Written by: Aayotrie Chaudhary - 27019, Grade IX
Posted on: 30 June, 2023
It was a Saturday morning in the Brewer’s residence and Margaret was eating her breakfast, poached eggs and bell pepper with some fruit kebabs she made using some of the leftover fruits in the kitchen. The fruit kebab was made out of rasberries, blackberries, bananas, and some fresh tangerine slices. Her brother was sitting next to her at the kitchen island eating scrambled eggs and a cinnamon roll with some extra whipped cream on top, he even added honey drizzle on top of all of it. Their father had already gone to work, he didn’t have Saturday off, only Sundays. Their mom was upstairs with their baby sister Florence. Margaret finished her breakfast and headed upstairs into her bedroom where she started to comb her light brown hair. After she finished she decided to go downstairs again, however when she saw her mom standing with her hands on her hips, Margaret realized it may have been a mistake to come down. Her mom looked at her sternly before letting out a huff and lecturing Margaret about how she was being lazy and that she needed to do something for once. Margaret felt a lump in her throat, this wasn’t the first time her mom had said this to her, Margaret had always tried to be better. She started focusing on little things at a time, eating healthier, maintaining good posture, combing her unruly hair before being told to do so, it wasn’t enough. Whenever Margaret tried to rush things, she would only make a bigger mess and end up accomplishing nothing at all. She really wanted to be better, be smarter and be more responsible, but it was hard. Not just the type of hard where you need to work hard to overcome it in just a day, hard like you may need to struggle with it your whole life before you can finally improve. Just thinking about her troubles made her head hurt. Though it was obvious her mom wanted to continue to scold her, her mom just sent her off and told her to help clean the attic.
Margaret went up the attic stairs which creaked beneath her feet and sneezed as soon as she reached the top due to all the dust that had been piling up there. After sneezing a few more times Magaret reached a window and opened it in a hurry. Finally, she got to work on dealing with the actual items in the attic. On most items there were tarps that used to be a white color, now they were stained with dirt and dust like most things in the old unswept attic. From the corner of her eye she suddenly spotted something. There was a box, no, not just a simple box, a chest. The chest was made out of dark oak which, covered by the heaps of dust, looked almost like the color of the attic roof. There were also a few gold markings as well on the chest. Margaret suddenly had a strong urge to, well, open it. She was about to creak it open when her mom walked up into the attic and saw her staring at the chest. For some reason her mom got extremely enraged and almost seemed scared of what would happen if Margaret opened the chest. She quickly yelled at Margaret to take a shower to get rid of all the dust that had landed on her. Margaret was stunned, she got up quickly and rushed down the creaky stairs. What could be in the chest? This thought rang through her mind at least a dozen times as she showered. Once she was done showering she walked out of her room and was immediately met by her mom. Instead of yelling her mom actually looked at her softy, even patted her head and told her that she had popped some popcorn downstairs. Margaret found this behavior to be a tad bit suspicious but she just shrugged it off and went down to enjoy some of the popcorn her mom had prepared.
Later in the evening her mom and dad decided to go to a restaurant leaving Margaret in charge, her mother made sure to emphasize the importance of not going in the attic while they were gone. Once they had left Margaret prepared her little siblings their dinner which was some leftover spaghetti from the night before. Her parents had forgotten to buy meatballs so instead they added some cooked sausages into the light yellow colored noodles and red tomato sauce. After a while she sent them off to bed, tucking in her little sister herself. She sat in the living room for a bit when she just suddenly felt a really strong urge to see what was in the chest. Her parents wouldn't be back until later, so, who could stop her? Slowly she got up, opened the stairs to the attic, and crawled up the stairs trying to not make it squeak or it would wake up her brother and sister. Finally she reached the top and tiptoed to the chest. She put her hands on the cold wood, and opened the chest.
Inside the chest were documents. At first Margret was confused, why did her parents want to hide old documents from her, then, she took a closer look. They were her documents, not just documents, they were missing people flyers and addresses. They were hers, they had photos of her when she was only a child. She saw the address of the missing child and without a second thought, closed the chest, went down the stairs, and went to her bedroom to sleep. She would go the next morning, it would be too hard at night. The next morning she acted normal, she tried not to alert “her parents”. Finally she managed to leave the house, and she set off on the journey to find her real parents, the ones that had been looking for her for years.
