Chapter 1
Dear Frances,
I have come to know you very well but am still not quite familiar with your strange secrets. I am writing you because I want to know what you have been keeping from me these past nine months. Please, please let me know if anything happens, and please remember to write back.
Your friend,
Charlotte S. Cole
As eighteen year-old Charlotte drove down Main Street, she spotted a restaurant.
'That looks nice.' She thought.
The sign on the restaurant said: Maltie's special, watercress sandwiches, chicken noodle soup, malt shakes, and a free newspaper.
She walked into the restaurant and ordered the special. As she read the newspaper, she spotted a heading on the front page. "Frances G. Charleston Buys Maltie's Restaurant." Another heading. "Maltie's Restaurant Closed Down, Now Named, Frances' Restaurant." Charlotte gasped. The restaurant would close down any minute now. She finished her lunch quickly, paid the bill, and started her car to go to Frances' house.
Ten minutes later, she walked to Frances' front door and rang the doorbell.
"Hello." Answered Frances' maid, Lottie.
"Hi." Said Charlotte. "Tell Frances that her friend is here."
"Yes ma'am."
"Thank you very much Lottie."
Lottie answered sometime later, and said that her mistress was having her tea and didn't mind if Charlotte came in and had it with her.
"Besides," said Lottie. "She has been expecting you for a while ever since she got that letter."
"Thank you again Lottie." Replied Charlotte.
Charlotte walked into Frances' parlor where Frances' butler, Jeeves, was pouring tea.
"Hello Charlotte." Welcomed Frances with a warm smile.
"Hello Frances." Replied Charlotte sitting down in a comfy armchair.
" I have come to see if you understood my letter Frances, if you do understand what I mean." Said Charlotte.
"Yes, I received the letter a few days ago and it has occurred to me that you already know what I have kept secret from you."
"Yes, I already know what it is. I have seen it in the newspaper and am expecting that you will be leaving soon."
"Uh huh, in fact, I am leaving right now. My, am I late! Dear oh dear, what am I to do! I am going to be late! Jeeves! Lottie! Come here this instant!"
"Well I guess that I am to be leaving now. Good-bye Charlotte!"
"Yes, goodbye! I am glad that we had a nice tea and now I shall be leaving also. Good bye!"
Charlotte went home happy, but not satisfied with the answer she got from her friend. She prepared a small supper for herself and got ready for bed. Then, she read a small portion of her book "Under a Midnight Sky"and then went to bed.
The next morning, she got up and thought that she should go out for breakfast that day. So she got dressed and then saw that it was raining outside. 'I had better put my jacket on and carry the umbrella then.' She thought. She got ready to go, started her bright red Jeep, and then drove off.
Charlotte flipped her her long, sandy blond hair out of her face and tied it back in its usual ponytail revealing her olive brown skin. Her Dark brown eyes twinkled in the light of Donna's Grocery and Appliances.
"Wow is it rainy today!" Charlotte exclaimed. "I am going to need to buy some hot cocoa and popcorn, sit down on the couch, and be a couch potato until it stops raining."
Well, it didn't stop raining and she fell asleep watching Doctor Who. But, at least the mystery was solved and done and now she had plenty of time to relax. At least she thought. What she didn't know, was that she was on the beginning of the biggest adventure in her life.
The next day at about two o' clock in the afternoon, when she got finished with her tea and toast, she heard the doorbell ring. She went to open it and was surprised to see, a robot?!
"What!" Charlotte exclaimed. "No way is this happening!"
The robot was the exact height of Charlotte, five foot two, but, it wasn't a human, it was a robot, droid voiced, thing!
"What are you?" Was all that Charlotte could get out of her mouth.
"The-question-is, who-are-you?" The robot answered with a droid tone.
"I am Charlotte S. Cole, now, what are you?"
"I-am-a-Kon-Star-droid." The droid answered.
"And, who are you?" Asked Charlotte again.
"That-is-classified-information-that-you-will-not-know-at-this-time." The droid answered rudely even though that it was very hard to tell if the droid had any expressions at all.
"Well then," said Charlotte. "I think that means that you must leave now."
"No, first-you-will-die!" Ordered the droid.
"Well then," said Charlotte again. "You must leave someday." So, with that said and done, she pushed the droid backwards off the porch so that it landed loudly on the ground with a crash. Pieces flew everywhere, and Charlotte went inside quickly.
Later, she found outside but another droid standing on her porch steps.
