge, which made her blue hair look even bluer.
Dan wondered if she gave the other drivers nightmares about old clowns.
"They do." Nellie confirmed.
"Amy!" she snapped, as another SUV careened down the exit ramp
because Beatrice had just pulled in front of it. "Stop reading in the car! It's not safe!"
"But, Aunt Beatrice—"
"Young lady, close that book!"
Amy did, which was typical. She never put up a fight with adults.
"Really?" Jake asked, turning to me.
"What?"
"You never fight with adults?"
"I didn't then." I replied.
"Do you now?" Dan asked sarcastically, earning him a smack on the head.
"Yes dweeb! I fight with those two-" I pointed at Alastair and Irena. "All the time! Plus Hamiltons parents and Jonah's dad!"
Amy had long reddish-brown hair, unlike Dan's, which was dark blond.
This helped Dan pretend his sister was an alien imposter, but unfortunately they had the same eyes — green like jade, their grandmother used to say.
Hamilton paused in his writing to stare right at me. "The books right, you do have jade eyes."
"Thank you?" I bit out lightly.
Amy was three years older and six inches taller than Dan, and she never let him forget it—like being fourteen was such a big deal.
"I'm sorry, being fourteen is a big deal!"
"Not it's not!"
"You wouldn't know, your eleven!"
"Enough!" Nellie scolded, "keep reading!"
Usually, she wore jeans and some old T-shirt because she didn't like people noticing her, but today she was wearing a black dress so she looked like a vampire's bride.
"Your an asshole, you know that." I huffed.
"Your right, you didn't look like a vampire's bride. You look like a cobra's bride! They have the same teeth!"
"That's it you little-!" I started to yell when Hamilton cut over me.
Dan hoped her outfit was as uncomfortable as his stupid suit and tie.
Aunt Beatrice had thrown a fit when he tried to go to the funeral in his ninja clothes.
"Really Daniel, ninja clothes?"
"Shut up you British idiot! I change mind, don't marry this 'git'"
I blushed, almost proud to find that Ian looked pink too. However, his mother and sister did not.
A perfectly manicured hand gripped her son's shoulder so hard he winced.
It wasn't as if Grace would care if he was comfortable and deadly, the way he felt when he pretended to be a ninja, but of course Aunt Beatrice didn't understand.
Sometimes it was hard for him to believe she and Grace were sisters.
"And your related to her?"
"Remind me to fire your au pair as soon as we return to Boston,"
Beatrice grumbled. "You two have been entirely too spoiled."
"Nellie's nice!" Dan protested.
"Hmph! This Nellie almost let you burn down the neighbor's apartment building!"
"Exactly!"
"seriously, what is up with you!
Every couple of weeks, Beatrice fired their au pair and hired a new one. The only good thing was that Aunt Beatrice didn't live with them personally.
She lived across town in a building that didn't allow kids, so sometimes it took her a few days to hear about Dan's latest exploits.
Nellie had lasted longer than most. Dan liked her because she made amazing waffles and she usually cranked her iPod up to brain-damage level.
She didn't even hear when Dan's bottle rocket collection went.
"You have a collection?!" Atticus squealed, eyes huge.
"yea?" Dan replied, surprised.
"THAT'S SO COOL!" The 9-year-old shrieked.
the two started to chattering animatedly as Hamilton continued to read.
off and strafed the building across the alley. Dan would miss Nellie when she got fired.
"Can't get rid of me that easy kiddos." Nellie hummed, ruffling the dweebs hair.
Aunt Beatrice kept driving and muttering about spoiled children.
Amy secretly went back to her huge book. The last two days, since they got the news about Grace's death, Amy had been reading even more than usual.
Dan knew it was her way of hiding, but he kind of resented it because it shut him out, too.
"Sorry." I muttered.
"No worries, I get it." Dan replied, shooting me a thumbs up.
What are you reading this time?" he asked. "Medieval European Doorknobs?Bath Towels Through the Ages?"
