Joy's Harper & Søren

First Chapter: Harper & Søren

The characters of this story belong to joymoment. I have her permission to write them in this book as a writing challenge.

"MOM! Harper crashed my date again!" Søren hollered, opening the door to his home with a bang as he stomped inside.

"In my defense, his date was a jerk!" Harper, his cousin, shouted angrily. She slammed the door shut as she stormed through it, trailing behind Søren with a thunderous expression.

"Does this problem include me at all?" Cece demanded. Her voice floated down to them from upstairs, muffled by the door and the distance that separated them. "If not, leave me alone! Actually, better yet, bring me that tub of ice cream in the freezer! I'm writing like there's no tomorrow, and nothing can stop me! If I get writer's block again, it'll be your fault."

"Cece, honey, I'll deal with it," Milo, her husband, called to her. "Harper, really, this is the sixth time in the past two months."

"He keeps asking out these snotty little queen bees," Harper fumed. "I'm not just gonna let them corrupt his mind with their terribleness! Just because they're pretty, Søren, doesn't mean they're nice."

"You don't even know Lily," he protested. "She was sweet! How could you possibly peg her as mean?"

"Where's that ice cream I was promised?!" Cece yelled down.

Milo sighed, gave the two glaring cousins a warning look, and disappeared to cater to his wife's needs. She was usually pretty reclusive when in a writing mood, but she also needed certain things to keep that mood alive. Like ice cream, for example. Evidently, she needed a lot of ice cream for her writing to be perfect. That was what she told everyone, but they knew she just liked ice cream.

But then again, who could really tell what Cece needed to feed her creativity? She repainted the whole house whenever she wanted to procrastinate!

"You wanna know what dear sweet Lily told me yesterday?" Harper asked, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides. "Apparently, she has three different boyfriends! And you are one of them!"

"That is not true!" Søren cried indignantly. "Name them. Go on, I dare you."

"Walter and Travis," his cousin sniffed. "Ask them yourself; I'm sure they'd love to know that Lily's been playing them."

"Whatever," the teenager scoffed. "I'll talk to them, but I doubt their stories will line up. I've done extensive research into body language, and Lily is perfectly nice. You may have been right about Julia, Tracy, and Rosa, but Clarissa and Izzy were safe. Honestly, Harper, you need to cool it."

"Pfft, like you haven't ruined my dates before," she snapped, rolling her pretty blue eyes.

"Okay, both of you, shut up and go to Beck and Elliot's house," Milo ordered, walking back into the room. "I have to keep Cece alive and I don't want to deal with you guys right now. Søren, if you and Harper don't kill each other by eight, you can come back home if you want, but you have to be quiet in case your mother is either sleeping or still writing. Good day, children."

As if he thought they didn't understand his words, he physically pushed them out the door they had abused only five minutes before. After they had been been successfully removed from the household, Søren's father waved a cocky hand in farewell before swinging the door shut with an irritating click. The cousins stared at the block of wood that was keeping them outside, both of them wondering if they should kick it down or not.