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"Ah, that makes sense." Naomi agreed with her sister on the plan of action as she took the dress of the hanger and laid it on the bed. That was JUST like Cecelia to do that; play it nice for distraction purposes and to keep a clean slate when something happens. Why didn't Naomi guess it? She nodded her thanks to Cecelia as she closed the door behind her, but not without a dress comment. Thank God she (being Naomi) wasn't planning to wear that dreaded thing. She'd still dress nicely, of course (this was her mother's idea for the marriage, so she'd support until she saw issues with the man she married), just not that HIDIOUS dress of death. You could choke or hang someone with the thickness of the frills.

Stepping into the ensuite bathroom, she was suprised to see that it actually looked rather.......fancy. Spa-like, almost. She suddenly panicked; Did these people know of her depresssion issues? She hoped all of the rooms looked like this. Then again, she saw no healing oils or soothing scents in her sister's bathrooms when she helped bring the stuff up. Suddenly curious, she began to walk along and check the whole bathroom, to see what was in here. But not without catching her surprised look from earlier; she really had to tone it down, otherwise it'd look like she liked this idea when she really in truth hated it dearly. But, no more than a simple mistake thankfully caught early on. She looked at the bottles: Some body soap for sensitive skin, with some fancy company name she knew not of, flower scents, bottle of bubble formula (which allowed bubbles to form instantly with water.....

Ok, the last one got her. She loved bubbles; it was as if they looked in her mind..........

........she shuddered..........

Slightly worrysome, no? Or merely just a concidence? She saw another bottle: "spa formula to relieve the mind, soul, and spirit", the bottle read. If Mom had mentioned ONE WORD about that........

She sighed; it was probably choice one. Mom knew not of her going to a counsler after school, anyways. In all truth, Naomi would know immediately when Mom realized it. It'd involve yelling of some sort and most likely a fight. But why worry now? Just wait til it comes up; it'll save the trouble.

The girl stepped into the shower, letting the warm water temporarly take away her sudden fears. She instead tried to imagine what would happen at the dinner tonight. It could go two ways; it could either go really well and stuff work out..............HAHAHAHAHAHA. No. It'll be choice two; complete disasater. But she was ready for any insults and how to cope with the aftermath of the mess tonight.

Her Ipod was fully charged, she unpacked on of her larger teddy bears, and she got out of those lights that spin and fill the room with colors; that seemed to calm her nerves and help her sleep. Her counselor suggested that instead of waiting in horror for the mess to break her, that she prepare "a santucary" so that she could relax when the mess did come. So, although scared, she was gonna try this. Heck, it could be fun, and at least she'd get some food if nothing else.

She stepped out of the shower, smelling nice, and dried off before putting on the pretty dress. It accented her nicely, the shoulders showing ever so nicely as the neck was long and the dress was supposed to do that. There, nice and fancy. She also got out her jewelry box and took out two gold-colored earrings, along with a gold heart-shaped necklace. She smiled; she was almost ready. She then began to fix her hair, humming a random song to herself as she curled her hair a bit; she'd wear it down, so it needed to be at least slightly bouncy.

"There is no need to be agitated, Madeline. I merely recognized the book as the same one Markus taught me from. I am sure he is thrilled with your interest." Alyekzander turned to leave the music room. Far be it from him to force his presence on the suddenly snappish budding pianist. He supposed he would head down to dinner. Someone had to be on time for everyone else to arrive fashionably late, after all.

The dulcet tones of Steven Tyler could be heard eminating from Markus's room, overcoming even the sound of his shower. Eventually, he got out, wrapped a towel around his waist, and brooded about what to wear. He needed brooding music. He picked up the remote for his stereo system and clicked a few times, skipping over pounding Rolling Stones songs, cheery Beatles music, up tempo Supertramp, and even his favorite: Led Zepplin. Finally, he came to rest on the divinely moody voice of Jim Morrison.

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down

Ah, there, the Doors were perfectly good music to brood to. He scanned his rather large closet to come up empty handed. There was his usual attire of torn jeans and band tees, or buttondowns over tanks; far too casual for this. Then, there was the fancy clothes he only wore when his father brought business partners home, hanging next to the unbearably proper prep-school clothes he hadn't bothered to burn yet, because his father insisted he keep them in case he needed to venture to the country club. Unlikely. The only other thing in the closet was the costume he wore once a year to the annual Renaissance Faire. There ought to be some combination of these clothes that wasn't either to lax or too stuffy.

