Beginning

My name is April Troper. Yes, that's my name and that's what I'm doing. Sweet! I already have a meaningful name. What luck. That's three tropes already! No fourth wall and lampshade hanging!

So where was I? I was introducing myself. I am 10-years old and have a 12-year old brother, Julian and a baby sister, May. Goody! That's twomore

tropes. A Boy, A Girl and a Baby, odd name out.

That's very disruptive to the flow of the narrative isn't it? I promise I'll try to stop. Okay, more information about me. I live in a town (it begins with an S and ends with a D. One guess per reader.)

If you guessed Springfield then you are DEAD wrong! I live in Sheffield and I just subverted my first trope! I feel so proud of myself. (You knew I was lying when I said I wouldn't interrupt the narrative again.)

I bet you'll never figure out where I live. I'll give you hints by describing my room. It's the room at the end of the hallways that is smaller than both my siblings' room (cruel right?)

It's painted pink and has fluffy stuffed animals. In a four poster bed and just waking up is a pasty little girl with messy brown hair. I don't know what the heck she's doing in my room!

"Hey!" I cry and jump out of the bed and land on the soft pink carpets. The girl darts up and looks around, blinking her sleepy brown eyes. I put my hands on my hips and the girl smiles at me.

"Hi." She says and waves at me as though nothing is wrong.

"Don't 'hi' me." I say, "Just what the heck do you think you're doing in my room?"

The girl's cheeks turn pink. "I was just-"

"Leaving." I march over to the window, which is disturbingly already open. I turn around the girl is behind me. I yelp. She is at least a head taller than me which adds to the creepiness.

She climbs out of the window. She starts to open her mouth but I slam the window on her. Not on

her. She was in my backyard when I shut the window. I draw the curtains.

I walk over to my bed. Ugh, there's a strand of her hair on my pillow! I pull my pajama sleeve over my hand and sweep it into the trashcan. I proceed to the bathroom and I look in the mirror. I brush stringy black hair out of my brown eyes. It falls back into place and I doubt it will ever stay put.

I'm a little paler than I would like to be. That's probably because I spend most of my time on TvTropes.org.

Since the sole purpose of my using the bathroom was to look in the mirror, I head downstairs and to the kitchen.

My mother was feeding my poor baby sister strained peas. Why do parent's insist on feeding us that crud? May was going to give mom a good fight before any food made it to her mouth.

Julian and Dad were eating cereal and talking about baseball. Julian was already in his baseball jersey, his long brown locks were squeezed by his hat.

I stand on my tippy-toes and grab the Sugar Nukes cereal. This is Sugar Bombs on steroids. Loaded with 250% more sugar and enough cholesterol for a lifetime. I grab the milk, a bowl and the last seat around our circular table.

I dump the box over and a single red ball and powder hit the bowl. I look down at it with disappointment. I look across the table at Julian. "You ate all the Sugar Nukes."

Julian shrugged, "Early bird gets the worm."

"I would've been downstairs earlier, but there was a freaky girl in my bedroom."

My family just raise their eyebrows at me and chose to write it off as an asinine comment.

"It's true!"

"You probably just had a bad dream." My mom says. I sigh and get up from the table. I jam the empty box into the trashcan. It doesn't come out and I let out a relieved sigh. Rule is, if something falls out you have to throw everything out, and I do mean everything

.

That trashcan hasn't been emptied in about a month. I make my way back to the counter and what else do I found but Courageous Colon Cereal. Now 25% more likely to make you gag. It's not a very good slogan is it?

I take the putrid cereal off of the counter and pour it into my bowl. Unfortunately, the unappealing gray flakes come out in an abundance. It turns the milk gray. I don't know if a healthy colon is worth this.

I pinch my nose and shovel a spoonful into my mouth. It tastes like paper machete. My tongue hangs out and a scrape the 'cereal' back into the bowl.

"April!" My mother exclaims.

"It's disgusting." I say, "I don't know how you and dad can eat it."

"I'm sorry, but you have to eat something. I'll go shopping later."

I groan. "Do I have

to? I'm just going to throw it up later."

"Yes." My mom says sternly. So that was that. I choked down the flakes that insisted on being classified as 'cereal', threw them up (just like I said I would) and now I'm hungry. It's not how I would like too start my morning. Nobody would like to start their morning like this except maybe Charm.

Who is Charm you ask? Only my best friend in the whole world! But she's really, really unlucky.She was born unlucky. While her mom was pregnant with her, she walked under ladders, broke mirrors, spilled salt and a black cat had taken a liking to her. Some placed her new booties on the table. She was born 13 weeks premature on Friday the thirteenth. And she was literally born

Unlucky.

I don't know what her mother was thinking, or even if she was. That's why I nicknamed her Charm in hopes it would make her lucky. I like to think if nothing else, I've given her a nice name

The doorbell rings and I open the door. Standing there, a little shorter than me, is a redheaded girl with piercing green eyes.

"Hi Charm, I was just telling the readers about you." I say.

