The Toy Soldiers Trilogy: Mockingbird

Chapter 1: Birthday Girl

Well I don't know the best way to start this off. I guess I don't have my mother's writing talent, but here goes nothing. My name is Victoria O'Doherty. As you can guess, I'm Seamus O'Doherty's daughter, and the youngest at that so I get babied! My dad's career has been over twenty years in the making, so I'm sure you can imagine that he's gotten far up in life, which he has! We live in a pretty nice house and a lot of people know who my dad is, which means just as many people know about my mom, Merel. She passed away right after I was born, and my dad never talks about her, but I know I look just like her.

We still have a few pictures around the house, but none from when my mom was younger. The reason I know I look like her is because my aunt Sophia tells me so DAILY. I still love her though, because just like all my other aunts, they're practically my mothers. Sure, no one can replace her, but they love me just as much as my mother would. Plus, like I said, I'm the youngest so I'm babied. My brother, Teddy, is three years older than me, and my sister, September, is two years older. One of the only things my dad has told me about mom is why she named us what she did. Mom was a huge history buff, so Teddy is named after Teddy Roosevelt, and I'm named after the queen herself. Then my dad went into this huge explanation about how music was one of the most important things to my mom, so she named my sister after a Daughtry song.

My siblings are currently in their first and second years of college, so it's just dad and I, at home at least. My aunt May and uncle Aleks live across the street from us. When I was really young, May got in a car accident. I don't know the technicalities of it, but somehow that made it so they couldn't have kids. With that, and the fact they're my Godparents, they treat me like their own. They're the only ones that aren't scared to tell me about my mom, and they actually tell me about her a lot. My dad doesn't mind, because it just means he doesn't have to do it.

We live in a pretty decent sized neighborhood. There's another street right by ours, and that's where my aunt Natalie and uncle Eddie live. They have one daughter who's a year older than me, and her name is Marcelline. Gee, I wonder where they got that name! That was sarcasm in case you couldn't tell. Anyways, just down the street from them is my aunt Sophia and uncle James. Their plan was to have two kids, which they did, and their names are Thayer and Arianna. Arianna's a popular senior and junk, and Thayer is in his third year of college. The reason why I said that was their "plan" is because they ended up having an "oops" baby. They'd never admit that, but I overheard my uncles and my dad talking about it once. She came a lot later, so she's my age and her name is Cher. We're best friends just like our moms were, and we do a lot together.

Cher's coming over today because it's my sixteenth birthday, but I don't want anything big and I told my dad that. He's usually pretty good about listening to me on that stuff, because he knows I'll get mad if he does do anything special. I'm not for celebrations much, because all I can ever think about is how my mom should be there. Which reminds me, the anniversary of her death is next week. I was only a year old when she died, and I don't remember a thing about her, but none of us do. Out of all us kids, Thayer is the only one that could even remember knowing mom. I still hold this weird internal grudge against him for that, but it's not like I could change my mother's death.

The doorbell rang and I ran to get it. Cher was there, with two presents in her hand.

"My parents insisted on giving you something!" She said rolling her eyes. "Plus I had to get you something too, so here you go."

I laughed. "Thanks. I'll set them in the dinning room, since I'm sure there will be more. Both aunt May and aunt Natalie told my dad that they were stopping by today."

"What about Ali?" She asked.

I sighed. "I don't know. I haven't seen them in a while."

"Victoria?" My dad called from his office.