F i r s t d a y o f h o l i d a y s

I wake up to sunlight streaming in the room, and a full-blown pillow fight taking place right before my eyes.

I duck as a pillow passes just above my head. "Woah guys, calm down. Give me a minute to wake up."

"Finally. You're awake. Took you long enough," Alexa comments.

"Um, my sister, Amelia, Mia and Matthew are all still asleep. At least I'm not last awake," I protest.

"Yeah, keep trying to defend yourself. It doesn't work on me!" Alexa exclaims as she launches another pillow in Lucas' direction.

"Hey, why is everyone teamed up against Lucas?"

"Um, cause he's the best at this. So, everyone wants to beat him," Damon grumbles.

"Char, allies?" Lucas asks me.

"Yeah, duh," I say, in a tone that says I am stating the obvious.

"Oh, what? Unfair," Casper argues.

"How? Its two against four," I shoot back.

"Good point. Battle on!"

I pick up a pillow and chuck it at his head, then get another one to shield myself as he retaliates. Shortly, Amelia wakes up and joins Lucas' and my team.

"Yes! Our numbers are growing," I laugh. We are taking this fight very seriously, getting out any bottled up stress from school.

Amelia surprises us all by being really good at this game, almost as good as Lucas. Everyone is surprised, this is the small Amelia that is too afraid to answer a question in class, who never does anything bad. Who knew she'd be so good? Just then, Cecilia wakes up, we get her to join my team, so now they are evenly balanced.

"Yes, finally! Fairplay," Lucas laughs. "Although, my team is so gonna win. We are wayyy better than youse."

While we fight and get more and more violent, Matthew sleeps on through the chaos. After half an hour, Casper's team surrenders.

"Stop, stop, it's true, you win," he gasps, winded by the pillow that just hit him in the stomach.

We all collapse onto the mattresses, also gasping for air. Lucas recovers first, and before we can stop him, chucks a pillow straight at Matthew's face. We all stifle a laugh and he jerks up, suddenly wide awake, taking in our disheveled state.

"Wha- What happened?" he mumbles sleepily.

"You missed out on the best pillow fight ever," I say, and Mia adds, "We tried to wake you up earlier, but you were too busy dreaming to bother waking up. You didn't move even the slightest bit."

"Not true," he counters, but a big yawn interrupts his speech and no one takes him seriously.

"So. What are we doing today?" Mia asks.

"Ahhh, not sure. Whatever you wanna do in this big ol' empty house of ours," Casper told us.

"Library exploring comes first," I interject before anyone else can speak.

"Um, no. Sorry Char, not everyone's as into books as you are," Mia rejects my idea. I was expecting that.

"Aww, c'mon guys," I whine.

"Nah, no way."

Lucas cuts in. "I'll come," he says eagerly.

"Since when are you into books?" I ask.

"I was planning to go anyway. I'll just come along," he quickly defends himself.

"Hey, you say that like going to the library is a bad thing. It most definitely is not."

"You are like, the only person that thinks that, and the only person that would go there for fun, but ok," Alexa declared.

"You guys are mean. C'mon Lucas," I say, and get up to leave the room.

"Um, wait a minute Char. Didn't you say you brought four books?" Damon emphasises the four.

"Yeah, they were just in case. I am so checking out this library. You don't come to a house with a library and not look at the library," I inform them, and they all roll their eyes. I sigh dramatically, take Lucas by the arm, and march off in exaggerated steps to the library.

"You are so lucky. I gotta walk all the way to the other side of town to get to the library," I murmur.

"Well you are welcome to come here anytime you like," Lucas says, and opens the door to the library. I walk in, between the aisles, running my hand along the spines of the books. It's a big library, tall bookshelves reaching right up to the ceiling, an easily portable ladder between some aisles to make access easier. The books are sorted into genres, and within the genres they are colour coded. I wonder how they had the time to do this.

"Damn, nicely organised," I whisper, and I hear Lucas' chuckle behind me.

"Yeah, I thought you'd like it. You've been here before though."

"Um, the bottom floor of this. Two storey library Lucas, remember?"

"Yeah I know, it's mine."

"I know. Just saying." I walk off, pulling out books that seem interesting as I go, making my way towards the back corner where I know there is a reading area, and there is also one in the middle of the library. I walk for a while - there is quite some walking to do to reach the back - and then I reach the corner, and settle down to read. I lose track of time, and finish a 350-page book before Lucas comes to find me.

"Charlotte you've been reading for two hours. We're getting hungry, come to breakfast."

Two hours already? "Coming." I pack up my books and follow behind, the stack reaching to my chin so I can hold them easily.

"Enjoyed your, ah, reading session?"

"Yes, very much thank you, did you find the book you're looking for?"

"Yeah." I sense he doesn't want to elaborate, so I stay quiet and we reach the sleeping room.

"Hey guys," I say.

