Prologue

“I don’t wanna!” I whined to my mummy. “Shots hurt!”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said soothingly, as she brought my out of the hospital. “All we have to do is come back tomorrow, the doctor will give you one little pinch, and you’ll be done.”
“But it’ll hurt, mum!”
“Just for one second,” she said, putting her arm around me.
She drove us back home. I kicked and flailed in my car seat. I hated shots.
When we got home, I jumped into my daddy’s arms. He picked me up and brought me to the sofa, where he put me on his lap. Cedric was sitting next to us.
“Hey, Ced,” I said. “Tell mum not to take me to the doctor tomorrow.”
“You’re so weird!” he said.
Daddy kissed me on the head. “You’re going to be fine, love. I’ll take you down there myself. I’ll hold your hand and everything. You’ll be fine.”
“Can Cedric come?”
Cedric sneezed.
Mum put her hand on his forehead. “Maybe we should take him to the doctor.”
“Come off it, Cecily, he’s just got a cold. He’s tough, Cedric is, and a tiny sniffle isn’t nearly enough to take him to the doctor.”
Cedric sneezed again.
“Bless you!” I said.
“Caitlin, darling,” mum said, sitting next to dad, “you’ll be fine.”
I pouted. I really didn’t want to go to the doctor tomorrow. But I was fighting a losing battle.
“If the doctor accidentally stabs her,” Cedric started, “and her guts start spilling all over the place, can I have her bedroom?”
“Mum!” I exclaimed. “Dad! Make him stop!”
“This is the problems with having twins,” dad told mum. “They’re too competitive.”
“Am I going to die tomorrow?” I asked.
“Of course not!”
“And what if I do?”
“Well,” dad started, “then you’d better go have the best day of your life today.” He picked me up, and put me on the floor. “Take Ced with you.”
Cedric jumped off the sofa as well. He and I ran outside and went to the park across the street. Cedric and I always went to Cassiobury park to play.
Cedric was my favorite brother and my best friend in the world. Well, he was my only brother and my only friend in the world. But he and I were alike a lot. I guess that’s what you get when you’re born on the same day. He’s a lot of fun, and I like playing with him. He and I would have races, or see who could climb a tree the highest, or see who could stand on their hands the longest. I guess dad was right. I would always try to beat Ced in everything.
Mum and dad came to fetch us not too long after we went to the park.
“You’ve been out here for hours!” mum explained, but it felt like ten minutes. I could never keep a track of the time when I was with Cedric. We’d have too much fun.
So we went home. It was kind of dark, I suppose. Dad made us food: he made macaroni salad. It never really tasted great, but for some reason mum always acted like it was her favorite thing in the world. She even told me that it tasted a bit yucky. I don’t know why she pretends. I asked her, but she never told me. She’s kind of funny, I guess
Dad has always been my favorite in the family. Next to Cedric, of course. He always talked to me and always played with me. Except for when he was working. He didn’t work too much, though, but when he did, it was like he was in a different world. Like when I had my singing performance at my school. All the parents of all the first grade students were there, and for me and Ced, only mum was there. I told mum to call him, I even cried, but she still didn’t because she said he was busy and shouldn’t be disturbed. I didn’t get why she couldn’t at least call him. It’s not like he disappeared off the face of the earth or anything.
Before long, mum was putting Cedric to sleep, and dad was putting me to sleep. I wasn’t very tired, though. I was too nervous about tomorrow. What if Cedric was right, and my guts did spill everywhere all over the doctor’s floor? Just the thought of it made my tummy wiggle.
“Pst!” I heard Cedric’s voice as he opened my door about an inch. “Caitlin! Are you asleeping? Sleeping? Asleep?”
“Not anymore,” I whispered back, sitting up all the way, listening to my brother come in as he slowly and quietly shut the door behind him as to not notify our parents that we were both awake.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Me, neither.”
