Starting Point

See the window on the left?  That's where you live.  You notice the light come in as you get ready in the mornings, you notice the sounds of the city and signs of life in the street below, but you never notice what is going on in the window across from you, until today.

Who or what got your attention?  Are they trying to tell you something? Are they cute? What are they doing?  Should you respond? Should you close the curtains? Should you throw something over?  Should you call the cops?  What happens next?

Use this starting point to create a short story and earn at least 2 PUBLISHER POINTS.  This is the last opportunity before the Publisher of the Month is announced at the YA Council meeting.  Email your story to wcpldteen@gmail.com

Chapter 4 from Rebels with Guts Part One, The Fall of Nations by Skylar

Chapter Four, The Big Pink Bubble

(Beth) May 9th, 2065

I was falling, gathering speed. Things around me were exploding. I was praying I'd die on impact, and not from being blown up. I was about to hit the ground, but I didn't. I looked around confused and realized I was in a big pink bubble which was slowly movie upward. 

  "What the heck! Am I in The Wizard of Oz?" I said feeling around the bubble. "Nope not  The Wizard of Oz, Chicago doesn't get blown up in that movie." That's when it hit me, all I'd ever known was gone. 

  I sat down in the bubble and waited to see what'd happen. I was heart broken. Would I ever see James and Rosie again? And where was this weird bubble thing going? 

  All of a sudden I felt like I hadn't slept in years, and I could scarcely keep my eyes open. The bubble floated through the open sky for what felt like years, and I began to drift off into a fitful sleep, where my dreams were haunted by the nightmares of what just happened. 

  I was brought back to my senses by the bubble unexpectedly dropping an immense amount very quickly. It was gathering speed falling towards the ground. I braced myself for the worst for the second time today. But just as the bubble was about to hit the ground it stopped. I looked down, and discovered the bubble was just inches from the ground. 

  "That was not what I was expecting!" I said, in amazement.

  Then the bubble popped. I fell feet first hard into the ground. I must have twisted my right ankle because the minute my weight came on it, it gave out on me. I crumpled to the ground pain shooting through my right ankle. I let out a cry of pain.

  Then all at once people came out of no where it seemed. As I looked at them I realized to my surprise they weren't people; they were monsters. There were living skeletons, vampires, werewolves, a witch, goblins, trolls, and sirens. 

  "What the heck! Am I having some kind of crazy nightmare?!"

  "Do not be alarmed, I am Bob. You are safe now." A skeleton said, walking up to me.

   I screamed, "Your a talking skeleton! Get away from me!" 

   "It's alright there's nothing to fear here." He said, walking closer to me and stretching out his hand to help me up. 

   As soon as he was close enough I punched him in the face. 

  "Ow!" He exclaimed, putting his hands on his face.

    I shook out the hand I'd punched him with. His face was as hard as bone; oh wait it was.

   "Told you she was a feisty one!" A vampire standing a few feet away said, putting her hands on her hips.

   "Shut up Daisy! Let Bob handle this!" A werewolf behind her said.

   The skeleton who from the sound of it was named Bob tried again with a new set determination, "I can tell your a no nonsense kind of girl; so instead of trying to calm you done I'll get right to the point!" He snarled clacking his teeth together. "You possess great power, magical power. This power is powerful enough that if used properly it could take down Killian and his army. We would like you to become our leader so that we can destroy Killian's army and eventually him." 

  He finished, and I could practically feel all their eyes on me.

  "You're expecting me to believe I have magical powers, and I should become the leader of this crazy monster army of yours? You're delusional!" I shouted, "And if his army is a bunch of humans and your undead wouldn't the odds of winning be in your favor anyway?" 

  "They're monsters to!" Bob shouted after me as I began to walk away. I didn't stop.

  "Please I know it's hard to understand now, but where will you go if you don't come with us? We know about the bombing; you have no one left!" The vampire named Daisy shouted after me.

