Excerpt: kyrIe: The First in the Andrisk Cronicles

Kyrie had never snuck out of the house before but she wanted to see Micah. She heard her father come up the stairs and stop outside her door. The door was slowly pushed open and she shut her eyes just as a patch of light fell on her bed.

‘Just go to bed,’ she thought. ‘I’m asleep. Just close the door and keep walking.’ She lay there hoping Eric would leave soon. After a few moments that felt like hours to Kyrie, Eric closed the door, leaving it open a little, and Kyrie heard him walk to his bedroom.

‘That was close,’ she breathed. ‘Now all I have to do is wait for him to fall asleep. That shouldn’t be too hard.’

Kyrie glanced at the clock and watched the numbers tick away. 10 o’clock, 10:30 and finally when the numbers flipped to 11, she got out of bed. She tiptoed over to her chair and put on the sweater that was lying on it. She grabbed her shoes and slowly made her way to her door. She peaked through the crack as she opened the door. The door creaked and she froze, listening to see if her father woke up. She held her breathe and slowly let it out when she didn’t hear anything. All she needed to do was make it downstairs without her father waking up.

She shuffled into the hallway and gently closed her door. She tiptoed down the hallway past her father’s room to the back stairway. The front stairs had an alarm sensor on them that would randomly change stairs every night. She learned that the hard way years ago when she was trying to sneak downstairs and watch TV. Her father was not amused.

As she came to her father’s door, she slowed down and inched past it, straining to hear any noise through the door. After she passed his room she breathed a sigh of relief and hurried down the rest of hallway. After all the times sneaking downstairs for cookies she knew all the places that the stairs creaked. She never understood why her father never had an alarm system installed on the back steps but it would work in her favor tonight.