Thanks, yay!  I'll see what I can do.  I've already written 1,2 and something words today!  (This is why I'd want to do NaNoWriMo!  I love writing.)  TOP!

Anyone want to read more?  Doesn't matter, I'll put the next section here anyway.  It's not what you'd be expecting, and I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with it, either.

  Sam leaned over her sister.  "Tess?"

  There was no answer, only the peaceful
breathing of a sleeping child, and the rain on the roof.

  Sam got out of bed.  She took the blanket from where it was
folded at the foot of the bed and wrapped it around herself.  She stared gloomily out the window into
the glare of the streetlights and the rain running down the window panes, the
gutters overflowing, a crackle of lightning followed by another flash.  This time she saw it, a bright tree
branch as bare as the winter trees, its smallest tendrils seeming to tickle the
houses' tops.  Sam shivered.  She was frightened, too.  She hadn't seen so much lightning
before in her life.  What a huge
storm.  She sat down on the edge of
her bed, bracing her cold bare feet against the floor.  She sighed.  It was too cold for June.  It was too wet for June. June was supposed to be a perfect,
warm, sunny month.  February was
cold.  April was supposed to be
wet.  But Nature was never
obliging.

  Another crack of thunder - it seemed at
the same time as the lightning. 
She couldn't see it that time - it must have been very close.  It felt as though her hair stood on
end.  The door squeaked a little
bit, and she almost screamed in fright, but as she jumped off the bed, turning
to the door, she heard the click-click of dog toenails, and Furrier jumped onto
the bed.

  "Furrier!" Sam whispered
furiously.  "You know you
aren't supposed to be on the bed! 
Get off."  She hauled
at the huge Golden Retriever, but Furrier only whined softly and looked
pleadingly at Sam.

  Sam sighed again.  She took off her blanket from around
her shoulders and dumped it on the floor. 
"Here," she said, heaving Furrier off the bed.  "If you have to sleep in here,
sleep on this."

  Furrier jumped back onto the bed, and
stood there, panting at her and wagging his tail.  Then, as a flash of lightninglit up the room with a dim
bluish light, he jumped past her and out the window.

  "Furrier!" cried Sam,
forgetting her sleeping family across the hall.  She didn't know how he'd done it.  The window had been shut.  It was solid glass. 
But he had certainly gone through it.  She pressed her face up against the glass, hoping to see
him, though rain and tears blinded her. 
Only cats could jump from second-story windows and survive!

  There was no trace of Furrier on the
ground below.  He had completely
vanished.

  Sam leaned over her sister.  "Tess?"

  There was no answer, only the peaceful
breathing of a sleeping child, and the rain on the roof.

  Sam got out of bed.  She took the blanket from where it was
folded at the foot of the bed and wrapped it around herself.  She stared gloomily out the window into
the glare of the streetlights and the rain running down the window panes, the
gutters overflowing, a crackle of lightning followed by another flash.  This time she saw it, a bright tree
branch as bare as the winter trees, its smallest tendrils seeming to tickle the
houses' tops.  Sam shivered.  She was frightened, too.  She hadn't seen so much lightning
before in her life.  What a huge
storm.  She sat down on the edge of
her bed, bracing her cold bare feet against the floor.  She sighed.  It was too cold for June.  It was too wet for June. June was supposed to be a perfect,
warm, sunny month.  February was
cold.  April was supposed to be
wet.  But Nature was never
obliging.

  Another crack of thunder - it seemed at
the same time as the lightning. 
She couldn't see it that time - it must have been very close.  It felt as though her hair stood on
end.  The door squeaked a little
bit, and she almost screamed in fright, but as she jumped off the bed, turning
to the door, she heard the click-click of dog toenails, and Furrier jumped onto
the bed.

  "Furrier!" Sam whispered
furiously.  "You know you
aren't supposed to be on the bed! 
Get off."  She hauled
at the huge Golden Retriever, but Furrier only whined softly and looked
pleadingly at Sam.

  Sam sighed again.  She took off her blanket from around
her shoulders and dumped it on the floor. 
"Here," she said, heaving Furrier off the bed.  "If you have to sleep in here,
sleep on this."

  Furrier jumped back onto the bed, and
stood there, panting at her and wagging his tail.  Then, as a flash of lightninglit up the room with a dim
bluish light, he jumped past her and out the window.

  "Furrier!" cried Sam,
forgetting her sleeping family across the hall.  She didn't know how he'd done it.  The window had been shut.  It was solid glass. 
But he had certainly gone through it.  She pressed her face up against the glass, hoping to see
him, though rain and tears blinded her. 
Only cats could jump from second-story windows and survive!

