Editing Eldramin (section)

== Chapter 20 ==
''Faith''

I tapped my pen against my desk in rhythm with the song stuck in my head. This was boring. My plan had been to get all my summer reading done within the first week of vacation; that way, I could have the rest of it free. But my plan was being messed up by how painfully dull the assigned books were. 

I shoved away from my desk, letting my chair roll me over to my bed, which I promptly flopped down on. The early afternoon light beat into my eyes and my room, making it seem like it was burning, but I knew we set the thermostat at 75. I rolled onto my back and stared at the white ceiling. Old glow-in-the-dark stars still clung to it, faithfully glowing green every night. I wondered how long it would take them to lose their stick and fall down. We had put them up nearly 10 years ago right after buying our house in a Chicago suburb when I was 4. 

Grabbing a stuffed animal, I shoved it under my head as a pillow. There wasn’t much to do over the summer when you didn’t have any friends in the area. All of mine had moved at the end of 8th grade, leaving me to face my first year of high school alone as the youngest in the building. I was several grades ahead of most people my age, which never helped with social relations. I technically had my brother Jayson in the building, but he was a school favorite and had far too many friends for me to be willing to interact in his friend groups. 

It’s not like he was exclusive or thought it was weird to have his little sister only a year behind him in school while being three years younger–he thought the opposite, really. But I didn’t want to bother him, so I just kept to myself. 

A high-pitched alarm pulled me from my thoughts. I could hear someone yelling downstairs. I had a feeling I knew what was happening. 

Throwing my improvised pillow onto my bed, I jogged over to my door. The stuffed animal frog bounced on my bed happily as smoke filtered into my room. ''Oh, gosh.'' 

My feet thundered on the stairs as I moved to the bottom floor as quickly as possible. The smoke was thicker down here, and the smoke detector  was blaring. I squinted my eyes and made my way through the living room, coughing as I turned the corner into the dining room. 

Ducking my head to see in between the cupboard and the counter, I saw flames coming out of a cabinet. I walked around into the kitchen to find my mother frantically trying to use a fire extinguisher on our bonfire of a microwave. The foam refused to come out of the cylinder. 

When she caught sight of me, her eyes lit up. “Faith! Here, hold this.” She handed me the fire extinguisher and took a step back from the flames. Extending her hands, iridescent blue light filtered from her open palm and enveloped the fire, hardening until it looked like glass. The force field stopped the fire from receiving any more oxygen and the flames flickered out. 

Mom sighed contentedly and put her hands on her hips, releasing the magic. It wasn’t unusual for her to have to use magic to fix some disaster in the house, but she normally made sure the neighbors stood no chance of seeing it. A family of Eldran from a different solar system living in suburban Illinois wouldn’t really pass well with anyone. 

“This is why Dad cooks.” I nodded. I couldn’t think of a single time my mother had cooked and not set something on fire or given us food poisoning. 

“What were you trying to make?” Mom pulled out her phone from her back pocket and opened it to a recipe. 

“It says it’s a recipe for microwave brownies, but it didn’t quite work out.” ''Well, if you tried to make it, it’s bound to be a recipe for disaster.'' She sighed and put her phone on the now scorched counter. The smoke detector  was still panicking, reminding us that the house nearly burnt down. 

I put the fire extinguisher away in the pantry where we kept it. “Do you know how to turn that off?” I asked, referring to the smoke detector . Mom shook her head. “...okay, I’ll call Dad.” My Dad and Jay were out on a “boys' day”, meaning deep-dish pizza and some overstimulating action movie that would have Dad asleep in minutes. The movie was supposed to be over by now, though, so I doubted I would be bothering him. 

I jogged up the stairs again to my room. Snatching my phone off of my desk, I called my dad. Jayson answered. 

“Everything you say can and will be used against you to the full extent of the law.” I could hear the car engine in the background. Jay took a loud slurp of some drink. “What doth the Faithster require?”

“Mom set the microwave on fire.” He audibly choked and started coughing. Dad asked him what had happened. I distantly heard a “mom tried to burn the house down again” before my dad snatched the phone. 

Amusement nearly overpowered the concern in his voice as he asked, “Faith, what happened?” I retold the tale of the explosive brownies. 

“Oh, also, we don’t know how to turn off the smoke detector .” He sighed and let me know that they were almost home. 

