“Ugh, where is it?! I need that paper for my assignment tomorrow!” Emma groaned in frustration, throwing clothes from a pile on the floor of her disheveled room. She took a moment to glance at her room and realized what a catastrophe it was, “I'll never find it in this mess!” She moved to a different messy pile and continued to dig through things making the mess even worse. She paused to think a bit, “Hmm, maybe it's in my cabinet...”
She walked to a large wooden chest in the corner of her room and slid the top drawer open. With vigor she began to dig through the various items and her hand closed on a thin chain. She pulled it out and looked at it, smiling fondly. It was old charm bracelet with several varied charms clasped to it.
The bracelet brought memories of her friends and high school rushing back to her. It reminded her particularly of the time when Adriane had given her the small silver sun charm bearing a small jade stone in the center. She and Adriane had got in a fight over something trivial that by now she had completely forgotten. Adriane had given her the charm to mend their friendship and end the fight. It had worked, too. They had both apologized and it was forgotten, Emma flipped the small charm onto it's back and read the few tiny words Adriane had wisely chose to put on the back. It read;
A & E
BFF
Emma put the charm bracelet back into the drawer still thinking about her past friends. She quickly snapped out of her reminiscing as the memory of her lost school paper began pestering her once more and she was forced to get back to looking through her drawers.
She flicked her long auburn hair out of her eyes and shoved the first drawer closed then pulled the next one open, she looked under a few things then slammed it shut, “This is hopeless!” she said frustrated and flopped down on her former bed. She lay there a while trying to calm herself down enough to think where it might be, her mind searching through all the nooks and cranny's in a virtual hunt. She needed the paper for a college assignment and since she was home visiting, it was a perfect chance to uncover the lost paper.
She considered it might have fallen behind her old collection of Breyer horses. The horses were all still in boxes as she had never bothered to unpack them after they had moved. She figured they would be safer boxed up anyhow since she wouldn't be using the room much while in college. She recalled that she had used to stack papers atop the cardboard boxes often. Carefully she unstacked a few boxes and moved one off the floor.
Something flashed in the sunlight, catching her eye as she set the boxes down. There was a karabiner laying behind where the box had sat, it was hers from when her dad had took her mountain climbing. “He always used to take me mountain climbing with him...” She said reminiscing about all the fun times she had with her dad. But that was all before the sea had taken him from her. He had been on one of his usual trips to the ocean to go abalone diving with his friends. He had been one of the safest abalone divers in the world yet the wily doings of the sea had defied him at last.
She shook the memories out of her head, distracted again from her original purpose. She finished looking behind the boxes and stacked them up again. By now she was utterly defeated, she couldn't think of any other place the paper would be. She heard the click of claws on the wood floor and turned around to see her first dog, Luther, standing in the doorway. The old flat coated retriever was graying around the muzzle now but his loyal brown eyes remained as bright as ever. He had been part of the family for a long time now and he was quite old. Her mother took care of him for her since she was in college, but she still enjoyed his company when visiting.
She remembered the time when her parents had finally decided she was responsible enough to at last have a puppy to care for. She had been overjoyed and gone to the shelter immediately to pick one out. The shelter had just put up a litter of puppies for adoption, and after a while of difficult decision making, she had finally picked Luther from the litter to bring him home. She had had so much fun with him back then but despite how much she had loved him, he had still had his flaws. His hobby was to take things he found interesting while no one was looking and put them in his stash beside his bed in the kitchen. Everyone would go crazy looking for it until they realized Luther had added a new edition to his collection and have to stop and laugh at the silly dog and their frustratingly frantic searches. She paused a moment as a thought occurred to her, it was unlikely she thought but it wouldn't hurt to look.
She got to her feet and left the room, switching the light off on the way out. Luther followed her closely, pressing his head against her leg as a sign of affection as he kept pace with her. The pair strolled into the kitchen and towards his bed where Luther let out a contented huff and laid down in the plaid cushions. He yawned widely before nosing through his stash and picking up a piece of paper covered by a sheet protector. He curled up with his head on his paws, the paper still in his mouth. “I should have known, you never change do you Luther. Silly dog” she said laughing.
- for the story to be exciting. You need to work something into this to make me want to read on, to make me feel her panic. Writers can make anything sound interesting, because that's part of the game.
