The Second Streets

Unsatisfactory Times

This story is copyright. All people and places mentioned in this story are products of my (the author's) imagination, and any similarity to a real person or place is entirely coincidental. This story may not be used in any work with the exception of short quotes (cited) and fan-art/fan-fiction that the creator of credits this story to.
Any report anything you find that may be a violation of this copyright os greatly appreciated.
Basically, please don't steal my story. If you want to make something based off of it, be sure to credit me, and please send me whatever you made. I'm interested in whatever you guys want to twist this into. Also, it's ok to "tattle" if someone is breaking the law by stealing my story.
Anyway, that was super long, so sorry about that and let's get started!
~MoonSong88

Chapter 1

Unsatisfactory Times

A blur of teal zipped along a narrow street. It was a girl, dressed in black jeans and a dark teal shirt, mounted on a light teal bike. Her dark brown ponytail streamed out behind her in the wind her speed appeared to create, restricted only by the ebony helmet mounted atop her head. Her chocolate brown eyes were narrowed against the rush of air in her face, but it didn't slow her down. She leaned over the handlebars, urging her bike to greater speeds.

The girl was training for the annual Greenville Teen Bicycle Speed Competition (GTBSC). The GTBSC was a bicycle race for anyone living in Greenville ages thirteen through nineteen. It was an ardurous race. The course wound through the city, stretching ten miles as the crow flies. However, it had many inclines, some of which were at almost a forty-five degree angle to flat ground. The event was scheduled for March 11. The girl had only a week left to prepare.

The girl finally reached Chub's Bakery, her marker for ten miles. She hit the stopwatch between her handlebars. 34:16:37. She muttered a curse under her breath. Speeds like that would not land her on the scoreboard, much less get her first place. She had to get four minutes under half an hour to even stand a chance. She slowly pedaled home, thinking about her time. What had gone wrong? She normally never got over 30 minutes.

The girl steered gently around puddles that she had shot through before. Simply going around the puddles almost doubled the distance home as they were so large and there were so many. Greenville received a foot or two of rain every night. The only thing preventing floods were the drain tunnels located at the end of every street, especially in the neighborhoods at the bottom of the frequent hills. The drain tunnels were pipes stretching about three feet in diameter. They led underground and eventually made their way to Beaver Lake about half an hour's drive from Greenville.

The girl finally reached her driveway. She locked her bike in a small shed built adjacent to her house. It was rare to find a house in Greenville without such a shed, as bikes were incredibly popular among the citizens.

The girl pulled a key from her pocket, replacing it with her stopwatch. She locked the shed behind her and made her way to her front door. Slipping the same key she had used for the shed into the knob, she unlocked her home and stepped inside.

"I'm home!" she shouted. She got no response, as usual, but knew she had been heard. She leaned against the door for a moment, relishing the telltale sounds of a bustling family: a sink running as someone washed their hands upstairs, a shout as one sibling annoyed another beyond further toleration, the clack of a lid being placed on a pot in the kitchen, the creak of the floorboards as someone migrated from one room to another. The girl hung her helmet on a hook by the door and head up to the room she shared with her two sisters.

When she opened the door to her bedroom, she found both sisters drawing at their mahogany desks. While the girl and her brothers leaned towards the athletic type, her sisters and parents were more on the artsy side.

"Edith, Laurabelle," she greeted them. Edith simply grunted in response.

"Hey, Ember," Laurabelle said. "What do you think of my drawing?" She held up a pencil sketch of a dragon, its huge wings extended to either side, its mouth open in a fiery roar.

"Beautiful, as usual," said Ember, flopping onto her bed.

"Ember, get off the bed or you'll spoil the sheets with your dirty clothes," Edith said, not looking up.

"My clothes aren't dirty," protested Ember, "and you aren't my mother, so stop bossing me around!"

"Well, I'm four years older than you are, so I can do as I like!" Edith said. Edith was eighteen, Ember was fourteen, and Laurabelle was twelve. The girls had two brothers: Edith's twin, Christopher, and ten-year-old Argon completing the group of children.

Ember did not heed her sister's words. She puffed her pillow under her head and shut her eyes.

"Ember!" called Christopher. Ember groaned and reopened her eyes.

"What?" she shouted. Christopher did not reply. She sighed and trudged over to the boys' room. Christopher was seated on the floor, while Argon was nowhere to be seen, probably outside.

"Yes, Christopher?" she asked, putting on a bored face. In reality, she was interested in what he had to say. Despite having him a separate twin and the four years of age between them, Christopher and Ember had the strongest bond of all five siblings.

"How was your time?" Christopher asked. Ember sat across from him.

"Terrible. I took almost thirty-five minutes." Christopher smiled sympathetically.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing," Ember lied.

"Come on, Em. I know you only slow down when you're mulling over something and not focused on your speed. What's wrong?" he repeated. Ember sighed.

"You know me too well. I'm just really nervous about next week. I've always come so close to winning GTBSC, but never actually won it."

"Ember, you realize you've only done it once? The fact that you even scored, much less got second on your first race is impressive. I didn't score high enough to hit the podium until my third race two years ago, and didn't get first until last year."

"Right. You were the one person to beat me. Besides, you scored on your first race," Ember reminded him.

"Yeah. I got tenth. Had one more person beaten me, I wouldn't have. Besides, half the racers were sick that year, remember?" Ember remember. She had been nine years old at the time, cheering for her brother from the sidelines. When the announcer listed the top ten, starting at ten, she had been so excited to hear her brother's name called first, even if he had only gotten tenth.

"See? You're good, Em."

"I know. It's just I really want to win," Ember said.

"Competing in the GTBSC isn't all about winning," Christopher reminded her. "It's a community event. It's about supporting your family, even if you race against them- like we will be doing. It's about loving bikes."

"I know. I know. Thanks, Chris," Ember said. She gave her brother a hug before returning to her room.

A/N
The final chapter of this story is actually a cast list. Since I'm using the mobile version of Wattpad and not the website, I can't set cast members.