Cedric sat down by my feet on the bed. “D’you wanna hear a story?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“Umm…” Cedric started to think. He would always do this. He came up with stories on the spot. He’d just sit there, and start imagining things, and then he’d start to tell a story. I guess he had a knack for that. I always figured he should be a story teller when he grows up.
“Okay, I got one,” he said. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She had to go to the doctor to get a couple of shots.”
“Oh, no, please!” I said, covering half of my face with my blanket, curling my knees up to my chest. “I don’t want to hear about the doctor or shots! I’m really scared for tomorrow! Tell me something else!”
“Fine,” Cedric said. He got up, picked up the stuffed unicorn that was sitting on my bookshelf, and sat back down on the bed. “Once upon a time, there was a unicorn,” he started.
“I already like this one better.”
“The unicorn’s name was… Albert.”
“A guy unicorn?”
“Fine! The unicorn’s name was… Jennifer.”
“Oooh!”
“Jennifer climbed up a rainbow… and jumped through a big hole in the sky! She kept climbing the rainbow until she realized that she was in outer space!”
“But how can she breathe if there’s no air in space?”
“She has a space suit.”
“I didn’t know they made space suits for unicorns.”
“In my world they do!”
“I want to go to space!”
“Me, too! Space is so cool! There’s like stars, and planets, and all this neat stuff out there. I’m going to go to the moon some day.”
“I bet you I’ll go to the moon first!”
“Nuh uh!”
“Ya huh!”
Footsteps creaked down the hallway towards my room.
“Uh oh!” Cedric said, but it was already too late.
“What are you doing?” dad said. “I thought we put you two to bed.”
“But I couldn’t sleep!” Cedric whined.
“And I want to hear about Jennifer!”
“Jennifer?”
“The unicorn! She’s in outer space! And she can breathe because she has a space suit! Isn’t that so cool?”
I thought that Cedric was expecting dad to get mad, but he simply laughed instead. He picked up Cedric, sat down on the bed, and placed him on his lap.
“I want to hear about Jennifer, too. But only if you promise to go to sleep right after the story is over.”
Cedric nodded. Because of this, he made sure Jennifer’s story went on for as long as possible. He’d talk about her many adventures in outer space, visiting made up planets and meeting strange people and aliens. Jennifer’s story became an epic tale of epic epicness, and when it became much too late, dad said Jennifer had to land back on Earth because her parents were missing her, and she had to get back to her family.
“I’m sure Jennifer had a great time in outer space,” dad said, tucking me into bed again. “But I bet she’s really tired.”
I yawned. I was tired. “G’night, daddy. G’night, Cedric.”
“G’night, Caitlin,” they both said at the same time, and then they left the room.
The next day at breakfast, I was even more nervous than ever. The idea of getting shots loomed over me like a great big shadow in the night. I begged mum to let me stay home. Especially because dad said he had some very important business to attend to for work, and so he couldn’t come with me. Cedric was sick, and he was fast asleep still because he had been up so late the previous night.
Mum forced me to go, though. She picked me up and put me in the car seat and strapped me in tight.
“But I don’t wanna!” I kicked and screamed.
“Come on, darling,” she said, stopping the car into a parking spot near the hospital building. “Just a pinch, just a pinch.”
We went into the doctor’s office, and it was more than just a pinch. It was like someone was ripping my arm off! Well, maybe not that bad, but definitely worse than a pinch.
“Mummy, my arm hurts!” I screamed as she put me back into the car seat.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes it does!” I lied. “OW! STOP!”
“Calm down, Caitlin!”
“MUM!”
She began to drive us back home. I realized as we were approaching our neighborhood that there was a distinct odor in the air. Like someone had burned a baking cookie in a huge oven for way too long. And then it began to smell less and less like the cookie, and more and more like the burning of a huge oven.
And then there was smoke in the air. Someone had definitely left the oven on for way too long!
“Ooooh!” I said in awe as I saw the fire. It was pretty, red and warm as it blazed on and on and engulfed everything under it. I could barely pay attention to my mother’s screams as I was thoroughly distracted of the beauty of our blazing house.