When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange

Right then, he grabbed one of his normal long-sleeved buttondowns, lime green in color, and paired that with the coat and pants of one his fancier suits. The combo was a pinstriped affair, black and white. No tie, because he hated the things. For shoes, he dug out a pair of old, hardly ever worn sneakers, black with lime accents, and for the final touch, he took the pendant from his Ren costume. It was a silver lyre suspended from a matching chain. His hair was combed neatly, and held back with a black rubber band. It wasn't really long enough to be all kept in a ponytail, though, and some loose strands around his face fluttered free of the rest of his hair. He tucked them behind his ears.

His stereo was paused. He was ready, though, before dinner, he really ought to apologize to Madeline, lest things become tense between them. Aslo, Alyk should probably now what'd happened, in case Maddy started questioning him, which she might. She stepped out in time to see both Maddy and Alyk coming out of the music room. Okay, good, this would save him time.

"Madeline, I was just going to apologize for my rudeness earlier. I should never have snapped at you like that, it was the clumsy one, I pulled the violin down when I fell. As you said, it is beautiful, and so of course, you wished to know about it. You could never have known I would react like that. Just bear in mind that the instrument is very personally signifigant to me, and that I'd prefer to not talk about it." He was being more formal than was usual for him, but he had to, or he risked getting emotional again, and there was no time for that.

"Alykzander, are you on your way down to the dining room? Mind if I join you?" He switched his attention from sister to brother. Alyk was supposed to be the younger brother, but more often than not, Markus treated him as though he were the eldest of the family. He couldn't help it, Alyk acted far more mature than Mark.

At last; after a bit more preparing (and getting her curling iron unstuck from her hair, which thankfully left no evidence of any trouble) and many more glances in the mirror, Naomi was ready. She was gonna do this; she was gonna be just fine and dandy.

The only thing she wasn't ready for.....was her mother.

Ever since dad had died, her mother had pretty much spent her life over at this house, treating the boys more like her children than her daughters. This made Naomi sad, and only stuck the guilt on further as she tried to rid her mind of it. How could she force herself to call this new man her father? How could her sisters? Was it even going to happen, and would that cause even more fighting? Did her mother even know her as well as she did the boys, or could she recite football teams quicker than the girls' favorite colors?

She shook her head, the curls bouncing; Happy thoughts, Naomi, happy thoughts. This attitude wasn't gonna help. She sighed at this sudden thought, and laughed for a moment, staring up and out the window. Haha, only God could help this dysfunctional hell of a mess now. Of course, not without watching the drama unfold with a godly bag of popcorn and soda first. She hid her Ipod in her desk drawer, sat the teddy bear on the bed, and pushed the spinning plug-in light ball under the bed with her foot.

She turned on her computer really quick, opening the vlog and deciding to do a dinner-prequel.

"Hey everyone, Naomi here!
Yeah, I know, hard to tell with the dress and complete makeover, heh. You like it?" she asked, striking a fashion pose before laughing. "Hehe, alright, I'm done with Ms. Priss at the moment. This is the moment of ultimate truth of whether or not I'll live in this house: it's the first dinner of the family mix. For those of you who are seeing one of my vids for the first time and are lost as heck, I suggest you watch the most recent........er, 3 vids with the stars on them. Those are the important ones in order to keep up, and the rest is mainly detailed fluff of my life if you're actually interested in this channel.

But enough on that; drama is practily OOZING in this house! Everyone is nervous, and no one has seen my mom or.......the other guy since we moved in early this morning. Probably on some pre-honeymoon or something stupid." Naomi then paused for a gagging face.

"Now, naturally I'm gonna post the results, but it can go one of two ways: if by some miracle of the Almighty that this ACTUALLY goes WELL, then I'll post as soon as I can tonight and be all bubbly and stuff. If I end up in tears, well, expect a post either tomorrow or very early tomorrow morning. Like, 2 AM or something, and it'll be rant-filled. I've done it before, you can ask some of the suscribers.