"Feel happy?" Mia demands. "About ditching us for your books for two and a half hours?"

"Um yeah," I reply, knowing that she's kidding. "Don't worry, I still love you though," I joke.

"Ah, good. That's what I was looking for," she grins back.

"We don't care," Matthew interrupts. "But I'm hungry. Let's go eat."

"We don't care that you're hungry, Matthew. But yeah, we gotta go eat now," Casper says, "Or breakfast will become lunch, and I don't feel like lunch yet."

We head downstairs, ignoring Matthew's complaints, and go back to the table we had dinner at last night. We sit around the table again, tell the waiter what we want, and discuss the day ahead.

"Hey, anyone know what time we went to bed last night?" I ask.

"Nine, or around that," Cecilia answers.

"'Kay thanks. It's 8 now, right?"

"Yeah."

Breakfast arrives - pancakes - so for the next ten minutes we stuff ourselves with food, and we don't talk. After seconds, and for some people, thirds, we slow down and talk about the day.

"What's our plan for the day?" Damon asks.

"Honestly, even if we make a plan, we'll probably go out of order and stuff in that we weren't meant to, so let's just do what we wanna," Casper suggests.

"Good idea, but that'll mean a lot of 'what are we doing next' is gonna be asked," Aviania responds.

"Oh well. Excuse the repetition, but what do we want to do first?"

"How about a game of truth or dare? We can give each other dares to do for the holidays," I suggest.

Everyone (except Matthew), agrees, so when we finish eating and go back upstairs, we sit in a circle, and the game begins.

"Charlotte, truth or dare?" Mia asks.

"Hey, I suggested the game so I get to start," I protest.

"Too bad, I asked first. Truth or dare?" she repeats.

"Ugh, fine. Dare," I say, wanting to get the bad over and done with.

"Hmm," she thinks for a while, then her face lights up with an idea.

"Oh no. I don't like that look on your face. Don't make it too bad," I implored.

"I dare you to not read for the whole holidays."

"What? Girl, six weeks without reading? There's no way I'm doing that. Gimme another one," I refuse. We argue for a bit, then I win.

"Fine. I dare you to tell us who you like," she says.

"Uh, no one," I say, which is true. Kind of.

"Nah Char, I see the look on your face, tell us!"

"No one, I swear!" I can tell she doesn't believe me, but she lets me off. It's my turn to ask.

The rest of the game continues in much the same way, with questions like that being asked, and nothing being revealed.

"Well, that was just about the most boring game of truth or dare I've ever played," Lucas declared when we finished.

"I must say, I agree," Amelia adds in.

"Yeah well, you guys asked most of the questions, don't blame it on me," I defend myself.

"Your idea," Damon counters.

"You guys agreed."

"Anyway," Casper interrupts. "Anyone feel like a light snack?"

"Yeah sure." Everyone gets up and walks out to the main room, and Casper ducks into the kitchen to get some food. He comes out with three bags of chips, a packet of lollies and a block of chocolate.

"Light snack?" Mia questions skeptically. "That's more like a feast."

"Hey, there's eight of us here, we'll eat it."

"Oh yeah," Lucas suddenly remembers. "Pandora said she's coming today. She just wasn't allowed to first day after school."

"Ahh, ok," Aviania says. "I was wondering where she was."

"They should be coming now. Lets go downstairs."

We go down, still being led by Lucas and Casper, and we go to the front room just as there is a knock on the door. Mr and Mrs Cypher are in the room too, standing behind the mini bar at the back. Lucas opens the door, and Pandora steps into the room.

"Hey. Sorry, I wasn't allowed to come yesterday. But, I can stay now for a few nights. Thank you for letting me come," she finishes, speaking first to us then to the Cyphers.

"It's fine. You are most welcome," he replies. We go back upstairs and pull out another mattress for Pandora, and she puts her stuff down too.

"What have you guys done so far?" she asks.

"Well, last night we watched a movie," I begin, but I am cut off by Damon.

"Charlotte here had herself a reading marathon this morning, then led us through a very boring game of truth or dare. You didn't miss out on much," Damon tells her, accusing me but it is in a joking manner.

"Fun. So what are we gonna do now? Got any plans or...?" she trails off, looking at us.

"Nah, some of us weren't bothered to make a plan," I say, aiming it at certain people.

"Um, no. We weren't gonna follow the plan anyway so we didn't make one," Matthew huffed.

"Yep. For once, I'm actually agreeing with him. I know guys, miracle. Get a load of this cause it won't happen again," Casper interjects.

"What," I exclaim. "You are siding with him over me? I swear everyone is against me today. Except for Lucas. He's the only good friend here." I am telling the truth though, I am feeling pretty left out so far.

"Sor-ry," Matthew says with a whole bunch of sass, in a way that suggests he is not sorry at all.

"Ugh," I grumble.

"Uh, before we get into any further argument, let's change the topic. What do you guys wanna do?"