Random Fact: i started writing this 4 years ago, good thing I remembered just now that i still haven't finished it.

Chapter 3
A girl named James and a Boy named Basil

“Oh Sweet Baby Jesus” Deborah expelled while throwing her arms out to her side as if she were trying to balance on a rolling log. Harold frantically squinted and scanned the elevator buttons. None of them read ‘push here in case of ungodly noises and sudden stop’.
“Blasted piece of ----” (here, Rosemarie at once covered Lily’s ears).
“I think we’re stuck” the southern boy said, eyes sliding ever so briefly toward the girl in the corner.
“I cannot believe this,” Deborah shrieked pulling her face back with her hands, “After all the bad luck we’ve had since we arrived yesterday evening.”
Harold bit the inside of his right cheek. At least this cowboy hat-wearing family had placed the blame on themselves; he hardly had to work to suggest it.
“Does anyone have a cell phone?” Rosemarie asked looking at Harold. He felt almost insulted. He wasn’t lazy enough to carry around a waste of money like that.
“I didn’t think I’d need mine” replied the girl in the corner.
“Oh! How silly. There is absolutely nothing to worry about then. Basil dear,” Deborah flicked her wrist in front of her son in case he hadn’t understood his name being called meant she wanted to speak to him. “Basil, pull out that contraption of yours that we just got for you.” She turned towards everyone else in the elevator. “You know, I myself just don’t understand the new gadgets out these days, But we’ve always bought our kids everything they’ve ever needed, regardless of price, for times just like these! I’m sure once we contact the authorities we’ll be out of this wretched thing in no time.” Twelve eyes now all stared expectantly in Basil’s direction.
“Uh,” a corner of the boy’s mouth curled into a slight smile which he breathed out, “Mama, you know I never use that thing. It’s not charged.” The girl in the corner suddenly felt warm.
“Doesn’t it have a back up battery, or generator, or something?” asked Don.
“No Dad, it’s just a cell phone.”
“It’s not just a cell phone sweet pea, it takes pictures and connects to the world wide web and records…it has to…is there not some sort of…” Deborah jerked toward her son in the jumpiness of someone trying to remove a stain from the carpet before company arrived.
“Momma,” the boy said quietly through clenched teeth, “stop.”
“Calm down Deborah, I’m sure soon enough someone will realise that the elevator is not responding” Don suggested with a slight grin as if to imply it was silly no one had thought of this before.
“No one uses the elevator” replied the girl in the corner. Don scanned the company. The woman with the child nodded in apologetic agreement.
“Sweet Jesus, what kind of dumpy place is this?” Deborah retorted as she fanned herself with her long, pale hands. “I cannot believe Daniel has lied to us again. He swore that this time he had found a nice decent place to live.”
Deborah Lambert would have been a very attractive older woman had it not been for her intense facial expressions and personality. Fortunately, her husband’s appearance was not misleading at all. Both inside and out he was very bland. Therefore, knowing them as a couple balanced everything out and erased any pity one might have for either member. Deborah was as conservative as they came. In fact, the only real questionable thing she had ever done was arrive at a photo shoot misinformed. She was 19 and her naïveté was to blame, of course. By describing the setting as “Romanesque”, the director was not implying that she would be wearing a toga and shot in a classically tasteful way, but completely nude. Deborah left right away and never revealed her mistake to anyone. Of course, the manner in which her eldest son, Daniel, had been conceived in the back seat of Donald’s chauffeured car wasn’t all that classy either.
“You,” Deborah said pointing to the girl in the corner, “You seem to know you’re way around this…place. Is there anything we can do to get out of here?”
The girl shook her head.
In fact, she had only lived at 128 West Street for little over a year. However, she probably knew it best. When she was 16, James Julia Aleman lost her mother. No misplacement involved, only the sad fatality of breast cancer. Her father had died two years before in a car wreck. Jeremy, her older brother and now her guardian, decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue acting and finally become acquainted with the city their father had grown up in. James didn’t mind the move at all. London had never really brought her any happiness. People avoided her at school. More than anything they were scared, secretly jealous of her uncommon beauty. She was always tanned for one, something the people of England are never known for. Her father had been a handsome man of Mexican decent and her mother had been a half-English, half-Egyptian TV actress. James was a superlative mix of her parents’ ethnic influences. Her hair was flawless, silk that danced in the wind. But it was her eyes that gave kids her age a real reason to tease her. One was as brown as the chocolate her father used to bring back from Mexico when he visited his grandfather. The other was a blue as clear and enchanting as the rarity of pleasant skies parading over London.
When the time came to leave the house they had called home behind, only Jeremy got teary-eyed. James was excited. She saw the move as a transition. She could start over. 128 West Street might possibly provide her with the life she had always dreamed of.
Her first week living in the building, James had descended the stairs in hope of finding a suitable place to read in the lobby. Instead, she found it very occupied. A caramel-complected girl was lying on top of someone who was insisting, “Charmain, we can take it slow, I’m not pressuring you…” to which the girl-confection answered by removing her top. Well, certainly this was not the right setting to read 1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era.
James quietly snuck past the couple only to find herself in front of a strange looking set of doors. After some inspection, she realised it was an elevator. It was the find of a lifetime. Soon the elevator became her sanctuary, a space that was rarely used. She could read away in peace without the fear of ever being disturbed.
“Dear Lord Donald, we can’t stand about in here all day. Daniel is expecting us.” Deborah began to pace in front of James.