"Oh no!" she exclaimed and went inside to get her ax. When she went back outside with the ax in her hand, she only saw a normal person standing in the exact place of the droid.
"Get out!" she yelled at the person and swung her ax at it but it shredded into pieces of cloth and cotton. What she had really attacked was a cloth dummy.
She ran inside terrified and shut the door behind her.
'How,' she thought. 'Can a cloth dummy move when there are no robotic parts in it?' Charlotte pondered this question for about three minutes before she knew the answer, the answer that would change her life forever. It was just a matter of life or death.
Chapter 2
Partially, Meredith didn't want to go to school.And partially, she wanted to stay home and play outdoors.
"Mother," she had said that morning. "Mother I don't think you understand my liking for outdoors and my disliking for school."
"Yes, I think that I understand everything, my child," her mother had said while tying a bright green ribbon in Meredith's tan-blond hair.
Meredith was a perfect impression of the young Queen Victoria who was now in her young reign of England. With her small brown eyes, French-braided tan-blond hair tied back in a bun with soft little ringlets around the face, frilly dresses and petticoats, and her silk gloves that reached almost to the elbow, it was very hard to tell the difference between the two, except that Queen Victoria was only eleven and Meredith thirteen.
Later, her mother walked her to school, said goodbye, and took a carriage home.
At recess, Meredith sat by the fence, staring very strangely at the sky. Her face looked so queer, yet like she was concentrating on something. The bell rang sooner than she expected, and all of the children ran inside to eat their lunches.
'Well,' she thought. 'At least I have somewhere to go next...' Her thoughts trailed off as she suddenly saw something appearing, something that represented a spiral with green and blue stripes running around and around it. It looked sort-of like a lollipop. She thought that it was a trick, so she went to check the other side. Nothing there, she went to where she had seen it last and decided to touch it, if it were safe of course. She touched it, and the next thing that she knew, she was spinning so fast that everything was a blur and her stomach hurt. Just then, she realized that she was inside the spiral and spinning about two hundred miles per hour.
She screamed for help, but her voice just echoed. She tried to grab the green and blue walls for support, but she found herself yet in another spiral that was yellow and pink, so she grabbed the walls and found herself in what she thought was the middle of the universe.
'I need to speak to another one of those droids,' Charlotte thought to herself.
"I really need to!" she exclaimed out loud.
Suddenly, every thing changed, she was yelling out at the top of her lungs, but no one could hear her...or so she thought.
"W-who is there?" stammered a frightened Meredith.
Charlotte heard that voice and thought that whoever was talking, could help her out.
"I-i-it's just m-m-m-m-me." Charlotte stammered back.
"You sound quite familiar," said the strange voice that Charlotte could hear all around her. "L-like my mother's friend, Charlotte."
"Wait," Charlotte said. "How do you know my name from your mother?"
No answer.
"Come on!" Charlotte exclaimed. "Why won't you just answer...ahhhhhhhhh!" she screamed. "Help! I'm falling and I don't know how to get out!"
Suddenly, she was there, with Meredith, on a huge space ship.
The space ship was multi-color at the wings. Blue, pink, green, red, purple, orange, sea green, and yellow were only a few of the colors that the ship was adorned with. Black outlined the wings, which looked a little like this:
“Hello!” said a little-over-cheerful voice.
“He-l-lo?” said the two girls in unison.
Suddenly, there appeared, out of a house made out a giant, thick, slice of bread, a man, with a hat made out of a thick slab of butter on his head. A woman was at his side with a sprig of mint on her head. Their clothes were spattered with giant strawberry seeds. (You could tell they had been in a fight). Their house had stain-glass windows made of different varieties of jam. Their door was also glass, except that it was made of marmalade. For the roof shingles, there were giant raspberry seeds. For the chimney, never mind, there was no chimney.
Any way, there was a bit of chattering, sometimes a bit of yelling and shrieking, and the occasional giant strawberry being thrown as the couple came out of the house.
The man’s clothes were made of strawberry leaves, the woman’s, of rose petals. She was also wearing an apron made of an albino poppy petal with a piece of long grass for the string. You’d think that they were a fantasy couple that was all organic.
“Hi!” said the wife. (Her name was Lily).
“Hello!” said the man. (His name was Terry).
“Um, hi?” answered the girls quizzically. For they were a bit confused. (If you and I had ever seen something like that, we would have probably not known what to do. So it was with these two girls).
“Well,” said Charlotte. “Well-" but she was cut off by Meredith, who had actually spoken for the first time ever since they ended up on the strange ship.
