I like my life. Okay, I fucking love it. I have nice parents, adoptive to be precise—but that never matters—a good school, the best dog in the world, and good friends, but I sometimes feel strange. Like it's all wrong or a lie or something. Then my BFF, Jade, always hugs me and I forget about it. Today though, I'm riding my bike to the park to do my homework in a nice, peaceful, location.

I'm starting up on my history outline when I see a bright red light. I look up, knowing it's not the sun. There's a beam of light and three girls appear, all confused and about my age. I stare at them and they stare back at me. The one with brown, curly hair whispers something to the other two and they stare back at me in an even creepier.

The one with straight blonde hair, and a couples scars on her face—most noticeably a burn on her left cheek—walks up to me and starts to say something but stops. She appears to think for a second before saying, "What's your name?"

"Why should I tell you?" I reply, suspicious of these creepy as fuck girls

"Because..." the third one with long, black hair speaks up, and stops, unable to think of a reason.

"Because you're our queen," the first one blurts out and the other two glare at her. She smiles sheepishly and I stare at them.

"You three are strange, and also probably stalkers. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some homework I need to get done,"

"Homework won't matter to you if you believe us," the one with the blonde hair says. I close my eyes and roll them before saying.

"You three might need to see a psychiatrist. That's a doctor who helps people like you be fixed mentally," I say slowly, like talking to a baby.

"We know what a psychiatrist is!" the black haired one says, sounding very offended.

"It's true," the other two insist.

"Prove it,"

"Is there sparkly, possibly magical, dust in your hair?" the blonde haired one asks.

"How do you—" I start, my right index finger absentmindedly twirling a strand of my hair, but stop at their smiling faces.

"Caught you off guard," the brown haired one smirks.

"Just leave me alone, please," I say to them, and when they don't leave, and keep whispering urgently, I start to get irritated, and a little angry. "Leave me alone!" I say a little—okay very—sharply, and some fire shoots out of my hand. I panic, holding my hand as if it's dangerous and stare at them. They look back happily and whisper something. I only make out the words "princess" "Savvy" and "home."

"You three have some explaining to do!" I say, now more irritated with them. The one with the black hair starts to speak.

"We live in a different dimension, Magicae. However, our ruler got kidnapped by Leila Savvy, probably the daughter of some evil bitchy spirit or something, and now Leila has taken over our planet. Evie, the queen, had a daughter who is our age now, but Leila took the daughter to a different planet. We were teleported here after an...incident, and we found you and you're the princess!" she finishes the story excitedly and I stare at her.

"You're crazy," is all I can manage. They sigh and I go back to my outline.

"Look, we have nowhere to live. Can we at least stay with you?" they say with puppy dog eyes.

"Depends, can you hide from my parents?" I ask. "Because I'm screwed if you're found."

"Sure, we can if we have to," they reply and I sigh.

"Fine, but at least tell me your names,"

"I'm Holly," says the brown haired one.

"I'm Alarya, but everyone calls me Snapdragon," says the blonde one.

"I'm Nari," says the black haired one.

"And I'm—"

"Ivy Sapphire, we know," says Snapdragon.

"Ivy Shadow," I correct. Snapdragon rolls her eyes.

"That's not your real last name, but whatever."

When we get back to my house I tell them to wait under my window. I run inside and up into my room. Then I grab a bunch of unused sheets and begin to tie them together into a rope. Once I'm almost done I hear my mother, Sara Leaf (she has a different last name than my dad and I), knock on the door. I have one of these weird beds that doesn't have an under the bed, because of how it's made, so I quickly throw the rope down into the crack between the bed and the wall.

"Yes?" I say.

My mother comes in and says, "It's time to go to sleep."

I nod and she leaves the room. I listen as her footsteps get softer and softer until I can't hear them. I peer out the window and see the three girls, waiting behind some bushes.

"Almost done?" calls Snapdragon.

"Yeah," I reply, "I need 20 ft. and I've got 18." Snapdragon gives me a thumbs up and I go back to my bed and grab the rope.

After attaching one more sheet I throw the rope down to the girls. "Ready!" I call to them, and Holly runs over from behind the bushes, extremely fast, and grabs the rope. I start heaving her upward, and she helps by putting her feet on the side of the house and walking up it. Once Holly is in, Snapdragon gets on the rope and we both pull on the rope, pulling Snapdragon up. Then I hear a voice that's not anyone's I know.

"Emira, we know the painting took them here. Mom wants us to fetch them now, instead of leaving them to fucking die. I know this place is shit, but the sooner we find them the faster we can leave."

"Fuck it's Cassandra!" Holly and Snapdragon exclaim. They motion for Nari to hide—while I pull the rope up—and she does, behind the bushes by my house. Emira and Cassandra start to look around, and it's clear that any second they'll find Nari. After looking behind the bushes of my next-door-neighbors Kaley and Jade's houses they start to look behind the bushes that Nari's behind! Everyone holds their breath as they look behind the bushes.

