The Locket of Clues

Chapter One : A New House

I just recently have taken a look at this story. I haven'y really given it a second glance for quite some time. It is apparent that I should have because some of the writing is horrific. I have begrudgingly taken it upon myself to edit the entirety of this story before continuing to add more chapters to it. I am going to edit every single chapter in order to make this story longer, more interesting, and hopefully make a bit more sense. Thank you to whomever has read this story so far, please be patient for a little while longer while I complete this arduous process. Here I go! (for the second time, my laptop shut down to configure updates before I had the chance to save the almost entirely edited chapter.)

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“ Your aren't serious, are you? This our 'great new house'?” I spat at my parents when I saw the sad looking house looming in front of me. I felt it was glaring down at me through its endless windows. "Great, just great! I’ll make sure to tell my friends that I live in a rundown creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Idaho!”

The house was supposedly two stories, but I could see from where I was standing that there was infact a window on what seemed the third floor of the house. The exterior of the house was painted a pale beige-y gray color with black shudders surrounding empty cracked window boxes.

The house had a paveddriveway lined with grown oak trees. Back behinf the house I could see the green trips of trees sticking up behind the roof. With I quick glance to the left I could see the start of a forest behind my new home. 

I could feel my red hair swinging with every step I took towards the front door. The blood red door was adorned with a black knocker. I wrenched open the door then slammed it behind me. I stepped inside and the first thing I noticed was that the walls were covered with a crème colored wallpaper.

"Gross, wallpaper." I murmured to myself as I ran my hands over the once smooth surface of the wall. Some of the wallpaper flaked off when met with my soft touch. The house really wasn't as bad as I had previously thought.

Even though the house was in almost perfect shape, I was still mad at my parents about making me move away from all of my friends and the wonderful state of Arizona, where I had lived all of my life, just for some higher paying job that my dad had been promoted to.

After calming down for a bit I decided to explore the house to find my new bedroom. My dog, a dalmation named Dominick, already occupied the first room I came across. I decided to leave him alone. Figuring out that the first floor consisted of only a kitchen, dining room, andseveral living areas, I ran up the numerous wooden steps to the second floor.

 What I found there was no different from the first floor. Old fashioned decorations, lace curtains, pictures of flowers, and and antique china with delicate floral patterns on them set on every counter, desk, or shelf. In the first room I found there was a worn sofa that consisted of two cushions that both dipped towards the middle. Near the window on the opposite wall was a golden picture frame sitting on a writing desk.

When I took a closer look, this picture wasn’t of cats or of a severly overweight woman, both of which I had seen earlier, but a black and white photo of a girl at least two or three years younger than me. She had hair about shoulder length and a huge smile. The girl was wearing a summer dress with a pansy in her hair.

In her cupped hands she held a little heart locket could have posibly been a gift from someone. I looked around the rest of the room and found nothing else of interest or importance.

The second room I came across was a reasonable size and the perfect bedroom for me. Large windows sapanned an entore wall and a little loft sat raised in the left corner of the room. 

Once I had gone back outside to the car and moving van, I found that my mom and dad were starting to transfer boxes from the truck to the ground. I grabbed some of the boxes labeled with my name and carried them back inside.

It was a little hard to make it up the stairs, I will admit that I tripped a generous amount of times. When I got to my room, I set the boxes down on the hardwood floors and opened the box that was on top. It held some pillows that were to be placed top of my bed. I set some pillows in the general place in which I decided that my bed was to be placed. I threw the remaining pillows up into the loft.

I left the room to go and get the rest of my boxes from the moving truck. By the time I returned to my soon-to-be-room, Dominick had apparently taken over. The pillows were scattered across the floor and   Dominick was some how able to jump into the loft and knock off the pillows there as well.

He was currently lying in the closet with a pair of socks in his mouth. Where he managed to get socks will always always remain a mystery to me. With a quick yell of "Get out! Bad dog!”. He almost made it to the door when I tore the socks out of his mouth and threw them across the room. While cleaning up my room my thoughts stayed centered around that picture. 

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 Four hours later my family had somewhat had somewhat finished unpacking and we were now sitting down on tightly packed boxes around a small table left in the dinning room. We ate an unpleasant meal of leftovers from the cooler we kept in the car with us on the way up and macaroni-and-cheese. We ate in silence, sounds coming only from our chewing and the occasional loud scarpe of a fork against teeth.

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The girl on the side is what I imagined Piper to look like. This chapter has gone through editing, twice. Once the story is finished I will go back and do some more major editing.

-Erica