"Take it back, no longer sorry."
"Hey!"
Amy gave him an ugly face — or an uglier-than-usual face.
Ian scrunched his nose at that for some reason, weird.
"None of your business, dweeb."
"You can't call a ninja lord dweeb. You have disgraced the family.You must commit seppuku."
"How do you know what Seppuku is, your eleven?!" Hamilton asked.
"Don't ask, trust me." I interrupted before Dan could embarrass me more.
Amy rolled her eyes.
After a few more miles, the city melted into farmland. It started to look like Grace country, and even though Dan had promised himself he wouldn't get sappy, he began to feel sad.
Grace had been the coolest ever. She'd treated him and Amy like real people, not kids.
Both Dan and I looked down. Everyone got quiet, Alistair even looked a little guilty.
Jake looked ready to speak when his father shushed him.
That's why she'd insisted they simply call her Grace, not Grandmother or Gran or Nana or any silly name like that.
She'd been one of the only people who'd ever cared about them.
Now she was dead, and they had to go to the funeral and see a bunch of relatives who had never been nice to them...
"that's a little harsh, very correct but still." Nellie joked.
The family cemetery sat at the bottom of the hill from the mansion.
Dan thought it was kind of stupid they'd hired a hearse to carry Grace a hundred yards down the driveway.
They could've put wheels on the coffin like they have on suitcases and that would've worked just as well.
"Dad, I am officially putting Dan in charge of my funeral!" Atticus exclaimed.
"Sounds dope, yo!" Jonah added.
Summer storm clouds rumbled overhead. The family mansion looked dark and gloomy on its hill, like a lord's castle.
Dan loved theplace, with its billion rooms and chimneys and stained glass windows.
"Okay, now that is a normal way to think!" Nellie joked, shoving Dan a bit .
He loved the family graveyard even more.
I stared at my brother, half annoyed, half disgusted. "How are we even related?"
"You just jealous!"
"As if-!"
"Children!" Uncle Alastair interjected.
he'd hardly talked this whole time, I'd forgotten he was here!
A dozen crumbling tombstones spread out across a green meadow ringed in trees, right next to a little creek.
Some of the stones were so old the writing had faded away. Grace used to take Amy and him down to the meadow on their weekend visits.
Grace and Amy would spend the afternoon on a picnic blanket, reading and talking, while Dan explored the graves and the woods and the creek.
"I remember!" I reminisced, voice a tad dreamy.
"Remember that time when we were little and we got into a mud fight?" Dan asked, perking up .
"Oh yea! I won because I shoved a toad down your pants!"
"yeah! Which was totally cheating by the way."
I scoffed. "Your just a sore loser."
The dweeb looked appalled.
Stop that, Dan told himself. You're getting sentimental.
"sentiment isn't a bad thing Daniel." Alastair chimed, doing that weird 'overly wise old man' smile.
"Says the dude who keeps fake dying on us." Dan retorted.
our uncle opened his mouth to reply, then closed it and continued reading.
"So many people," Amy murmured, as they walked down the driveway.
"You're not going to freak out, are you?"
Amy fiddled with the collar of her dress. "I'm — I'm not freaking out. I just —"
"You hate crowds," he finished. "But you knew there'd be a crowd. They come every year."
"You don't like crowds?" Jake asked, looking directly at me for the first time.
he was pretty, his hair did this 'effortless swoopy-thing' that framed his face.
"No, kind of hate them acutely." I mumbled back, averting my eyes.
"so you must love this whole thing, right?" He teased, bumping his shoulder into mine.
I acutely giggled a bit (when was the last time I'd giggled?!), schooling my face to be very serious.
"Oh yeah, this is a carbon copy of the best day of my life. Being forced into a tiny ass room filled with a bitch of people who want to kill me!"
Both the Rosenbloom boys chuckled. And just passed them, I saw Ian glaring.
sucks to suck cobra! I thought, carful to shoot him my prettiest smile.
I was delighted to see him scowl back.
