The Secret of Jauregui Estate (Camren)

Chapter 1

I sat at my desk, tapping my black pen out of boredom. I glanced up at the digital clock just above the door and sighed because I still had another ten minutes left in french class and I was ready to jump up and dash out the door. I felt someone poke me on the back with a pen, that had to be Dinah. I turned quickly to face her.

"My place after school?" She asked as she maneuvered her pen through her slender fingers.

"I don't know, Dinah..." Dinah put on a 'seriously' face and slammed her pen on the desk. "What?" I squeaked.

"You never come over any more, Mila!" She said. "I always end up going to your house."

"Because I feel like a thorn in your parents' side when I go to your place." I explained.

"Mila, you feel that way towards everyone's family!"

"Exactly!" I exclaimed throwing my hands in the air. Dinah rolled her eyes and sat back in her seat. It's not that I didn't like Dinah's family, it's just that they're a little... strange. Her brothers and sisters act like wild dogs! She has the biggest family I have ever seen! Twenty - one people live in her bayou house so Dinah has no problem sharing bathrooms, rooms or cleaning up after people.

The bell rang a little late so I ran down the hall to get to the carpool lane before the crowd arrived. Dinah was cramming papers into her backpack behind me as she tried to keep up. We waited for my mom to arrive with Ally and Normani, our best friends. Freshman year our parents agreed to carpool to school every day so it's been a consistent thing ever since. This week my mom was driving.

Once we got into the neighborhood, we passed a black iron gate.

"Who lives there?" I asked.

"That place?" Mani chuckled. "No one. It's been abandoned for over fifty years."

"I remember the people who lived there." My mom muttered. "The eldest daughter was my best friend."

"What happened?" Ally questioned.

"Nobody knows." My mom said in a bit of a creepy tone. "Jauregui Estate is a dangerous place, girls. Nobody ever enters those gates anymore." She said. "So don't even try it." We all nodded in agreement. No way would I walk into a haunted Estate alone!

When we dropped the girls off I bounded upstairs and slung my backpack down. I looked out my window at Jauregui Estate, at how looked so cold and dark with no signs of activity except for a lone gardener, clipping at the dead rose bushes by the path. My mind was full of questions I couldn't answer like 'what happened to them?' or 'where did they go?' Nobody knew the answer to any of those questions not even my mother, who was very close to the Jauregui family. It dawned on me that I knew someone with the last name Jauregui! Of course I had no idea as to whether or not she was related to them but it was still a possibility. Who knows, she may not even know those people but then again they were maybe long seperated cousins? I stopped my train of thought so I could focus on the task at hand. Homework.