Well hello there! I have a great new chapter in store for you.

Some of you might have noticed that I changed the area in which this story takes place, it was just easier to write about a place I know a lot about, especially for plotline purposes it works out that it takes place in the United States. But the end destination is London ;-)

The light tower mentioned in this chapter is called Baker Island Lighthouse, I fibbed a little bit in the chapter because I needed it to be a place where my oc can get to. But this lighthouse is actually in Acadia National Park and is owned by the park and the light itself is maintained by the United States Coast Guard. :-)

Anyway so here is Ashlynn's proper introduction chapter!

Whooohoo!

As always KOTLC is owned by the talented Shannon Messenger!

My OC's belong to me

"Sibling relationships are complicated.

All family relationships are. Look at Hamlet."

– Maurice Saatchi

Bar Harbor, Maine, USA

1 am

'This is probably not a good idea' Ashlynn Sterling thought as she gripped the white trellis that was attached to the two-story white cottage she lived in. Her knuckles were white from gripping it, Ashlynn glanced downwards, took a deep breath, placed her foot in one of the holes, then took another step down, and another, and another until she was safely on the ground.

With a breath of relief, Ashlynn turned so her back was to the house and sprinted down the beach, racing down the sandy path that ran alongside the water and led toward a light tower that rested on a sandy hill in the distance. It wasn't too much of an incline, but it jutted out over the water enough to catch a breeze.

It was chilly enough during the nighttime in Maine to make Ashlynn grab her fluffy blue pullover and her longer black yoga pants. Maine during the summer was weird that way. Nevertheless, Ashlynn was grateful that she made that decision since the wind blew in her face, the cold rush of air clawed at her veins and the feeling of freedom filled her soul.

The ocean alongside her was choppy, whitecaps crashing against the shoreline, drowning out any noise around her and spraying her with the water, almost beckoning for her to come and play.

The full moon beside her reflected off the ocean, giving her some light to see the path before her, not that she needed much light anyway. Ashlynn was always proud of her 20/20 vision, especially how it helped her with the many pranks she's pulled on her teachers in the past, which required a lot of crawling around in the dark.

Finally, Ashlynn slowed down once she got to her destination. It was a small light tower, compared to the others in Maine and around the country, but it was Ashlynn's favorite one.

The small keeper's house next to the light tower is a L-shaped wood-frame building, with a gable roof and a brick foundation. It was a warm and cozy home to some of the sweetest couple Ashlynn knew.

Walking over to the door of the light tower, Ashlynn dug around in her pocket and pulled out a lighthouse-shaped key, it was a gift from the former owner, William after he saw how much joy it brought her to go up there. She was just eight years old then, she and Alex would spend so much time going up and down the stairs, pretending they were finding pirate ships off the coastline and looking for mermaids.

It was a nice break after their mother would spend most of their waking hours putting them through exercise routines or endless amounts of lessons before she put them both into the public schooling system.

After William suddenly passed away, his partner John left and went to London, leaving the light tower and the small home to be entrusted to the town's care. Now, even though the town owns it on paper, they don't have enough funds to keep up with a lot of the repairs.

So Ashlynn took on that role, with a lot of help from other adults of course, but they let her use it as her own little 'hideaway' of sorts, thinking that she might get bored with it and move on to something else, but nope!

This was her version of her treehouse, a place where all of her greatest pranks were planned, it was a safe place where many tears were shed after her mother's cruel words cut into her skin. In a way, Ashlyn is 'trespassing with permission', she doesn't care, as long as she had this place, she was free.

Ashlynn wiped her tears as they slipped from her eyes and shoved the key into the lock, twisted it, and went inside.

This time her mother had pushed her too far.

Ashlynn shoved past the opening of the netting on the door as the wind howled outside, almost reflecting the inner turmoil of emotions that swirled inside her. Ashlynn quickly shut the door, the wind blew around some papers she quickly grabbed some that almost escaped and placed them back down on the plastic tray tables set up in the small place.

Fake stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars littered each of the underside of the steps leading up to the top door, the glow almost reminded her of the real thing but it provided little light.

Ashlynn gripped the railing and opened the door that led outside, she was met once again with the wind. It swirled around her, causing her dark brown hair to float above her head, the wind acted like a puppy, excited to see its master after they'd been gone for two seconds.