Each winter, as long as Dan could remember, Grace had invited relatives from all over the world for a weeklong holiday.
"why would she do that? If you guys all hate each other, why would she stick you together for a week?" Nellie asked, to which everyone just shrugged.
"The real question is, why did she was us there?-" dan persisted.
"Your right, actually when I think about it. That was really unsafe to leave us around you guys." I continued, face scrunching.
"Unsafe? Why would it be unsafe?" Cara asked.
I bit my cheek. "Well uh, when I was eight, Ian locked me in this broom closet. Then he locked it and ran away. It took Dan TWO HOURS to find me, I had nightmares for a year!"
Ian got very pale.
"You had nightmares?"
I was glaring now. "Of course I had nightmares! It was dark as fuck in there!-"
"Bit the string light-!" Why Ian was trying to defend himself, I didn't know. And frankly, I didn't care.
"You mean the one that was way out of my reach! Plus, when you shoved me in, I cut my knee on this rusty metal thing. It hurt really bad, I had to get a tetanus shot and 5 stitches!
And-and, it smelled like death and there were all these spiders crawling on me..., it was horrible!"
Everone was staring at me now, which made me want to go hide behind Nellie. But I couldn't, so I didn't, just sat up a bit straighter.
"Jesus fucking Christ!"
"Seriously, the fuck man?!"
Ian went from white to pink.
"Okay, to be far! We didn't know it was locked."
"Which ya know, come to think of it-" Madison butted in.
"Explains why you we didn't see you until the next year." Regan finished.
"Did Beatrice take you to emergency care?" Nellie asked, checking over me as if it'd just happened.
"No, that was grace." Dan grumbled.
"All she did was yell at me for ripping my tights." I added, looking glum.
"And I'm going to keep reading, we can talk about this more at the break." Alistair interrupted, looking bothered.
The mansion filled up with Chinese Cahills and British Cahills and South African Cahills and Venezuelan Cahills.
Most of them didn't even go by the name Cahill, but Grace assured him they were all related. She'd explain about cousins and second cousins and cousins three times removed until Dan's brain started to hurt.
"Ya know, you'd think she'd stop doing them after that." Mark objected.
"No such luck. But usually stayed in the library there after." I assured glumly.
Amy would usually go hide in the library with the cat.
"wow, creepy." Atticus laughed.
"I know," she said. "But … I mean, look at them all."
She had a point. About four hundred people were gathering at the grave site.
"They just want her fortune," Dan decided.
"Dan!"
"Well? It's true."
"You guys are real classy people, I can tell."
"Hey!" he yelled.
"Look, guys," a girl said. "We caught a rat!"
Dan wasn't in a good position to see, but he could make out the Holt sisters — Madison and Reagan — standing on either side of him, holding him by his ankles.
"How?" Ted asked, speaking up for the first time since we'd gotten here.
"What do you mean how?" Regan growled, crossing her arms in spot of herself.
"he's taller then you..." The triplet tilted his head in confusion.
"So?"
"Is this really so pressing that I can't get through this chapter?" Alastair grumbled.
the twins had matching purple running suits, blond pigtails, and crooked smiles. They were only eleven, same as Dan, but they had no trouble holding him.
Dan saw more purple running suits behind them—the rest of the Holt family. Their pit bull, Arnold, raced around their legs and barked.
"ugh! Can you imagine!" Natalie sniffed, earning a smug smile from her mother.
"Why I don't have to imagine dear, the abominations are right in front of us!" Isabell sneered.
all three of them laughed, though Ian in a bored sort of way. Like he didn't care all that much.
"Hey, don't talk about my sister that way!" Hamilton yelled, making to stand only to be stopped by his mother.
"Or what?"The eleven year old spawn of satan laughed.
"Maybe he'll shove you into a broom closet!" Atticus yelped, quickly followed by his brothers shushing.
The brat's face turned an ugly red color, Ian looked a little stricken.
I almost feel bad for him.
