Chapter 13

Gabriella's Story – The Ghost Who Smiles

Gabriella was only 11 years old when she had moved into a new condominium called The Wild Coyote. The Wild Coyote was a condominium located in Colorado Springs, a city within the state of Colorado.

Gabriella was a native of the state of Colorado, except she was born in Denver, the capital of Colorado. She came from a family of five (including her two older siblings Jessica and Maria).

The Wild Coyote was a condominium of four apartment blocks. The biggest was Block A, having 8 floors, 6 apartments and 2 storage rooms per floor, 2 elevators, and 2 staircases. That was where Gabriella lived, on the eight floor.

The other blocks B, C and D merely had 3 floors and 6 apartments.

But overall, the Wild Coyote had a swimming pool, a sauna, a bar, a gymnasium and a playground, with a ping pong table.

Gabriella's older sisters always had extracurricular activities, making them always come home much later, and her father was the breadwinner of the family.

It was only Gabriella and her mom who were able to spend a much earlier time within The Wild Coyote.

For Gabriella, she often spent time in the swimming pool and the playground. Some of the other kids spent time there too. But two kids she often hung out with were Daniel and John. They were both younger that her by a year. Daniel was Japanese-American. John had a tanned complexion, with brown hair and blue eyes.

Gabriella played more games with John and Daniel, than with the other kids. It was as if the kids already formed their own cliques, wanting to do their own things. But they were all nice and polite to each other.

When John and Daniel don't show up yet in the playground, Gabriella would always play with the only kid who spent more time in the playground than she did. The kid was a girl named Lena. With Lena, they always spent time in the swing or the seesaw, and often talked about fairy tales and funny things that had happened to them.

Gabriella liked Lena because she was always very friendly with her, every time they bump into each other.

But whenever John and Daniel showed up, Lena would say that she wants to be by herself as she played long enough with Gabriella. With Daniel and John, she would play X Men with them, where they pretend to be the different members of the fictional mutant hero group (based on the cartoon series rather than the original comic book series).

On one particular day, Gabriella was going to learn something about The Wild Coyote that she had been completely ignorant of.

Gabriella had just come back from school and the first thing she did was to go for a swim. When she had gone for a swim on the pool, she had bumped into two older kids named Nathan and Jed. They were both 13 and 14 years old respectively.

Nathan: (joking around) Hey Gabriella, why are you swimming all by yourself? Where are the rest of the X Men?

Jed laughed.

Gabriella knew what they meant.

Gabriella: (joking back) I'm waiting for them.

Jed: Which X Men are you again? Jubilee!!

Gabriella: I'm Storm!!

Jed: You sure you're not Jubilee!!

Gabriella: Of course I'm sure.