I hung up and hopped back downstairs. Mom had all the windows open and was trying to fan out the smoke using cookie sheets. It wasn’t working very well. I joined her in the kitchen but didn’t pick up a pan but rather inspected the damage to the microwave. It didn’t look horrible, but I wasn’t sure if it would work again. 

The door on the opposite side of the house opened and swung shut after two pairs of feet entered the house.

“Knock knoc- oh my word, why is the house full of smoke?” Mom and I poked our heads around the corner to see who had just entered the house. Eli and Via stood in our entryway, trying to fan the smoke out of their faces and occasionally coughing. 

I was about to run over to them when I realized my mom was acting weird. Via and Eli lived 45 minutes away in Chicago, and it was a rare–and normally happy– event when we did see them. But the only thing I'd seen on my mother's face was thinly masked dread. 

Unnerved by this reaction and a little confused, I eventually went over and hugged the two. 

"Mom tried to cook and set the microwave on fire, but it's fine now." The look of alarm that came over both of their faces was incredibly amusing and it took quite a lot of restraint to not burst out laughing. 

I noticed a small motion from Via as she grabbed my brother's hand, gave it a little squeeze, and lightly pushed him towards my mom. Eli paused and glanced back at her again. Via gave him a reassuring smile and nodded her head toward Mom again. 

Eli took a deep breath and walked over to Mom, disappearing into the kitchen with her. This was weird. 

Via turned to me, a small smile still on her face. "So, Faith, what have you been doing in recent days?" Her English was heavily accented and a bit overly formal, but still understandable. 

I let out a little puff of air and tried to take my mind away from whatever was happening in the kitchen. "Uhm, not much, I'm on break so that's nice but I don't have much to do…" I trailed off as the familiar sound of our car engine pulled into the driveway. "Oh, that should be Dad and Jayson." It's not like I was trying to end my conversation with Via, I thought she was great, our whole family had liked her from the moment Eli brought her home the first time, and we were all overjoyed when they got married last year, but I was a little too distracted to hold a conversation. 

The back door swung open, leaving the sound of springs rattling as Jay's footsteps thundered in from the kitchen. My two brothers had a very loud reunion in the kitchen before making their way back into the living room. Mom and Dad followed them in, Mom looking nearly sick and Dad looking nervous. Something was up. 

Dad asked us all to sit down. That meant something was really wrong. Just having the four of us who regularly lived together sit down meant something big had happened, but having our whole family do it? We hadn't had something like this since Eli and Via got engaged, and by the looks on the adults' faces, whatever had caused this meeting to happen wasn't a good thing. 

Rubbing his hands together, Eli started. "So, we've told Mom and Dad a little bit of what this is about, but you two," referring to me and Jayson, "probably don't know what's happening. It's about Izzy." 

I instinctively glanced at the one picture we had of her out. An old family photo that sat on the piano. I was only a few months old, but she was seven. She had looked a but like me I guess, the same hazel eyes and smattering of freckles on pale skin, the only noticeable difference that I could see was our hair. While my late sister had dark blonde hair, mine was a dark brown. 

Turning back to the conversation, I registered why my parents had looked so freaked out. My older sister, Isabell, had been killed 13 years ago in the crossfire of a rescue attempt to save her after some crazy leader on our home planet had kidnapped. No one ever talked about her, so it would be a shock to my parents if something about her had come up that merited this kind of meeting. 

Via continued the explanation, switching into Eldran instead of using her broken English. It still wasn't her native language, but it was far more understandable. Thankfully, our family had a bizarre thing where we would learn a new language every month, so I understood her just fine. 

"I probably should have told you all sooner, but Eli and I agreed that it would be safest for all involved to wait for the right time to tell you." She looked down and sighed before raising her head and continuing. "Your oldest daughter is still alive." 

Dad jerked forward in surprise. The rest of us just froze. Silence fell over the room and then seemed to explode all at once. 

“What?!” “That’s not possible, the video-” “Why didn’t you tell us before?” “Is she safe?” 

Via folded in on herself as the volume rose and questions got harsher. 

Eli stood up suddenly and shouted, “Okay, enough!” We all stopped talking and looked at him. “Listen, the only way to keep Izzy safe was by keeping this a secret.” 

“Then why tell us now?” Dad interrupted him before he could continue. “You wait for thirteen years and now decide to say something? ''Why?''”

My oldest brother folded his arms and sighed. “Because she knows now.”