Zee and Todd

Zee:

Zee’s head felt heavy as soon as she felt herself come back home. She opened her eyes and saw all the hair that she remembered cutting off, back on her head. Feet and feet of hair fit for a Rapunzel. Zee hated it though. Her hair would get dirty as it dragged around on the ground. Zee’s mom and dad both had their fairy tale attire on. Zee couldn’t help but giggle at Mom’s pig tails and dress. She looked like a woman who was dressing up for Halloween.
Zee remembered that Dad was supposed to be the Ugly Duckling back in the past, but she thanked God that he wasn’t horrendous. He just walked around the house blind as a bat trying to find his old glasses. He even stepped on Zee’s hair by accident. Dad liked to wear contacts while he was out of the house, but since everyone had been in the past, he had to borrow a pair of glasses from that time.
After talking to Todd, Zee looked up to see her parents arguing about what Carter did. Zee left her parents when they were about to call Uncle York to see if he and his family was home safe too. Zee followed down the hallway off of the living room to still see Jack’s door closed. She knocked on the door, but when no one answered, she tried the knob. The door was locked. She banged on the door harder and still no answer. She quickly turned around to her room and tripped on her hair.
“Seriously?” Zee growled.
She stopped for a moment and started looking around her room for a pair of scissors. She learned last time that this happened, even if she did cut her hair to a normal length, it would still grow back out. But after a few weeks of cutting her hair, she finally found the right length where she could keep her hair at. She finally found a pair of scissors and quickly started to cut her long hair.
After getting to the length she wanted, she twisted her hair quickly into a messy braid and walked over to her closet. She pushed through her clothes and found a small door. They had found this door one day randomly and it led to both of their rooms. She pushed it open and crawled through the four foot high door. She hit her head on the coats and random items in his closet and fell out into his oddly clean room.
Mom had told him to clean it, but this was too clean for comfort. The bed was made as if a maid did it, and Zee couldn’t smell the two week old pizza that he once had under his bed. His stuff was still there, so she didn’t think that he ran away, but it was as if he wasn’t planning to come back for awhile.
She snooped around his room and found nothing strange.
“Jack?” Mom said knocking on the door.
“No, it’s me,” Zee said opening the door, “He’s not here…”
“Where did he run off to?” Mom said crossing her arms, “I was hoping to see what he looked like.”
She gave a goofy smile and Zee rolled her eyes. After what “Jack” said to her before, she wondered if he would even change. Mom left to go change then soon came back asking if she could borrow something of Zee’s.
“Everything blue and white?”
“With red shoes… Do you mind?”
“If you can fit them go right ahead.”
Zee grabbed her phone and called up Becca. She wasn’t answering. Which was odd for Becca since she was a texting and video chatting all the time. If her phone was a man she would marry it. Zee then called up Rosie, but only got a busy signal. She probably was talking to Todd the boyfriend. Zee then called Andrea who picked up on the first ring.
“Andrea-”
Zee couldn’t tell what Andrea was. She looked like a mix between that curly haired good witch from the Wizard of Oz and had a “Rambo” look to her. It looked like she was outside in the dark in a bush.
“Zee! I saw Jack on the news! What the heck is he doing on? Since when was he with the Tracers?!”
Well that answered where Jack was, but Zee didn’t understand who the “Tracers” were. Andrea saw her look and explained that they were those rambunctious people who were vandalizing and causing havoc in town.
“Wait, I heard those guys in the news. I thought that they mainly did harmless stuff. Well, besides robbing stores and vandalizing…”
“Well, with what has been going on, they apparently have been part of that Carter person’s evil plans. The members from Tracers have been patrolling the town and keeping people “in check”.”
So… he was evil then. Probably just waiting for Zee to let her guard down and kidnap her or something for Carter. Though he did say that he was a soldier against Carter, though now she couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.
“Then what are you doing outside?”
“After I saw Jack in the news, I planned to watch I was following some of the members all day and I found Jack’s car!”
Zee then got off of Jack’s bed and ran to her room and grabbed comfortable shoes and a jacket. She demanded Andrea to tell her where she was and Andrea said that she would text over her location. She had to go because some goons were coming by her. The screen quickly went black and the text appeared on Zee’s phone. Zee then quickly called up Todd.
He didn’t sound happy for waking him up, but she told Todd that she found out where Jack was and that they needed to go check it out now.

