Loud

Chapter 7

I was sitting in my beanbag, barely watching the moving, colored pictures in front of me. What had I gotten myself into? Phantoms, haunted houses, old women. Sounded too much like a book to me. Where did that dumb luck that Lucinda would just coincidentally have two foreign exchange students from America staying at her house come from? 

Maybe I was being set up. Again.

Thoughts of my past blurred through my head. The man in the orange jumpsuit with the black bowtie. The man with suspenders and a long beard. The slimy grease-monkey with the short, bristly beard that men get from not shaving for a few weeks who always seemed to be wearing a leather jacket. Their gloved black hands covering me and Josie's mouths. Their billy clubss knocking us out. Waking up in the very back of another dirty van.

Then the good ones came. Josie was whipping water out like tentacles and knocking out all the strong men. Wrestler beat by 13 year old. What a great news title that would be. Too bad that would never happen. I laughed to myself as I thought about the time I hung them all upside down from the ceiling using my vines. 

"Gwen?" a tiny voice came from behind the door.

"Yeah, come on in." 

"Are you okay?" It was Gwenny. She waddled over to my beanbag and sat down next to it.

"Yeah, just exhausted from the long flight we took from America."

"Sure." Gwenny nodded her head sarcastically and crossed her little arms. " What happened in the woods?"

What?! How the freak did she know?! "Hmm?" I asked nonchalantly.

"You know what I mean. The broken down house."

"Uh..." What was I supposed to say?

Gwenny began giggling uncontrollably. "Just kidding."

It was pretty obvious she wasn't. 

"Dinner's in twenty minutes!" She called in a sing-song voice as she closed the door to our living room. My life just keeps getting better. Physcic five year old. Check.