Chapter 1: 27th July 1991, Saturday: Part 1

There was an eerie silence permeating the Linwood household as the sun slowly rose over the moors of Yorkshire. Everyone was fast asleep except for one young girl who was staring down the narrow gauntlet which was the upstairs hallway. This final and most difficult obstacle was the only thing separating her from victory.

Ellie's secret mission was temporarily put on hold as she evaluated the perilous terrain ahead, one wrong step could cost her everything. She only had to walk a few more yards to reach her goal but 6 years of experience living under the farmhouse-turn-mansion taught her that the floor ahead was not to be trifled with. Ellie's hazel eyes glanced at the grandfather clock at the end of the hallway and knew that when the big hand reached the small hand pointing at seven, her time was up. The hands were already starting to overlap so she mustered her courage, tightened the strap around her dressing gown, and took her first step forward.

Ellie carefully tip-toed left and right down the corridor like she was trying to avoid invisible boobytraps. She had mapped out every single floorboard which produced even the slightest creak and knew exactly where she could and couldn't step. Some of the gaps between the few silent floorboards meant that she had to occasionally perform small but highly risky leaps through the air whilst dispersing her weight perfectly on the landing.

Regardless of the nearly-impossible gymnastics the path demanded, Ellie pranced from one side of the hallway to the other like a tiny ballerina. She made it look effortless. Ellie had homed this skill originally to steal chocolate from the kitchen at night but her talent now had a new greater purpose. With her tongue sticking out in concentration and both feet now firmly planted on solid ground, Ellie finally arrived outside of her brother's bedroom door.

Now, all she had between her and victory was her brother's cursed doorknob. This was the part Ellie hated the most, there was nothing she could do except pray that the squeaky door gods were feeling generous today. The latch would always make the same clicking sound every time she opened it regardless of how fast or slowly she turned it, sometimes the volume varied but she hadn't yet found out why. The unpreventable clicking wouldn't have been so anxiety-inducing if it wasn't for the fact that her parents were sleeping in the bedroom opposite her brother's. She could even hear her father snoring at this very moment.

Ellie gripped the doorknob with both of her hands whilst repeating the same mantra 'you're going to be quiet this time' inside of her head. Part of her still wanted to withdraw but she knew that the risks were well worth the reward, she just had to be brave. Ellie reminded herself that she had opened this door multiple times before and hadn't been caught yet. Her track record was undoubtedly flawless.

Ellie thought optimistically, "why would today be any different?", as she turned the doorknob and felt the lock completely retract inside of the door.

She was greeted with the expected clicking sound but, to her horror, it was way louder than ever before. Ellie froze like a statue as one hundred per cent of her concentration was focused on the sound, or lack thereof, coming from her parent's bedroom. The house was completely silent, the only thing Ellie could hear was the sound of distant songbirds waking up. That meant only one thing, the snoring had stopped.

She intensely waited to hear the sound of a quilt being lifted or her father's voice, only then would she make a hasty retreat back to her bedroom and pretend this adventure never happened. Seconds felt like hours as the silence continued until Ellie was finally gifted with the sweet sound of snoring. She let out the breath she had been holding and wiped the sweat that had started to form on her brow.

"That was a close one", she thought to herself as she entered the room and gently closed the door behind her.

With her back against the door, Ellie had a glance around her brother's room and was instantly reminded of how incredibly boring he could be. All that excitement and adventure to make it here and this is what greeted her, the blandest bedroom in existence. Everything was either grey or brown, with not one single exception. Ellie remembered when her brother's room used to be one of the guest bedrooms, it was basically the same as it was now except with even less in it. He had insisted on taking out everything except the essentials, leaving the room practically empty. Now, there were no pictures on the walls or flowers on the window sill, even the small chandelier was taken down and replaced with a simple tan lamp shade.

All that was left was the single bed with a thin light-grey quilt, the tiny art-deco bedside table that was a present from her weird Uncle in South Africa, and an old oak wardrobe that used to be in her room before it was renovated a few years ago. Ellie would have guessed that this was what a prison cell looked like, just without the bars on the windows. She wouldn't be surprised if her brother suggested adding them as well to finish the depressing aesthetic. To be fair, it was her fault for unjustly getting her hopes up. It was unrealistic to imagine that the decor would magically change one day without her noticing. In the end, this mind-numbingly dull room flawlessly represented the person who resided in it.

Ellie's mother and father were not cruel or cheap people, far from it. This terrible bedroom, in Ellie's humble opinion, was solely created and maintained by her one-penny-short-of-a-pound brother. He liked the room the way it was, he honestly thought it was perfect. Ellie thought that boys were into 'cool' stuff like cars and guns, but not her brother. Ellie's mother had offered to paint his room any colour he liked, but he liked grey. Ellie's father had offered to buy him a bed in the shape of a rocket ship, but he prefered the old steel frame with the pointy edges.