A grin spread across Ashlynn's face as she shut the door, reaching out towards the sky. Calling the wind to her side, her fingers prickled, as the wind slammed into her hand, sinking into her veins, the coldness and sharpness of the wind providing a comforting feeling, perhaps it was because it reminded her she wasn't alone, even though there were many times her mother made her feel like she was.

She wasn't supposed to be here, not after being grounded, unfairly she might add, it wasn't even her fault! It more or less started when Ashlynn slept in and forgot to take her calming medicine, which started her fidgeting which led to anxiety about the fact she forgot to take her medicine and they were already all the way in town and she knew her mother was not going to go back home just because Ashlynn forgot to take her medication.

Pair that with the fact that the cruise ships had docked offshore and crowds of people were tendering from said cruise ships and crowding the small boutique shop Ashlynn's mother owned.

It just amplified the problem, since Ashlynn just did not do well with crowds of people, especially sweaty tourists who broke things and dripped ice cream everywhere. She could have done all the deep compressions in the back storeroom she wanted but nothing worked, so she went outside, somehow managing to make it through the sea of people and go down the boardwalk to smell the salty sea air.

That's where she spotted Alex, her brother, who was talking to the "I'm miss perfect queen bee senator daughter fake as the lip injections I got" Mandy King.

No... Ashlynn didn't hate her guts at all.

"So looking forward to our date tonight Alex," Mandy King said, flipping her perfectly curled black hair, as Ashlynn walked up and stood next to her brother. Feeling slightly insecure as Mandy looked her up and down, probably pointing out all the ways' Ashlynn's worn-out ripped shorts, bright pink vineyard vines tank top hardly compared to Mandy's designer 'quiet money' outfit, tan shorts that didn't have a wrinkle on it, white ribbed tank top, her bronze skin sparkled just as bright as her whitened teeth did.

Alex shifted from foot to foot, unsure about what to do next. When he saw Ashlynn, he grinned, "Uh, I'll have to reschedule, I'm taking my sister down to the movies, we're seeing Jaws, and I know how much you hate sharks.

But since I promised her before you asked me, it would be the right thing to do. But-uh raincheck you know." Alex said as he draped an arm over Ashlynn's shoulders.

"But...it's like not even raining!" Mandy whined, Ashlynn placed a hand to her mouth to stop herself from laughing too hard, "Shut up loser! He just feels sorry for you after what happened with Justin! You should have known he wouldn't date a freak like you!" Mandy snapped, reminding Ashlynn of her painful rejection and humiliation in front of the entire school before the school year ended.

Justin was just a normal guy, your basic tall, bleach blond hair brushed to the side and green eyes 'I go surfing when I skip classes' kind of guy.

Ashlynn formed a crush on him when he joined in the middle of the school semester last year. He was so charismatic, charming, and such a gentlemen. They got paired up together for a science project since Ashlynn's normal partner, Kai, set out to show Youtube that he could jump into his family pool from the roof, which led to him breaking an arm.

They bonded over a lot of things pretty quickly, and he even asked her out to the fall festival in Portland, of course, both Alex and her mother said no...she snuck out anyway and returned to be greeted by a very pissed-off Alex and a very angry mother. Ashlynn was luckily only grounded for a month thanks to Alex talking their mother down from a ledge, he was angry at her (Ashlynn had no idea why) but she was grateful for the reduced sentence.

She thought everything was going great with Justin until right before they were let out for the summer. Ashlynn confessed and Justin turned her down...loudly...and one of his friends videoed the whole thing as a prank and then played it at the school pep rally.

Tears filled up in her eyes, but Ashlynn refused to let them fall, instead, she let the anger take its place, replacing the intense feelings of sadness, anxiety, and stress with a rather large bubble of hate.

The wind picked up around them, making smaller boats rock up and down. Without realizing it, Ashlynn reached out towards Mandy, causing a large gust of wind to blow Mandy backward over the railing and she fell into the water below. Ashlynn didn't touch her but nobody believed her.

What came after that were a lot of threats of lawsuits and a lot of apologies. Luckily, Mandy wasn't hurt at all, the water was deep enough, no small fishing boats were going by and Alex and a couple of other dockhands were close by to get her onto the floating dock.

