With great effort Mom opened the door, her face straining and cords standing out on her neck.

Instantly, white light cast itself out onto the front lawn, bathing Shawn in its inescapable warmth.




It was a sight to behold, even for an adult of any kind to be sure. Two huge spiral staircases.

"All of this is mine!" Mom said, and then as if remembering. "It's all yours Shawn! You did it! Welcome to your new home!"

Shawn couldn't help but gape at the sight of the massive, brightly lit foyer, but it seemed like the appropriate reaction so he didn't try too hard to hide it. "Uhhh...wow." It still didn't feel real, and he waited for his Mom to step over the threshold first, as if worried the mirage would vanish if he did anything.

"Isn't it wonderful?" Mom asked, her own mouth two rows of bright, shiny teeth eyes catching the gleam of the chandelier that basked its heavenly, opulence across the room.

"We can get anything now. You're a star. You just ask for it, and it's yours." Mom said.

"But don't ask too much." She said, contradicting herself and catching herself as if she realized she was a Mom and had to impose some kind of limits.

OOC: Shawn Adds

* * Deep Pockets Merit to his character sheet.

Shawn didn't know how a TV commercial meant all this for him, but all he could really do was accept it. "Thanks Mom! I'll be responsible." He tried to put on the air of the serious, considerate child as he replied. He didn't want to seem like a spoiled brat - to his Mom or the neighborhood kids.

The phone somewhere off in the distance rang, emitting a jangling sound that bounced around the interior of the house.

"Oh, I need to get that. That's probably Bill." Mom said. "I mean, Mr. Horwitz" She said to Shawn, as if she was correcting herself. "Why don't you go upstairs. Your room is the second room to the right." Mom pointed to the stairs, the spiral staircase to the right.

Shawn tried to recall if he knew a Mr. Horowitz, but nothing occurred to him right away. So he nodded cheerfully at his Mom and started to head up the stairs. The place was so big, it felt almost disorienting - like he was heading to a room in a hotel rather than what was ostensibly his home.

The spacious room felt more like Shawn was walking in a giant's house from Jack and the Beanstalk---a very rich giant that lived in Hollywood. The paintings on the walls of the hallway were enormous in their proportion to Shawn, and when he reached the top of the stairs he had to take a breath or two to recover his stamina.

The hallway was long and it had about seven doors in total. Seven different rooms and this was just the upstairs, Shawn hadn't gone downstairs yet to the kitchen where Mom was, let alone explored to see if there was a basement.

As Shawn was walking down the hallway to get to the second door on the right as Mom instructed, he heard something or someone. A shuffling sound coming from the first door on the right.

Shawn heard the sound coming from the first room and paused for a moment. He knew it wasn't the room he was supposed to be heading for, but it was his first time in the house, so he had a ready-made excuse for opening random doors. He decided to quietly open the first door on the right; if anyone objected, he'd just say he was trying to find out where the bathroom was.

But before Shawn could even open the door, it opened by itself.

A kid with angry eyes stared back and Shawn, a look of surprise on his face.

"What!?" He almost shouted. "Who are you!?"

Shawn was equally surprised, though his eyes were far less angry. "Huh? I'm Shawn. I was just looking for the...wait, who are you?" His Mom hadn't warned him about any other kids staying here. Though certainly it looked like there was room.

Shawn's answer sparked even more interest. The of look of surprise now a look of bewilderment.

"What!?" He repeated. "I'm Chris. And this is my house. What are you doing here?"

Shawn was equally surprised, though he was relieved that Chris didn't seem outright angry. "Umm, my Mom said I live here now? That's supposed to be my room, I think? I didn't know anyone else lived here." He pointed at the next door down - the second on the right. He hadn't been here long enough to confidently assert that it was his house.

Chris' eyes were as wide as dinner plates as if this information was all new to him.

"You're living here?" He repeated the words, like a kid trying liver and onions at dinner for the first time, and not at all liking it.

"But I live here!" He said, as if Shawn's moving in was somehow a threat and the two could not exist at the same time in the same space. Although, of course, this was definitely not the case, given that Shawn had never been in so much space in his life.

"I've spent my whole life here. Where are you even from?" Chis asked, as if Shawn was some kind of alien being that had invaded Chris' planet.

