| The boy's name was Josh Young. Luckily, Josh Young was a financial guru. In fact, he was often teased by his friends because he would talk for hours about finance and read financial books for "entertainment." This was a very odd boy, but his friends loved him anyway. Well, Josh wasn't too concerned about supporting himself and his family. He had $500 saved up, invested it in stocks, and continued to double his money every day for the next 3 weeks until he had plenty to last for a while. However, he was quite concerned with finding the true identity of his father. Had his father been kidnapped by corporate criminals attempting to gain his secrets and power? Or was his father engaged in clandestine dealings, and had he been maintaining this normal life with Josh and his mom on the side? Josh was very troubled and decided to consult his good friend Lisa, who was always a good source of wisdom. He had just dialed her number on his cell phone when suddenly, a number popped up from South Carolina. Odd. He decided to answer it. The voice on the other end was high-pitched and shaky.
"Hello?" the girl asked.
"Um...hi. Who is this?"
"My name is Jami. I...um...this is going to sound wierd, but I'm calling because my dad disappeared several days ago, and I found your number in his little red book. Did you know a man named Victor Heckstein Harris?"
"Um...my dad's name is Victor...Victor Young. What does your dad look like?"
"Oh, he's tall and dark and bearded..quite sinister looking actually. He has a jello fetish and likes to laugh maniacally. He also likes to accumulate large sums of money and bury it in the local graveyard where he pretends his dead basset hound is buried."
Josh was frozen in his tracks. Clearly, the strange girl was talking about his father. So had these "business trips" been an excuse for his father to lead many different lives? And this girl -- was she his half sister, or was she perhaps something darker, something scarier, something more dangerous than he could imagine?
Josh didn't have much time to think. The voice on the other end grew faint, and the girl suddenly started screaming, "No, no, don't take me! Let me go!" She did manage to whisper into the phone before she hung up, "Prancing poodles are very picky and pink." He had no idea what this meant, but it sounded like an important clue. So he called up his best friends -- Shali, Lisa, Charlotte, Glaziepoo, Severo, Jeremy, Sterns, Steve, Carolyn, Aimee, Lori, and Seth -- and he asked them to prepare for Mission Poodle. Together, they would track down Jami, save her from destruction, and work with her to find Josh's father and unravel this mystery. However, they needed a secret weapon, so they decided to call Dr. Meyers as well -- who was great at pretending to be a cute old lady and then busting out her super ninja skills when most needed. Thus began the road trip to South Carolina.
(P.S. If you weren't included in the list of Josh's rescue mission friends, that's because you get to be a villain later...or whatever you get put into the story as.  ) |