"Readers?" She looks at me strangely.

"Don't worry about it." As she comes in I close the door behind her.

Julian comes into the livingroom, chugging down a soda. "What's she doing here? I have a game in a few minutes."

"Hi Julian!" Charm says, "I had no idea you had game. April! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because his games are sooo boring." I say, "I didn't want to put you through that."

"But I like baseball." Charm smiles at Julian.

Julian sighs and rolls his eyes, "I guess you can come."

April gets a spanking (Exactly What it says on the Tin)

The pitcher steps onto the plate and stares down my brother. I'm barely awake at this point. They've been staring at each other for five-minutes! Did any innings pass yet? I didn't know. Charm seems engrossed in this boring and painfully slow game. You have a lot of time to think between each pitch.

I've come to think that my life is boring. When I'm bored I go through TvTropes.org but since I'm bored a lot, I believe I've literally been to every page seven times. Considering how big the website is, you know how bad that is. I need to think of something interesting to do. I am 10 years old and already bored of life! I have 90 more years, at least according to Five for Fighting. That's a whole lot of boredom!

"Charm, I'm bored!"

"It's almost over. The bases are loaded, with two outs. Your brother is batting with his team down by three." Charm bit her nails.

Of course it is. "Here's a spoiler for you. He hits a walkoff grand slam." I lean back in the bleacher, "I'm sorry that I know what that is."

"You can't possibly know that." There was a loud crack of the bat and everyone but me stood to their feet. The ball was soaring right towards Charm and I. She reaches out her hand to catch the game-winning ball. It smacked her in the eye and rolled into the hands of a small boy.

Charm grabs her eye, but turns to me in amazement. "How did you know?"

"It never ends in a routine groundout to the shortstop now does it? You want a steak for that?"

Charm chuckled, "Beef Bandages aren't sanitary."

"Beef Bandages? You sound like TvTropes."

"You started it with your Miracle Rally prediction and quoting the baseball page."

"So what am I troping my life now?" I pause. I don't know if it's good thing that that sounded like fun... or a really bad thing.

"Real Life does

have it's own folder." Charm smiles at me and I smile back. We seriously need to get lives.


We all came home after a 6 hour, 6 inning little league baseball game (yes I'm being repetitive and dramatic, I just want you to be as bored as I was.) there was a small celebration in honor of Julian. So he can hit balls with a big piece of wood. Big deal! Well, I can't do it and neither can Charm. May can't and neither can Mom... okay so it was a big deal. I'm just tired of him getting all the attention.

After the celebration, Charm and I went upstairs to my room. It reminds me that I haven't told Charm about the girl who broke into my bedroom.

"Maybe she's a stalker." Charm suggests as I load up the TvTrope webpage.

"Eww, gross." I say, "Can't I at least get stalked by a cute boy?"

"You wanted to do a bunch of tropes right?"

I grab a pillow and whack her with it. "Knock it off! How do we even begin?"

Charm scrolls down to the bottom of the home page and presses the blue 'random' button. The page that comes up is "Innocent Swearing".

"How am I supposed to do this?" I say, "I know what swear words are and if I swore I wouldn't be able to sit for a week!"

"Well, it does say the Innocent swearer quite often gets in trouble."

"Only quite often. I'm not innocent enough to qualify anyway. New trope." I'm about to click the button when Charm grabs my hand.

"What about May?"

"She can't speak."

"Baby's have to learn sometime right?"

"I don't want to corrupt my baby sister..."

Charm pats me on the shoulder, "she's just a baby. She won't get in any trouble."

I sigh and reluctantly climb to my feet, "I'm not worried about May."


Charm and I go across the hall to the second smallest bedroom in the house. The room that should be mine! It instead houses my baby sister, who's only needs a crib, rocking chair and changing table. (Just saying!) We creep over to the crib and see May is fast asleep. She looks so cute with her short blonde hair and chubby cheeks.

I was gonna make them flap foulness. I am such a bad big sister. I slowly lift May and gently walk over to the rocking chair. I rock back and forth and May's open. She looks around with her bright blue eyes. She sees my face and she starts giggling.

"Hi May. How awe woo?" I rub noses with her, and I'm feeling worse about what I'm about to do. She laughs and claps. She reaches and pulls on a strand of my hair. I can feel my heart melting. I turn to Charm, "I can't. "

Charm looks somewhat disappointed. "How are we gonna complete as many tropes as possible?"

I shrug and climb to my feet, "I don't know. But it's not worth teaching my baby sister how to curse." As I walk over to the crib something foul reaches my nose. I frown and turn May around and it's her who smells. "Ugh." I hold her at arms length and carry her to the changing table.

I'll spare you the details. As most of you know, changing diapers are gross! I pick up my clean baby sister and carry her over to the dresser. I open the second drawer, "here Charm, take this." I throw the old PJs to her. She catches them and drops them immediately.

"Ugh, it was sticky!" She waves her hands around, closes her eyes tight and let's out a squeal

"Come on, I changed an entire diaper. The least-" I watch as Charm runs blindly for the doorway. She misses it and smashes into the wall.

