should i continue, change it, or just stop this one??

I wrote this beginning, and now I want to know what you think. Should I continue with it how it is, change the girl to a friendless misfit, or stop the story all together??

Comment and tell me!!!

Prologue          

            I believe in luck for three reasons.

1. Its how my friends came to me.

            I have a group of awesome friends, and they all came to me by chance. There’s Karly, who’s been my friend since Kindergarten when we had to share the letter “K” on the rug at circle time on the first day of school, and Jen, who I only started to play with in second grade because Karly was sick for a week. Pretty soon we were hanging out almost every day on the playground doing whatever it is that second graders do at recess.  Then there are Mia and Liv (her real name is Olivia), who I met at an extracurricular class in third grade that my mom made me take in an effort to improve my cultural ability or something. It was about cooking, and I only took it because the one I wanted to take, French I, was full. Rose moved to school in the fifth grade, and I was assigned to be her “Welcome buddy” on her first day because the teacher was out sick and the substitute didn’t know enough about the school to show Rose around herself. Finally, there’s Lilly. We ran into each other around school, literally. On our first day at Abe Lincoln Middle School we were both running down the hall in opposite directions, to get to out science class, and we collided right in front of Mr. Schillias’s door. We bonded over ice packs down in the nurse’s office. The only reason I was late for science class in the first place was because I had to change my schedule at the last minute so I could take advanced math. Seeing a pattern here? Karly was sick, the French class was full, and the teacher was absent. It was all luck.

2. I can kill anyone at cards.

            Be it blackjack, slapjack, Texas hold ‘em, I can beat anyone at cards. Whenever my parents aren’t home, I sneak onto the computer and play my dad’s virtual poker. (I cracked his password long ago.) I have guys begging for mercy by the time I’ve finished a few hands, and I mock them (in mature language because you’re supposed to be 21 or older to get on the site.) My dad always jokes that if he let me loose in Vegas at 8:30 AM the whole city would be bankrupt by closing time. I don’t even care about winning. I’m just lucky.

3. I was grounded on the third Friday in January.

            OK, that probably doesn’t sound like luck, but don’t judge me. You haven’t heard my story yet.
            All I can say is hold on tight.

Chapter 1: A Funny Feeling

            The bus smelled smoky and disgusting, as if some kind of living animal, perhaps a possum, had crawled through its yellow doors and down its thin center aisle one night, maybe a few years ago, then had died and was now slowly rotting away. That, combined with the stale lunches and smelly boy stink created a stench to rival that of a boy’s locker room. (I have never been in a boys locker room though, so if you are Mr. Weston reading this and looking for proof that it was me who tied Jimmy‘s shorts to the flag pole you aren’t going to get it! Ha-ha!)  The stench, and the roar of loud boys crowding the back of the bus, could not dampen my spirits however. There was a spring in my step as I proceeded down the aisle of the school bus that was destined for Karly’s house, where the Friday Night Slumber Party was going to take place this week.

            Our little group of seven friends had these Friday Night Slumber Parties every other weekend, and it was Jen’s turn to host. Later to come were Jen, Mia, Liv, Rose, and Lilly. Sometimes referred to as the Alphas or just the A’s, we were the most popular, and therefore most powerful group in all of Abe Lincoln Middle School. Unfortunately, the group almost hadn’t been complete at the FNS tonight. My mom and dad were going to be away at my brother’s basketball game, so I had almost been unable to go. As a last resort, Jen had invited me to join her on her bus ride home, and I had been so desperate I had agreed. That was the only reason I had found myself on the smelly, stinky bus with a backpack full of everything that was needed to have a perfect sleepover, including a few things that were probably not supposed to be at school. (Can squirt able cheese be considered a weapon? How about a pair of drumsticks? Or…well, you get the picture. A lot of suspicious stuff was crowding my purple Jansport backpack.) Anyway, the sleepover was the only reason I was sitting myself down on a gross brown bus seat and swinging my backpack around onto my lap so that Jen could sit beside me. The backpack also served to hide my face, especially my defining green eyes, because as disputably the most popular girl in Abe Lincoln Middle School, it would not do to have any of my rivals see me riding a bus!

            I ducked my head of black hair as I caught sight of Kathryn, my archrival and the leader of the Betas, Alpha wannabes who were just not cool enough to join, walking past the bus, her blonde hair swinging behind her, and didn’t raise my pale face until Karly tapped me on the shoulder.

