No, no, no! It couldn't be true! Oh God, no! Not the words! Not the two words every teen wants to burn in a pit of fire and bury the ashes and have breakfast on the grave of! So unreal, so untrue. These two words that, if uttered by Mom or Dad, could break your very being from the inside out and shatter you like a dome of glass illusions! Those malevolent words whose very purpose of existence was to burst the happiness of every human being like a mere bubble and then spiral them down into mental chasms of death, sorrow, and emo music. Those words had to be a sick fraction of some pitiful dream conjured by a terrifying mind. Why? Why would any mother or father ever say such a horrid thing to their child? Twisted! Dear God, if twisted was not a horrible enough word to describe it, then... No! No word could ever brush the breath of equality to the wickedness of what Mom or Dad just said. They... They just... They just said...

"We're moving."

Allie Queene had been sitting comfortable in the far back seat of a Tahoe of an undesignated year. Her right hand had been perched over a piece of paper, her fingers dyed gray with led and charcoal, as she flicked a pencil across the semi-whiteness. Her paper was on top of a Rainbow Dash folder to help avoid any rips, and she jerked it up to her chest to conceal the drawing when her Mom had turned to talk o her. She hadn't been doing anything... Illegal. However, her attempted artwork was of a realistic woman, and she didn't want her work judged halfway through. Why else would her mom turn from her precious phone so abruptly? Why else would Mom not have left Allie alone to be victimized by the beauty of her artwork?

"Yes, Mama? Somethin' wrong?" Allie was, naturally, a girl of the south. It didn't just show through her accent, but through her very actions. If a Southerner couldn't detect your feelings, nobody could. At least, that's what their family from the North claimed; Allie and her mother, Katie, could pick up any traces of any emotion like a bloodhound, even from the best actors.

"Did you not hear what I just said?" Katie was acid in her words, voice melted and fringed with annoyance. Of course, Southerners liked to get to the point, too. They didn't take crap from anyone unless they were the ones giving the crap. They were rough, and that quality definitely showed out in Katie. "You non-listening little ass. When are ya gonna learn that what your Mama says is important? Listen up, now." She turned back to the steering when, knuckles becoming frail and white with how hard she gripped it and its camp covering

Mama, thought Allie, You and I both know you can act tough all you want, but there ain't no way in Hell you're hiding that fear from me.

Katie was always afraid ever since her husband died five years ago. Allie had only been ten, but she remembered that they all used to laugh together and play back then. Yet, after some kind of brain cancer had taken him away, the house grew distant. Katie always talked on the phone to their family up north, and Allie was always in her room drawing or reading. Even though they had both grown distant and mother barely recognized daughter anymore, Allie could still read the adult like a children's book.

"We're moving. Up north with all your aunts and uncles. Isn't that cool?" Allie's mother pinched the mirror above her head in the vehicle and twisted it so that her daughter was captured by the frame. She wanted to see her child's expression at the devastating - in the parents' case, every single time, WONDERFUL - news. She was grinning at the reflection of them both, teeth bright and face more pale than ever. She looked like a ghost. An ecstatic one.

The drawing wrinkled at the sudden drop to the ground, completely ruining the quality of the paper. But Allie couldn't give a care in the world for what had been done to the drawing, despite the fact that it would have turned out amazing. She accidentally snapped her pencil in a move so slick, its breaking gave nearly no sound at all. A shard or two of wood and led blew out, and the folder popped loudly to the floor. The conde!Ned artist wasn't going to put up a fight. Those two horrible, horrible words had created a tear in her very soul. A dark, pitch hole nothing could outgrow. And was that strange? She didn't have any friends down in the south, but she was attached to the place. She'd been born where she lived... She grew there... She was leaving there.

"When?" Allie said meekly. Her knees wobbled, despite the fact that she was sitting. Her eyes stung, her nose burned. But, as she was rightly stubborn, she would not cry in front of someone so distant from her. She would not sob to a technical stranger. "When are we..?" The artist couldn't even finish her weakening sentence.

