The Suicide Master (October Writing Challenge)

Chapter 1: The Lake House

Chapter 1

The Lake House

Emery looked out at the calm water, a blissful sunshine illuminating the dewdrops like tiny stars. She sighed and stood up from the wooden dock, watching the trees sway with the cool autumn wind across the lake.

Suddenly, Emery's peace was interrupted by her sister bounding up behind her with a big smile on her face.

"Isn't this great?" She asked, wrapping an arm around Emery's shoulder. "The lake is so pretty!" Emery almost laughed at her sister's sudden change in demeanor, going from 'excited about their free trip' to 'realization of her surroundings.' She gazed at the lake with wonder, her hazel eyes sparkling.

"Yeah," Emery replied finally. "It's good to get away from Long Island for a while, you know?"

"Definitely. The mountain's so cool, but it sure is cold here," her sister said with a perfectly timed shiver.

"You'll get over it."

"Hey, Brookes! Come on, we're having lunch!" The girls turned at the sound of their last name and started their way to the brown house next to the lake.

The girls walked through the glass doors that lead to the dining room. Everything was so very wooden -- the polished wooden flooring; the birch wood cabinets; the long, oak dining table in the center of the room. There were four doors leading out from the room, a hallway, and what Emery assumed was the kitchen through an arched doorway.

There were nine sets at the table, each with a card that read the guests' names. Everybody was in the room and they each sat down. Every looked at all of the familiar faces of her friends, joyfully appreciating each of them individually and as a group.

First, there was Amily -- her sister, perky and unbearably sweet to everyone; Lucas -- responsible but lazy but athletic; Ethan -- cool, charming, but a jerk; Charlotte -- the sassy hipster; Aaron -- leaderly and humorous; Riley -- the nice, silly skater boy; Christy -- quiet but ultimately endearing; and Benny -- the big prank.

In fact, at the moment, Benny was planning to shove a fish into Charlotte's suitcase by the grand stairs, but stopped as soon as Aaron shot him a glare.

Lucas, who'd left the room to get lunch, walked back in with a large frozen pizza that had been heated up in the oven.

"A meal only fit for royalty," Riley said, holding out his hands to put the box in the middle of the table. Immediately, everybody scrambled to grab a slice or two and put them on their plates.

"Too bad there's no pizza delivery on the mountain," Lucas sighed. "I may have messed it up."

Suddenly, Ethan spit the pizza out, making a disgusted groan.

"You burnt it!" He cried. Ethan, for someone healthy and athletic, was an extremely picky person. As everyone else began to eat, Ethan simply picked and prodded at his pizza slice like a child at supper.

"Don't blame me when you go hungry," Lucas said with a mouthful of cheese stripped from his pizza slice. Ethan only grimaced.

"Considering we just got here," Christy suggested. "We should look around the house a bit." Everybody nodded in agreement.

"Honestly, how do you burn a frozen pizza?" Ethan grumbled after a minute. Riley chuckled.

"Hokay!" Emery said after everybody finished their burnt lunch. "Where should we look first?"

After a moment of thought, Christy replied, "The downstairs, I guess?"

"Oh! You know what..." Aaron interjected. "Before that, we should go find our rooms. I think there's four."

Subtly, everybody looked from person to person, wondering who would sleep downstairs, seeing as there were only two beds in every room.

Amily interrupted the silence, saying only what we were all thinking. "Well, who wants to?"

"I don't think any of us want to sleep on the couch, Amily," Charlotte stated matter-of-factly.

"Well, who would be willing to sleep on the couch is what I meant."

Moments passed. Some would say you could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed.

"We could have someone sleep in a chair in the room..." Aaron suggested.

"Do any of us feel comfortable sleeping in one of those old chairs?" Lucas asked.

"Would you rather have Benny prank you in the middle of the night?" Charlotte asked and when nobody answered, "We all know he'd do it."

"True, true," Benny agreed.

"So, who's going with who?" Aaron asked.

Again, silence.

"Howsabout we just all run to a room upstairs and we'll see who we end up with?" Amily proposed. Sixteen shoulders simultaneously shrugged. There was a short pause before the teenagers gathered their belongings and bounded up the stairs to the large balcony that wrapped around all but the front wall of the house and looked out on the dining room. There were two doors on each side and two hallways perpendicular to the stairwell. The group split up in a messy fashion, stumbling in two uneven groups to the doors.

One, much known fact about this particular group of friends is that they are very competitive with each other. Some would even say they were brutal.

Basically Benny, Christy, Amily, Ethan, and Emery veered one side, toward the left doors, and Lucas, Charlotte, Aaron, and Riley swerved the other.

"Wait!" Charlotte called suddenly, and each person stopped in their tracks, two with hands on doorknobs. "Are we going by gender?"

Everybody sighed in synchrony, continuing on their ways inside the rooms.

Riley shoved his way into the room on the farthest right side of the house, leaping onto one of the big beds. Lucas crashed in after him, tripping in the doorway. He scrambled up to claim the other bed while Aaron entered the room breathlessly. He cursed under his breath and settled in the plush armchair in the corner of the room.

Elsewhere, Ethan and Benny were settling into their own room across from the other boys and Amily and Emery in the room next to them. Charlotte fell onto the bed in the room across from them, and Christy stood in the open hallway, unknowing where to go.

"Sorry, Christy, there's already a room of three!" Riley yelled across the way. She looked helplessly to the sisters and trod past the stairs into Charlotte's room.

"It's settled then," Aaron called so everyone could hear. "There are our rooms. Oh, and you and I" -- he gestured to Riley behind him -- "Will be switching this bed." Riley nodded.

"See, this is why one of us should have the three person," Amily stated. "We'd share the beds instead of the chair!"

"Sure, but that'd leave one us with one of the boys," Emery pointed out.

"Touche."

"Alrighty then," Aaron started, clapping his hands together. "Why don't we get unpacked and head to the hot tub, hm? It's supposed to be really pretty out tonight."

And so the month-long vacation officially began.