  There was no trace of Furrier on the
ground below.  He had completely
vanished.

I suppose the lines are doing that weird thing again.  Sorry.

Thanks for commenting!!!!  So, yes, the opening sentence is.  I thought it was a nice place to start though.  CP A Wrinkle In Time.  I was just recently rereading that - it's a great book!!!!!  And, good idea about the italics.

Ok, since you ask.  :)

  Sam clumped down the steps of the
school bus and out into the open air. 
She had stayed after classes for her frisbee club, but the exercise
hadn't lifted her spirits any.

  "Sam?"

  She turned around.  It was Nick, one of the boys on her
frisbee team.

  "What?" she tried to say, but
her voice came out rough and impatient.

  He sighed and caught up to her.  "Are you mad at me because I
caught the high curve pass to Yvette, or are you just upset because of your
dog?"

  She looked at him.

  "Or both?"

  "More like both," she
said.  "Why are you here?  You don't live on Willow Street."

  "I followed you," he
said.  "I want to be a
detective when I grow up, or maybe an author, and I wanted to see if I could
find any clues about his disappearance."

  Sam sighed.  "Can't hurt," she said.

  "How did it happen?"

  She started walking again.  "I don't know."

  "Thanks."

  "I don't."

  "Okay.  When?"

  "Yesterday night."

  "You woke up and he was
gone?"

  "No.  I was awake - well - Tessa - my sister - couldn't sleep, and
she came in and woke me up, and there was a lot of thunder and lightning, and
Furrier - my dog - came in - I guess he was scared.  And he was standing on the bed, and I was going to tell him
to get off, when there was a flash of lightning, and he jumped out the
window."

  "You had the window open?"

  "No, it was shut, the inner
window, and the storm window."

  Nick looked at her incredulously.  "You expect me to believe
that?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay," he said.  "I'll try.  He just disappeared?"

  "Uh-huh.  I kind of saw the window kind of shimmer as he went through
it."

  "Did you look out?"

  "Of course!"

  "Well!  Was he there?" 
Nick was getting impatient.

  Sam wrenched open the door.
"No!  Now will you go away and
leave me alone!"

  "No," said Nick.  "I haven't looked for clues
yet!"

  "You don't need to -"

  "Sam?" came Mom's voice from
the kitchen.  Sam could hear the
kettle boiling.

  "Yes?"

  "Come in and shut the door.  Else we'll use up the heating bill on
the outdoors.  Did you bring
someone home with you?"

  Sam slammed the door and stalked into
the kitchen.  "No.  He came himself.  Nick, this is my mom.  Mom, this is Nick Verrin, he's on my
frisbee team."

  "Nice to meet you, Nick,"
said Mom.

  "Nice to meet you, Mrs.
Greene," said Nick.  "I'm
here to look for clues about your dog's disappearance.  I want to be a detective when I grow
up."

  "Well!" said Mom.  "That sounds nice, maybe you'll
help us find him.  Would you like
to start in Sam's room where he was last seen, or in the backyard, or
what?"

  "I'd like to start in Sam's room,
if she doesn't mind," said Nick. 
He looked at Sam.

  Sam rolled her eyes.  "The stairs are in the
foyer," she said. "I'll go up with you."

  "Be nice, now," said Mom,
turning down the kettle.

  Sam gave her a look and went up the
stairs.  Nick followed behind
her.  They met Tessa on the way
down.

  "Hi," she said.

  "Hi," said Nick.  "Are you Sam's sister?"

  "Uh-huh," said Tessa.

  "Uh, Nick, this is Tessa,"
Sam said.

  "I'm five."

  "Really?"

  Tessa nodded.  "But next year I'll be six."

  "Amazing!" said Nick.  "Well, I'll see you around."

  "Where're you going?"

  "Up," said Sam.

  "We're going to look for clues about
how your dog disappeared," said Nick.

  "Can I come?"

  "May I.  I guess," said Sam.

  Tessa smiled and took her sister's
hand, and the three marched up the stairs.

  Nick stood at the window.  "Feels solid to me," he said,
pushing gently on the glass. 
"Are you sure?"

  "Yes!" said Sam,
exasperated.  "And you said
you'd try to believe it."

  Tessa sat down on the bed.

  "You're sure you didn't dream that
part of it?" said Nick.

  "Fine," said Sam grouchily,
"I'll prove that to you.  Look
at the bed: dog hairs.  Smudges of
dirt - he stood on it.  It's even
still a little damp."

  "Damp?" said Nick, examining
the bed.  "You're right, it
is  damp... he must have been sopping
wet last night."