  I stopped, feeling as if I'd just hit a brick wall. She was right; I had nowhere to go. I turned around, and said, "You have ten minutes to prove to me that I should stay."

Chapter 3 from Rebels with Guts, Part One, The Fall of Nations by Skylar

Chapter Three, To Top Off the Worst Day of my Life, I Fall into a Pit

(James) May 9th, 2065

    I stepped into the helicopter, my legs giving way as I fell on to the vacant seat. 

  The helicopter pilot looked at me and said, "Where's your lady friend?" 

  I wished that I was invisible as everyone in the plane turn towards me. I took a shaky breath then said, "Dead," in a weak, defeated, sorrowful voice.

   "Oh" the pilot turned away, as if he was embarrassed that he had made me upset.  

  I put my head in my hands and began sobbing. I then felt what appeared to be small fists punching my back. I suddenly remembered Beth little sister Rosie was in my backpack. "Oops" I said weakly. I unzipped my bag and her little face popped out; the women next to me gasped. 

   "Where's my sister Beth's boyfriend she's not aloud to have. I couldn't see her hands, but I could tell she'd put them. On her hips. 

  Taking another shaky breath I said, "I know this is the last thing you want to here Rosie, but your sister is dead." 

  She burst into tears. A few people tried to comfort her, but it was no use, she wouldn't stop crying. 

   About thirty minutes later the pilot turned to us and said, "I'm going to drop you kids off just up here there's a little help center for kids who have become orphans about a mile away; they'll be able to find you good homes."

  A few minutes past then we landed and he told me and Rosie to get out. I walked unsteadily out of the helicopter and it took off again. Leaving me and Rosie in the middle of a deserted desert landscape about a mile from where he told us to go.

   I started walking figuring I'd find it eventually. After about three hours of walking around in what was most likely circles I sat down on a rock Rosie right next to me. Then I heard a rumbling and the ground under me and Rosie gave way, and I fell about about 10 feet into a dark pit. I hit the stone floor butt first. I moaned in pain, curling up into a ball. Then Rosie fell on top of me. 

  I screamed in pain and an alarm went off. A loud female voice said, "Intruder alert intruders put your hands in the air or you will be shot."

   I instinctively put my hands in the air. Rosie did the same, crying in terror.

  A teenaged girl with purple and pink hair who was beautiful in a weird and somewhat alarming way walked up to us followed by eleven other beautiful, but somewhat quirky teenaged girls. All of them with hand guns pointed at my head.

  "Welcome to Rebels With Guts, I'm Pinky. Do not be alarmed." 

  I fainted.

Chapter 2 from Rebels with Guts Part One, The Fall of Nations by Skylar

Chapter Two, My First Kiss

(James) May 9th, 2065

  I walked home from the Library with my new computer code cracking book under my arm. I had jitters all over because I had promised myself the next time I saw Beth May the cute, nice girl from school I'd tell her I loved her.  But I'd been telling myself this for years and every time my nerves got the best of me. 

  My reminiscing on my dismal thought was interrupted by the earth violently shaking under me. I was nocked off my feet; I fell like a ton of bricks onto my back. I lay sprawled on the ground near the street sign for Eljen and Creston roads as the ground continued to shake. 

  My book had skidded across the pavement and lay on its side in a large pot hole. I was about to attempt to get up when I saw a car heading straight for me. Shaken violently by the earthquake the car skidded along. The driver a beautiful teenaged girl tried frantically to regain control of the car.

  I braced myself for the worst, praying a little prayer. "Please don't make this hurt a lot." 

  Then a miracle happened; just before the car was going to hit me the driver slammed the brakes and the car stopped with its front bumper inches from my head. 

   The driver threw the door open and ran towards me, "OH MY GOSH! JAMES!? Are you okay?!" She said leaning down over me. I realized with a lurch that the girl was Beth May!

  "BETH!? Oh no! Not now I was supposed to be acting cool not lying on the ground! Oh this is all wrong!" I moaned looking up at her.