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As a last resort, the whole family had walked around a massive furniture store for 2 hours only to have him turn his nose up at everything. Absolutely nothing interested him and it infuriated Ellie to no end. She originally had all these whimsical ideas about competing with him over who had the fancier bedroom. She could have easily blackmailed her parents into renovating her bedroom as well as his. Ultimately, Ellie could have gotten that four-poster princess bed she had spotted when they were shopping for his new bed. That ingenious plan went up in smoke the moment they left the store empty-handed. It was one thing for her brother not to want nice things, why did she have to suffer as well?

As Ellie's eyes wandered to the far corner of the room, opposite the bed, she saw the single exemption to her brother's extreme minimalism. There was one thing he asked to be added to his room and that was a desk. Not any old desk though, he made it very clear that he wanted a very large desk so he had plenty of space to work. Ellie's father jumped on this opportunity to donate his office desk to her brother which seemed like a very nice gesture at the time.

Her used-to-be father's desk was one of the fanciest things Ellie had ever seen, it was more of a piece of art than a workplace. The desk was beautifully hand-crafted out of walnut and rosewood and was decorated with highly detailed carvings. There were even 9 drawers with golden handles with individual locks and keys. It was most likely more expensive than everything in Ellie's room combined. It was fair to say that Ellie was a little jealous, why would her father give up such a nice desk to her brother when he could have just bought him a new, less fancy, one instead? Of course, everything started to make sense when a shiny brand-new desk arrived at the house. Ellie's mother was not happy at all when she found out how much it cost.

She didn't really care if her father wanted to treat himself, money was there to be spent after all, but Ellie felt like she was being left out. Where was her fancy new desk? She didn't have a desk, just a stupid old dressing table. Ellie could have gotten a desk back then if she had pushed for it hard enough but her brother's weird habits spoiled that option. She had foolishly assumed he wanted a desk to play video games on or to mess around with one of those new Macintosh computers but she couldn't have been more wrong.

If there was one thing her brother loved more than sucking the life out of a room, it was reading lots and lots of books. Right now there were two mountains of books littering his desk, the too-read and currently-reading piles. He would sit at the desk for hours slowly making his way through those huge piles by picking up a book from the left side, skimming through to the end, and placing it on the right side. Rinse and repeat, forever and ever and ever. Ellie had watched him perform this monotonous task for weeks and had started to wonder if he was even remembering what he had read.

"Surely it was impossible to read so much and remember it all, right?", she thought back then.

To test her hypophysis, Ellie had randomly picked out a book from the right pile and quizzed him on the content. To her surprise, he remembered everything as if he had just read it. She had told her parents about this and they were equally as shocked once they tested him themselves. Her father had compared him with someone called 'rain man', whoever that was. Apparently, her brother was really smart which probably explained why he got full marks on his SATs.

Instead of asking for toys or games, her brother just wanted a never-ending flow of books. He didn't even care about the subject matter, there was nothing he wouldn't read. Her father and mother were more than willing to indulge him which temporarily resulted in the right pile nearly blocking the entrance to his room. That was around the time when her father gave him another spare room to act as his personal library. Whereas Ellie had a room just for toys, her brother had one just for books. Her father really liked this side of her brother and said that he was 'destined to do great things' but her mother didn't fully agree.

Ellie's mother had told her that it wasn't normal for boys to act the way her brother does. Her mother called him special but not always in a good way, she even looked quite sad at times which Ellie didn't understand. The truth was, Ellie didn't really know her brother that well. He had only been living with them for just under a year.

He had been an orphan like her but wasn't able to find a family until her mother and father found him. Ellie didn't remember living at an orphanage but, according to her mother, they weren't nice places to live. That's why her mother thought he might be different from the other boys but Ellie knew something her parents didn't. Something only she and her brother knew. That might have been the real reason why he's different.

Regardless, Ellie liked her new brother. She had never had one before and couldn't imagine life without him. He might have an unbelievably boring room and read books all the time but that didn't change the fact that he was always there for her. Her brother would always play with her if she asked nicely no matter what he was in the middle of reading. He never complained about any of the silly games she made him play, even if they were designed to deliberately embarrass him. If she was ever being bullied, he would always stand up for her and scare the bullies away. He had read every one of her favourite story books and would read them aloud to her from memory every night until she fell asleep.

She didn't know what it was like to have a normal brother but she didn't care either. Ellie was more than happy with the one she got. Her warm smile lingered briefly as Ellie turned to face her brother who was still fast asleep in his bed. Her expression distorted into one of mischievousness as she then slowly began to pull out a handful of paperclips from her dressing gown's pocket.

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