In the mater of ten minutes, Zee and Todd found Andrea hiding.
“Andrea? What is going on?” Todd asked as she turned around.
“Shush!” They all squatted down and Andrea showed them the car, “I haven’t seen him all day, but apparently that building over there is their base.”
“The old library?” Zee cocked an eyebrow, “not really the best location for a base…”
“Are you sure that it’s not a trap?”
Andrea stared at him with a “seriously” look. Her mom was the queen of conspiracies and she taught Andrea well to follow a lead. Zee’s mom taught her the good reporter skills too. Those skills, however, were telling her that something wasn’t right. But she needed to find out where Jack was. Even if she was still a little mad, she needed to know that he was okay and not evil. That and the building may have vital information about what Carter’s plans were.
Todd and Zee both gave similar looks saying that they needed to get inside the building. Andrea said that she’ll come with and a machine gun appeared into her hands.
“Seriously… what kind of fairy tale character are you?!” Todd couldn’t help but ask.
“Who cares,” Andrea shrugged, “I get weapons. My years of playing violent videogames will finally come in handy.”
Todd scooted away from Andrea and Zee took the lead. Andrea said that someone patrolled by the bushes every ten minutes and the door every five. So they had only a few minutes to run over to the other side of the parking lot and find the back doors. Todd reminded them saying that the emergency exits of the old library had only one way out and no way in, but thankfully Zee found the storm shelter.
The rusty lock snapped off quickly and they carefully made it into the musty storm center. The doors creaked and made a lot of noise, but thankfully no one heard. Zee and Todd both pulled out their phones and lit up the musty storage room.
“There’s a door over there,” Todd said finding one.
“Man, there’s a lot of junk down here…” Zee said putting her nose into her jacket to filter out the musty smell.
Andrea then pushed forward keeping her gun up and ready, just in case someone was hiding in the room. Thankfully there wasn’t and they made it up some small stairs to the first floor. There was music playing down the hallway they entered and laughs from the other end. Zee thought fast and noticed the ceiling beams above them. She untied her hair and threw her hair up high and pulled the three of them up out of sight. Todd sighed in relief and Andrea pouted about wanting to shoot someone.
“Look,” Todd said pointing off to the side.
The beams continued on throughout the floor and traveled over many different rooms below them. The three started to crawl across the beams and noticed a party going on in some room and other workers spray painting the statue of the library’s founder in the lobby area.
“Its like we’re in a frat house rather than a base,” Todd said.
“Which means that they are probably careless with their information,” Andrea winked.
They crawled on and noticed the stairs below them. Zee carefully dropped herself with her hair to the floor making sure that no one was coming and told the others to hop down. Todd couldn’t get hurt as a wooden puppet, so Andrea held on tight to him as they jumped down from the beams. They followed up the old stairs that creaked as they moved and finally got to the top.
No one was on the top floor and they noticed a room that was open at the other end of the second floor. They carefully traveled over to the other side and noticed papers and files laying out on desks. Andrea stayed by the door to be the look out while Todd and Zee quickly looked through the files.
“Zee, everything is in a different language…” Todd said.
“Then how could the men down there read it then?”
“Because it wasn’t for them to find,” a loud voice echoed in the room.
Todd and Zee dropped their papers on the ground and heard the voice laugh. Carter. Andrea fired her gun up to the ceiling, but nothing was there. Suddenly a large dark hand came down from the ceiling and grabbed a hold of Zee. Zee screamed and Todd tried to run to her, but was taken by a hand himself. Andrea continued to fire her gun, but the hands were made of magic, and her weapons weren’t going to hurt them.
The floor beneath Andrea started to sink and Zee could feel herself quickly being pulled up towards the ceiling. She called out to Andrea, but her voice didn’t carry. She was magically pulled through the roof and everything around her was dark. She couldn’t see at all.
“Carter!” she yelled wanting to see light again.
“That little trip that I sent you and your family on was meant only for time. I knew that you all would be back soon.”
“You should have just killed me then! I’m not going to stand for this! My family either!”
“Your family is just an annoyance. I have dealt with them and now the other magic users are my next target. I don’t want you to be in the way. So I have found the perfect places to store every one of you.”
Suddenly the world around Zee got lighter and Zee saw that she was in a large room. The floor was tiled like marble and a grand piano stood close by her. Large windows had a frosted texture and only a window with a bench below it, was open. Zee noticed her hair was longer again and she was wearing a dress. She ran over to the open window and squinted through the bright sunlight.
Then she saw it. A wilderness of trees and land filled her vision but most of all she noticed that she was in a tower. The ground was yards and yards away and she only spotted a set of stairs leading up to the second floor of the tower. She was trapped in an unknown place and was alone…