The Sippy-Cup

"Seriously!" I yelled. "You have got to be kidding me!" 

"Honey, that's an order," my father said firmly. "It'll be a nice thing for Connie and Sydney." He tried to hold my hand, but I pulled it away. 

My father was talking about Connie, my step-mom, and Sydney, her 13-year-old daughter. Sydney's three years younger than me and is an annoying VSCO girl who thinks she's really cool and is better than everyone else. 

"AUGH! Fine!" I screamed, storming off to my room. I found my phone to call Charlotte to cancel our plans for tonight. We were going to go to the mall and go shopping. 

"Kira?" Charlotte answers. "What's wrong?"

"I can't come!" I cried.

"What! Why not?" she asked.

"I need to babysit to Sydney!" I complained. 

"Connie's annoying VSCO daughter?" demanded Charlotte. 

"Yeah," I grumbled. 

"Kira! We're leaving!" my father yelled from the bottom of the stairs. "Make Sydney quesadillas!"

"UGH!" I yelled, so he knew I heard him. 

"Listen, I need to go," I explained Charlotte. "I need to make quesadillas." 

My family's Mexican and we act like it, although I don't look like a Mexican at all. I have blonde hair, a brownish tan, and green eyes.

"Alright," Charlotte said. "Say hi to Daniel for me."

I rolled my eyes. 

"Will do," I replied and hung up.

Daniel is my cousin who Charlotte likes him, even though he's in his Freshman year of college and we're in 11th grade. 

I rushed downstairs and called to Sydney in her room on what we were having for dinner that night. She grunted in response. After I was done making supper, I called her down. She came down, sat down, and continued texting on her phone.

"Who you talking to?" I asked

"My boyfriend," she answered, not looking up. 

I snorted in response and rolled my eyes.

"Sure, honey." 

"Believe what you want," she said. "Can we go get Starbucks?"

"Is that what you kids drink now?" I asked. 

She narrowed her eyes at me. 

"What?" I questioned, raising my hands. 

"Never mind," she looked down again and continued texting.

I looked at my phone and said, "Want to film a Tik Tok?" 

"Um, no. I wouldn't want to video a Tik Tok with you."

"Sydney, you need to stop," I said firmly. I had had enough. I said it so fiercely that Sydney actually looked up.

"We need to do something," I said, "because I'm freaking bored."

"Okay, weirdo," she got up and went to her room. 

"Seriously?" I muttered, heading to my room. 

"Where are you going? Come in," she gestured to her room.

"Oh," I said. "What should we do?" 

We sat silently for a while then Sydney piped up. 

"We can play a prank on my mom." she grinned. "We can switch the paintings in the hall. So instead of date order, it can be color order."

That's Connie for you, the queen of neat freaks and the worst you can do is mess up the order of the paintings.

"Sure," I said. There was literally nothing else to do. 

I moved the Mary Cassat painting Sara Holding A Cat, while Sydney moved Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory. When Sydney moved The Sleeping Gypsy she gasped. I ran over to her.

"What!?" I cried.

She just pointed where the painting was. 

"What is that?" I asked, then I turned to the wall.

"Did you know this was here?" she demanded.

"No," I said. 

There, where The Sleeping Gypsy had been there was a button.

That's right, a red button with no label. 

"We should press it," she suggested. 

"Let's do it," I pressed it, then grimaced.

I opened my eyes and there was Click downstairs. 

Sydney and I raced downstairs and came upon the fireplace. The logs weren't there anymore instead, an elevator. We rushed in and it sped down. The elevator opened and Sydney gasped. I just gaped. There was an actual room down there. Right down the middle, there was a line one side there was a bunch of panda stuffed animals a closet, and a videoing room. The other side had a fridge full of candy and had a huge TV. 

"What the-" We stepped out of the elevator. In the middle of the room, there was a table full of papers. Sydney went up to it. She picked up a paper. 

"Wait! This is the quiz mom had me take last year asking my likes!" she showed it to me.

