I woke up the next day at seven in the morning. This was very early for me, too early. I wasn’t a morning person. I wanted to make sure that yesterday wasn’t a dream though, so I made the extra effort to drag myself out of bed.

  I didn’t live far from school so I usually got up at eight, but an extra hour wouldn’t hurt. I put my slippers on and my fluffy blue dressing gown, then walked out of my room and down the stairs to get some breakfast. I tripped on the last stair and fell onto the floor, it seemed my luck hadn’t changed just yet. Ouch. I rubbed my wrist to ease the pain of landing on it. I should have stayed in bed, people that sleep in never have these kinds of problems.

  To my surprise, my brother was already up, his mouth full of toast. The crunching sound he made as he chewed was unbearable.

  “What are you doing up so early?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t sleep, Mum told me about that thing you got in the mail, it sounds awesome.” A bit of toast fell out of his mouth while he said this. I am not related to him.

  “Yeah.” I said unenthusiastically as I poured some cereal into a bowl.

  “I can’t wait to go, it’ll be so much fun!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t you think?”

  I poured milk into the bowl and then sat down at the table across from my brother. I shoved a spoonful of cereal in my mouth and forced a smile. “Yeah.” I said, my mouth full.

  My brother was always easily excited and he was ecstatic about this. He was skipping around with a stupid grin on his face, he couldn't sit still. He’d almost choked on his toast twice in the last five minutes by doing this, he might not be alive for the party the way he was going.

  While I sat there awkwardly chewing on my rock hard cereal, the phone blared in the background. I thought for a minute about whether I should answer it. I decided I should, it could be an emergency, my parents always said that when the phone rang. I walked quickly out of the kitchen into the living room and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” I said, still chewing on some cereal.

  “You won’t believe this!” My best friend Hannah squealed down the phone.

  “What?”

  “I won a family pass to this theme park near Westlake!”

  “Huh? I won one too. My mom says I have to go with my brother.” I said, disappointed.

  “Really? Isn’t it bad enough that they called you Elsa?”

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  “Hey!”

  “We can go together. It’ll be so much fun!” There was a pause. “I’ve got to go get ready for school, my mum’s telling me off for being on the phone. I’ll see you there. Bye!”

  She hung up and I heard a hypnotising beep, beep in my ear. How had she won a pass as well? What a weird coincidence. I put down the receiver.

  “Who was that?” My brother inquired.

  “It was Hannah, she won one of those passes too.”

  “Really? That’s cool, you can go with her and I can invite someone.”

  My brother was such an opportunist! Although I had to admit it made sense and it’d be more fun that way too. Okay, maybe he was smarter than I gave him credit for.

  I’d much rather go with Hannah, that was for sure. This was going to be the biggest party of the year, or so it said on the invitation, so I wasn’t going to let anything ruin it for me.

  I left for school early that morning. My shoes were dripping wet from yesterday. I decided to skip catching the bus, the driver would probably forget to stop in the right place anyway and school wasn’t all that far away. I turned up at the gates when the bell rang, so I had to race to get to my class on time. It had to be the longest day of my life. The party was a couple of days away and it was all I could think about. Hannah’s parents both had to go away for business that weekend, so my parents were taking me, Hannah, my brother and his best friend, Liam. I was so excited, I couldn’t take my eyes off the clock all day. Every time the minute hand moved a fraction of an inch it felt like a million years. To top it all off, we had some grumpy substitute teacher called Ms. Jacobs, who refused to let anyone talk for the whole entire day! She was handing out detentions for doing nothing, I’m pretty sure I got one just for existing.

  I couldn’t wait to get home. I wanted to go to sleep straight away just so tomorrow would happen already. Every day that passed was a day closer to Saturday. As I ran home my semi-wet shoes made squishing sounds as they slapped on the cement, my wet feet felt cold and uncomfortable. I was really looking forward to taking them off.

  I hurried up my front steps as fast as I could. I pulled my gross shoes off and dropped them by the front door. I grabbed the spare key out of my pocket, hoping I hadn’t lost this one too. I stuck it in the lock and opened our bright yellow front door. Mum had painted it that colour, saying whenever she saw it, it cheered her up.

  ‘Hey Smellsie!’ Anthony grinned at me from the kitchen. He thought he was so smart.

  ‘Whatever.’ I replied. I couldn’t come up with a nickname for him. ’You know you’re really stupid for a ten year old.’

  ‘Your comebacks suck.’

  ‘No they don’t, your name sucks, that’s why I don’t have a comeback, because nothing rhymes with Anthony.’

  ‘You stink!’ He spat back. “I’m telling mum you said I’m stupid.”

  That was a good comeback. Not. I shook my head and made a face. Brothers suck.

  Just then, mum came in. She poked her head through the front door and called my brother’s name, he had soccer practice. She had to drive him straight there after she got back from work. My mother looked at me, asking if I’d be okay in the house by myself, I assured her I’d be just fine, better than fine. Anthony grabbed his things and slammed the door behind him, I heard our car drive away.

  I sprinted up to my room to make sure the purple envelope hadn’t disappeared, it was the only thing I had to look forward to at the moment. I saw it on my dresser and looked at the card again. I’d never noticed there was something on the back of it before. I flipped it over and saw a picture of a cartoon vampire. The picture kind of popped out at me, like it was 3D but I wasn’t wearing 3D glasses. After a few minutes of looking at the card, being pretty sure that I hadn’t possibly missed one tiny detail, I put it back where it belonged. I danced down the stairs into the kitchen to grab something to eat. Then resumed my after school ritual of collapsing onto the couch and flicking on the TV. That’s when I saw it.