Inheritance Of Secrets

Birthdays

Four years earlier

Today I am 14. 

Today I am 14. 

Today I am 14. 

Today I am 14. 

Today I am 14.

4 more years till I can leave this place. 

"Happy birthday Anna." Jameson slings an arm around my shoulder making me jump. He looks happy today. 

"Please don't make it anything," I beg. It would only be a good birthday if she was here.  Suppose we got to run around our room singing stupid songs and cartwheeling into furniture. 

He smiled—a real true smile. "I didn't do anything big. I did get you a gift." He isn't lying but Hawthorne's never do anything halfway so I wasn't expecting him to follow any of my wishes. "Follow me."

Jameson guides me through the Hawthorne house passing many rooms till we reach one.  

The door is a deep brown colour with engravings of swirls in each of the corners. The handle of the door is bright gold and it has one key slot. Right in front of the door, there is a brown cardboard box. Jameson bends down to pick it up. 

His eyebrows are quirked up and he has this slight small smile on his face. He is excited and waiting for something to happen. The box has something to do with a puzzle and it seems that he has created it all in this room. My gift is a birthday puzzle. I think it might be the best I have ever gotten. 

"Jameson, what is in the box?"

His smile becomes even wider so proud of his mystery, "Open it." He hands me the box.

In it is a set of keys. All of them look identical. The only difference is a number on each one. 

I stare at the door for a second before reaching for key number 12. There are 12 engraved swirls on the door. 

I slide the key into the lock and open the door. 

The room is small with one large desk in the middle and bookshelves all around.  On the desk, there is another box. This time to open it you need a 5-digit code. 

"What do I have to do this time Jameson?" I ask Turing around to see his mysterious grin. 

"You will find the code around the room and your gift is in the box." 

His face said it all. 

The bookshelves. 

Every book on the shelves was an all-time favourite of mine. One that I rambled on about for days because I loved all the characters so much.  I looked around the shelf until I found something odd. There were two additions to the hunger games, on at the start of the shelf and on at the end. I reach for the one at the end flipping through the pages. A paper slides out. 

went

I walked back to the first copy and pulled it out until a similar paper was found in the middle of the book. 

Bee

Bee went

Beewent

Between

There was a book right in the middle of the row. 

Little women

I flip through the book. There are many random highlighted words every few pages. 

Find, Paper, The, Blue, desk, under. 

"Jameson pen." He threw one right into my hand and I began to write the words on my palm.