"Found you!" one of them says happily as she grabs Nari's hands and ties them together. She motions to her sister who congratulates her, and I learn that the girl who grabbed Nari was Emira. Cassandra pulls something out of her pocket and throws it, a vortex thingy appearing where it lands. Then they pull Nari into the vortex and once they all have gone through it disappears.

"What was that?" I ask.

"We, might've, tried to steal your mother back from their mother," Holly says.

"You mean my 'mother,' " I say, putting air quotes on the mother. Snapdragon looks at me.

"You still don't believe us?"

"Sadly, I believe you now. Too much has happened. I can't deny it anymore," I say, sighing. Snapdragon and Holly smirk at me and I roll my eyes at them.

"So, are you going to come with us? Save your mother?" asks Holly.

"What about my adoptive parents? And how do we get back to your—errr, our, planet? Also, what about my father?"

"Don't worry about your parents, once we clear up Leila they can come live on our planet, and you'll know your real mother. As for your father, nobody really knows what happened to him, except Leila and your mother." Snapdragon says as comfortingly as possible.

"Oh, yeah, also what about my friend Jade? I don't want to leave her,"

"She can come. You'll find she'll prefer to stay here but you can visit, of course," Holly says.

"Okay," I say, tears falling down my face as I think of leaving my life to save another dimension I don't even fucking know

"We might also have to find a way to teach you about your little family talent; all the royalty has a lot of magic, and usually a parent explains to the child how to use them but..." Holly says, trailing off.

"But?"

"She might be a painting," Snapdragon blurts out.

"WHAT!? OKAY, NOBODY TOLD ME SOMEBODY COULD TURN PEOPLE INTO FUCKING PAINTINGS! WHAT IF WE BECOME FUCKING PAINTINGS!?" I ask, a little—aka a lot—scared.

"Uh...We're remembered as heroes forever?" Holly guesses.

"Okay, I guess that's a risk I'm willing to take," I say, fingering with the magical dust in my hair. Then I begin to wonder, What was the..."incident" Nari was talking about? I decide to ask, but also wonder if they will be willing to talk about it.

"What was the incident Nari was talking about earlier that brought you here?"

"Holly touched a painting," Snapdragon says, ratting out Holly. Holly giggles sheepishly before sighing.

"Yes, I did. It was Lily's idea though!"

"Lily?"

"Another one of our friends," Snapdragon explains, "she's kinda trapped somewhere with Lana and Ally, our other friends."

"Oh,"

"We don't know what happened to them because Holly touched the stupid painting,"

"Why'd she touch it?"

"Because your mother was in it, or so we thought. Turns out it was a trick one," Holly says.

"Okay, just tell me the whole story about this, 'incident', " I insist. So Holly tells the story of how they climbed into the clouds to rescue my mother, who was rumored to be in a painting, and how they found the painting and how she, Snapdragon, and Nari ran over to it, and she touched it and they teleported here.

"Whose idea was this again?" I ask.

"Lily's," Snapdragon says, "we didn't exactly take the actual danger part into account, only the hero part." She laughs at her own silliness, but the laughter stops abruptly and becomes sighs as she remembers her other friends.

"How will we get back?" she asks, worriedly.

"Cassandra and Emira are going to come back for more, we'll steal their teleportation thingy and teleport back," I reply.

"They have another one so they can follow us," Holly pointed out.

"We'll throw it so that we'll have a little bit of time to hide from them," I say, by this point determined to get back and save people I don't even fucking know. Am I too naïve?

"Okay, but how will we know when they come back?" Snapdragon asks.

"We'll know when they do, but we won't know ahead of time, so nobody should leave the house. I'll play sick so that I don't have to go to school and you two aren't supposed to be here anyway," I say.

"How are you going to play sick?" asks Holly.

"I happen to be allergic to butternut squash, and I have a stash in here; luckily I only puke when I eat them," I say. The other two give me a 'ew' face and I shrug.
    "I'm used to it. I always eat it when I want or need to stay home. Now onto the more important matters, where are you two sleeping?" I ask.

"In the closet? Anywhere nobody touches in this house?" Holly guesses.

"My closet? It's tiny, you won't fit, it's full of crap, and unless you want to sleep in a ball under a sink, you might want to guess more," I say. Then I realize something, "Wait—there's a third floor. Nobody ever goes up there, I can just grab some sleeping bags."

"That sounds good," Snapdragon says. Holly nods and I walk to my closet and grab two sleeping bags, both blue with leaves, and hand them to Holly and Snapdragon as they leave the room.

"How do we get  to the third floor?" Holly asks, quickly turning around.

"I'll show you," I say, walking down the hall and opening a door near the end.

"Go up these stairs and sleep somewhere on the ground," I say, pointing up the stairs right behind the door.

"I'll bring up food in a little bit, once you get settled," I say, as they walk through the door and I close it behind them. Is this going to be worth it, all these risks? I wonder. Who knows? It will at least be worth trying, I hope.