“I think that we should explore this ship a bit more before we get into conclusions shouldn’t we Charlotte-Charlotte! Charlotte where are you?”
But she was gone. There was a buzzing noise, everything disappeared, and Meredith was back at school, near the fence, while the bell was still ringing for everybody to go in for lunch. Meredith looked at Big Ben, but nothing had changed at all.
Chapter 3
Charlotte woke up in her lounge chair, book, hot cocoa, and bowl of popcorn beside her, and the T.V. still on.
“Huh? What happened?” she said in a still tired voice. Suddenly it hit her. She had been on a space ship with these really weird people, and this girl. She looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall sleepily. Yup! It was still twelve o’ clock.
“Twelve o’ clock!” she exclaimed. Her stomach growled.
“Wow! I need to get some lunch in my tummy!”
She giggled. She sounded just like a child!
She started cooking some quick ramen. She got a pan filled with water, set it on the stove to boil, and grabbed two packets of ramen from the pantry. She ripped the packets open ravenously staring at the food. She couldn’t wait to eat! Charlotte took the packets of flavoring out, and put one back with the other ramen packets.
“Too much salt!” she grumbled. She giggled again. She was so hungry that she could not control her emotions no matter what!
The ramen was done. ‘Finally!’ thought Charlotte. She dug into the food like nothing before. She slurped noodles. She gulped the broth. Then, she took out a piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk from the fridge and ate and drank those carefully.
Meredith ate her lunch with all the other kids and went to the eighth grade classroom to do algebra. Ugh! She hated algebra. Absolutely everything about it disgusted her. All that geometry, multiplying, adding, subtracting, and dividing. Ugh! She made a face.
Three hours later, she was home.
“At last!” she exclaimed. “A free weekend all to myself! No more algebra! No more grammar! No more science with dissecting frogs! No more anything! Woo-hoo!” she shouted happily as she ran up the two flights of stairs to her elegant bedroom.
Meredith flopped down on her bed. ‘Wait…’ she thought. ‘It’s only two days free.’ She thought some more. “Any way, it doesn’t matter.” She told herself as she went to change into play clothes and take out all those annoying pins and hair clips. She would take a nice bath before bed. To wash out all that mousse and hairspray! To feel the warm comfort of the bath in the marble tub! To make clothes out of the bubble bath and smell of lavender and sheep milk after the bath! Oh, the wonders of just one bath!
On Monday, Meredith walked to school in her play clothes, a jumper and a long-sleeved shirt. Her hair was also in a ponytail. (She had found all of these on the ship). But, when she got to the school, she saw that there was a big “closed” sign on the door.
“But why,” she told herself. “Why would the lights still be on?”
She decided to investigate. As Meredith entered the building, she heard a clattering noise.
“Hello?” she called.
No answer, but more clattering noises.
“Hello-o?” she called again.
No answer.
Meredith heard a shuffling of feet, opening and closing of drawers, and-
“Hi!” said a voice that sounded familiar. “Oh! I’m so glad that I found you!”
“Excuse me?” said Meredith, offended that somebody she didn’t know would tell her that.
Suddenly, Charlotte stepped out of the shadows and pulled Meredith into a nearby closet.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come for about an hour and a half, Meredith! Meredith? Hello-o. Meredith!”
“What! Huh? Oh! Yes Charlotte?” mumbled Meredith sort of sleepily and sort of exited.
“I said that I had been waiting for you to come for about an hour and a half!” shouted Charlotte. “Where were you?”
"I was getting ready for school."
"Oh"
Then, the lights went out, came back on, went out, flickered, then came back to life. Where was Charlotte! And, why was Meredith standing in the coat closet!! Meredith got out, and went back to her seat in sheer embarrassment.
"As I was saying," said her teacher in an annoyed voice. "get out your textbooks, and turn to page 351, 'The History of Christopher Columbus'." As if in unison, all of the children flipped to their assigned page, and stared reading aloud, (in turns of course).
Chapter 4
Charlotte opened her eyes with a start. 'Why am I in the fridge?' she thought. She quickly got out, embarrassed. When would she stop sleepwalking? She stumbled over to the couch on her weak legs, which were tired from the previous bike ride she had just taken. She switched on "Alice in Wonderland". A couple minutes later, she was snoring.
