An Excerpt from a Writing Project

From Rockybado: Robot King of the Island

Everything has always been normal in Crown Point, a quaint little city in Northwest Indiana. As a matter of fact, everything has always been normal everywhere, especially in the household of the Ingram's. This family, from Crown Point, was just going through a normal day, as always.

The five boys' parents were at work. The oldest, Dawson, was on his first day at an internship. The second oldest, Brett, was playing games on the computer. The three younger boys, David, Brody, and Toby, were playing video games on their old gaming system in the common living area. Everything else was very quiet in their house on Garfield Court.

When school starts again, Dawson will be a junior at a private university, which is about thirty minutes away. Dawson is studying Spanish and Education, and will be 21 years old in July. He is involved in many clubs and organizations, and he is also part of a bowling league with one of his brothers. In his spare time, Dawson likes to play lacrosse with his friends.

Brett will be a sophomore at the nearby high school and already has aspirations of working in the IT department of a prominent business. He also does quite a lot at school, and he is on the bowling league with Dawson. However, Brett does not play any other sports, other than tennis.

David will be a freshman at the same high school, and all of his classmates consider him the valedictorian of his class; he is that smart. He is on the tennis team with his best friend, Adam Levistad, and he has been looking forward to high school for quite a while.

Brody, a soon-to-be eighth grader at the nearby middle school, is as smart as David. However, Brody is very accident prone and is considered a klutz. As David is on the tennis team, Brody does not do any school sports yet. However, in high school, he wants to play tennis and baseball.

Toby is a fourth grader at an elementary school in the area. He is the youngest of the kids, but he is not related to them biologically. As a matter of fact, he was adopted from Luxembourg when he was very young. At first, his real name was Tobias Laschwanze Urzyscha Schwann. But, when he was adopted, his adoptive parents legally changed his name to Toby Laschwanze Urzyscha Ingram. They liked the name "Toby" more than they did "Tobias."

To explain Brody's sense of being accident prone, he has had everything happen to him since he was little. When he was only six years old, he fell out of a tree and broke his wrist. Brody fell off his bike and broke his arm at the age of eight. When he was ten, he was very sick with the flu, passed out, and had to go to the hospital. In the summer of seventh grade, he had to have his tonsils taken out. He also has asthma and was diagnosed with it when he was six. Nothing of the like has ever happened to Dawson, Brett, or Toby.

David had his tonsils removed when he was four years old, and he was diagnosed with asthma when he was eight years old. Therefore, he and Brody have more in common than he and their other siblings do.

When Brody had the flu, he tried to get up from the couch and get a drink of water because he was very thirsty. Little did he know that he was very dehydrated. When he was halfway to the kitchen, he felt as if he spun around in circles while hearing some dark music coming from the other room. Before he knew it, he was on the floor with a relatively high fever. Once he was stable, he found out that it was how he fell that made some of his family members laugh. He passed out in a more unique way than the majority of people would.

When Brody was six, he had a huge desire to work in an orchard, since their grandparents own one on their property. He, being as headstrong as he always has been, decided to actually climb up an apple tree and see how many apples he could pick while up in the tree.  

Before he fell, Brody picked a total of nine apples. He tried coming down safely, but he lost his balance. Therefore, he lost all nine apples; they fell to the ground and bruised. Then, Brody himself fell to the ground, and he landed on his wrist. After he was back on the ground, he could feel his heart pounding through it; and he felt sick to his stomach as well. Their grandma found him and took him to the hospital to have his wrist x-rayed before they all found out that he broke it. And that was the last day of school for him for two days and a weekend.

Tomorrow was going to be the last day of school for everyone, and Brett received a phone call from one of his friends, asking if he would like to come over to his house so that they could study for finals together. Once Brett got off the phone with his friend, he left. An hour and thirty minutes later, David and Brody decided to draw pictures of abstract figures.

“Thank goodness we don’t have finals yet,” Brody said.
“Finals are probably very annoying to study for, but I’ve heard that they are mostly pretty easy to pass,” David replied.
“True that,” Brody sighed with apprehension. “I don’t like the idea of staying up at midnight studying for unnecessary finals. Math I can most definitely handle. Literature, on the other hand.”
“Oh, you’ll be fine,” David answered confidently. “Brett has yet to have a bad final.”

Brett came back to the house soon after his younger brother made the somewhat valid statement. If he knew exactly what David and Brody were talking about, he would be in utmost agreement with them. However, since he didn’t know, he wasn’t quite sure whether David and Brody were saying something good about him, or something bad about him. Brett was going to find out for himself pretty soon.

“What did you say about me?!” Brett chimed in, sounding quite furious, yet sarcastic.
“Absolutely nothing!” Brody answered with utter excitement.
“That came out of nowhere,” David said plainly.
“I realized that.” 

Brody, for some odd reason, decided to lie on his stomach. He was on the couch, and then he decided to grab a bag of candy from the kitchen counter. But Brody realized that the bag was empty. He was a little bummed.

“Would you like to go to a fast food joint?” Brett asked his younger brother.
“Okay!” Brody nearly shouted.

Brett and Brody went to Brody’s choice of fast food joint. David wanted them to bring him back a chicken sandwich, because he did not feel like going back out once he was at home. He was working on his own personal “project” involving medical robotics. Brett helped him with the project whenever needed, but David really wanted to do his research independently. He has been hoping that he could get a lot out of this research so that he could come up with ideas for new medical technology in the future.

Once Brett and Brody returned home from the fast food joint, they observed David working diligently on his project. They handed him a small bag that held David’s order.