  That was true - Sam hadn't thought of
that.  "He was," she said
thoughtfully.  "He even
smelled wet."

  "So he'd already been out
then?"

  "I guess," Sam said.  "But how?  He can't get through the cat flap, and
all the windows were shut."

  Tessa watched, quietly sucking the very
tip of her thumb.

  "Maybe he fell in his water
bowl?" Nick suggested.

  "We'd have noticed the
puddle," said Sam.

  "I still think he was stricken by
lightning," said Tessa.

  "I don't think that would work,"
said Nick.  "Ionized atoms
can't penetrate solid matter."

  "Oh," said Tessa, nodding.

  "What's happening in here?"
asked Fred, poking his head in the doorway.

  "Talking about ionization
again?" asked Jason, coming up next to him.  "My physics teacher thought today would be a good day
to teach us about thunder and lightning, in lightning of what happened last
night."

  Fred groaned and shoved Jason.

  "His words!" yelled Jason,
shoving Fred back.

  "All right, all right,"
yelled Sam, "if you all want to have a party in here, go ahead.  See if I care.  Fred, Jason, this is Nick, he's on my
Frisbee team, and he's here to look for clues about Furrier disappearing."

  "Why couldn't he have been
stricken by lightning?" cried Tessa.

  "Because lightning is a lot of
atoms, and the atoms couldn't have gone through the roof and hit him without
hitting us and burning the house down. 
Which, obviously, didn't happen."  Jason crossed his arms and looked smug.

  Tessa wasn't done.  "But maybe the stars protected
us?"

  Sam sighed.  "Maybe they would have!  Maybe they wouldn't have!  Your lightning theory isn't possible anyway!"

  Tessa pouted, jumped off the bed, and
ran past her two brothers.  Sam
could hear her thumping down the stairs. 
"Mommy?" she called. 
"Was it lightning?  Are
stars reeeeaaaaaal..." Her voice faded as she ran into the kitchen.

  Sam slapped her hand over her
eyes.  "Come on," she
said to Nick.  "If you're done
here.  Let's check out the
backyard."

Word count:  3936.  Days: 3.  Yay!  Goal:  60,000 words by June 13th.  Yayay!

Thanks Vida! I'll have a look at everyone's comments, thanks!  And I'm really sorry about the lines thing, that's Microsoft Word's problem.  So, here's some more...

  Nick surveyed the small yard, then
looked up at the side of the house. 
"Which window's yours?" he asked.

  "That one," said Sam,
pointing.  "Both of those two
are, but that's the one he disappeared from."

  "He jumped out the window."

  "That's what I said, isn't
it?"

  "So if he jumped, there'd be a
place here where he hit the ground. 
We'd see a dent or paw prints or something, or at least a lot of
mud."

  Sam walked out onto the wet grass.  "Right around here," she said.

  "Depends," said Jason.  "If he wasn't going that fast,
he'd have fallen closer to the window."

  "Well, he was going pretty darn
fast when he passed me!" said Sam indignantly.

  "How fast, exactly?" said
Fred, whipping out a calculator. 
"If the window is twenty-five feet off the ground, and the bed is
two feet from the outside of the window -" He started stabbing at the
buttons.

  "Well, I don't know!" said
Sam.  "I'm not a speed
gun!"

  Fred ignored her, saying "Let's see, if he was going ten
miles per hour - he jumps straight out - he loses that much velocity from the bed to the window?  No, wait, he must have jumped up and forward - so if he went up three inches at the speed of -"

  Nick knelt on the ground.  "There's no dent here," he
said.  "I don't think he
landed."

  "What do you mean?" Sam said
skeptically.  "He vanished in
thin air?  He flew away?  I find that hard to believe."

  Nick stood up.  "He jumped through solid glass?  I find that hard to believe too."

  "Right here!" cried
Fred.  "He would have landed
right here, and here are two dents, see? 
His two paws, maybe!"

  Sam looked down.  "Fred, stop daydreaming, those are
the dents Nick's knees made in the ground."

  Fred stood up.  "Well, maybe over here,
then," he said, and started crawling around.

  Tessa rounded the corner of the
house.  "Hi," she said to
Nick.  "Sam!"

  Sam turned to look at her, the innocent
face indignant.

  "Sam, Mommy says the stars don't
do what you said they did!"

  Sam groaned.  "Tess, I just told you that so you'd fall asleep.  You want to help Fred look for where
Furrier would have landed?"

  Tessa nodded vigorously and crawled
across the lawn, full of purpose.

  "Nick, I saw him jump!"

  "I didn't," Nick returned.

