**To my creative imagination, who always encouraged me to write.**

(This is like a bit of my book.)

**Chapter 1**

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The grass crunched under his worn black and white sneakers. What was once a beautiful light gray, that students used to come in and out of school on, was now overtaken by weeds and brittle grass. However, when he did take a look at it, it had cracks and was a dark gray. The air was cold, making him feel icy. It was a freezing February morning. Louisiana had gotten no snow all season, but the dark gray clouds threatened it. The old abandoned school was right in front of him. The bricks, once a bright, vibrant red, were now a faded burgundy. He assumed that it was painted before the red because the peeling paint showed glimmers of white as a faded red. Windows were broken all over the place, the frames looked like the mouth, while the broken glass looked like ragged teeth. To his surprise, there was minimal graffiti, there was some on the walls and doors, but nowhere else. However, ash was everywhere, on the ground, on the trees, and on the school itself. When he looked at the front of the school, the ash wasn’t bad, but when he moved through the trees and looked at the side, scorch marks, ash covered the corner.

Thornhollow Elementary had suffered a horrible tragedy.

In 2008, a kitchen staff member named Abigail Green had been hungover while baking frostbitten chicken nuggets in the small oven that the school owned. She had gotten tired of her hair in a hair net, so she had taken it off and returned to looking at her phone. Soon, her boss came in and lectured her about why she had to wear a hairnet and why she shouldn’t be on her phone. While all of this commotion was going on, the chicken nuggets turned crispy, then burnt, and then the parchment paper on the pan turned into flames. Oblivious of this, Abigail opened the oven, and a burst of flames came out. The fire only spread through the kitchen and on some of the lunchroom tables. Otherwise, the school was alright.

Although the school suffered only minor injuries, it shut down. Apparently, that was the last straw. After the pipe burst in the teachers’ lounge, termites eating up most of the classrooms and some other stuff, the school ran out of money. Since it was an elementary school, the kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders were sad to leave because they actually had fun in their classes, had little to no homework, and liked their teachers! However, the third graders, fourth graders, and fifth graders were happy, among the kids just not liking school in general, and having to get up at the crack of dawn, it seemed like a great opportunity. 

But that didn’t work out for them. All the kids and teachers were moved to online school. The school had already bought small laptops for all the kids, so they thought they would make the best of it. It worked out for the younger kids; they saw their teachers, basically had no homework, and still got to play freeze dance!

He stepped into the abandoned school, his footsteps picked up massive amounts of dust as he walked. The dust was heavy throughout the air. Cobwebs hung from everywhere on the ceiling. The faint scent of molded food and decay flooded his nose as he strolled through the halls.

When he got to the cafeteria, there were dust-covered chairs and rusty tables. The metal serving counters were covered in soot. Trays were scattered around the long, brown cafeteria tables with decayed food. A vending machine was in the corner farthest from the kitchen, the glass was cracked and scattered all over the floor. The drinks and snacks in the machine were spilled out. Many of the things were opened, crushed, or expired. He walked over to the burnt kitchen. The remains of chicken nuggets were all over the floor. The oven was mostly all ashes and soot. He kicked some of it around, making his shoe dirty.

He tried each of the doors, but none of them opened. He shook each of the handles, hard. Still, none of them budged. He walked up to a door that said Ms. Daffie’s Classroom, 7th Grade, on a silver plaque. Since he was so used to pulling on the handle hard when the door opened, he fell. When he got up, he saw that it was a history classroom. 

He walked around on the front wall, one side was a dust-covered whiteboard with scratches from years of erasing and faint writing that looked like it said: **TEST **Thursday. There were posters of WWI and WWII. There were also inspirational quotes on the walls. There were 5 rows of desks with 4 desks in each row. Most of the desks had drawings and things like “E+G” engraved with pencils on them. He walked around the rows, looking inside a couple of the desks’ cubbies.

The first desk had an old composition notebook in it. It also had a half-drunk water bottle, a couple of pencils, and some trash. Another desk was very neat and put together. It was one of the desks with no writing on it. It had a textbook in the far left corner, a pencil case, wrapped headphones, and a name template folded down in the bottom center of the desk. One desk had a big gray and blue lunch box. It was slightly opened so he could see an unopened juice box and a moldy sandwich. Also in the desk was a wrinkled piece of paper and a calculator. 

He touched a flower on the teacher's desk. Instantly, the flower crumbled into tiny pieces, which flowed down to the floor. He stepped on them some more, remembering the time when he and Catie were 14 years old. During the fall, he and Catie would always shove piles of small leaves together to make one giant pile. Then, on the count of three, they would jump into the pile while holding hands. It was one of his favorite memories.

Slowly, he reached for his neck. On it was a locket with a photo of him and Catie together. Emotions swirled in him: happiness, anger, and grief. He was happy because of all the good times he had with Catie. He was angry because he had no idea where Catie was. And he felt grief because, well, he missed her deeply.

He put the locket away quickly. The whole reason he did this was to clear his head and forget about Catie. Then he noticed a brown closet door that almost went up to the ceiling. It had a very shiny golden-colored knob. Which had been strange because everything else had been covered in dust. 

When he opened it, there were some old textbooks, tissues, cleaning supplies, and some other classroom supplies. When he walked inside, some of the textbooks fell. He looked at everything and shoved some pencils, tissues, and other things in his pockets. When he turned around to leave, a trap door opened underneath his feet. 

He fell into a room that looked the same as the history class. When he stepped out of the closet, he saw the flowers, but they were alive and bright pink this time. This time, it wasn’t dusty at all, and there was no mildew smell. 

When he looked back into the desk cubbies. They all looked the same, but when he looked into the cubbies that had the moldy sandwich, it wasn’t moldy. It was a perfect sandwich that looked like it had been made that morning. The room looked like it was from 2013, fresh.  

He didn’t mind it, so he just walked around looking for more open doors. Every time he tried to open a door, it opened at first, and he didn’t think anything of it. Before he stepped inside, he looked at the door and realized that he had already tried to open it because he remembered that a small smiley face was drawn on it with a permanent black marker. Then he went around to see if any other doors were open. To his surprise, all of them were open. He decided to go into every room and look around. He went to the room with the smiley face on the door first. When he opened the door back up, it looked like a normal math classroom. But when his first step landed on the floor, the door slammed shut, and the room was transformed into black darkness. 

Also noebody asked but Ima give some facts abt me :)

Name: Shh 🤫

Age: Tween

Birthday: July 17 (7 days!!!!)

Pronouns: she/her

Sign: Cancer ♋️

Height: 4’11

Hair Type: 2a curls

Hair color: brown

Eye color:brown

Dream Job: Actor, Influencer, Author, Singer, Police Officer (any of them)

Dream Broadway Role:Rizzo- Grease

Apperience/accessories: Glasess, ears periced

Favorite Color: Ivy and Purple

Favorite Tv show/Movie: Umbrella Academy, Young Sheldon

Favorite food: Choclate covered apples, great-grandpa’s gumbo

Favorite song: Riptide-Vance Joy Beautiful Girls- Sean Kingston

Favorite drink: Coke-Cola

Titles of Books I’m working on: The Ashes of Thornhollow Elemtary, Seven Deadly Sisters