The Locket

I wanted to scream because my best friend had just betrayed me. Gail, my bestie had just found a house that belonged to her grandmother and she wouldn’t let me tag along. We had made a promise that if either one of us went on an adventure the other would go too. But she didn’t even invite me to go explore her grandmother's house. I was so annoyed and sad that I actually cried. When I found out in school I had to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom so I could lock the stall and cry. 

After that happened, I wanted to get revenge and go on a better adventure than Gail. So naturally, I went to where everyone adventurer goes to find an adventure. The attic.  

When my mom came home I had been looking for about an hour. I hadn’t found anything, however. I needed to go to school tomorrow with something to show off to Gail.

“Carry! You have to start on dinner sweetie!” I heard my mom say from downstairs. Shoot, I thought. I couldn’t have my mom know I was looking in the attic. It had a lot of things that belonged to my dad, and she didn’t want me finding out anything about him. He had died before I was born and my mom was a little crazy because of it.

I scrambled down the ladder and landed in my brother's room, leaving a mess in the attic. I pushed the door up so my mom wouldn’t see it was open. 

“Coming Mom!” I yelled downstairs out of breath. I left my brother's room and started down the stairs. If I couldn’t find anything in the attic where would I go? To the basement maybe. There was a whole room dedicated to more storage space. I could find something in there. 

I saw my mom close the door to her room. She usually stayed there for only a couple of minutes after she came home to get her work clothes off. That meant I only had a couple of minutes to explore the basement. 

I ran down to my room (which was in the basement) trying not to be loud so my mom couldn’t hear me. I passed my room and saw the light on, which was weird because I hadn't been in there since this morning. I was sure I had turned it off. 

I opened the door and saw a piece of paper on the floor. It was in the middle of my room face down so I couldn’t  see what it said. I looked around myself, just as adventurers do naturally when they go into a room they have never been in before. Except, I had been in this room before. But last time I went in here there wasn’t a piece of paper, and the light wasn’t turned on. 

    I hesitantly entered my room turning off the light because it wasn’t necessary to see. It was the middle of the day after all. Most adventures though happened in the middle of the night.

    I flipped over the piece of paper and saw a map. It had my fathers name at the bottom, Jacob Tunnode. I knew that I had found my adventure. But even though I wanted to show it off to Gail, I couldn’t wait to start exploring where the map could lead. Surprisingly, this was the first adventure I was going to go on. I had watched so many movies though, I felt like I had been on one already. 

    I closed the door and went up the stairs quietly. I needed to leave the house because the map was leading somewhere behind our house. But, my mom would kill me if she found out I had left. So I needed to fake something. 

    “Mom, I need to go outside for like an hour for an assignment.” I told her through the door to her room. 

    “Okay sweetie, just come back in to make dinner right after!” She answered. I went outside to start my adventure. 

I followed the map to a small stream. The stream probalay leads to a lake or something bigger like the ocean, but I wanted to know what this map led to. I followed upstream and entered a patch of trees. I knew we had a forest behind our house, but was too afraid to go in until now. It wasn’t bad.  

There were not a lot of trees but there was a lot of open space. I looked down at the map making sure I was going the right way when I tripped on a rock and fell. The rock jabbed into my knee, and I screamed. Thankfully, my mom didn’t hear but unfortunately I was in so much pain I didn’t know if I could walk anymore.  

I looked down at my knee and I couldn’t see where the rock had hurt my leg. It was covered in blood, and I didn’t know where it started. My head started to hurt from it all. The blood made me nauseous.

I looked at the map that was now covered in blood. I couldn’t see where to go next so I continued upstream.  It was a struggle at first to stand up. My leg was all wobbly and I couldn’t stand on it. I found a long branch and used it as a crutch for my knee so it was easier to walk. 

Sometime, when I was walking or limping, I looked for my map but couldn’t find it. I must have dropped it at some point. I didn’t really care at this point if my adventure was better than Gail’s. In the movies, all of the characters healed after they got injuries. But it didn’t seem like that was happening to me anytime soon. 

After what felt like four years of walking I made it to a small lake. Everything was foggy and I couldn’t really see anything. The sky was dark and that made it much harder to see. My mom was going to kill me when I came home, if I ever did. I might already be dead by then from loss of blood. 

I sat down on a rock next to the lake and almost fell asleep. I wanted to but I knew I had to keep going to find out where my dad's map lead to. Except I had lost the map so I didn’t know where I was going anymore. I assumed whatever treasure there is, it would be here. At this foggy lake. 

I reached for my locket, not wanting to lose another precious thing. My locket was also from my dad but I had never been able to open it. I had looked for the key, but gave up on looking because it wasn’t anywhere to be found. 

I looked through my backpack I had taken from home, for some food. I found a granola bar and ate it. I found water, but instead of using it to drink I poured it on my wound. It stung, but I didn't want it to get worse and be infected. 

I stood up again after having the snack and cleaning my wound. I leaned up against a big pine tree for more support than my makeshift crutch. I decided to cross the small lake. It was a stupid idea but there were a few rocks I could step on to cross it. 

I tested the first rock. It was a little wobbly but I managed to stand on it. The next rock was sturdy so I stepped on it. So far so good. The next rock was a little farther away but sturdy. I took the jump. 

I landed on my bad leg crumpling to the ground. Except there was no ground, only a small rock to stand on. I fell into the murky lake unable to see anything. It was deeper than I expected and I could no longer see the surface. Water rushed into my mouth and I couldn’t breathe in the air anymore. Only water. 

Something caught my eye on the bottom of the lake. It was a chest coated in silver plating. I reached for it. It was stuck in the sand though. I pulled it up with the last of my strength.

The chest was heavy and was a weight pulling me down to the bottom. Drowning me so I was unable to do anything, to see anything. I tried to get up but everything in my body went limp and I couldn’t breathe. 

Then suddenly, my heart rate slowed until it faded completely, and the only sound I could hear was a clink in the chest. But soon that stopped too, my consciousness stopped and it felt like I was being pulled into some sort of dream. But it probably wasn’t just a dream, maybe I hoped it was, but no. This was reality, I was dying. All of these past events flashed in front of my eyes before I drowned. My dad was the last one, him smiling at me at some amusement park putting my locket around my neck, until like him I too faded from this world. Gone.