Well, I can't be late, so see you all later, and wish me luck! Cheers.
PS: I'll get a into and ending up here soon, I promise....."


She stopped the timer and uploaded the video.
Before turning off the computer, she randomly looked at the list of a new site-wide feature: The Top 100 Most Popular Vloggers List. Pretty much self explantatory; those with awesome vlogs got up to here, a hard feat to accomplish and even harder to keep, and the hardest to get to the very top. She glanced through the list quickly like usual, but this time her heart skip a beat as she looked it through. Thinking she misread it, or it had to be someone different and she didn't look at the screenname, she scrolled back down again. But it was true; she even clicked to see the profile, then clicked back at the list again:

96. Rebecca (scr: Mindsweep)
97. Naomi (scr: Naomi/Sprinkled Muffin)
98. Chris (scr: Man of Mystery and Food)

"Woah........" Naomi was speechless; she knew she was getting more requests and more on the friendslist, but never to such an extent as to make it in the top 100; very nice! She grinned as she closed the now-off computer: she knew there were both good and bad things to come from this, but for now she got the pick-me-up she needed.

The girl finally exited the safety of her room, closing the door quietly behind her. Thankfully, another reason she liked the dress was because she could still move in it wonderfully without restraint. She felt normal, and free. She hummed to herself as she went quickly down the stairs; this house wasn't so bad navigation wise............

She stopped suddenly as she noticed Madeline, Alyekzander, and another unknown boy, all in the same hallway. Was this a concidence, or had Madeline become friends with them? Either way, spiffy timing on their parts. "Well, good evening to you all." she said, as she made her way to her sister. "It's down that way, take a left at the painting that has a slight resemblance to the Mona Lisa, then continue til you see the brown railing stairway, and the kitchen is down there, which leads to the dining room."

Naomi grinned as she felt the familiar kindly-happy pressure of her sister's hug, and she hugged back in return. Ah, Madeline. Naomi probably couldn't survive without her bubbly personality and hyper nature. Especially when that girl wanted food; good heavens, ESPECIALLY when that girl wanted food.

Then, as Naomi was released and she could breathe again, she suddenly saw that glint....oh, that oh so familiar glint of a master plan of master plans scheming in her brain............of squishing huggable death! Naomi stepped aside just as Madeline lunge, thinking it was another Naomi-target tackle.

But she couldn't hold back her sudden spurt of adorable laughter as she saw her not tackle Naomi herself......but Alyekzander out of all people. How precious; family bonding was just what was needed at desparate measures such as these.

Then, a lightbulb clicked in the girl's head, and she felt a strange evil grin bore on her face as the wonderfuly evil idea popped into her head. Time for a more Beauvais-girl-like welcome....

"DOGPILE!" she cried out in joy, as she hugged Alyekzander from behind. It wasn't a glomp like she was used to (she WAS wearing a dress, after all, and God forbid she do anything to flash these guys; that was the last thing she wanted), and it was no where near enough force to knock him down; unless, the other boy joined in......

Cecelia had just escaped from the hairspray in her room, when she heard laughter a ways down. She strod towards it, her heels making a clack against the floors on her way, till she saw Naomi and Madeline hugginh Alyekzander. She put a hand over her mouth to laugh, since the site was rather funny.

"Don't strangle him now. we don't want to have to bury a body again.." Cecelia said, before floating off, heading for the dining room.

Markus's snickers subsided, but his grin remained. He was glad to see the stiff Alykzander loosen up a little. "I'll meet you down there, guys. I mean, once you all get untangled." He snickered again and bounded down the stairs after Cecilia.

"Hello there, sis. You're the eldest, right?" He smirked, a wicked gleam in his eye. "My name's Mark, and well, If you're willing to work with me, I have a plan." He'd already started a tentative friendship with Madeline, and he could see from Naomi's personality that she'd be no problem to get along with. If he could get Cecelia to be his friend, he was sure the other two would be relatively nice.

Cecelia raised her eyebrows, smirking. "Yes, i'm Cecelia." She said, listening to his offer. "Hmm.. alright, what's the plan?" She asked, matching his wicked gleam.