            “Kierah, the bus is past the school. You can look up and actually talk to me now.” I raised my head and smiled sheepishly at my friend, knowing she would understand. Her blue eyes sparkled with held in laughter, and I could tell she did. I looked around, taking in the mediocre environment of normal, averagely popular people. Stains on the seats, swear words written on the brown leather with permanent marker, immature boys making inappropriate noises in the back. It was disgusting.

            Karly must have ready my mind. “Awful, isn’t it? I hate taking the bus, but luckily my mom only works two days a week, so I just get tortured on Tuesdays and Fridays.” Lucky for me my mom closed down the studio for an hour every day so she could pick up me and Ian from school and let us get some of our homework done in peace before the rush arrived. I never had to ride the bus, except for today.

            My family owns a clay studio, called The Clay Pit, in downtown Tenuga, Illinois, a small town that no one has ever heard of. We live up above it in a three bedroom apartment. I know, that must sound like the most picturesque little thing you’ve ever heard, but trust me, it’s not. Not when you’re trying to defend your title as the most popular girl in all of Abe Lincoln Middle School. Not when you want to have a sleepover with seven people and your mom says no because the apartment’s too small, or the studio has a big birthday party booked tomorrow and you need to help. Not when you sometimes feel like you were put in your family by accident, and are hoping the right family will come someday and take you away from it all. Not when your family owns a clay studio and you are the least artsy person in the world.

            My mom is the most artsy person in the world. She actually majored in ceramics in college, and her dream her whole life, since she was a kid, was to open an art studio. Somewhere along the way art narrowed down into clay, and I got stuck with the mom who always has on an apron, and not a cooking one like Lilly’s mom, who always makes us cookies and cakes and pies at her sleepovers. Sometimes I was almost glad mom didn’t want me having the sleepovers because then she would have been making us glaze bowls all night for her basic ceramics class on Saturday mornings. Also, don’t even get me started on what Ian would have done. He’d totally have embarrassed me! He’s artsy to the max and actually enjoys doing things like firing the kiln and making bowl after bowl on the wheel for people to paint. Plus he’s the geeky, nerdy type who actually cares about grades and stuff. Ew!!!

            If dad would have been home, ever, it would have been different. He would have kept mom busy all night so that we could have some privacy, and given Ian some money to buy a new book or something to keep him out of our hair. But unfortunately he was always out of town on business and I was forced to endure being the only girl in our group that couldn’t host the biweekly FNS’s.

            I was so busy thinking about my family that I actually jumped when Karly tapped me on the shoulder.

            “What the heck Karly!” I exclaimed.

            “I was just going to ask you what you thought of Trista’s shoes today in gym class.”

            ‘They were hideous,” I replied enthusiastically, glad to be distracted from thoughts of my family by this popular girl gossip. “Who wears rainbow shoes? It’s not the first grade anymore, and someone needs to tell her that!”

            “I know! And what about Melody’s haircut?!

            “Disgusting,” I agreed. “Short just doesn’t work on her, and her stylist apparently doesn’t care if she looks bad.” Melody was a Beta, so we enjoyed mocking her.

            “Yeah, and it’s like she’s oblivious to how ugly she is,” laughed Karly.

            “Totally, she didn’t even pay attention to all the looks she was getting. I’d expect more from a Beta.”

            This popular gossipy chatter went on through the entire bus ride. Jen’s stop was second to last, so we had to ride nearly a half an hour, talking and watching the bus empty around us, before Karly stood, gesturing for me to follow.

            “Our stop,” she announced, and I eagerly followed her off the smelly, stinky bus, out the door and down the sidewalk.

            The bus drove off, back to wherever it is buses go when they aren’t driving kids around, leaving a cloud of chocking smog behind. I tried to breathe as little as possible as I voiced a question to Jen.

            “Where do buses go when they aren’t driving kids places?” I asked. Karly shrugged.

            “Probably to some big bus yard that’s filled with yellow buses,” she replied.

            “I wonder why we’ve never seen it,” I continued. “I mean, a big yard with a bunch of busses parked in it has to attract some attention or something right?”

            “Maybe they don’t want kids to find it, so the bad boys can’t graffiti the sides of all the buses or something,” Karly reasoned. We both knew it wasn’t that, however. There weren’t any kind of bad boys in the school, at least none that were worthy of an Alpha. I knew that Jen was longing for cute boys to date just then, same as me.

            “Maybe,” I voiced, returning to our previous subject of buses, “It’s some secret government hiding place or something.”

            I could tell Karly liked that idea. “Maybe it’s in some secret location.”