"Right now. It was supposed to be a surprise! A good one, too, huh, baby?" And, as all parents were, Katie was clueless to her child's feelings about moving away. "That's why I had you stay with our neighbor for a few days. I was moving out our things. Isn't it a wonderful shock? We're almost to the new house, too. Just another half hour."

Allie didn't dare say anything. If she'd even tried, her voice would crumple up like a withering flower and die. The tears would relentlessly slide down the curves of her cheeks, and her throat would get stiff with each sob until she could no longer cry put. Instead of speaking, the artist found the paper from the floor, pulled the Rainbow Dash folder into her lap, and abducted the half of her pencil that still had a reasonable shape of led showing through. And for the next thirty minutes, she'd draw. Her portrait turned into a creepy, lonely picture of a gray woman walking on black water, tears down her face and the world burning behind her. You see, nothing was mentally wrong with poor Allie yet. She'd just learned to draw what you feel.

***

The new home was a dark, eery home with crooked shackles lining the roof. It was made of wood that looked burnt at each and every angle, and there were two stories inside. The door was the sort of silver, gleaming door a normal person would see at the steps of a rich being's house, and not fit to go against the dark wood that stood there. It was on a street that was blocked by houses that were nearly as terrifying, if not more. The driveway at the front was knee-deep with slick pebbles, and the yard was sharply erect. It was the sort of place Allie would hate to draw from; flat lawn, no nature, dull. And so were the homes around it.

"Oh, I bet there are lots of lovely women and their daughters we can befriend! I heard that there is a spa up the street," Katie said. "Target can't be far off. And Rue 21! They have to have that store up here in a nice town like this!" Her jabbering voice had pitched in the last few minutes as if she were a teenage stereotype in a mall. "You go pick a room, Allie. I am going to help the nice gentlemen set up parts of the living room and kitchen. Love you!"

Allie didn't even turn to face her mother, or the house's bowels. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she stomped through the entryway, blindly going behind doors. She didn't care which room she chose; she'd come to hate them all.

She limply went to turn the rusted knob of a door. Of course the house was cheaply built. It was one of those houses that was advertised on the internet; beautiful and unique on the outside, low-maintenance and broken on the inside. She slung her art work against the floorboards, and broke into sobs in the corner. The poor artist huddled her knees, going out to the crew she'd his from her very own mother. Instantly, she regretted it. Of course she had to cry, but the movers would be in her new, half-assed room any minute now to put a few of her things in it. Besides, she-

What the hell was that?

She heard it again and this time she knew it came from the closet. Allie slowly walked over to the door and pressed her ear to the wood. "Be quiet, Jasmine!" The voice sounded pitched like keys of a piano and strangely feminine. Her heart thudded in her chest as if it had just dropped against her ribs, and she backed away from the door. Who wouldn't have been afraid? She'd seen this happen on television all of the time... Teen moves into house just to find her room is haunted.

"Sorry!! I can't help the twitching!!" another voice, raspy from yelling and also feminine, growled from inside. "You fricken know that I FRICKEN TWITCH!!" A loud slapping sounded from behind the wood, and a small cry of shock over pain. Great. Ghosts that abused each other. A totally child-friendly environment.

Allie jumped away from the door. Something was terribly wrong. Ghosts were things that haunted dreams, weren't they? They were entities that stalked your sleep, taking the forms of your dead loved ones or random ghouls who wanted to chase or consume you. Yes, ghosts weren't real. The artist dragged her wrist across her wet eyes, drying away the tears. Maybe they are my neighbors. But why my closet? The girl cupped the rusted knob that led to her clothes' designated area, and twisted it. Standing there in the pitch blackness, two figures stood.

One was a frizzy-haired girl wrapping her arms around a much taller girl. She had a shy grin on her face and braces cupping her teeth. The hand that she was showing was bright red, as if she'd hurt it. The hair going past her ponytail was waving, and the holder was lime green. Her eyes were the same type of green, but shaded by beautiful lashes. Her chin was squared, eyebrown thinned, and dimples curved. Her T-shirt was based from the Homestuck fandom, and she wore skinny jeans.

