Home Alone, Formerly

Home Alone, Formerly is the hint h chapter of Stranger in a Strange School.

Chapter
Basil sat in his living room. He looked at a picture of his parents. His dad, Cassius looked happy, weird for a man who had been having health problems for years. His mom, Sondra for some reason made him think of the Wicked Witch of the West.

He thought for a few seconds. Basil then shook his head and threw the picture aside. He had always wondered what it would be like to be home alone, his dad being an author and sick most of the time meant that he had never gotten his old house to himself. Now that he had a house to himself, Basil liked it.

Basil's thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Basil got up from the couch he was sitting on to answer the door. When he did answer it he saw Lee, Camillio, Holger, Tina and Biffy on his front porch. Basil raised an eyebrow.

"Lee? Aren't you grounded? Why are you here?" Lee shook his head. He wasn't too thrilled for the reason. Basil could understand how Tina could visit him since she wasn't grounded. That only raised the question of why the other three were there. "Wait a minute, how'd you all find out where I live?"

"Uh, my parents are at the opera so I thought I'd just pay a visit." Basil looked at everyone else. "Them too." Basil did not seem convinced. "And your mailbox has your last name on it." Basil leaned out of the door to look at the mailbox. It had 'The Hagen's' written on it.

"Okay then, now leave." Basil was about to close the door when he was stopped by Biffy. Basil glared at the towering tenth grader who growled in response. "You know I'm prepared to throw the urn holding my dad's ashes at you."

"Dude, you are so bluffing." The shock on Cam's face was the same as everyone else's.

"I am not!" Now where was that urn? The closet? The basement? The attic? Basil's mind raced as he tried to figure out where it was. "Actually, you guys can come in until I remember where the darn thing is." Basil got out of the way and let everyone in. As Lee and Tina stepped in they both looked at him with questioning looks. "What?"

"You wouldn't really throw the urn holding your dad's ashes at us would you?" There was a trace of fright in Tina's voice. She was starting to have a bad feeling about being friends with someone like Basil. Basil closed the door and looked around. He heard Cam, Holger and Biffy in the living room. He then looked at both Lee and Tina. Basil shook his head in response. Tina smiled a bit while Lee kept his questioning look.

"Then why use that particular thing as a threat?" Lee's question was an obvious one. Why would Basil threaten to throw an urn at visitors? Basil shrugged. "Do you always use that?" Basil shook his head. "Okay then."

"No way!" Biffy's excited voice rang through the entire house. "The first edition of 'The Life of King Robert the Bruce.'" Lee and Tina ran into the living room where a bookshelf was. The entire shelf consisted of the books that Basil's dad had written, all fourteen of them. Cassius Hagen's books were popular among teenagers. The most popular of them was 'The Life of King Robert the Bruce." It was popular because of the action and drama in this story out of history that made it something that teenagers couldn't stop reading. Teenagers usually found history boring but for some reason more and more people had been taking history classes because of that book. Basil couldn't understand it. He had never read any of his dad's books. While he heard his guests discuss his dad's books, Basil slumped to the floor.

"I cried at the end of 'The Modern Prometheus!'" Tina's comment made Basil wince in pain. That story of horror and romance that had so much drama in it, it was inspired by 'Frankenstein'. He hated being called Frankenstein and because of that Basil hated that book particularly.

"Hey, take a look at first edition of 'The Legend of Amleth.'" Lee's voice made Basil's skin crawl. That book particularly, the one his dad had written the year Basil had been born it sickened him. "It says 'Dedicated to my son, Basil' on the first page." Basil stood up and walked towards the back door and exited to the backyard. Almost immediately, he heard the back door open. Basil turned his head to see Lee and Tina behind him.

"What do you want?" Basil's voice was cold. It caught both Lee and Tina off guard. They didn't expect this from him.

"Why didn't you tell us who you were?" Tina's voice was calm, friendly, warm, kind how sympathetic she was.

"Your dad was Cassius Hagen." Lee's voice, just like Tina's it was something that Basil was not used to.

"Do I look like I care?" Basil didn't turn to look at either of them. He just stood there looking at a large oak tree. "The only reason anyone wanted to be friends with me was so they could get their copies of his books autographed. Now that he's dead people are all like 'Oh, he's some dead guy's kid, no one cares about him.'"

"Basil, I told my friends about what your life has been like and they all felt sorry for you." Basil turned his head and looked at Lee and Tina. They felt sorry for him?