            “Maybe the whole thing’s spray painted yellow!” I exclaimed. “You know, to hide it from the air.” At this we both started laughing hysterically, so hard that we missed the ice patch, concealed by snow, until we were on it, and then it was too late. My feet went out from under me and the next thing I knew Karly and I were on the ground in a heap, covered in snow and laughing so hard it hurt. We helped each other up, still laughing, then started back toward Jen’s house, but tripped and landed right back on our booties, which set us off again.

            As I climbed to my feet for a second time, I suddenly felt a funny feeling in my stomach, a familiar feeling that I couldn’t place. It prickled my scalp and sent shivers down my spine, but I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. Karly was already walking toward her house again so I let it go and followed.

            A few minutes, a lot of laughs, and a couple of odd looks from the other students on the bus later, (luckily Karly and I were nearly unrecognizable in our state of winter preparedness, thus eliminating any humiliating and status affecting embarrassment) we reached Jen’s house.

            I had always loved Karly’s house. It was the prettiest one on the block, and definitely prettier than my house-slash-building with “The Clay Pit” painted above the door instead of a house number in pretty lettering and no evidence of homeliness showing on the outside except for ugly green curtains on the windows. Karly’s home was a canary yellow color and had a little brick pathway lined with flowers leading up to her white wooden front door. The door of their garage was also white. We didn’t even have a garage to put a pretty white door on. I also knew for a fact that the backyard of Karly’s house had a huge swimming pool that was over five feet deep in some places and there was still enough room left in the yard to play baseball. What I would have given to have a huge yard, or really any yard at all. Little did I know that soon I would be longing for my own house-slash-clay studio, and my own family.

            We walked up the brick path to the front door and Karly set down her pink camouflage backpack and began searching through it for her key. I stood above her, feeling the cool breeze on my face and hoping it was a sign of early spring.

            My eyes were closed as I stood, facing the wind, so Karly’s alarmed cry startled me.

             “Oh no!” Karly gasped. She started throwing things out of her backpack in a panic. “I can’t find my key. I must have lost it or dropped it somewhere or something. Mom’s going to kill me. Now we’re locked outside until mom comes home.” She plopped down on the swing that hung from her porch roof and sighed, swinging gently.

            “Don’t you keep, like, an extra key in one of the flower baskets or something?” I asked, because there certainly wasn’t a shortage of flower baskets to put a key in. Beautiful flowers hung all over the porch, another thing that my less than perfect house lacked.

            Karly slumped farther. “Not in any of the flowers or anything. My mom’s too paranoid. There’s one that she keeps around, but only for emergencies and stuff, and it’s, like, stuck in the gutter somewhere. We’d never be able to reach it.” And I could already tell that she had resigned herself to a wait of 45 minutes until her mom returned from her part time job as a teaching aid. I, on the other hand, had a different idea.

            “Exactly where in the gutter is it?” I asked.

            Karly looked up. “Right in front of my window, I can see it from my bedroom.” She didn’t catch on for a moment, but then her head whipped up so suddenly I wondered if she had whiplash. “Kierah, you’re not going to get it are you? Because you could get hurt or something and I don’t want-” But I was already one step ahead of her, shimmying up one of the tall cylinders that supported her porch.

            “Don’t worry Karls,” I called, using my favorite nickname for her. I was already halfway to the roof. “You’ve seen me climb trees before. I’ll be fine.” I could scale trees as fast as a monkey, and sometimes my friends even called me that.

            It only took a second for me to reach the top and crawl carefully along the roof till I found the key. It was a bit harder to dig out than to get to because it was wedged under the plastic of the gutter and covered by over a month’s worth of rotting leaves and sticks and snow. I pulled at and dug my fingers in the rotting matter clogging the gutter until it finally came free, bringing the key with it. As I raised my head and wiped my gloves off on the snowy roof, preparing to climb back down the beam and back to the porch, I felt the prickling sensation again, a sixth sense telling me that something was not quite right. I shuddered again, though I didn’t know why. I didn’t realize it until I had slid down the porch support and landed on my feet in front of a still amazed Karly. I didn’t see it until I had handed my friend her key, dull and scratched from sitting exposed in a gutter for a long time. I didn’t get it until Karly had unlocked the door and stepped through. As I was crossing the threshold I finally placed my feeling, my sixth sense, and I was amazed at not having realized it sooner. I shivered again and shut the door tight, because I knew what I had been feeling as I walked home from the bus and to Karly’s house. I knew what that prickly feeling was.

            It was the prickly feeling of being watched.