ice

001

"Core will you come out of your room?"My father's voice rung through our house like a shrill bell; it was loud and annoying. The pounding of step after step of his clicking shoes alerted me that he was ascending the two flights of stairs that lead to my room.

The first flight of stairs were used to get to the second floor of our rectangular home, the second were used to get to the attic which was my own humble abode. More pounding came, but in his systematic 2/3 rhythm when he knocked on my door. I slammed my laptop shut and shoved it under my bed; I wasn't suppose to be on it when someone else in my family wasn't present. I threw a queen sized quilt made of various pink fabric squares over my head and uttered an almost silent, "Come in." He didn't hear me.

"Coraline, I do hope that you're decent since I'm coming in!" My dad flew through the door and sputtered into a coughing fit.

He was allergic to half the things the infinite universe contained.

"When was the last time you dusted in here?" He looked around my dark room blinking, coughing, and fanning the stale air away from his face.

"When did we move here?"

"Two years ago. Wait you haven't dusted in that long?" He gave me the disappointed-and-annoyed parent look he was so keen in sporting and walked his clicking shoes towards my windows. My room was exposed to the sun one window at a time as my father pulled my dark curtains apart. A surprised squeak emerged from his throat when he found a bird nested in the flower box on the window furthest from the door. As I kept my body engulfed in the quilt, I crawled towards the part of my bed that was closest to that window. I smiled as I looked at the nest with him.

I struggled to contain my laughter. "Oh yeah," I said. "Birds like that window." He slowly returned the curtains to their original position.

"Well at least the birds are outside unlike some animals I know." He barely said that under his breath. My father turned towards me. "Coraline Rose Thompson, it's been two years so don't try using the we just moved-and-I-have-no-friends ruse, but why can't you leave the house?"

"Because I'm a vampire," my voice was monotonous and my father wasn't amused.

"You're grounded," he said. A laugh nearly escaped my lips.

"From what?"

"This house." I sat up onto my knees. This was getting serious.

"What? You're joking," He shook his head and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. I watched him critically as he pulled out an Andrew Jackson.

"Here's a twenty. You can come back at 9:00pm since that's your curfew but besides that I want you out of the house." I looked down at the money he had placed in my hand with disbelief. There was no way that this was happening, it couldn't be happening. It wasn't my fault that my only friend had moved to Europe after the first wave of the Kilm Wars started. It wasn't my fault that she had been the only person who liked me at school, and wanted to hang out with me during the summer. But it appeared that I was being punished anyway.

But after being yelled at to change into real clothes, having a hoodie pulled over my head by my older sister Corinthia, and being thrown into the passenger seat of her car I realized that he was definitely not joking.

When my sister started the engine and started driving I knew she wasn't joking either. "We're going to my job in the city, okay?" She drove out of Suburbia and onto the freeway and then I knew I was in for it. She worked in Pirik. Pirik was the biggest city in our state of Oregon. I hated Pirik.

After twenty minutes of top forty hits we entered the city. I couldn't stand Pirik. I loathed going there. Loathed. That's a pretty strong word and I didn't just throw it around.