Second Star to the Fright (Disney Chills 3)

“Rise and shine!”

Barrie’s mother’s voice echoed through the house, up the stairs, down the hallway, and through his bedroom door. “Time to get up for school.”

How does she have vocal superpowers that could wake the dead? Barrie thought as he buried his head under his pillow. He cracked his eyes open and groaned when he saw the clock.

“Not even six,” he muttered into his pillow, pressing his head into it. He grasped at the last fleeting tendrils of sleep and the exciting dream he’d been having, not wanting to forget it. He’d been trying to solve a mystery in a haunted cabin on a remote island, looking for a secret treasure. “It’s still dark outside. This is…child torture.”

He flipped over and tried to bury his head deeper, knocking the pile of mystery books off his bed and onto the floor, along with the flashlight that he’d used to stay up late reading well past his bedtime. His eyes darted to one of the books on the floor. The cover read The Mystery of Cabin Island. Clearly, the dream was inspired by his late-night reading. He could tell the exact spot where he’d left off and fallen asleep from the deep crease in the spine.

Barrie loved reading mystery books more than anything. He loved the way they made his heart thump in excitement as he read faster and faster, his fingers flipping the pages to get to the end and discover how the characters solved the case. In real life, he often found himself sneaking off to look for secret treasures and slipping down dark hallways and into places he didn’t belong. He wished his real life was as exciting as that of the band of sleuthing brothers from his books.

Before he could remember if he’d solved the mystery and found the hidden treasure in his dream, the door to his bedroom burst open and startled him, making the whole thing evaporate from his mind.

Bright, artificial light spilled in from the hallway, making his eyes tear up. He ducked under the pillow once more.

“Is my little guy ready for a brand-new day?” Mom called in a singsong voice. “The early bird gets the worm!”

Getting a worm? That’s how she was trying to motivate him to wake up?

Barrie couldn’t understand how anyone could be this cheerful so early, let alone on a school day. It was one of life’s greatest mysteries, even more than the ones in his books.

“I’m up…I’m up…I swear,” Barrie muttered. He tried to sound convincing.

But even he knew he’d failed.

“Don’t make me come back up here,” she warned, shifting into her stern mom voice like she’d flipped a light switch. It was another one of her superpowers. “You’re almost twelve now,” she went on. “You know what that means.”

“Uh, what?” Barrie said, his voice muffled by the pillow that was keeping the light from searing his eyeballs. He lifted his head and tried to pry them open again. His mom looked blurry.

“Old enough to get yourself up for school,” she finished. Her gaze darted to the pile of books and the flashlight on the floor. Busted. “We’ll discuss that later. Now get up!”

Before he could respond, Barrie heard her footsteps retreating across the carpeted hall, then her rapping on his sister’s door.

“Rita, that means you, too,” Mom continued. “You’re even worse than your little brother.”

Oh, good. If she was going after Rita, that would buy him a little time. He tried to snooze a bit more, but he could hear her raised voice reverberating through the house.

Ever since Mom got downsized from her job as a copy editor at a magazine last month and started freelancing from home, she’d been more stressed than usual. Dad had picked up more shifts at the power plant where he worked as a civil engineer, but it didn’t make up for the lost income—or so Barrie had overheard when he’d been practicing his sleuthing skills. Apparently, freelance magazine work was scarce right now, and even Barrie could see the bills were piling up on the kitchen table. Just last night, his parents had been arguing about it, and he hadn’t even had to snoop to hear that conversation. He’d been reading in bed when he was supposed to be sleeping, and they’d gotten loud enough for him to take in every word.

“You just had your sixteenth birthday,” Mom yelled at Rita, her raised voice forcing him to finally, truly wake. “You can pitch in and help out more. Oh, and don’t forget. Starting today, you get to drive your brother’s school carpool.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Rita complained. “Him and his goober friends are gonna smear hazardous waste all over my back seat.”

“That was our deal, remember?” Mom said. “I took you to get your license. You can drive the carpool.”

“Fine, but I need the bleach wipes,” Rita griped. “Like a whole canister to decontaminate my car.”

“Please, don’t be so melodramatic,” Mom said with an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been driving you both around for years. How do you think I feel?”

“Have you seen the bathroom after he showers?” Rita said. “And what’s that smell that leaches out of his closet?”

“Fine, you make a good point,” Mom said finally. “I’ll leave the wipes out in the kitchen. Which reminds me…a new list of chores is waiting for you down there—including cleaning the bathroom.”

“Anything but the bathroom,” Rita said. “Please have mercy on my soul!”

Barrie forced himself out of bed. It wasn’t like he was going to get back to sleep now with Rita moaning and wailing at the top of her lungs. If he’d learned anything about what happened when you became a teenager, it was that everything turned into a huge drama.

A few weeks earlier, Rita had been gifted a blowout sweet sixteen party, complete with a DJ and dance floor. But ever since her birthday, all his parents could talk about was how she needed to “grow up” and “pitch in more around the house.”

Being almost twelve was bad enough, but turning sixteen looked even worse. What happened when you became an actual adult?