Sweet Sixteen

That's right.

It's my birthday.

I'm sixteen.

You guys can party now.

Okay, seriously, today's my sweet sixteen! AND it's a Wednesday! So I guess you can guess what comes next right? A BIRTHDAY themed Writing Wednesday! \o/ Let's get this party started!

The prompt comes from the first line in Chapter One in my novel, The Lucky One: My sweet sixteen started off okay and went downhill from there.

Here we go!

...

My sweet sixteen started off okay and went downhill from there.

For one thing, it was sunny. Despite the fact that it was just kicking off the month of August, there is rarely any sun anywhere within a 500 mile radius of the city of Seattle. Most people may take that as a good sign, but in reality, it made me nervous.

I woke up early. The night before had been difficult-- not only was there a full moon out (I don't really sleep during full moons, for some strange reason), but I was way too excited about turning sixteen. That said, it really wasn't that surprising that the time was just barely past seven in the morning as I peered through bleary eyes at my clock.

Should I get up? I listened carefully, hoping for any noise that would indicate my parents were already awake (and hopefully setting up a surprise birthday party for me). Only silence reached my sensitive ears.

I sighed. There was no way I was getting back to sleep, but I did not want to get up now. It was way too early, and everybody was probably already asleep.

My stomach growled. That settled it, then. I had to get something to eat, or it would drive me crazy. With a huff I threw the covers off of me and climbed out of bed.

As I opened my door I noticed three things.

The first was that Mom's bedroom door was open, and the bed was empty. So was my brother's to the right of my room. And although I couldn't see into the bedrooms of my two toddler sisters from here, I could tell by the lack of noise that their rooms were vacant, too.

Second, the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up, my eyes widening, an odd fight-or-flight reaction I was unused to having as I looked around the house. Everything, from the bookcase to my right to the staircase railing, had been broken, strewn about, or shredded. My house looked like Wolverine had taken a buzzsaw and hacked everything to pieces.

And the last was that my cat, Stallworth (who is actually a girl but named after a boy), was sitting patiently at the foot of the staircase peering up at me with wide yellow eyes.

I suddenly decided that this was not going to be the best birthday ever like I'd originally thought.