Mystery on the Mountain ( Please comment on my story.)

Mystery on the Mountain
By: Tessa Pavey

Chloe Cummings, as usual, was awake before the sun was, planning the day ahead of her. Suddenly, there was a knock at her door. Chloe knew it had to be her mother, Ms. Cummings. No matter how hard Chloe tried, she could never manage to beat her mother in the race to get up in the morning. Every morning when she woke up, Chloe could already smell the bacon frying in the skillet downstairs.

Ms. Cummings knocked again, “Chloe, are you awake yet?”

“Yeah Mom, just planning out the day, what’s up?” asked Chloe as her mother walked into the room.

“Good morning honey! Guess what?” Ms. Cummings asked.

“What?”

“Your Aunt Jane as invited us to stay at her cabin in the Rocky Mountains! And, remember how big that cabin is? Well, she said your friends and their families are invited, too!” Ms. Cummings cooed happily.

“That’s great, Mom! I’ll tell the gang when I get to school. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to be invited,” Chloe replied.

When she walked into the office where she worked on the school newspaper, she found Sam, as usual, messing with the things on her desk. When she finally made it to her desk, Sam had already put whatever he was playing with back in its original spot. You would not have been able to tell that he had gotten into anything except for the fact that he had a red post-it flag sticking to his forehead. The site of this made Chloe laugh.

“I didn’t know this was target practice, I must be in the wrong room,” Chloe said, her lungs bursting at the effort at keeping her laugh at bay.

Sam looked up at his forehead, crossing his eyes in the process. He reached up and pulled the post-it flag off, muttering only a simple “oh” in embarrassment.

Chloe doubled over in hysterics at this newest development in the post-it predicament. Leave it to Sam to drop an entire crowd to their knees in laughter.

Tapping his foot, Sam sighed, “Are you done yet?”

Pausing for a moment, Chloe said breathlessly, “I think so… wait… nope!” then burst into hysterics once again.

Chloe finally said, “Okay, I think I’m done now.”

“Good, ‘cause I’m not getting any younger,” Sam said angrily.

“Okay, okay! I’m sorry! But I can make it up to you, my Aunt Jane as invited you and your parents to come stay with us in her cabin the Rockies over Spring break.” Chloe said.

“Sounds like fun! My family isn’t doing anything else over spring break, so sure, we’ll come,” said Sam.

As Sam started to leave, Chloe called after him, “Oh, and tell Clark and Jessie they’re invited, too.”

As Sam made his way to class, he ran into Clark and Jessie. Sam extended Chloe’s invitation, and they both accepted without hesitation. Apparently, no one had anything better to do over Spring break.

“Chloe getup and start packing or we are going to be late!” Chloe’s mother yelled the next morning.

Chloe sat straight up in bed and said to herself “I can’t believe I slept late!”

Yesterday all of Chloe’s friends had gotten packed and Chloe had put packing aside to work on the next week’s issue of the school newspaper.

Ms. Cummings asked again “Chloe are you packing yet?”

Chloe said “Yes mom!”

As soon as everything was packed into her mother’s car they all met at Sam’s house and put the entire luggage into the mini-vans Sam’s parents had rented. So the teenagers and luggage were in and all of the parents were in the other.

Jessie drove first but they were all seventeen and had their driver’s license so they traded off. Chloe knew it was going to be a long ride when she found out they all had to sit on the same seat.

During the many, many hours of the drive to the cabin Chloe had to put up with snoring, fighting, stupid noises the boys made, and many bathroom breaks. The worst part of it was the fact that Chloe’s mother had forgotten to pack the air freshener.

By the time they got to the cabin it was dark outside and everyone or at least Chloe and Jessie were exhausted from there drive up to the cabin. Still Chloe looked forward to staying at the cabin. She always had fun but it would be more fun now that her friends were there.

They got to bed around 9:30 which was early for Chloe. All of the parents said they had to go to bed early because they had a big day planned for tomorrow. Before they did anything Chloe wanted to check the attic. Chloe had always wanted to go up there but was too afraid. Now would be her chance; she could take her friends with her.

The next morning, she woke up her friends and asked if they wanted to explore the attic with her, and they all agreed to go.
Chloe led the way to the attic door, but couldn’t get it open. So Clark elbowed her out of the way and kicked the door of its hinges. He would have to fix that before Chloe’s aunt found out.

Suddenly, Chloe felt something furry scurry past her foot. She let out a scream and backed into Clark, who put his hands out to catch her, but tripped over Sam’s foot instead and knocked Jessie and the books she held to the floor. When the dust from the commotion cleared they were tangled in mass of arms and legs.

Pulling his arm out from underneath one of his friends, Sam stood up and sputtered, “Way to go Chloe!”

Jessie said, “Okay, whoever’s playing footsie with me, I am not in the mood!”

“Oh, sorry, that was me,” Clark mumbled, still spitting dust out of his mouth.

“Hey guys! Look what I just found!” Chloe said, excitedly.

“What? Another phantom mouse? Everybody run, Chloe’s gonna scream!” Sam joked.

“No. I think it’s a trap door,” began Chloe, “help me get it open.”