"Umm, I'm from down the street?" Now Shawn was especially confused - surely his Mom hadn't moved them into a place without telling the people who lived there, right? "Is anyone in that room right now?" He pointed at the door to the room he ostensibly was going to be living in.

"You sure are." Chris said, folding his arms as if defending his room. When Shawn pointed, Chris turned his head and looked down the hallway about a dozen feet past a gaudy painting on the wall of oil canvas Cheetah to where the next door was.

"That's the guest room." Chris said. "That's where my friends have sleep overs. We all pretend to be in the desert or in a big computer world where one of us is Max Headroom and the others are watching the TV." Christ explained, and there was a defiant tone in his voice. "And we stay up real late." he added, as if there could be no other way but staying up late and that anyone who objected to it was a total loser.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:22, Thu 23 Sept 2021.

The fact that it was a guest room made things a lot clearer to Shawn - clearly, he and his Mom were guests of Chris' mom or dad, and his Mom hadn't made that clear when they went inside. Of course, if Shawn was a guest, that made Chris a host, and he knew you should always be polite to a host. He immediately looked fascinated by Chris's sleepover story. "Oh wow, that's really cool! I bet you have a lot of friends!"

Chris seemed surprised and somewhat disarmed and taken off guard, clearly trying to work his way up to some kind of defense of his house. "I've got...friends." Chris said, finishing the last work rather lamely and unconvincingly.

Chris unfolded his arms. "About as much as anyone can call kids that live on Celebrity Drive friends." He said cryptically. "Where down the street?" Chris asked, suddenly suspicious.

"I hope we can be friends too!" Shawn was answering Chris' implied statement more than what he'd actually said, but he remained cheerful in the face of Chris' surprise and suspicion. "I'm from Main Street - it's only a few blocks from here."

Chris regarded Shawn silently. Then when Shawn said he was from Main Street, Chris said "You're from that side of the development. I know where that is. Its across the fence behind our yard. Dad says not to go back there. He says poor kids live there."

"Man, you don't even know it. You're gonna be way over your head here. This place, Celebrity Drive. It's not like a normal neighborhood."

Shawn had expected a slightly frosty reception when he revealed that he was from Main Street. But that was because Main Street was dangerous, not because it was poor. But his plan to overcome it remained the same - trying to be nice and charming and Chris' friend. "It definitely seems really different. The houses are super huge and everything. Maybe you can show me the ropes?"

"Well, it doesn't work like that. It's just where you start is where you are. Everyone here has to be something. Its not good enough just to be a normal kid. The parents here won't let that happen. Everyone has to be better than just a normal, poor kid. Everyone here has to be kind of like an adult." Chris explained, not promising anything, and certainly not warming to Shawn, but nevertheless providing his frank assessment of the situation.

"The ropes are like this: Don't trust anyone. And don't listen to anything that anyone says." Chris explained.

Shawn didn’t want to show it, but Chris’ description of having to be better, not being able to be just a normal kid sounded incredibly familiar to him. It sounded a lot like being an actor - having to know his lines, get along with everyone, never stop being patient, give the agents and directors what they wanted even if it was impossible…

But rather than dig too deep into what that meant, he pushed it deep down and maintained his seeming cheer, though he tempered it with sympathy as well. “That sounds really rough…but you seem nice at least!” Well, he hadn’t been, really. But sometimes when you said nice things about someone, they’d wind up trying to live up to it.

Chris gave a wry little smile. "You should see me when I'm hungry." And then, adding "The guest room should be clean. Mom makes sure the cleaners do the whole upstairs, downstairs and basement every Wednesday. Anyway, if I don't make it downstairs to eat breakfast before you go, it was nice talking to you."

Shawn saw Chris' smile, and while it wasn't exactly the open arms of friendship, at least it felt like a connection. "It was really nice talking to you too! See you tomorrow, hopefully." He didn't really understand the circumstances that had brought him to this house, or what he was going to be expected to do. But for the time being he was going to just go along with things until he figured more out.

He hefted his suitcase, and then gave Chris a friendly nod before heading towards the guest room.

OOC: Shawn joins thread

Shawn: The Guest Room?