The Haunted House

Chapter 5

April 28, 1870

Today is my tenth birthday and my best friend, Claudia is ruining it. She spoiled my favorite dress, the silvery one that glows in the moonlight. I guess I shouldn't worry much because my mom made another one that will fit me when I'm about sixteen or seventeen.

Claudia made a gigantic rip in the sleeve of my dress and I had to go change into another one. While I was crying, my mom told me that Claudia was probably jealous of my dress because it was prettier than hers. Claudia and I made up pretty quickly.

The only thing that went wrong was the cake-cutting ceremony. When I started to cut my cake, Claudia grabbed a piece of the beautiful cake that my mom made and shoved it into my face. I was so angry that I slapped Claudia and poured her dark red tomato soup on her dress. She really hated me after that.

Present Day:

The middle part of the diary was ruined; there was blood covering all of the pages. I could only make out a few phrases here and there, like "enmity between me and...", "wanted me dead...", discovered... plot...", and she told...".

"Sounds like someone really, really disliked her. Maybe it was Claudia." I muttered.

February 7, 1877

Today was my little sister's birthday. She had always wanted to go to Paris Games for her thirteenth birthday, so my parents had planned to take her there. I had tutors coming hometoday to help me on my studies.

I had missed two months of school because my uncle was sick and I had to take care of him. Besides, I had gone to Paris Games many times with my friends. It was the best arcade in town. I had a bad experience there with Claudia once, though. Good thing I had my friends to back me up. Although it knid of was their fault. 

Claudia was at Paris with her brother and his friends. I bumped into her that day and without knowing who she was, I said sorry to her.

"Yea, you'd better be sorry because you're going to lose this bet." she replied maliciously.

"What do you mean?" I asked, confused.

"Your friends accepted a bet for you." she sneered.

"About what? How much?" I asked, panicking.

"Dancing Mania, the hardest game in this world. And, if you lose the bet, you lose your popularity, because everyone thinks you're a better dancer than me, which you are not. And if you win, I won't bother you ever again." she clamly replied.

That sounded like a fair bet to me, but I didn't realize that Claudia was planning to cheat until she actually did. She bumped hard into me in the middle of Dance Mania, causing me to fall down. When she won, my friends started protesting about her cheating.

Her brother came to her rescue. Everyone was scared of Claudia's brother, Ryder. He was one of the most nototrious gang leaders. Even the teachers at our school feared him! He threatened to kill me! He actually threatened to kill me! I was scared now. When Ryder gave a threat, he always carried it out.

He had hated me ever since mine and Claudia's friendship was destroyed. I knew that something bad was going to happen to me. It always did.

To be continued...