"NOOOOO!"

"Muahahhaha! Yesssss!"

"... B-bu-but-but... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"

Ah, yes. Tradiotional Friday Night Monopoly games at my house.

"But, Lorraaaaaine, I called the boardwalk. When I call it in advance, you can't buy it! It's the rules!"

"Oh, yeah? Show me where it says that, Dom."

"Fine, I will."

Fumble, fumble, grunt, click of a pen, scribbling.

"See? It says right here, right on the instructions themselves. 'When Dom requests in advance that he plans to buy the Boardwalk, all other players, including Lorraine, must submit.' Here: visual proof."

"DOMINICK! You fucking vandalized the Monopoly instructions?!?!?!" comes Jack's voice from the kitchen.

"Ewww, don't call me that, Giacomo," sneers Dom, making scratch marks with the blue ink on his palm.

"Oh, what, you mean 'Dominick?'" asks Briel, sticking her hand in his curly, dirty-blonde, shoulder-length hair and ruffling it.

"Ew, Rainie, make her stop!" he whines, blindly swatting at Briel.

'Sup. My name is Lorraine Giaccobe. Repeat after me: luh-RAIN jah-KO-bee. Not jee-uh-COB. You have no clue how many times I've gotten that. Not that I can really blame you guys. But anyway.

I'm 16, and I'm a South Jersey girl. That guy in the kitchen is my brother, Giacomo. Everyone calls him Jack, though. (Yeah, my family embraces its Italian heritage... for the most part. I'm the only one in the family without an Italian name. Gee, thanks, mom and dad.) Jack's a freshman at Brown, and he's home for the summer.

See that idiot over there getting his beloved hair messed up? That's Dominick Vasser, aka Dom. He has the worst possible case of Peter Pan Syndrome. I swear, he's a two-year-old stuck in a 6'2 seventeen-year-old's body, and everybody loves it that way. He has been my best friend since foreverrrrrrr. I know him better than anybody else, and vice-versa.

The hair-messer-upper is his twin sister Briel. Although she and Dom are fraternal twins, they still look exactly alike. Except Bri has blonder hair and is three inches shorter. Not that it matters, seeing as she is still colossally tall.

And the kid with the mohawk sitting next to Bri over there is their fourteen-year-old brother, Nathan. He thinks he's immortal. Their parents, Russ and Annette, and my parents have been best friends since high school, so the Vassers practically live here. I mean, they come over at 5:30 in the morning before school, go to school with me, come home with me, and leave at 9:30. So they basically just use their house to sleep. Russ and Annette are pretty much attached at the hips with my parents, too, so it all works out. I'm surprised they don't get tired of each other. It's impossible for the kids to get bored of eachother, though. Need proof? Just take a look around.

But anyways. Welcome to the my home.