  "What's wrong? And why oh no?" She said in a mix between compassion and annoyance.

 "Oh alright I guess it's worth a shot," I took a deep breath,"Beth May I know I might be last guy you'd ever want to be with, but I love you." I said looking up at her.

   What happened next I totally hadn't expected she put her hands on the back of my neck leaned down and kissed me full on the lips. The kiss lasted about ten seconds and those were the best ten seconds of my life. 

   As she pulled away and helped me up, a building behind us exploded. I grabbed Beth and pushed her behind a dumpster.

  "Are you okay?!" I asked wondering if I had hearts in my eyes? "Your a great kisser!" I added sheepishly.

  She playfully slapped me, then added "I know." 

   "But what's going on? Why are there suddenly a bunch of earthquakes and explosions?!" She asked peering out from behind the dumpster. 

  "I think the answer to your question is up there." I pointed up at the sky.

  In the sky there was an airplane dropping bombs; farther in the distance were more bombers.

  "Oh my gosh we're being bombed!" She gasped looking up. "Should we run? We need to find cover!" She said all in a jumble.

   "Okay." I said. 

   Suddenly I heard a child scream and a little girl with her brown hair in two little pigtails and piercing blue eyes, who slightly resembled Beth came running out from behind a wall as a bomb exploded near the spot she'd just been at!

  "Rosie! Over here!" Beth shouted standing up and waving her arms. The little girl ran towards them and fell crying into her arms.

  "Beth! They blew up are house," She moaned her face buried in Beth's white blouse. 

   "Oh my gosh! Beth gasped.

   "I'm scared Beth!"

   "Don't worry me and James will protect you." Beth said reassuringly 

   "Who's James?" Rosie asked sniffling.

    "James this is Rosie my little sister; Rosie this is my new boyfriend James." Beth said giving me a squeeze.

  Inside my head; "oh my gosh! Oh MY Gosh! OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!She called me her BOYFRIEND!!!!!!"

On the outside; I have a weak smile on my face and I shake Rosie's little hand.

  "I thought Mommy said you weren't aloud to have a boyfriend till you were 18?" Rosie said questioningly.

   "Sweetie who says she had to know, and it's not like he's my first boyfriend." She said. I felt as though she had just stabbed me. I mean I know she'd obviously had boyfriends before me, but was I just a toy to her?! Would she play with me then cast me aside and find someone better?!

  I cast this aside, a bomb had nearly blown up Beth's little sister and I was worried about how devoted she was to me what kind of loony was I?!

   "Beth we need to find a bomb shelter or something!" I shouted as another bomb went off not to far from us. 

  "There's a bomb shelter under the middle school!" She shouted back sheltering Rosie from the falling debris. 

  "How do we get there?" I asked.

   "There's a man hole in the football locker room that's right above it, but we need to be really careful the school might get bombed!" Beth said grabbing the lids of the garbage cans we were hiding behind. "We can use these to cover are heads from falling debris. 

   "Okay there are only two how will we protect Rosie?" I asked plugging my ears to keep out the screams of people a few blocks away were another bomb had just gone off.

  At this Beth took her back pack off her back and dumped out the content. An assortment of book, pencils, pens, pieces of paper, and other school related things went tumbling onto the ground. "It's not like I'll need this stuff if there's no school left to go to." She said in a very matter of fact tone.

  She looked down at the pile and retrieved a few things a small book with the word diary on the cover of it and a few pieces of paper one of which had the words: will always love you my sweet little girl, love, Dad. On it. She stuffed the papers in her pocket and then she turned to me and said, "Can you put this in your bags it's important to me?" 

  "Sure," I took the small book and placed it in my backpack. "Who's your dad anyway you never talk about him?" I asked remember the piece of paper I'd got a glimpse of.

  "You wouldn't know him, he's dead." She said, looking as though she wanted to cry.

   "Never mind, let's just get to the bomb shelter." I said, afraid I'd upset her.