"Ow!" She grabs her face. She wipes her nose and looks at the blood, "dammit, I'm bleeding."

"Charm!" I point at May and spread my arm wide.

"Dammit." May says and giggles and repeats the word again and again.

"May, no!" I hear footsteps coming up the steps. "Why now? Why speak now?"

"We should run." Charm says. She sniffs and opens the door. I rush to the crib and lay my swearing sister inside of it then I scramble out the door with Charm.

(You thought I was gonna get a spanking didn't you? Well... I just told a blantant lie!)

Supeheroes

"Arc Number." I say and proceed to read the entry on TvTropes. "How do we pick one?"

"56." Charm says.

"That was... eerily fast. Why 56?"

"QueenTroper56, April Troper, Charm Rogers."

"Your name is Unlucky." I say.

"Even if, 56 still appears a lot."

"That's just my name and screen name."

"And your brother's number! It's settled. 56 is our arc number."

I sigh. I never even realized that my screen name contained my brother's jersey. I really gotta pay attention more.

"We should have arc words as well!" Charm grabs the mouse from me and presses the link. "Maybe it should be 'dammit', people say it a lot and May will be saying it for a while." She laughs so I whack her with a pillow.

"No." I say sternly, "what makes you think everyone will just start saying a phrase or it will randomly appear everywhere?"

Charm shrugs. "Maybe we don't pick it but keep are eyes and ears peeled."

I shrug in agreement, "fair enough." I scroll to the bottom of the screen and press the random button. "Viewers are Morons. This shouldn't be too hard."

"Do we even have to do anything? They are

reading this."

"I don't know who should be most insulted. Us, our readers or our author."

Charm pauses for a moment. Then she grabs the mouse, which my hand is on. She uses it to scroll, by running her finger across the mouse wheel, to the bottom of the webpage. The TvTropes webpage by the way. I realise this is more like Viewers are Goldfish, but of course you probably (read definitely) didn't notice that.

Anyway, if you managed to follow, Charm scrolls the mouse wheel to the bottom of the page and presses the blue random button.

"Superhero Episode." She says. A smile creeps across her face, "We get to be superheroes?"

"You're missing one minor detail. We don't have any applied phlebotinum."

"What about some sort of steroid?"

"Hey..." I trail off. My brother told me of a boy who offered him steroids once. I didn't want to ask him for anything.

Charm pokes me, "April? You're not teeellling me something."

I sigh, "Follow me."


Julian was sitting on a chair reading a superman comic. I knocked on the side of the wall of the second biggest bedroom in the house. (No, I'll never let it go!)

"Can't you read? No losers allowed!" Julian says.

I boldly step into his room and Charm follows. "We want steroids and I know you have them."

Julian jumps to his feet and rushes to close the door. "Don't go around shouting those things. Besides, I don't use them and they're not steroids."

"Mom still won't like that." I say, crossing my arms.

"She won't like the fact that you want them."

"That will just make things worse."

"What about you teaching May her first word?"

I sputter, "No one can prove that... it was Charm!"

Charm looks at me, "Thanks a lot."

Julian smirks, "I have something you want kept secret and I have something you want. I'll give it to you if you take out the trash if I spill it."

"What!? How's that fair?"

Julian shrugs. He has a smug look on his face.

"Okay." Charm says, "but you can't knock it over on purpose."

I give her the stink eye as Julian goes into the closest. He digs around until he finds a shoebox. He sets it on the bed and we all gather around as he lifts the lid.

There are three bottles. Green, red and blue.

"I got these from a guy named Sammy McGuire." Julian said, "He says it's safe unlike steriods. But you never know." He picks up the green bottle of Barry juice. "Why do you guys even want this?"

"We're gonna be superheroes." Charm says.

I do a facepalm. "You just broke the golden rule of superheroes! You don't go around telling people these things!"

"Sorry." Charm mutters.

Julian makes a thoughtful noise and I look at him. "No..."

"There are three bottles." He says, "besides, I know more about superheroes than you two."

Charm smiles. "We need a team name and a theme song."

"What about Five for Fighting's 'Superman'?" I say, "I can't stand to fly-"

"No." Julian says and picks up the three bottles. He hands the green one to Charm and the red one to me.

"I wanted the blue Barry juice." I whine.

"Let's get a few things straight right now." Julian says, "If you're gonna be my sidekicks you can't-"

"Whoa, whoa! Sidekicks?"

Julian flipped the bottle, "Well, naturally."

"No way! It was my idea."

"Well actually," Charm says, "You just pressed the random button."

I narrow my eyes at Charm, "Would you shut up for a second?"

"Look at it this way," Julian said, "I'm older, smarter, cooler and I made us superheroes. If that doesn't make me the leader than I don't know what will."

Impressum

Texte: Me
Lektorat: April (yes, it's the April from the blurb)
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 17.11.2012

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This is dedicated to boredom, for without it this would not exists.