Underneath

Chapter One - Morning

     *Kilo* -

There you are!  Finally!  Do you know how long I have been waiting for you to pick up this book?  Yes.  You!  Five more minutes and I wouldn't have even bothered in letting you read a tale so frightening, yet so amazing, that it could, and will, change your life.  Think I'm exaggerating?  Fine.  Whatever.  Put this book down, see if I care.  I don't care at all.  Go ahead.  Waste your money on some stupid vampire story.  You know it'll just end up in some extravagant I told you so moment. Yup.  There you go, walking away.

     WAIT!

     Ha! Ha...  Thought I was serious, huh?  Jeez!  I wouldn't just let you go!  Obviously.  I made a big deal over how important this adventure concealed in these pages were.  You think I 'd just let you leave?  Psh.  You have no idea... Just sit, tie yourself down, and get ready for the ride of your life.  Or not.

--

My name is Kilo Roame. Kie-lo... Rome.  I know.  It's a weird name for a girl.  Truthfully, my parents wanted a boy, which explains why a lot of my baby clothes were printed with dinosaurs and space ships.  That's why I'm named after my late uncle, The Great Kilo.  Why he was so great, I have no idea.

    No need to feel sorry for my parents.  They did eventually get a son.  In fact, they got my two younger brothers, the twins.  Hmm.  Not exactly how they imagined their family would turn out. Not my most ideal vision either.  As if our three story apartment in New York isn't full enough with the us five, my grandmother also lives here.  Which can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.  Like on the first day of school, when her excited, wrinkly heart, just, gets the best of her.

     "Ki-loooo!"  An elderly, Britsh-accented voice yelled from my bedroom door in the far corner of my room.  "Ki-looo Looo! Wakey it up!"  I moaned, barely lifted my head of my black satin pillow, and looked at the digital alarm clock on my mahogany nightstand.

     6:30 a.m.

     I still had thirty minutes, before I had to get ready to leave for school.  Ugg, school.

     I swiftly lifted my pillow, buried my face into my mattress, and covered my head.  At that moment my darling granny barged into my room.

    "Kilo Julien Roame!" I winced at the sound of my middle name.  It wasn't even it's feminine version!  "What do you think you are doing young lady?"  She yelled as she pulled my red drapes to each side of my floor length windows.

    "Sleeping," I replied.  Although my head was still between my mattress and pillows, so what came out was more of a mumble.

     "Excuse me?"  She came over to my canopy, and lifted the pillows from my slowly suffocating self.  "I understand that you may be a little tired do to your lack of a good, sturdy breakfast, but when your grandmother speaks to you, you answer clearly."

     I slowly rose from my bed. My raven black, curly hair blocked my face. "I was sleeping,"  I spoke louder with a huff.  Granny sighed.  She dropped the pillows to the floor, and ,as she so often does, swept my always messy hair from my face.  Sitting on the side of my bed, she stared into my "hypnotic" grey eyes.  Eyes that no one in our family has ever seemed to have.

     I'm the odd ball in that way, the black sheep.  Both my parents moved to the States from England when they had just finished up with school.  They hadn't known each other then.  They had only been strangers that passed each other on the streets of New York everyday.  Until one fateful morning my father asked my mom to dinner.  Once they began to talk, it was true love.