  "He did!  Tessa was there - no wait, she was asleep.  Well, you saw he was in my room,
right?"

  "Uh-huh," said Nick.

  "And he's not anywhere to be found
now."

  "Sure, unless you're hiding him in
a kennel somewhere."

  "Why would I do that?  We've been over this before, and I am
sticking to my story!"

  "Okay," said Nick.  "Well, I can't find any
clues.  Put up LOST DOG posters.  Post an inquiry on the Internet.  Tell the newspaper."

  "Sure," said Jason.  "I can see the headlines now:  DOG JUMPS THROUGH SOLID GLASS.  GIRL, AGE 14, IS ONLY WITNESS."

  "Stop it, Jason!" snapped
Sam.  "You'd say the same
things if you'd seen it happen!"

  "Kids?" called Mom, sliding
open the kitchen window.  "A
little quieter, please.  Can you come
in?"

  "I'm hungry," complained
Jason, opening the refrigerator.

  "No snacks till dinner.  Close that door," said Mom.  "Nick, do you need to call your
family to let them know where you are?"

  "No, thanks, Mrs. Greene,"
Nick said.  "They don't mind
what I do, as long as I don't leave the nieghborhood and I'm home for
dinner.  Mom and Dad won't be back
from work for another couple hours anyway."

  "Lucky," muttered Sam.

  Tessa sat down on the floor with a
book.

  "What do you do in Frisbee?"
Fred asked Nick.

  "You throw a Frisbee around - you
have two teams, and they pass it back and forth..."

  "Kind of like soccer?" said
Jason.

  Sam rolled her eyes.

  "Yeah, like soccer, except in the
air."

  Tessa looked up from her book.  "Mommy, what's rational?"

  "I'm rational.  You're rational.  So are Sam and Nick and Fred and
Jason.  It means capable of thought
and active decision."  Mom
stirred a boiling pot of water and shook some pasta into it.

  "Really?"

  "Mm-hm."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Tessa?" Nick said, looking
at her strangely.  "Can I see
that book you're reading?"

  Tessa handed it over.  "I found it in the bookcase in the
living room."

  "Human reaction to physiology? 
You can understand this?"

  "Tess," said Sam.  "why are you reading that?"

  "I wanted to understand the human
reaction to phys'yology," said Tessa.

  "You can read?" said Nick.

  Tessa nodded.  "Mommy taught me this year," she said.  "I'm reading a lot of books
now."

  "What's your... favorite
book?" said Nick, as though he couldn't really believe she could read.

  "I liked the Boxcar
Children," Tessa said. 
"It's in the bookcase in my room now.  I reread a chapter every night before bedtime."

  "I liked the Boxcar Children,
too," said Nick.  "It's a
lot of fun."

  "I'm learning to type now,"
said Tessa.  "Mommy lets me
type on the computer and I write stories and I write about the characters in my
books."

  "How would you like to show me
some of it?" asked Nick.

  "Sure," said Tessa happily,
and, getting up, went into the living room.  Sam could hear the computer starting up.  She had to admit Nick was very tolerant
of Tessa, more tolerant than she usually was.  She got up and went into the living room, too, with Nick
following behind her.

  "Sam!" called Tessa.  "Can you log it in?"

  Sam punched in the password.

  Tessa opened a folder on the desktop,
and pulled up a file called "Tessa's writing from 2010."

  Nick leaned over her shoulder and
started reading.  It was dark in
the living room.  Sam went over to
the corner to turn on a lamp, and suddenly stepped on something soft and
squishy.  She gasped and jumped
back.  There was a loud yowl and
Coat-of-Legs shot out from where her foot had been.  He sat down in the corner, licking himself.

  Sam glared at him, breathless.  "Coat-of-Legs!  You cat, you!"

  Coat-of-Legs stalked off into the
kitchen, waving his tail.

  Sam turned on the light.  Nick straightened up.  "That's great!" he was saying
to Tessa.  "Keep
writing!"

  Tessa grinned and shut the file.

  Nick walked over to Sam.  "Is there anywhere else I could
look for clues?  I have another
hour."

  "I don't know," said Sam.

  "Where does he usually
sleep?" asked Nick.

  Sam pointed.  "His bed's in that corner, and Coat-of-Legs's bed is in
that corner."

  Nick went over to the dog bed, and felt
it.  "It's dry," he
said.  "He got wet after he
was in it."

  Sam felt it too.  "You're right.  How could he have gotten wet,
though?"

  "It was raining last night,"
said Nick.

  "But he was wet before he jumped
out the window," Sam said.

  "If he did it once, maybe he could
do it again," said Nick.

Word count: 5239.  Days:  3.