  "Right!" Beth said, regaining her composure.

    We ran like there was no tomorrow praying we wouldn't die. Rosie was tucked away in Beth's now empty backpack because she thought that would be a safe enough place to keep her since she couldn't run as fast as us.

  Over are heads I saw a chopper with a spotlight surveying the debris for trapped citizens. Then it's spotlight fell on us; I was blinded by the extremely bright light. 

   I loud clear voice said, "young citizens we will be dropping a rope ladder, please climb it and get in the chopper. We will take you to safety." 

  A long rope ladder unrolled from the chopper. The end of it hit the ground about a yard from me Beth and Rosie.

  "Come on James!" Beth said, grabbing my hand.

   We ran as fast as we could things erupting around us every few seconds. 

   "You first," I said gesturing to the ladder. 

   "No I have Rosie, she'll slow me down." She said.

   "Give me her." I said holding out my hands.

   She gave me a look that said 'I hope you know what your doing.' Then handed me the backpack that Rosie was stuffed in. I slung it over my back and began to climb the rope ladder as fast as I could. It was a very hard climb considering the rope ladder was very flimsy and it was very windy. Ash flew into my eyes as I climbed Beth close behind me.

   Suddenly the ladder shook violently. Beth shrieked from below me.  

"Beth whats wrong?' I asked looking down at her. Beth was hanging on to the remaining part of a half severed rope which was the remains of what used to be the bottom of the rope ladder.

"Grab my hand!" I said holding my hand out to her. She grabbed for it, but her hand slipped through my fingers, She fell as the last bit of the rope snapped. She fell about 40 stories down to the ground. The ground around where she fell exploded, and I knew she was dead.

"No! Beth! You can't be dead! No!" I moaned and shouted the whole way up the rest of the ladder because I knew the only girl I'd ever loved was dead.

Chapter 1 from Rebels with Guts Part One, The Fall of Nations by Skylar

You don't know how brave You are until being brave is the only option.

Chapter One, The Fall

(Pinky) May 9th, 2065

  I was sharpening my sharp edged dagger when the alarms sounded and are TV switched on. On the screen I saw a reporter screaming, "Chicago is under attack! I repeat we are being bombed! Chicago is down!" As soon as the words had left her mouth an explosion behind her blew her off her feet and the camera went black. 

   The screen changed to a view of explosions in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Orlando, and Washington D.C. All of them looked awful and totally devastating, but on the screen showing Chicago I saw a strange but heart warming thing. Through all the explosions I saw a boy who looked to be about 16 with messy brown hair and a beautiful girl who looked around the same age as him with long, gorgeous straight dark hair Kissing! Their world was exploding around them and they were kissing of all things! 

  "What weirdos!" I said shaking my head. "Right, this has to be Killian's doing; let's get to work girls."

Starting Point

Use the few sentence below as the starting point to a short story in order to receive at least 2 PUBLISHER POINTS! Remember, plot consists of a beginning (establish the who, what, where, when, and why), a climax (establish the height of drama in the story over one or many events) and an ending (conclude with a resolution).

This concert is amazing. I never thought I would actually get first row tickets to see (insert band name here) live! I'm glad the show is outside because this amount of people indoors would get really hot really fast. The band just started to play my favorite song when all of a sudden, the power went out and a blinding light shone on us from the sky.

Happy writing!

Excerpt from Kelise's Beginning (Part 3) by Kelsey

“You’re the first person who’s been able to answer that question correctly. Most of the humans that we’ve asked that question guessed that they were our dinner; one person thought the humans were cannibals.” He said. 

“You’re never going to let me forget that are you? For goodness sakes, I was nine!” the woman in blue blurted.

“You pointed yourself out, I wasn’t going to say whom thought that, Gracell.” “You thought Silver was a cannibal!” The woman in red laughed.

“Shut up.” Gracell said. 

