The Dome Chronicles: Lies

One

Vvvrrrrooooommm. Vrrrroooooommmmmm. Screeeeeech! 

I am rudely awakened by the faint sound of roaring cars and shouting men; the annoyance comes from below me. 

For some godforsaken reason, my 12-year-old sister, Peyton, is watching Fast and Furious. How do I know that? Because it’s happened before. I love my sister, but she can be really weird sometimes. Not to mention that the sun hasn’t even come up yet. It's 5:30 AM, which is basically the middle of the night in Freaya time. Not cool.

After listening to these irritating noises for another five minutes, I roll over and press the speaker button for her cube.                                                                                                                                                                                     

"Peyton!" I yell, still groggy and half-awake. 

The way our beds are set up isn’t really typical. Because Nicholas is an inventor, our family is always the first to try out his new products, whether they’re successful or not. They can be anything from high-tech appliances to the cubes we sleep in, which closely resemble the capsule hotels that became popular in the early 2000’s. The cubes are set up in a three long by three high, cube-type format stacked against the wall, and each of them are equipped with a mini TV and a speaker system that can broadcast to one or multiple other cubes at a time. This is a handy feature for many reasons, but I mainly just use it to yell at Peyton for watching car racing movies at full volume at 5:30 in the morning.  

As I said, it’s a pretty handy feature.

"What?" she yells back. Her voice is as irritated as mine, which doesn’t quite make sense.

"Care to explain why the heck you’re watching Fast and Furious at 5:30 am? And at full volume, I might add. Don’t you have any respect for other people’s beauty sleep?" 

"Because," she replies with obvious sass in her voice,"I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep." She pauses. "Plus, mom’s C-section is in a few hours, so I thought ‘what’s the point of trying to fall back asleep’?"

My mom is currently pregnant with triplets; as if nine kids wasn’t already enough. She and Nicholas wanted to have one more kid, but since they used IVF, they got a little more than they bargained for.

"Well, for your information, I was watching Fast and Furious because it’s a good movie. It’s called having taste. Not that I would expect you to know what that’s like..."

I let out a deep sigh. “I don’t have time for movies, because I actually have a life.”

She snorts. “No, you don’t. If you did, you would be like me; up to date on the best old movies of all time.” 

“Whatever. Just turn it off because I am dead tired and could really use an extra hour of sleep. It’s going to be a long day.”

“Fine.”

I roll over and attempt to get more sleep. I wake up again at 6:30, then realize that we are supposed to be en route to the hospital right about now, and all of the kids are still sleeping.

Can’t say I’m surprised; this is like a daily occurrence with our family. We’re late to everything. Even our siblings’ birth, it seems. 

I push the ‘project’ button which allows me to talk to everybody at once.

"Good morning, guys. Uh, this is your big sister and I'm just letting you know that we’re literally supposed to be on our way to the hospital right now for mom’s C-section and we have to leave, like… ten minutes ago. So get up, lazy bums.”

That seems good enough.

I scramble down from my cube and start to gather some clothes for my younger siblings while they all groan, open their sleeping cubes, and climb down the ladder. 

The first one down is Peyton, of course, who is completely wide awake. Next comes my eight-year-old brother, Tauren, and my fourteen-year-old brother, Toby. My brothers Finn and Ronan, six and five years old respectively, eventually crawl out and start digging in their closets for clothes. Once I’m finished picking outfits for the little kids, I turn to grab them and start getting them ready. The structure of the sleeping tubes makes it hard to drag my toddler sisters Devyn, and Charlotte, out of their safe, comfy “cocoons” as they call them, and they protest quite a bit at first, but I assure them it’s for the best. Devyn and Charlotte aren’t twins, but are only a year apart at three and two years old, so we basically regard them as twins. 

“Toby, Peyton! Can you get the girls dressed please?” I pick the girls up, one in each arm, and bring them over to the bathroom, where Toby is obviously busy perfecting his hair. 

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” he says, annoyed. 

“Yes, but I need you to help get the girls ready. I’m busy with Faith.”

“Okay, fine.” I set the girls down and he takes each of their hands and leads them into the bathroom.

