Spies (ON HOLD)

Chapter 1

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

The Iowa sunlight streams through my window as my alarm clock wakes me up.  I kick the blankets off of me and they tumble to the floor.  I sit up, stretch, and stand.  Glancing down at the blankets by my feet, I consider picking them up, but decide to save it for later.

"Lexa, are you up?" Samantha calls from the kitchen.

"Yeah," I shout back, followed by a yawn.

I walk over to my closet, pick out a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and change into them.

As I make my way to the door, I catch a glimpse of the electronic calendar/clock on my wall.

Tuesday 7:03 AM

September 23, 2038

Thoughts begin to flood into my mind, but I only allow two words through: Eleven years.

I feel tears come to my eyes, but I don't let them escape.  I do this to myself every year, but I hate my birthday.  Some people think it's stupid that I haven't let this go yet, but it's not my fault that I remember every detail of that day, eleven years ago.

"Lexa," Samantha calls.

"Coming," I say.

Breakfast.  Good.  I need a distraction.

I walk into the kitchen and see Samantha putting two pancakes on top of a stack on a plate next to the stove.

"Breakfast is ready," she says when she notices me walk in.  "Get the syrup out of the fridge for me, please."

She takes the stack of pancakes to the table and I get the syrup.  We sit down and begin to eat breakfast.

Samantha is in her mid-30s, but she looks about the age of a college graduate.  In fact, Samantha could probably pass as my sister.  Her shoulder length hair is the same shade of dark brown as my long wavy hair.  Her green eyes are almost the same color as my hazel-green eyes.  Samantha looks more like me than my real mother did, but that is mostly because I got a lot of my physical features from my father.

Samantha adopted me about six months after my parents died, but even though she is technically my "mother," I've never called her "mom."  It just never felt right for me to do it, so I've only ever called her Samantha.

She doesn't bring up the fact that today is my birthday.  A few times in the past she had asked me if I was okay with having a party to celebrate but I've never said yes.  She doesn't bake me a birthday cake because she knows I'm not going to eat it.

When I turned 5 years old, Samantha made me a simple white cake with light pink frosting and "Happy 5th Birthday Lexa" written in blue icing with five candles stuck in it.  It was the first birthday I had since the car accident, and seeing the cake made me cry and feel awful.  I ripped the candles out, threw them across the room, and pushed the cake off of the table, creating a huge mess at my feet.

I celebrate birthdays, and I eat birthday cake, but just not my own.  Why celebrate the anniversary of the worst day of my life?

"Are you going to invite your friends over today?" Samantha asks.  That is the only thing I've ever done to "celebrate" my birthday, but it's not like having my friends come over is much of a special occasion.

"Yeah," I reply. "Katt already said she is coming, and I'm going to double check with Adrian at school."

"Alright.  I'll be sure to have extra food for them to stick around for supper," she says, more as a reminder for herself than anything else.  "Is there anything in particular you'd like to eat tonight?"

I think for a moment.  "Chinese food sounds good."

"Orange chicken?" she asks, knowing that it is my favorite.

"That works," I answer.

Samantha and I finish eating and I go off to finish getting ready for the day as Samantha clears off the table.

Once my hair is free of tangles, my teeth are brushed, and I check to be sure I have everything, I'm ready to go to school.

"Bye, Samantha," I shout to wherever in the house she is.

"Bye, have a good day."

"I'll try to," I say quietly to myself.

I grab my bag and walk into the hallway.  I open the door to the storage closet.

There was a time in the past where people thought that by now we would have tons of high-tech gadgets and things out of sci-fi movies or something like that.  Well, that hasn't really come true yet... for normal people.

I push a button that is disguised to look like a screw, and the back wall of the closet slides away, revealing a small, circular metal chamber.  The chamber is lit by a blue glow given off by the panels that make up the floor and ceiling, and by a white screen on the wall.

I step into the chamber as the wall closes behind me.  I tap on the screen and a keyboard pops up on the bottom half of it.  On the top it reads Destination Code: with a box for text and an "enter" button after it.

I type my school's 10 digit code into text box and push enter.  The screen goes white for just a second and then it says:

American Spy School

Access Granted

Prepare for Teleportation

I hear a faint hum as the glow on the ceiling and floor gets brighter until I'm surrounded by blue.  I feel a strange tingling sensation, but I'm used to it.

After all, I do this every day.

Because I'm not a normal person.

I'm a spy.

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Hello world and all who inhabit it and everyone who enjoys spontaneous combustion!

I know I posted the prologue like three or four months ago, but I didn't really have a plan for my story then.  But I figured it out for the most part now.

I'm basing this story off of a game my best friend and I used to play when we were really little, so I never had the technical details figured out then.  I have some of them worked out but some I'm still clueless on.  So if the next chapters of the story have parts that don't really make sense, that's why.

So what do you guys think of the first chapter??? Please tell me in the comments! I'd love to hear from you.

Also I'm dedicating this chapter to my frie... *Spontaneously combusts*