The odd thing was, Ashlynn, didn't feel remorse after it happened, she felt a small, tiny bit of satisfaction like justice was being served. The smile that was on her lips disappeared as soon as she saw Mandy clinging to Alex as she cried about how terrible Ashlynn was.

When Ashlynn and Alex's mother got there, she acted surprisingly calm and collected. Somehow she was able to convince the Mayor, the sheriff, and some news reporters (there weren't many in her town) to not run the story or include Ashlynn's name.

Ashlynn was terrified the whole way home. The car ride was silent and miserable, even when they got home and Alex tried to defend her, their mother shot him a glare so cold that he immediately went upstairs to his bedroom.

The argument that followed led to tears, hoarse voices, and threats (from her mother of course) to burn down the light tower if Ashlynn didn't get her emotions in check and be responsible enough to take her medicine and not cause her mother the extra headache of cleaning up Ashlynn's mess. Of course, their mother made Ashlynn write a hundred lines of:

"Staying under the radar means staying safe. I promise to not cause any more trouble."

That mantra was repeated to both of them their whole lives. Nothing that was connected to the internet was in their home, no computers except the one in the main living area and that was only to do school assignments on. No big flatscreen TVs like the ones Ashlynn sees Alex's friends watch when football is on, they have a basic TV that gets news and sits on a swivel stand and most of the time it faces the wall.

Neither she nor Alex understood why their mother was so paranoid. Ashlynn remembered a couple of years back when weird colored fires were burning all across California, their mother freaked out so much that she removed Alex and Ashlynn from their school and then put them on house arrest until the fires were put out.

Ashlynn theorized to Alex that maybe their father died in a fire...or maybe their mother was just a crazy control freak who's worried about fires that took place in a state on the other side of the United States. Either way, Ashlynn is still grounded, meaning even less freedom before the new school year starts and fewer opportunities to sneak away and come to the light tower.

Ashlynn lowered her arms and sat on the ground, focusing on looking up at the night sky, the wind still swirled around her. It was the best view of the night sky, there was no light pollution to mess with the beauty of the stars. Ashlynn wondered what it would be like to fly away from everything.

Everyone would look so small if she could just fly away, be a part of the wind, and forget all of the pain she was feeling at the moment. The stars were so bright, so full of light that chased the darkness away, whilst Ashlynn sat, rooted to the ground shrouded in darkness.

Creak!

Ashlynn shot up, she panicked at the possibility that it could be her mother looking for her ready to scold her and drag her back home.

She couldn't make a getaway if her mother was coming through the only entrance, she would have to leap over the railing and it wouldn't be pretty. She didn't want to die. If she were to die, she would rather be better dressed than yoga pants and her fluffy pullover.

Ashlynn looked down over the railing at the entrance to the light tower, careful to stay hidden.

Nothing.

Her heart was beating so hard that Ashlynn could hear each ba-dum, ba-dum in her ears.

It couldn't be her mother she would have gone straight to the light tower. Maybe it was some dumb kid snooping around the small house.

Yeah.

That's it.

No reason to worry.

Still, better to be safe than sorry. Ashlynn reached her arm out toward the home, calling the wind to her side. The sensation of air filled her arm as it shot out through her fingertips. After that, Ashlynn felt everything.

The sand, the ocean, the side of the tower. The wind was elated that she was ready to play and it carried her out. Ashlynn had to fight for control to get the wind to go back to the house. The wind reluctantly compiled and swirled around the house, seeping into the cracks.

Ashlynn's fingers stretched further, she had to lean over the railing, and her other hand gripped the railing. The home did not have any furniture in it so it was pretty easy to feel the shape of a person walking around in the house. Ashlynn pulled herself back, having the wind pull out of her arm as well.

I think it's time to go.

She thought to herself. If it was a dumb tourist, she didn't want to lead them to a place where they could do some damage. The same goes for any of the kids at her school, especially if they saw her, they would probably trash the place on purpose.

Carefully running down the stairs, Ashlynn fumbled with the lighthouse-shaped key. As soon as she locked the door, she made a mad dash towards her house and didn't stop until she was safely up the trellis and in her room.

Ashlynn quickly shut her window, wiped her brow, and sighed a breath of relief when she made it back unnoticed.

"I'm glad you made it back." A voice said behind her. Ashlynn jumped and with wide eyes she saw...