"Doo-dee-loo-dee-loo-dee-da-lee…" the sound of familiar out-of-tune carousel music dwindled in the air above Charlotte. BANG! CRASH! BOOMMMMM!!! The loud noises of a marching band woke her up. "…doo-dee-loooo-dee-leeee…" She found herself in a sunny field. Plants and trees of all kinds were growing everywhere. Birds sang in the lovely blue sky. And on the ground, bumblebees and butterflies buzzed around daisies and Queen-Ann's-Lace. Best of all, was the land that stretched for miles and miles on end with the biggest carnival Charlotte had ever seen! "Wow, I must be dreaming." she mumbled to herself. When she stood up, she noticed that she had a pretty little blue dress on, with a starched white apron. Suddenly, a small white rabbit came bouncing by. Then, it crawled into a tiny hole, about the size of a throw-pillow. Charlotte started running toward it, but found herself instantly stopped by a little girl with blond curls, and the same dress! The girl looked a little bit dazed and awkward while crawling through the tiny hole. Finally, it came to Charlotte's mind what story she was in. 'This isn't any old field,' she thought. 'This is from "Alice in Wonderland!"' In less than a minute after that, she heard a scream, followed by some crashing and clunking. She thought that she would wait a little while before trying to leave.
Five minutes later, Alice crawled out of the hole, dirt streaked face covered in tears, and dress torn. She was a mess! It only took a few seconds for the bedraggled girl to run away into pure nothingness. 'Huh, weird that she didn't pick this back up.' Charlotte was thinking as she picked up a little cake that said "eat me" on the top. It was so pretty, she was afraid that one touch would make it crumble into a fine dust. But when she picked it up, she found it to be very sturdy and easily squishable. She reluctantly took a small bite. It tasted just like cheesecake and chocolate! She ate some more, and then some more, until it was all gone. Thoughts spun around in her head. Bad ones, and good ones. Ever since that day that Frances bought the restaurant, everything had gone wrong in her life, and it was her job to stop it from being that way. It wasn't fair, everything being pounded down on her in one day! Charlotte needed to speak with Meredith, and soon. The answer, the answer that would change the world was deep down inside of Charlotte. It was very frightening, but it had to be let out… let out before THEY destroyed the world… before THEY made humans slaves… before THEY even discovered Earth. Charlotte knew who THEY were, but only deep down inside.
Chapter 5
Three hours later, Charlotte and Meredith were ready to go on the journey never taken, the road never traveled. They were ready to defeat a secret organization of aliens named THEY. The two friends went to sleep dreaming all about THEY.
What an odd feeling… being on this new and strange planet. Charlotte and Meredith felt dizzy. They took a few uncomfortable steps towards the very tall, very gray, and very ominous building that loomed overhead. This was where the secret organization was held. This is where I come in. I walked towards them. They smiled. "Hi!" I said in an awkward but friendly tone. "My name is Serena, and I am the only child of THEY." The two girls gasped. I bet that they had no idea that THEY had a child. Nonetheless a lonely child… only one child. I needed to make some real friends, but whenever I tried, I was always ignored, discarded from the group, made to seem like the only one who isn't normal. I thought that they could be my friends.
One hour later we were really good friends. I was sooooo happy! Real friends! We marched in the building. Suddenly, we were fighting off the enemies. When those were finished off, we marched to the main room where the RULER of THEY, the MOTHER of the me, probably the cruelest person in the universe was held. "Hello, darling," MOTHER cooed evilly. "And how are your little friends?" She started playing calm music. "Maybe this will help a bit in your situation." "Oh no you don't!" I cried furiously, reaching for the radio that was playing the music. "Oh yes I do," she said calmly, a sly smile growing on her face.
It was driving us insane. How could we manage? We were tearing at our hair, and stomping our feet around the room. We couldn't let her defeat us, we just couldn't! Then, Charlotte reached into her pocket and pulled out, a button? She pushed it. "Go," she said. "I'll meet up with you later, just go." "But-" I stammered. "Go," she said firmly. I'll be okay. Meredith and I reluctantly walked into the door that appeared when Charlotte had pushed the button. "Well," we heard her say. "A girl's gotta' do, what a girl's gotta' do." She took out a bomb. "NO!" MOTHER screamed. Charlotte lit it. Then, it exploded. "NOOOOOOOOO!" MOTHER screamed, louder than the first time. We screamed too. Suddenly, the building disintegrated, and we were all at Meredith's house, safe and sound. All except for one… Charlotte.
The End/ To Be Continued In…
Book 2 of 4: Under a Midnight Sky.
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