Once upon a time, there were three children called the Graces. They lived with their mother and father in a small apartment in New York City. Each night they fell asleep to the winking city lights and the sound of cars on the bustling freeways, and each morning they woke up to the birds singing in their nests on the window sills, and children shouting for hot dogs and popcorn in the lush green park nearby. The three were fairly happy living in the tiny rooms, but the noisy neighbors posed a problem. The three siblings were writers, and quite good ones but a writer has to have certain sounds to help their inspiration. Noisy neighbors is hardly fresh inspiration.

The youngest sibling in the Grace family was named Violet. She had honey colored hair and turquoise eyes, and her cheeks were always rosy. She loved puppies and liked to burst out laughter. Violet also loved to run in the park among the trees and the balloon stands. She was the pet of the family, everyone loved her and was charmed by her. She could have a temper at times, but she was very smart and always ready to forgive and forget.

The second child was a little boy, named Andy. He had curly yellow hair and his skin was pale, but he had a perpetual sunburn across his pointy nose. The other children at school and his friends in the park thought Andy was strange, not only because he loved to draw but also because his eyes were a soft shade of purple. Andy was quiet and rather shy, but his imagination and quick wit soared above the other little boys and he loved creating cute pictures of kittens.

Deker Grace was seventeen years old, and took care of his two younger siblings. He was somewhat of a recluse, tall and thin, with black eyes and a thick shock of brown hair. He could be funny and sociable, but most of the time he was intense, like a panther waiting to spring. The only people in the apartment building who weren't afraid of Deker were Violet and Andy.

It started out being a normal summer in the Big Apple; the sun's heat arose from the asphalt in waves, hot dogs sizzled deliciously underneath red and white striped umbrellas, and dozens of children swarmed in the park playing in the cool pond. School was out, and three Grace siblings, or the "Three Graces" as their mother often called them, were happy for a chance to sleep late that Friday morning.

Violet stretched under her thin sheets and blinked in the shaft of sunlight which fell over her little bed under the window. "Yay!" she suddenly screamed. "It's summer!" She hopped out of bed and pounded into the kitchen where her mother was already making pancakes with chocolate chips and a scramble of bacon, eggs, cheese, potatoes and onions the Grace children called Cowboy Scramble.

"Good morning, dearie," said their mother, turning around to grin at her little daughter. Mrs. Grace was a tall woman with happy blue eyes and short bouncy blond hair. She was wearing a baseball cap and her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the stove top. She slipped several chocolate chip pancakes onto Violet's plate and the little girl pounced in her chair and began ravenously devouring her breakfast. "This is glorious!" she said, waving around a forkful of potatoes and eggs.

Right then, Andy Grace trotted in, shouting "Brekky!" in an Australian accent. Mrs. Grace turned around. "How did you sleep, kiddo?" she asked.

"I was kept up until three in the morning by those noisy neighbors downstairs!" Andy groaned. "You'd think they'd run out of things to shriek about in the middle of the night!" He rubbed his purple eyes and plopped down in his chair to hide behind the New York Times and drink a glass of mango guava juice.

Mrs. Grace laughed. "Violet, did you hear the shrieking last night?"

"Yeah," bubbled Violet in a fast voice, "and you know what? I had a dream about a timed bomb!"

Deker tripped into the kitchen and gave Violet an odd look. Andy peeped over his newspaper to grin at his older brother as Mrs. Grace slipped her arm around her oldest son.

"GRANDMA!" screamed Violet, running around and around the slippery kitchen floor. "We're going to grandma's for the summer next week!"

"You didn't stay up too late, did you?" asked Mrs. Grace. Deker just smiled to himself and said nothing. Andy cleared his throat and Deker looked over the table top at him.

"Deker, I need your advice," Andy began in a businesslike voice. Violet bit down a giggle and ran into her tiny room, a corner partitioned off from the rest of the room by a long cream colored sheet, to get her Barbie dolls. "My kittens are giving me trouble!" Andy said, after taking a sip of his sweet cold fruit juice.

"What's the matter with them?" Deker asked. His voice was deep and a bit snarly, but he stayed up until unholy hours of the night and was always like that. Mrs. Grace began frying herself a pancake.

"They're threatening to sneak into the neighbor's rooms, the noisy ones, and break into their refrigerator! You see, I've had to set a limit on how much food I give them now, and they're mad." Violet came in, gripping a hairless Barbie doll wrapped in a rough dish towel, and laughed.

"Maybe then they'll stop being so loud!" she grinned, then settled on the ground to play with her dolls.

"Do you have any ideas about how I could tame them?" Andy asked.

Deker got a bloodthirsty gleam in his black eyes. "You could threaten to kill them off," he growled.

Violet gasped and made one of her Barbie dolls fall over. "Shadow's coming!" she squeaked.

Andy gave a high-pitched cry of shock and vigorously shook his head.

"I LOVE those kittens, I don't know what I'd do without them!"

Deker shrugged. "Lock them in the basement of the building. That's what I did to you-know-who last year."

Andy gave him a smirking look of disapproval and resumed the reading of the Times.

Mrs. Grace smiled to herself as she sat down between her two sons, one eye on Violet to make sure she didn't pull off the head of one of her dolls. She had long since gotten used to the idea of her children seeing their characters and playing with the fantastical creatures they made with the aid of their pens, or laptops, in Deker's case.

Once everyone was finished, Mrs. Grace got up and rapped her knuckles on the table. "I need to call a Council of War," she declared. Violet left her Barbie dolls and leaned on her mother's knee. Andy folded the Times paper and laid it aside, putting his elbows on the table next to his cup of mango guava juice, and gazed at his lovely mother. Deker took his thin rimmed glasses from the refrigerator and stared at his mother with his piercing black eyes.

"I'm afraid," began their mother in a hesitating voice, "that your father and I won't be going to grandma's with you this summer. You're going to have to go there by yourselves and I trust that you will behave." The three siblings looked at one another. Violet at once got a goblin-like look in her dancing blue-green eyes, Andy gulped and Deker continued to stare, his face tightening. It had been an annual tradition that the entire Grace family visit grandma, but now the Three Graces would have to brave her frail nerves and horrible cooking with no monitor.

"Deker, I expect you to keep the others in line. I am putting you in charge as soon as Dad drops you three off at grandma's next week. Violet, I don't want any screaming or nighttime adventures and Andy, please don't make any toy bugs to throw around the house." Mrs. Grace looked around at the three of sober faces and forced her lips to smile. "Oh come on, it's not that bad!" she said brightly, getting up to clear away the breakfast dishes. "I'm sure this will be the best summer you've ever had!"