I stumble back into the bedroom and over to my eight-year-old sister, Faith’s bed; Tauren’s twin sister. She doesn’t sleep in a tube like the rest of us because she has nonverbal autism and is prone to epileptic seizures. My mom made Nicholas build her a separate bed on the ground to give her some peace of mind. 

I gently shake my sister, who is still sound asleep. “Hey, girl. It’s time to wake up so we can meet the new babies!”

She opens her eyes briefly, and then closes them again when she sees me.

What a mood.

“C’mon girly, your brothers and sisters are already awake.” I pull both of her arms toward me so she is sitting up. Her eyes open and she glares at me, clearly annoyed. 

“Faith, seriously. Stop with the ‘tude. Let’s go.” 

I help her stand up and lead her over to where I put the clothes I had set out for her.

Nicholas pops his head into the kids’ room. “Hey Freaya, mom and I are going to take off for the hospital. It seems like you’ve got things under control here?”

“Yep, completely under control,” I respond, with a hint of sarcasm as I help Faith take her pajama shirt off and put a different one. 

“Freaya.” 

“What? I said everything was under control.” As if that was his cue, Finn comes running in the room with only his underpants on, a tired-looking Toby following close behind. Toby scoops Finn off the ground and carries him back to the bathroom. 

“Everything’s under control here, Nicholas. Don’t worry.”

Nicholas shrugs. “Looks like you’ve got everything handled, so we’re going to take off.”

He leaves the room and I continue to help Faith get dressed. Peyton comes back in the room with both of the girls on her hips. “How’s it going?”

“Well, ‘dad’ just came to check on us and then Finn came streaking in the room with only his underpants on. Nicholas didn’t even blink an eye.” I make finger quotes as I say “dad,” because Nicholas isn’t our real father; which I guess is why we call him by his real name.

My family's very unique in the sense that we're not all completely biologically related. Nicholas isn't my mom's first husband. First, she married my biological father, Robert, and they had me and Toby. A couple years after Toby was born, they adopted Peyton because they felt like something was missing. After that, we were happy. We were complete. We were a family. That is, until the accident happened.

My biological father, Robert, was a firefighter. He was my hero. He was nice, loving, caring and compassionate. He loved his job and his family. One night, he went on a call for a huge fire that had engulfed an entire house. The other firefighters got everyone out of the house, except my father. After the fire was put out they discovered they were too late. 

Since it was late at night, my mother got the call when she believed all of us were in bed. Her crying woke me and Peyton up, so we left our rooms to see what was wrong. We heard her say that she didn't believe he was gone, and then we knew what happened. She told us the following morning. That day was awful. We did nothing but sit there and cry; we couldn't even eat. The funeral was even more torturous because we had to deal with the reality that we would never see him again. It was the same level of sadness as any other funeral but for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to cry. I had used all my tears up. I had none left. 

My mom waited two years before even trying to start dating again. When she met Nicholas, she was happier than I had seen her in a long time. She told him about my dad, and he was sympathetic. He told her that’s why he and his father built the Dome in the first place, and she was smitten. She was impressed with his quick thinking and logic. Before I could even blink, Nicholas proposed and she said yes. Despite how fast-paced everything seemed to go, the wedding really was wonderful. It was the symbol of a new beginning, both for mom and for us. A few months later, mom was pregnant with the twins. Then came Patrick, Noah, Devyn, Charlotte and now the triplets. Now our family's finally complete.

Then again, not quite yet.

I lead Faith into the kitchen, where I make a bowl of cereal for her and pour some milk. The rest of the kids trickle in one by one, and reach for more bowls. 

I swear, even though these guys are my siblings, sometimes I feel like their mom.

About a half an hour later, all nine of us are ready to leave. I enlist Toby and Peyton to help me corral all the kids into the minibus, and with their help, it doesn’t take long.

Although I just took my driver’s test yesterday, I’m the oldest and the only one who can drive so naturally I get into the drivers’ seat. 

When we arrive at the hospital, which is about ten minutes away, I swing into a parking spot and nail it. My parking is absolutely flawless.

You would've never guessed I got my license yesterday, especially since I’ve never driven the minibus before.

I put the bus in park and help the little kids get unbuckled. For safety reasons, we always use one of those ropes with the plastic rings attached so nobody gets lost. We’re like a walking preschool. After all the kids have grabbed onto a ring, we begin the journey through the parking lot and up to the front doors.