Started a looooong ago, and I only recently came back to it. I still like the concept of it, but the writing isn't great. If you guys like it, I'll put more of it up until I hit the last of it, and then I'll write more of it from there.

Sparkers and Extinguishers

Chapter 1

Kaylee

I was lost. I was lost in the slums of New York City. What a great ending to a great day. To start, it was my first day at a new school where nobody liked me, then back to my dad's house where my bitchy stepmother yelled at me for no reason, before my jerk stepbrother drove me to my swim meet, after which he decided to pull a prank on me and "forget" to pick me up at the pool, which happens to be very far away from my dad's house. Did I mention that my life sucks?

"Kaylee," said my stepmother when I called her to tell her about my being stranded, "Don't you have any brains at all? Just take the bus; you should know their schedules after being here a month!"

So I, being the idiot that I am, tried to find a bus stop. And now I'm lost in the slums of NYC. Nice.

I sighed and pulled out my cell, deciding to call my stepbrother, Tracy, and beg him for a ride. Of course, my phone was dead.

I walked up to a relatively un-creepy woman and asked her where the nearest bus stop was before realizing that she was a dude in drag. Also nice. He…she…it pointed me in the right direction and walked away, high heeled boots clicking. I walked for seven or eight more blocks before realizing that I probably wasn't even going in the right direction, and that even if I was, this was not the kind of place I wanted to be. The only signs that I could see were advertising creepy plays, nasty movies, dirty bars, and more of the same.

I looked around, desperate to find a phone. I had enough change for a phone call, but the only payphone I could see had a bunch of weirdoes hanging around it. I took a deep breath and walked towards them. They all looked at me expectantly, as if they though I was going to say something.

"Excuse me, but can I get to that phone?" I asked, erring on the side of politeness rather than risk getting them angry.

"Sure," smirked one creepy guy, "But there's a charge."

"Sorry, I don't have any money," I lied, crossing my arms tightly.

"Who said anything about money?" he leered.

"Screw off, jerk." said one of the rainbow haired tough-girls, slapping the creeper upside the head and gesturing to the booth, "Go on, kid."

"Uh, thanks," I said, stepping inside the booth.

I popped in a few quarters and dialed my dad's cell number. It rang, but he didn't pick up. I tried again, this time dialing Tracy's number. He picked up.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Hey, it's Kaylee. Could you please come get me?" I asked in a low voice.

"What, don't you like hanging around the pool?" he laughed.

"Please, Tracy, this isn't funny. I'm lost in the middle of nowhere and dad isn't answering his cell. Can you please come find me?" I begged.

"What? Why aren't you at the pool?"

"Your mother seemed to think that I would be able to find a bus stop, but I couldn't, so now I'm lost, alright?" I said, nervous.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but if you do my chores for a week I'll come get you."

"Fine! Just hurry!"

"Where are you?" he asked, sounding smug.

"I don't know! My phone died and there aren't any street signs anywhere!" I said, freaking out more and more.

"Chill, will ya'?" he sighed, "Is there anyone around you can ask?"

"Uh, hold on." I said, popping in a few more quarters, just to be safe before letting the phone drop and stepping out of the booth.

"Hey," I said, tapping the helpful tough-girl on the shoulder, "Do you know what street this is? It's really important."

"Sure, kid. This is North Elm Street." she said, looking at me like I was some sort of idiot for not knowing that.

I repeated the name to Tracy and he started laughing.

"What?" I asked.

"What the hell's a little prissy chick like you doing down there?" he laughed, "They'll eat you alive! Just stay put and I'll try to find you."

He hung up and I followed suit, not reassured in the least.

Now, since I'm sure that you're wondering what this is all about and who I am, I'll tell you. My name is Kaylee Tolman. I'm seventeen years old, 5'7'', 110lbs, and currently attending Preston Meadows High School in New York. Up until about a month ago I lived in Olympia, Washington with my mother, Regina Tristan, little sister, Katrina Tolman, and pet beta-fish, Ponyboy. My mother and father are divorced and have been since I was seven. My dad had an affair with a college "friend" and my mom dumped him like a sack of potatoes. She got the house and just about everything else, so my dad moved across the country with the mega-bitch (a.k.a., Tracy's mother) to live in New York.

Why did I move, you ask? Because my mom and little sister are dead. There was an accident, and I was the only one to come away alive, so dad ended up having to take me and Ponyboy in. My poor little beta-fish; he had to sit in my lap in a little plastic cup on the plane ride to New York. He's actually doing better than I am right now. I bought him a huge aquarium and a female beta-fish (the boys only attack other boys, so don't worry) and they're working on a fishy family.

