Chatterbox: Inkwell

                                                        A NEW STORY TO READ!

   Hi. I'm Faye and I'm 11 years old from Maryland. I want to be an author when I grow up. Now, I type books on my dad's computer at home. I give them to my friends and they LOVE them! 

   Right now, I'm typing the fourth book in my hit new series, called The One More Piece Series. 

   If you love Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, and/or 39 Clues series, then you are going to just love MY series! 

   So, here's the first chapter of the first book in my series, called #1 The One More Piece Series: The Bad Begins.

   I think there's only one mistake somewhere in the story, where I typed the word "best" instead of "bus".

   So, here's the first chapter of the book! Comment after you read it and tell me whatcha think and if you want to read the second chapter or not!

   - Faye

Chapter 1

Caroline

Okay—first off, let me tell you a little about myself before I forget. So most of the time you’ll find my head stuck in a book, usually a mystery. I love Nancy Drew’s and sometimes I read The Hardy Boys. Other times when I’m in class and my creative-writing teacher, Ms. Kane (which does not have any mystery books, don’t ask me why) tells us to grab a book off her bookshelf and read it, I usually go for A View From Saturday or Frindle. Maybe if I’m challenging myself to some adventure I’ll read Goosebumps. But usually I stick to mysteries.

   The second thing I want you to know about me is my parents. My mom, Michelle Elizabeth White got divorced a long time ago,and she’s never told me about it. She always says that she “doesn’t remember it”. I don’t really understand what she means. On the other hand, my dad, Bob Daniel White, was never divorced; he just got married late, at the age of thirty-seven. My mom is forty-two now and my dad is forty-eight. I am an only child, at the age of twelve. My birthday is May second. I was born in nineteen ninety-nine. I am a sixth grader.

   The third thing you must know about me is that I will refuse to eat any animal. I think that it is cruel to hurt animals for humans’ food. For example, I won’t even eat turkey on Thanksgiving or chicken for dinner. I especially won’t eat fish bites at school. This is just me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

   “So your mom won’t let you read for a week?”My best friend, John Barnsley said to me on our walk home from school.

   “Yes, that’s right. Just because I didn’t sleep last night, instead I hid my book under my pillow when she kissed me good night and then took the book out after she shut my door and read for the whole night. 

Sometimes I just don’t understand my mom… and dad,” I replied, sighing, “Do you understand your mom and dad?”

   “Yes and no,” John answered, “sometimes they’re nice and let me go to school get-togethers and play dates with friends, but other times they won’t let me watch TV for a month, they’re so mad at me!”

   “I understand…” I added, turning my housekey in the small hole of my house.

   Suddenly I swung the door open. Nobody was home, so John and I were all by ourselves. That meant that we didn’t have to do our homework first thing. Ha!

   “I’m bored… I don’t want to do my homework, so what can we do?” I asked John.

   “Ooh—in social studies today we talked about ancestors… could we look through some of your parents’ old books? Like, scrapbooks?”

   “Sure!” I said back to John, heading downstairs to the basement. “Follow me.”

   Soon John and I were downstairs in my basement. I 

headed right towards the brown (probably dusty) bookshelf, where my parents kept all their old books, dictionaries, college study books, and scrapbooks. Finally I found a book which read Family Scraps. I picked it up and looked at my fingers—they were all gray, in other words all dusty. So I blew all the dust off the scrapbook and then told John to sit down with me on the sofa.

   I opened up the old book and found written in neat cursive:

Family Scrapbook from the 1900’s

Put Together By: Natalie Dorothy Banks

Born: 1903

Aunt of

Michelle Elizabeth White-Banks-Barnsley

   “Barnsley…?” John asked which I was just about to say, too.

   “Probably another Barnsley…?” I added with a smile.

   I looked around the basement—there was a fireplace, a desk, a laptop, a TV, a sofa (which we were sitting on), two bookshelves, and a big old clock. The walls were painted with a cream color and the flooring was all wood. I remembered when I was little I used to put on tights under my pajamas in the morning and I used to run and slide on the wood floor. One time I almost broke my back!

   Then I looked down at the scrapbook. I turned the page. There were lots of pictures of my mom and some photos of my dad, counting my parents’ wedding photograph.

   “Turn the page!” John said with some excitement.

   So I did. There was some diary of my mother when she was probably twelve or thirteen, because it spoke of seventh grade.There was also a diary of my father which spoke of high school. He also included some photographs in his, unlike my mother’s.

   “What are all these diaries for?” John asked.

   “I think that it’s just showing different point of views through different peoples’ lifetimes,” I answered, “or just my great aunt…”

   I sighed. My great aunt, Natalie Dorothy Banks was my aunt… at least before she died. Three years ago she passed away from cancer. Usually I don’t think about it, but now I am. I better stop.

   “Never mind…” I added, trying to lose my latest thought.

   Then I turned to the next page—and that was the page that surprised me and John—because there was a photograph on thatpage with specifically Max Samuel Barnsley and Michelle Elizabeth White… or should I say Barnsley?