“Thanks,” David said blankly.
“Any time,” Brett answered.
“I thought you were going to study with your friend for a while.”
“Well, we were going to. We planned on studying for two hours, and then we got caught up in playing video games.”
“Do you think you’re ready for your finals?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m ready to nail this like a boss.”

David kept working on his project for another hour at least. Brett and Brody decided to put on a Sci-Fi movie. David still worked on his project regardless. It may have appeared difficult for David to maintain his focus on what he was doing, but it really paid off in the end.

“How many pages of your project do you have?” Brody asked.
“Thirty,” David answered bluntly.
“Just in text?!”
“No. I have a few pages with pictures. Anyways, what time is it?”
“Time for you to get a watch, sir.”

Both boys laughed at the direct remark. David could probably use a watch. He has lost several watches in his life; six to be exact. His family members have kept on telling him that he can have another watch, as long as he doesn’t lose the next one.

It was now about nine o’clock at night, and the boys were supposed to get ready for bed, since Brett would have to take a couple more finals, and David and Brody would need to be up and ready for school as well.

The two boys were both standing in the bathroom brushing their teeth. They hummed some random songs while standing in front of the mirror. Then, when Brody rinsed off his toothbrush, he noticed a huge orange spider on the wall.

He stood still. His face turned pale. He could feel his heart banging inside his chest. He noticed himself breathing hard. Then, he started shaking.

“D-David?” he slowly called David’s name.
“It’s a pider,” David joked.
“SHUT UP!” Brody suddenly shouted.
“I like me some pider.”
“Well, you do. Kill it.”
“No.”
“Then, get your habitat case.”

David went to his room and got out his habitat case, which was filled with sand and other décor. He came into the bathroom with the case, and then he picked up the spider with his fingers and put it in the case. Brody thanked him for that. Then, the younger brother took off his shirt.

“HOLY JEHOVAH! THIS FEELS SO GOOD!” he announced.

The weather was very warm tonight. It was the beginning of June, so it was almost summer. Only about ten more days, and then the longest day of the year would come. Time to pick out the watermelons, the cantaloupe, the sweet corn, and all the whatnot.

David and Brody share a room, which is the biggest bedroom in the house. They each have a futon, one on each side of the room. The two boys fell asleep in no time at all and stayed asleep for at least a couple hours. Then, Brody woke up.

“David?” he asked quietly.

No response from David, meaning that he was sound asleep.

Brody then crawled over to where his older brother was sleeping. David was sleeping on his stomach, his back moving up and down with his breathing. Five minutes later, he stirred and lay on his side.

“DAVID!” Brody shouted at the top of his lungs.

David finally responded. It turned out that he was not in the best of moods. As a matter of fact, he was in a worse mood than he normally is in his waking moments.

The boy was suddenly woken up by his younger brother, and he found that to be somewhat annoying. He was trying to sleep, so that he would have a great last day of school tomorrow. And now, thanks to Brody, he might end up pretty exhausted. Brody had to have woken him up for a better reason than not.

“What?!” David answered, somewhat annoyed.
“Do you hear that sound?”
“What sound?”
“It sounds like girls singing.”
“Why would we have girls in the house at this time of night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Want to investigate then?”
“Yes.”

David got up off his futon, and he and Brody walked all around the house. They didn’t think the “girls” would have been anywhere, except for Brett’s room. When David and Brody walked farther away from their older brother’s room, the sound grew fainter and fainter.

“These girls are singing in Brett’s room,” Brody said bluntly.

The two boys walked into Brett’s room, only to find him listening to some random pop music. He used some songs by his most favorite female artists to study for one of his harder finals. Apparently, the brain messes with its owner when he or she first wakes up from a deep sleep. David and Brody stood by Brett’s door for a few minutes as they kept on wondering why their older brother would even consider listening to songs that are most likely from the ‘80’s.

“Hey, guys,” Brett said.
“Hi,” Brody answered blankly.
“What’s up?”
“I thought there were girls singing in the house. You tricked me.”
“It’s eleven. You should probably go to bed.”
“It’s eleven. You should probably go to bed.”
“In thirty minutes, I will.”
“Have fun studying.”
“Have fun going to bed.”

David and Brody went back to their bedroom, and they tried to go back to sleep. David returned to Dreamland in no time at all. Brody, however, could not fall asleep. He had too much stuff on his mind.

Last day of school tomorrow. Trip to the East Coast in a few weeks. Meet some new friends. How exciting.

Brody decided to make himself a cup of hot oolong tea in order to calm himself down. As the tea was steeping, he returned to his thoughts about what his summer would entail. He closed his eyes and envisioned everything.

When Brody sat down and waited for his tea, Honeybunny walked over to him. The sound of the white cat’s loud purr emanated through the kitchen. The furry motorboat leaped onto Brody’s lap and sat down.

I want you to pet me, the cat must have said.

Brody pet the cat for what seemed to be five minutes. He drank his tea, and he continued to play with the cat. Brody then looked at the clock, and it was already one o’clock in the morning. Holy mostaccioli! He and his brothers have their last day of school tomorrow. There was no time to actually mess around with the cat, especially if he wanted to have a great last day of school.

BRODY! PET ME SOME MORE! AROUND THE BACK AREA! The cat must have shouted.

Brody picked up the cat and put it down on the floor. He really needed to go back to bed now, since he would be so exhausted, come tomorrow morning.

​He went back to his bedroom after drinking his oolong tea. David was still sleeping soundly on his futon. Brody then lay on his futon. He fought hard to go back to sleep, but it failed miserably….until about 1:30 in the morning.