The taller girl had short red hair as deep as blood, as if a waterfall of circulation was spilling down her ears and forehead. She had narrowed dark blue eyes, and a frown that seemed to make her pale lips blend with her bunt chin. Her shirt was covered in random Phan images and oddly sexual quotes. Her jeans drooped past her feet, which were covered by shoes as black as beetles. She was a couple of pounds too big.

Neither girl seemed to notice Allie yet.

"Uh, ahh..." Allie was at loss for words. "Why..?" Was there even a question for what she was asking? Why are you in my closet? Why are you in this house? Of course, she had a few ideas of what to ask, but thoses all seemed stupid. "What..?" And, again, all of the "what" questions were dumb.

"Oh, look. A human. Jasmine, let go. Greet the neighbor..." The tall one nudged to one with glasses, who was hugging her mid-stomach.

The one with a ponytail, Jasmine, suddenly frowned and buried her face into her friend's back. There was sad, indistinct screaming before she flicked her glasses off so that her tears would show. "We can't hide in the closet any-" she began to yell. Then, she let go of her friend and rushed over to a dusty window parallel to closet. "WHY THE HELL ISN'T THERE DUST ON EQUAL SIDES OF THIS STUPID WINDOW!!??" The sleeve of her Homestuck shirt was dirtied on the glass as she began to scrub it. "Stupid. Fucking. WINDOW." And she twitched before giggling.

The red head facepalmed. "Jasmine, attention this way. Let's greet the neighbor." She held out her nimble hand, the curved and elegant limb of a fellow artisan was how the artist girl noticed it, and happily shook Allie's hand. "My name is Jay Erix. This is Jasmine Blare. Nice to meet you."

"I'm Allie..." She said, blunt. Was it normal in the north for your neighbors to show up in your closet? Apparently, the childhood fear of closet monsters wasn't completely irrational when it came to the north. "Umm... Nice to meet you. Why...?" Her gaze dashed to the closet before shifting uncomfortably right back to Jay's face.

"Closets are fun." Jay smiled. "I hope we can be friends, Allie. Are you going to Middle-Rock Middle school?"

What a strange name...

Allie thought back. Had her mom said anything about a school? "I think so." Her mom hadn't said anything at all that had anything to do with education for several years straight at all, and definitely nothing about a school. However, her mom was bound to gossip with the neighbor mothers and be influenced by where their kids go. "Is it a good school?"

"Is any school a good school?!" Jasmine shouted angrily before snatching one of Allie's hands up, amazed. "Wow! Your hands are pretty! Are you an artist? Cause Jay here is an artist, and she has some fabulous-" the girl yanked her neighbor's hair at an uncomfortable stance and shrieked, "WHY THE FUCK IS YOUR HAIR UNEVEN?!?! I HATE YOU!!"

Allie blinked. Those words hadn't caused any pain, but she was simply standing blank before the absolutely amazing confusion another girl could create. "I..."

"Isn't my shirt great?" Jasmine pointed to the picture of arms in a cake on her shirt. "My shirt is great. You shirt is great. I like shirts because they cover up ugly boobs." Twitch.

"Jasmine is an OCD, ADHD, very twitchy girl. And, ah, protective. In a special way..." Jay smiled wryly. "Well, I guess we're leaving your house. Haha. Isn't this illegal?"

Was it? Allie didn't know. "See you some other time then..." She found herself smiling; no one had been interested in her friendship before. A few interested in her portraits, but never herself. "I guess we can be friends..."

Jay smiled shyly.

Katie screamed from down the hall.

"Oh, I think she found Chloe and Anna!!" Jasmine said, tone hitting several high notes only speech in puberty was capable of, and spiraled away from Allie and Jay. Her body plunged through the gape in the door as she shouted, and she disappeared past he living room.

"Better go save my other closet friends before your mom gets to shoot them." The redhead sauntered away, taking the path her hyper friend had taken, and Allie followed after. By the time they'd escaped the bedroom, Jasmine was already a blur leading two giggling girls by the hand out of the front door.

"See you, Allie..." Jay winked at Katie before bowing to said girl. "Remember, when you hear about The Weird People, always think of me and my odd, mentally unstable friends. We are kinda famous in this little world of ours."

Allie smiled when the girl turned away. Because she knew there was always beauty in uncannyness. And she had friends.