Introduction

This is the diary of Allison Jude Crossford.

I'm not going to bother writing about today, this is an introduction. I'm just going to explain a bit about myself.

I am 11 years old. I have bright red curly hair that barely goes down to my shoulders. I have no fashion sense and wear mostly dark blue, red, black, grey and yellow clothes.

I'm the youngest of 18 children (I know right. Big family!). I'm a quadruplet too. I've always been ignored, shoved aside because I'm the youngest, even by my twin sister, but not anymore. Tomorrow I'm going to the Ensemble Music Academy. I'm going to be a musician! I'm so excited!

By the way, here's some details about my family:

I have 9 brothers and 8 sisters, I'm the ninth girl.

First there's Emily (Em), who's 19. She's pretty much just ignored me my whole life. I ran into her the other day in the hall and she didn't even remember my name! She's really into animals and sort of a mix between a girly girl and a tomboy.

Then there's Joan & Luca, who are 18. They're twins, and they're inseparable. They're always together all the time, they even share a room. Although they don't really have a choice because our house is really big, but also small so lots of people have to share rooms. They're nice enough, but still ignore me most of the time. They only speak to me if I speak to them first.

Anyways, then there's 17 year old Carl. He shares a room with 15 year old Bobby, who's the middle child. It works out well though, because they're both obsessed with video games and football. They secretly stay up late and play video games. I've heard them. They're both mean to me and always have been. But they don't know anything about me, I actually love football and I'm probably as good as them.

Then there's Millicent, Tiana & Evelyn (AKA Millie, Tia & Evie), who are 16. They're triplets and share a room, which, again, isn't a problem because they get on really well. They're all really girly and love to talk about celebrities and TikTok and all that stuff. They pretty much just ignore me all the time, they don't even talk to me.

After them there's Joe and Ben (14) who are also twins. Actually, now that I think about it, there's a lot of twins or triplets in my family, My mother's actually a twin too. Joe & Ben are only 3 years older then me, but they're still not nice to me.

Then there's Jane, who is 13 and really nice. She's always keeping an eye out for me and my quadruplets because we're "the family babies". She shares a room with Em, they spend hours talking about animals and what pets they're going to get when they're older.

Then, last but not least, there's Me, Carlos, Parker & Ivy. We all share a room and it was fine, until recently. Carlos & Parker are the only boys in the family who I get on with, they're my best friends. Or were. 6 months ago they both left for boarding school and I've barely spoken to them since, just in a few letters.

Now I'm stuck sharing a room with Ivy and she's always pranking me. We ended up starting a prank war, which is what lead to me discovering music.

I discovered music 4 months ago when Ivy locked me in the attic. Let me quickly explain a few things about her.

Ivy's hated me since we were 5. We were bffs, but then she just started being mean to me. She's 15 minutes older than me, so she acts like she's more important.

On that day, Ivy tricked me. She pretended to be nice and said we should get to know each other and make peace. She said we should make new memories and explore the attic. We went up there, and then she pushed me in and slammed the door shut. It hurt a lot, because I landed on a bike, then stood up and banged my head, then walked into a piano, then tripped over the bike and landed on a box of books. It was like dominoes, in a way. That was actually how I started playing, because I landed next to a box of old instruments. I lay on the floor for around half an hour before wandering over to the piano. I found a bunch of books on how to play and started teaching myself. After a few hours I'd managed to play 4 songs with no mistakes. I searched it up online and it says that if you pick it up really fast it means your musically gifted. But I don't know. I mean, when I started playing I felt comfortable, like I was made to play music.

Ivy let me out in the morning, but the only people who had noticed I wasn't there were Joan and Tia. by the time Ivy let me out, I'd learnt 17 songs on the piano, violin & trumpet. I took the instruments down to my room and started searching songs up online. Then, since ads are based off of previous searches, there was an ad for Ensemble Academy. As soon as I saw it, I loved it! It's this huge brown building with 3 floors. I looked at the map and apparently there are 4 houses with 4 sleeping quarters in each. The houses are Strings, Brass, Woodwind and Vocals. I'm in Room 11 Strings. There are 13 bedrooms in each sleeping quarter, each bedroom holds 3. I looked at some photos of the bedrooms, they are amazing! The best part is definitely the bedrooms. When you walk through the main door to your room, there's basically a sight from a fairy tale. It looks just like a Princess Bedroom! There's 3 double beds with light pink curtains, violet sheets, aqua marine duvets & turquoise pillows. There's also one of those windows that takes up nearly the whole wall, it's so amazing! Then there's also photos of a more simple room with 6 sets of Bunk beds, for sleepovers, and brown sheets, dark pink duvets & magenta pillows. Its a bit confusing, I don't know what kind of room I'm going to get. I'm so excited to meet my roommates and find out the secrets of Ensemble Academy! I read on the website there's secret rooms in the building that few people know about. I'm so excited!! Most of all though, I can't wait to make new friends! I've never had a friend for longer than 2 weeks before, the few friends I've had all either got fed up of not being able to come over, or they came over and couldn't stand the chaos of my family. Ensemble Academy is my new start, I'm going to make some friends and then they can be the leaders and I can just follow them around and do what they say. Oh yeah, that's another thing about me. I'm a bit shy, and I don't like to be in charge of things, I like to let others take the lead. Hey, I'm the youngest of 18 kids, I've grown up having to do that. I also was diagnosed with something a few years ago, I don't know very many details because my mum lost the information sheet and forgot everything. What I do know is that if I don't just go along with everything, people start arguing which gives me a terribly painful headache and in the end causes me to faint. That's all I know, and that's why I let others take the lead.

Anyways, I gotta get some sleep now, although I bet I won't be able to, I'm so excited! Tomorrow is the big day!!!