Charms

Chapter Five

"Ok, why did you guys do it?" I asked as Ashley, Annabelle, Dad, Rose, Tom and I barged into Lauren's mostly-pink room.

On the ground, there was a huge, paper mâché volcano. Lauren's blonde hair and Georgia's brown hair were both pulled up into messy buns. I could tell that their hair was tangled, as many of their strands intertwined with one another.

"What the heck are you talking about, Patty?" Georgia asked me, confusion filling her blue eyes.

"Don't play dumb with us, Carson!" Ashley barked, "We know what you did!"

"Wh-what did we do?" Lauren stammered, her blue eyes filled with confusion as well.

"You stole our mom's charm!" Tom yelled.

"What?" Lauren shrieked with surprise, "No, we didn't!"

"We would never do a thing like that to your mom!" Georgia chimed in, "She's such a nice lady!"

"Liars!" I argued, "Check the house, guys!"

After about an hour of rummaging through Lauren's house, Ashley, Annabelle, Tom, Rose, Dad, and I were very disappointed to not find anything.

"See, we told you that we didn't steal it!" Georgia rubbed in our faces.

"Well, just because it's not in Lauren's house, that doesn't mean that it's not in yours!" Ashley argued.

"Go ahead. Check it. You guys will be pretty upset when you don't find it and realize that you've spent all that much time in my house for nothing!"

And so we did. Dad, Annabelle, Ashley, Tom, Rose, and I marched out of Lauren's room, out the front door, and hopped back in Mom's mini van. Ashley and I gave Annabelle the directions and she drove us all over to Georgia's house.

"Knock, knock, knock!" The beautiful, white door went as I furiously pounded on it. A couple of seconds later, it swung right open. We were greeted by a short woman with blonde hair and brown eyes.

"Oh, hello!" She greeted us, "Who are you?"

"Are you Georgia's mom?" Rose asked.

"Yes, I am."

"Well, we're her friends," Ashley stated.

"Oh, I'm sorry to tell you that Georgia isn't here right now. She's at her friend, Lauren's-"

"Oh, we're not looking for her."

"Then, who are you looking for then?"

"We're not looking for anybody, miss. We're looking for our mom's charm!"

"Why? What happened to it?"

"Somebody stole it," Annabelle answered grumpily.

"And you think that my Georgia stole it? If you do, then I'll have you know that my sweet little Georgia would never-"

"No, we aren't blaming her at all," I lied, interjecting my words in between Mrs. Carson's sentence, not wanting to hear a mouthful, "We are searching every house in Charm City, Mrs. Carson."

"Go ahead," Mrs. Carson said furiously as she stepped aside, "Search all you want. I am one-hundred-percent sure that you won't find anything."

"Alright, let's make this quick because I'm supposed to babysit some kid in Foxenburg in three hours," Annabelle grumbled as she wheeled my dad through the door.

Tom, Rose, Ashley, and I followed them into a colorful living room and made sure to shut the front door behind us. We spent almost an hour searching for my mom's charm in the Carson household. Still, we found nothing.

"See, told you that you wouldn't find anything!" Mrs. Carson told us once we had given up.

"You sound just like that rude daughter of yours...," Annabelle muttered under breath.

"What did you just say?"

"Nothing!"

Just as Mrs. Carson was about to scold Annabelle, I intervened and stood in front of her and Dad and began to shove them out the door. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Carson, but we really need to get going if we want to save my mother's life!"

Before Mrs. Carson could say anything else to us, Annabelle, Dad, Ashley, Rose, Tom, and I quickly scrambled out the door and slammed it behind us.