Story

Kirsten Phillips Grade 10 Mrs. Amberg Lesson #7 ELA “Doors to Stories” Domiciles Project Door #1 Gouverneur High School Apartment 292 “Allison would you hurry up in there?” “Stop rushing me!” I reply to Maddie. I’m Allison. Maddie and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. Today we are going to look at some apartments. “I’m ready!” I call as I come down the stairs. “Well what are we waiting for?” Maddie gives me a dumb look and we are out the door. “All the apartments are way out of our budget, what are we going to do Alli?” “There’s one more left.” I say pointing my finger at the newspaper. “See Maddie, apartment 292!” Maddie looks at the address and off we go, to apartment 292. We pull into the driveway and make our way to the office to find someone to unlock the door. “Sir, can you open the door to apartment 292 for us?” I ask. “Sure girls.” The man says. Once we are inside the apartment I notice how old it looks. There is an old rocking chair, old wallpaper, and a plant that is almost dead. “Well it needs some work for sure but it’s right in our price range Alli, and we can move in as soon as we’re ready!” Once Maddie got done dealing with the paperwork, we headed home. “Oh my gosh, Allie!” “What?” "I’m so excited about our new apartment, aren’t you?!” “Yeah I am, but I hate packing everything.” I said, shoving every clothing item I could find into my suitcase. “Me too, but I’m so happy we can finally have a place of our own!” On Monday morning the first thing I hear is “ALLI WAKE UP, WAKE UP!” I roll over to check the time. "Eight o'clock, seriously Maddie?" "The sooner you get up is the sooner we can leave!" "Leave where?" "To our apartment, now get up! I made pancakes and bacon!" I get out of bed and throw on an old shirt, some ripped jeans, my pair of favorite converse, and head downstairs. Once we get to the apartment, I go inside and pick the room that I want. Of course I pick the biggest room. Later that night, I call to Maddie to see what she would like for dinner(even though I know she probably wants pizza.) "I'll have pizza!" she yells. "Thought so." Once the pizza arrives, I grab Maddie and myself a slice and head to the living room to watch some tv. "What Alli?" Maddie says. "I didn't say anything?" "Oh... Do you hear that?!" Maddie says walking towards the closet. "Yeah it sounds like cr-" "Crying." Maddie and I open the closet door only to find a little girl no older than seven sitting in the corner sobbing. I immediately pick her up and bring her over to the couch. "Who are you?" Maddie asks. "My name is Julia," the little girl replies. "How old are you Julia?" I ask. "I'm six." she answers. "Well how did you get in there?" "I don't know, I can't remember a lot." Maddie and I questioned Julia a bit more and found out her full name is Julia Grace Nicholls and her birthday is April 20th. We brought Julia to the police and they told us that Julia had been missing for three days. They tell us that child protective services will keep Julia until we can fill out a lot of paperwork, saying we can keep her. It has now been a month and finally we get a call saying that Julia's parents were in a bad accident and that we needed to go down to the station immediately. Maddie and I get to the station and they send us to a room. They ask us why we want to keep Julia and other questions like that. Once we are done in the room, we walk out and Julia runs to us and gives us a big hug and says, "I get to live with you guys now forever!" It's been two years since this all happened. We still don't know what happened, but we don't like to talk about it. We just think about how lucky we are to have Julia in our lives.