I know, I know, you want me to stop talking about the stupid fish, right? Sorry, I just start to talk about Ponyboy when I'm upset, and talking about the accident makes me upset. He's red and yellow, by the way. His girlfriend, who I named Cherry, is tanish-brown.

Anyhoo, now I'm living in my dad's penthouse apartment with my dad, Dylan Tolman, step mother, Rika Tolman-Julliard, step-brother, Tracy Julliard, and, of course, Ponyboy, my faithful fishy. My dad's really secretive about his job, and won't tell me or Tracy what it is, though I suspect Rika knows. It must be really well paying, or he wouldn't be able to afford a penthouse. Rika's unemployed, but used to own a beauty parlor back in Washington. She seems to hate me for some unknown reason (though I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that, when I found out that she was sleeping with my dad, I freaked; I attacked her and gave her a lovely assortment of bruises.) She took on dad's name when she married him, but she wanted to keep her own, too.

Tracy, on the other hand, doesn't approve of his mother's decidedly "pathetic" actions and refused to change his last name at all. He doesn't even know who his dad is, which I can tell bothers him sometimes. He's an okay kid as far as New Yorker's go, but we don't get along really well, even though we're the same age. He looks at me as the prissy, pain in the neck bitch that I was when we first met, which was almost ten years ago. He's nice enough, but he likes to pull pranks on me when he's feeling crappy.

I probably should have guessed that he would do something like leaving me at the pool, since he had just had a fight with his bitch mother. I had only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough to make me pissed off. She had been telling him that he was just as big of a jerk as his father and that she wished that he had never been born, so I disrupted their fight, telling her that she shouldn't have fucked his dad in the first place and that she was a ho, while I dragged him out of the apartment and made him drive me to the pool. As I'm sure you can guess, it was a quiet ride.

Well, that's that. I'm not going to tell you what I look like other than that, so you'll have to figure it out for yourself as the story goes by.

So there I was, standing in the phone booth, knowing that I would have to get out of it so that he could find me, but not wanting to. I took a few steady breaths before going back out onto the sidewalk. I removed myself from the group of weirdoes, walked over to a bench, and sat down.

I had only been sitting there for about five minutes before a creepy old man in a trench coat sat down next to me and began to hum the "Time Warp" tune from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was really strange, so I slid over to the edge of the bench continued to scan the road for Tracy's blue Toyota.

"Do you know the Time Warp?" asked the guy, startling me.

"Um, I've heard of it, yeah." I said, not looking at him.

"It's just a jump to the left!" he yelled, scaring the crap out of me, "Right?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." I said.

"Dance with me!" he said, grinning and showing yellow teeth, "A jump to the left!"

"No; thank you, but no." I said, still not looking at him.

"Dance!" he commanded, standing up, "Dance now!"

He took a step towards me and I got up and ran away from him. He ran after me yelling something about how only aliens didn't dance the time warp. I ran through the group of weirdoes by the phone booth, hoping that they would stop him, but they didn't even slow him down, and one of the creepy guys copped a feel as I passed him.

The old guy was fast and caught up to me quite quickly, since I was tired out from the swim meet. He grabbed my arm and I screamed, kicking him in the lower genital region. He let go, but I must have missed the vitals or something, because he didn't go down. I turned into the alleyway to my left and started to run down it, breathing hard.

I heard gunshots and I thought that the guy was shooting at me. Then a pair of guys not much older than me turned into the alley from the other end and came running at me. One of them slammed into me we both went down hard. Another shot was fired and I heard the guy that I had run into scream. He started writhing like a mad thing and his buddy, who had been trying to help him up, recoiled with a look of terror on his face.

"Give them to me, Tanner!" the standing guy screamed, "He's coming!"

The writhing guy gripped my arm and stared at me with unseeing eyes.

"Revolution!" he choked, spitting blood, "Tell Tobias! Tolman's acting again! New bullets with hell-poison in them! Tell Tobias!"

With a shaking hand he pulled out a paper sack filled with something heavy and gave it to me. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he stopped moving. I started crying because I had never seen someone die before, and stuffed the bag in the pocket of my blue jeans.

When I looked up there was a man dressed all in white standing over me, pointing a handgun to my head.

I am aware of the improper use of commas, but I'm too lazy to fix it, so just ignore it, please.