I looked down, rubbing my Jean- covered knees. Just underneath, I knew the scar was still there. Faded with age, but still jagged and ugly.
I remembered Korea, that same face leaning over mine, calling me lovely. That same voice disappeared as the cave closed in on us.
almost
"Let's fling him into the creek," Madison said.
"I wanna fling him into the bushes!" Reagan said. "We never do my ideas!"
Their older brother, Hamilton, laughed like an idiot
"Hey!"
Next to him, their dad, Eisenhower Holt, and their mom, Mary-Todd, grinned like this was all good fun.
"Now, girls," Eisenhower said. "We can't go flinging people at a funeral. This is a happy occasion!"
"Oh, so their are just assholes, aren't they?" Jake whispered to me, eyebrows raised.
I shrugged.
"Amy!" Dan called. "A little help here?"
Her face had gone pale. She mumbled, "Dr-dr-drop …"
Dan sighed in exasperation. "She's trying to say 'DROP ME!'"
"Sorry, again."
Madison and Reagan did — on his head.
"Ow!" Dan said.
"M-M-Madison!" Amy protested.
"Y-y-yes?" Madison mimicked. "I think all those books are turning your brain to mush, weirdo."
"How does that even remotely make sense?" Atticus asked.
Reagan pinked a little, then glared over at the kid.
If it had been anybody else, Dan would've hit back, but he knew better with the Holts. Even Madison and Reagan, the youngest, could cream him.
The whole Holt family was way too buff. They had meaty hands and thick necks and faces that looked like G.I. Joe figures.
Even the mom looked like she should be shaving and chewing on a cigar.
this had mixed reactions. The twins and Hamilton looked happy with it. Eisenhower looked angry (or maybe that was just his face?), and Mary Todd looked half confused half proud.
"I hope you losers took a good last look around the house," Madison said. "You're not going to be invited back here anymore, now that the old witch is dead."
"Why would she give it to you? She sees you once a year and your assholes?" Nellie pointed out.
"Rawf!" said Arnold the pit bull.
Dan looked around for Beatrice, but as usual she wasn't anywhere near them. She'd drifted off to talk to the other old people.
"Grace wasn't a witch," Dan said. "And we're going to inherit this place!"
The big brother, Hamilton, laughed. "Yeah, right." His hair was combed toward the middle so it stuck up like a shark fin.
"Wait till they read the will, runt. I'm gonna kick you out myself!"
All right, team," the dad said. "Enough of this. Formation!"
The family lined up and started jogging toward the grave site, knocking other relatives out of their way as Arnold snapped at everyone's heels.
"Is that actually how they act?" Cara asked, giving the holts the side eye.
"Yes" everyone answered.
"Is your head okay?" Amy asked guiltily.
Dan nodded. He was a little annoyed Amy hadn't helped him, but there was no point complaining about it. She always got tongue-tied around other people.
"Man, I hate the Holts."
"We've got worse problems." Amy pointed toward the grave site,and Dan's heart sank.
"The Cobras," he muttered.
"It's Kabra, you half wit America git!" Ian shouted.
"It's stupid either way, ya prick!"
Ian and Natalie Kabra were standing by Grace's coffin, looking like perfect little angels as they talked to the preacher. They wore matching designer mourning outfits that complemented their silky black hair and cinnamon-colored skin. They could've been child supermodels.
"Why thank you Daniel!"
"Choke on glass."
"Dan!"
"They won't try anything during the funeral," Dan said hopefully.
"They're just here for Grace's money like the rest of them. But they won't get it."
Amy frowned. "Dan … did you really believe what you said, about us inheriting the mansion?"
"Of course! You know Grace liked us best. We spent more time with her than anybody."
Amy sighed like Dan was too young to understand, which Dan hated.
"Come on," she said. "We might as well get this over with." And
together they waded into the crowd.
This chapter was to long!
also, I don't hate Hamilton or the cobra's, just think they were kind of jerks in this book!
bye!