Hornagal turned back to me. “Indeed, we are the Circle of Dragons and Rider. Our job is to rule and police the Dragon Kingdom. Now, can you guess why you are here?” 

“Well, I’m noticing that you’re the only dragon without a person in front of them. That doesn’t mean that the person isn’t absent, but…oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” 

“Yes?” 

“This will probably be really embarrassing if I’m wrong, but…am I here because you want me to be your rider?” 

“Another correct answer.” Hornagal said. He glanced over at the nasty looking woman. “I don’t know how you could possibly have thought this girl was stupid; I recall that even you didn’t answer those questions correctly.” 

The black dragon laughed, and the nasty-looking rider made an exasperated gesture. Hornagal turned back to me. 

“What do you think? Would you like to become a dragon rider?” 

“I’ve always dreamed of becoming a dragon rider, but…I’m not sure. I don’t know anything about you guys. I don’t want to leave my family. I didn’t even know this place existed until twenty minutes ago!” 

“These are good things to consider. I can tell you that you do not have to leave your family. It might be difficult for me to explain about us with words. I think I know how to help you though.” 

His forehead touched my forehead, and a rush of images rushed through my mind. I was in a cave, for some reason, sitting in an eggshell. An excited, black dragon was peering closely at me; a gold dragon that looked a lot like Hornagal, only bigger, and possibly older, was looking down at me with pride. 

The images changed to the two young dragons that I could now clearly tell were Hornagal and the black dragon with the nasty rider. 

“Race you to the cave!” The black dragon called. He leapt into the air. 

The young version of Hornagal called, chasing after him (desperately flapping his wings): “Hey, that’s not fair, Venom, I can’t fly yet!” 

The image changed again: I was surrounded by the dragons that were with me in reality. The only difference was that they were much younger; the green dragon looked like barely more than a baby (Was that what baby dragons looked like?). The young dragons and I seemed to be playing a game of questions. 

Many images flashed through my mind: I was arguing with the black dragon called Venom; I was in some kind of ceremony; I was flying; I was watching the riders that were here appear before the group in turn–

I snapped back to reality. I stumbled away from Hornagal and tripped over my own feet. I fell to the ground. I looked around, feeling slightly disoriented. 

“What the dragon fire did you do to her, Hornagal?!” The aqua dragon said, sounding slightly startled.

“I gave her some of my memories.” Hornagal said. 

The red haired woman looked alarmed. “Hornagal, you’re thirty-six hundred years old, at least; she’s fifteen! She couldn’t handle very many of your memories!” 

“I’m not stupid, Charlie. I didn’t give her any more than she could handle.” The rider named Charlie gave him a look. “Are you all right, Kelise?” Hornagal asked. 

“I–I’m fine, just a bit shaken. That was weird.” 

“But you are all right?” 

“Yes, I’m fine.” 

“I’m just trying to help her, Charlie.” 

“Fine, fine, if she’s all right.” 

I sorted through the new images in my mind. There were many more than what I just described, but it would take hours to describe them all. To make my decision, I muttered a prayer to God asking what I should do. 

I knew what my decision had to be. 

“Have you decided?” Hornagal asked. 

“Yes, I’ll become your rider.” 

“Excellent! Does everyone else agree?” 

All the others murmured in consent.

Hornagal turned to the group of men in the raised benches. “Does the council have any objections?” he asked.

Some of the councilmen (I guess that was what they were) shook there heads or muttered things I couldn’t hear. A couple of the men looked like they had fallen asleep.

“No objections? Very, well.”

Hornagal leaned closer to me and said quietly: “Are you 100% certain about this? It can’t be undone.” 

“More along the range of ninety percent, but I’m positive that I’m supposed to do this.” I replied. 

“All right then.” 

Hornagal puffed a cloud of golden smoke from his nostril, but it didn’t smell like smoke or dragon’s breath. His breath smelled like clementines and vanilla ice cream (what was the deal with that?). 

I suddenly felt very lightheaded. I lost consciousness. Again.