Chapter 1

Being woken up by fire alarms I slowly sit up in my bed. Maybe it’s just Sam fooling around I mean I did go to bed early tonight and last time I checked it was only 9:30. I looked at my alarm clock with blurry eyes; it read 2:00am. My eyes shot open just then “Emma?” I said turning on my lamp next to my bed. She wasn’t there and my door was closed. I never close the door. This is getting extremely weird now, I go over to my door and I start hearing a noise like a tea kettle whistle. “Ouch!” the door knob burned my hand bright red. Then it really hit me. The house really is on fire.
          “Stella!” I heard a banging on the window I couldn’t see out of it but, I knew it was Emma. I ran over to the window and pulled up on it. “I can’t get the window open!” I ran to the second window in our room; it wouldn’t budge either.

 “Stella, are you okay?!” Emma screamed.

“Yea, I’m okay but, I can’t get the windows or door open.” I said as I started to cough.
“Keep trying, you have to be able to get something open.” She screamed through the window.
“I have to break the window Emma. Get back” I cried back her.
“No you can’t. The flames will get so much worse.” She was crying. I could hear it in her voice.

“Emma, I don’t really have a choice here.” I coughed “I don’t have much time.” My voice was getting really shaky now. “Get back.”
I looked around the room and finally noticed how bad the flames already were. They had already devoured half of the room. I grabbed my small brown bag and threw some pictures that had been untouched and some other things and put it inside, put my bag on, and grabbed the tiny rocking chair that always stayed in the corner of the room. I threw it through the window and jumped through without even looking back at the now enraged flaming room.
“What took you so long?” Emma asked. She sounded like she was about to have a heart attack.
“I had to grab a few things that we can go through later.” I answered back almost hoarse from being out of breath.

We raced up to the hill in the back yard and waited for some sign of life, but nothing came. Nothing but sirens sounding in the distance; the fire trucks and police cars made their way down the long driveway. Emma and I stayed out of sight too stunned to move, but we knew we couldn’t be seen either. We watched as firemen pulled hoses and cones out to block off the area while others worked quickly to put out the fire. As the fire was being cooled off teams of two went inside the ruins to find any people still inside. We saw them pull out two motionless people; Mom and Sam.
“Let’s go” Emma said. “I can’t watch this anymore.”

I stood up feeling flimsy like I was about to collapse right then and there. I followed her up the hill and into the woods without a word. We kept walking until “Snap”
“What was that?” Emma whispered.

“I don’t know. Wasn’t me.” I said back.

“Come on, over here.” I followed her quickly and quietly behind a bush and we remained ducked down there for a few moments. Until a flashlight found its way to us, “Stay quiet and follow me” a boy said. We were in no position to say no or ask any questions. There were already cops searching the area for us because we were missing from the fire.
We followed him until we got to a tree. “A tree, you brought us to a tree?” I asked.
“You obviously don’t look close enough like most people” he points the flash light into the tree and we vaguely saw what looked like a fort, but it was so carefully covered that you couldn’t see it unless you were actually looking for it. He jumped up and grabbed a string which then lowered a small rope ladder that brought us up and inside the fort. 

“Do you live here?” Emma asked.

“Yea, I have for awhile. It’s not much, but it’s all I have; it took me awhile to get all the pieces to build it though.”  He obviously took much pride in his work, which he should. This place looks amazing. He walked over and turned on the lamp. There was a bed in the far corner of the room, what looked like to be a cooler at the foot of the bed, a small table with three chairs, and a bookshelf with books filling every possible spot. There were two windows, one that seemed you could climb out of and sit on a nice branch.

He went over to the cooler and took out a small box and sat at the table. “Come take a seat, its okay. I’m a friend.”  We looked at each other with blank expressions. We knew we couldn’t trust anyone, but we both found ourselves in a very tough situation. After a few minutes we decided to take a seat at the table and find out exactly who this kid was.
“I have been watching you two for the past few years; some other people too, but something seemed particularly interesting about your family.” He dug inside the box and pulled out what looked like a scrapbook and handed it to us. We looked through it as he spoke.
“Perhaps I should start here. My name is Jimmy.” He took out a small tin from inside the box, opened it and placed it into the middle of the table. “It’s not much, but feel free to help yourself.” There were cookies inside the tin. “Now, you two are welcome to stay the night here if you’d like. You two could share the bed and I’ll sleep on the floor.” We smiled and kept thumbing through the pages. They were all news paper articles in the front, and journal entries in the back. They were all about us and our family.

“Why have you been watching us? How do you even know us?” I asked.
“My dad knew your family fairly well. He even knew your father. ” he said.

I looked at my sister, she had completely timed out after he mentioned our father. Maybe this is the connection we need in order to find our father. I closed the book and handed it back to Jimmy while taking a cookie.
“Where is your father now?” Emma asked.

“He died in a fire, same as your mother and brother.” He said sadly.

“How’d the fire start?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve been hiding out here ever since. I figured whoever set the fire, was definitely out there looking for me and probably still looking.”

“That’s why you found us and lead us back here. Isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes, I wanted to make sure you two were alright. If you have somewhere else to go, you’re welcome here any time.” He said.

Emma and I rose from our seat.

“Just be careful on who you trust. Even the people you believe in may be the one who is turning against you.” He said while staring out the window. “The cost is clear if you two want to leave now. You should be okay. ”

We said our goodbye’s and headed out back into the woods.

Author's Note

This is the first chapter to my book. It's still in progress for the second chapter.