“So, someone is expecting you soon?” Rosemarie asked hopefully. Basil grunted and slid down onto the floor. Deborah glared at him and nipped him with the point of her shoe.
“Well, yes. My son expects us at 6:00. But we always arrive early, He’ll realise that.”
Rosemarie deflated. It was only 12:30.
“At least I have some snacks, in case anyone gets hungry.” She pulled a backpack from her shoulder and shook it around as proof. “I’m Rosemarie Thack…um… well, actually, I suppose now it’s Jordan, Rosemarie Jordan.” More forgetful than usual, in light of her recent and messy divorce from her husband, Rosemarie stuck her hand shakily toward Deborah. After brief contact, Rosemarie gestured to Harold. “This is Harold Grimson and my daughter Lily.” Harold’s eyes looked as if they were about to leap out of his head. Now this woman even had the gall to introduce him to public enemies. Deborah stared at Harold and when he didn’t extend his hand in warm welcome, Donald took the liberty of offering his.
“Gouda meat chew?” said Donald almost sincerely. Harold didn’t have the interest to unscramble the strange babblings of cowboy hat-wearing Americans.
“Pleasure” he replied dryly.
“Oh,” piped Deborah, identifying the accent and looking from James to Harold, “are you her grandfather?” Harold’s upper lip quivered.
“No,” said James quickly, “I’ve never even spoken to this man before.”
“Then you are?”
“James Aleman.” The girl stood up for the first time and extended her hand confidently.
“James? Isn’t that a boy’s name?” Deborah expelled slow dopey giggles and looked around for approval. Only Lily joined her.
“My mum’s Dad was very ill before I was born and my parents promised to name their next child after him in his honour. I turned out to be a girl, but they kept their promise.”
“How silly. Weren’t you teased at all as a child?”
“You should talk mother,” Basil interrupted with a smile, “They would have named me Dwight if my great uncle hadn’t thought he was dying and demanded I be named after him.” Basil rose from the floor and took James’ hand gently. “Basil Walter Allen Montgomery Lambert III, imagine substitutes getting that right the first try.” James’ blue eye twinkled.
On the contrary, substitutes never slurred or confused Basil’s name. They knew the wrath of his family very well. The Lambert’s were old money. Creole by blood, powerful by inheritance, and infamous from holding office, Lambert was a name hardly brushed aside. Nonetheless, Basil and his older brother Daniel had never considered themselves different or righteously special. They found it all quite silly. Daniel was notorious in their gated community for rebelling and driving his mother crazy with his “improper antics”. He had turned down a scholarship from Harvard to instead travel the world and send scandalous pictures to his mother’s friends of himself in pubs and places like Guatemala. Basil disliked polo, sports in general, sailing, and people like his classmates who instead of bragging about good grades, were more interested in getting other trophies: cars, poker spoils, girls. Deborah was blind to her sons’ humility however, and simply lavished them with luxurious gifts trying in vain to make them realise the prosperity and rewards of money.
“Yes, Basil’s why we had trouble at the airport. They thought his name was too long to be real and so we were set aside like cattle and checked out. The nerve of those people. If my father were to find out, God, I don’t even dare tell him. He’d…well, we’re never treated like cattle.” Deborah pulled a compact out of her Louis Vuitton purse and continued to talk to no one in particular as she powdered her nose. “And then our taxi got a flat tire and we just had to walk to our hotel. Dear Lord, in these heels I felt like my toes were right about to fall off my feet. You’ll never guess what happened last night. I guess Margery, that’s the head of our hired help… I guess she forgot about the time difference and called me at 11:45 P.M telling me that one of our horses had got out. I couldn’t believe it. Now this! It’s like we’re cursed.” Deborah put her compact away and smiled absently at Rosemarie. Harold backed as far away as he could from Deborah and narrowed his eyes.
“So you’re visiting your son for Thanksgiving?” Rosemarie asked; mislead to think Deborah’s misdirected smile at her implied she wished to be conversed with.
“Oh…” Deborah’s eyebrows furrowed in a look like she’d been interrupted, “yes. My son Daniel. He says he’s finally found his soulmate. So here we are ready to get acquainted. It’s going to be a lovely dinner, He’s a fine cook.” Deborah turned toward James whose eyes had suddenly widened.
“Well there’s some good news” Rosemarie said cheerfully.
“Oh Mon Dieu,” James breathed, eyes not focusing on any particular thing. “Daniel Lambert? Dizzy Danny? Oh my God.” James suddenly sank back into her earlier mentioned position on the floor.
“How?” Deborah began, alarmed that such a girl would know her son’s private family nickname. “What are you muttering about?”
“It’s just. I…I just realised that I know Daniel. I know him…very, very well.”
“Sweet Jesus, you aren’t saying that YOU are Daniel’s love interest are you? How old are you? 13?” a vein made itself present on Deborah’s temple.
“No, no, NO.” James shook her head and bit her lip, beginning to fully realise just how small the elevator was.
“What are you trying to say then?” Deborah’s vein pulsed wildly. “Do you know who my son is in love with?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Who? Your big sister John?” Deborah laughed at her own joke (as did Lily) but stopped when James didn’t snap back in defence.
“Jeremy.” She finally let out.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re sister’s name is Jeremy? You’re parents really went too far.” Deborah nudged Don in disbelief.
“Well, no. Jeremy is my brother’s name.” James said quietly.