"She makes you take them!? My dad does, too!" I shrieked. 

"This is so weird," I muttered. 

"Tell me about it," Sydney murmured. 

Ding! My phone dinged with a text from my father.

dad<hey honey we are coming home.

"Oh no!" I grabbed a sippy-cup from the fridge as proof and took the elevator just as Connie came in the door. 

"Hello!" she smiled and waved at us.

"I'm going to bed," Sydney grumbled and stomped upstairs.

"Uh, me too," I said and walked after Sydney.

I heard Connie gasp as she saw the paintings being switched around. 

"Oh no, honey," Connie whispered urgently, "I think they know!" 

"It's fine, babe," my father said. "It was theirs anyway." 

"Yes, but what about the cup?" Connie asked.

"Why would she take the cup to her room, Connie? Don't be ridiculous." 

"You're right," Connie admitted. 

I talked to Sydney about what Connie had said and we decided to get some sleep.

A few hours later I woke up to something glowing.

"What the-" 

I heard a faint "Help! Help!" I called Sydney to come to see. I suddenly got self-conscious on seeing Sydney. She was wearing a red crop top and mini shorts while I was wearing an oversized T-shirt and sweatpants. 

"What?" she asked. 

"Shh." I put my finger to my lips. "Look." I was already recording with my phone. 

The voice was young mans voice. 

"What do you need?" I asked, softly.

He stopped asking for help and answered me. 

"A couple trapped me in here! I can't see anything!" he said.

"Who?" I asked. 

"A couple," the boy repeated. "Connie and John, I think." 

Sydney gasped. "What's your name?" 

"I'm Ben Whitney. I accidentally saw them do something to a girl and they trapped me here." 

"Sydney!?" Connie asked from next door. "Kira?" 

"We need to go," I said to Ben. "We'll figure out how to get you out."

"Bye," Ben said. 

I hid the cup and pretended to be asleep when Connie came in.

"John! Come here!" she said. "Look, the girls are sleeping together! Isn't that cute?" 

'Ewwwww!' I thought. 

The next day we decided to confront our parents.

"Mom?" Sydney called. 

"Dad! Come down here!" I yelled. 

We sat down in front of our parents.

"We found the button, the elevator, the room, the sippy-cup." Sydney declared.

"We know everything," I said

"Oh, I doubt that, child." Connie said, solemnly. 

"Just tell us what's going on," I pleaded. "Why did you trap Ben in the sippy-cup?"

"Oh. That's his name." Dad said. 

"Spill," Sydney said, then smiled at me. "Or we can run away." 

Connie's blood drained from her face. She was evil, but she cared about her daughter.

"You wouldn't." 

"Oh yes I would. It wouldn't be that hard. Kira has a job and a car."

"Ok fine, fine!" my dad broke down. "He saw us experiment on a girl and he thought that we were hurting innocent people. I mean he wasn't wrong... Anyway, so to stop him from reporting us we trapped him in the cup. The cup you found." he nodded my way.

My eyes were wide. 

"First, how do we free Ben?" I asked. 

"Well, um. You can't," he said uncomfortably. I could tell he was lying. 

"And second," Sydney continued. "What did you do to the girl Ben saw?"

Connie sighed. "We were making a machine that shrinks people. She didn't want to do it so we kidnapped her."

"What was the experiment?" Sydney asked, genuinely interested. 

"We tried to shrink her but it only works when they are fully enclosed. As soon as the skin touches air they go up to their normal size." 

I knew what I had to do. 

After we talked, we rushed to my room. I was going to break the sippy-cup. If I was wrong, we would never be able to bring Ben back, so my decision was a huge risk. I took a kitchen knife and cut the cup. Instantly a cute, blonde, blue-eyed boy appeared. He rushed into my arms and hugged me.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" 

Sydney and I just gaped.

We ended up reporting our parents and they're in jail now.

For Sydney, Ben, and I, we live together with five other people in an apartment in New York. And things have been pretty exciting, but that's a story for another day.