The Clique Eternal

Volume I - Autumn

Part I - September

Chapter I

"Massie," said Kendra Block, mother to the social failure sitting on a chair in front of her, petting her dog and checking her phone constantly. It was around eight in the evening, and the sky was dark. "You remember the Perrys are coming tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah, Mom," Massie muttered. She tugged at the hem of her faded green shirt from the camp she went to over the summer, where she had met her best friends Dylan Marvil, Alicia Rivera, and Kristen Gregory. Massie was going to meet them at the movie theater in an hour. She hadn't seen them since camp a month before.

Massie had social problems, specifically friendship problems. All of her "friends" had betrayed her in some way, either by ditching her, being mean to her, ignoring her, or some other cruel thing. So after a while, she just didn't try to be friendly to anybody because it wasn't worth it. Her mom noticed, and after several failed attempts to fix her daughter's friendship problems, she sent her to Camp Honeysuckle. Camp Honeysuckle was a camp for girls with social problems, and it was like normal summer camp, but they did special bonding exercises and stuff to form lasting friendships and lean how to be friends with other people. The three other girls in Massie's cabin were Dylan, Kristen and Alicia, and by the end of the two weeks in August, they were super close. And they were even going to be starting at Octavian Country Day Middle School together! They hadn't been able to meet up over the summer because Alicia did swim team, Dylan's dad had stage four pancreatic cancer and she had to spend the rest of the summer with him, (his cancer was fatal, and the doctors only gave him until the end of August to survive, which was perfectly accurate) and Kristen was in a play as the lead and needed to study her role. But they texted every day and had been able to finally meet all together on the Sunday before middle school started.

"And you remember that they have kids, right?"

Massie nodded, but her mom didn't notice.

"They have two daughters and a son. Their oldest daughter Wendy is sixteen, and their youngest daughter Sammie is twelve like you. Their son Kevin is only five. But Miss Ellen, their mom, said that Sammie's really nervous about making new friends. Would you mind spending the day with her?"

"Mom, I have to meet my friends at the movies tomorrow! I TOLD you that!" Massie yelled. "I haven't seen them all summer, and I want to hang out with them before school starts on Monday!"

"They'll be here around noon, and your movie isn't until one. We're eating lunch with them. I'm sure your friends won't mind bringing Sammie along?"

"I guess not," she said. She was excited to meet Sammie, because it would be the coolest thing ever to be best friends with somebody living less than five minutes away from her! "Want me to help Inez with the guesthouse?"

"Inez is baking cookies for tomorrow, sweetie. The guesthouse still needs to be set up, actually. Would you please take care of it? Here's the key." Kendra smiled at Massie and waved as she crossed the living room and slid open the glass door, walked outside, closed it behind her, and continued until she reached the weathered white front door of their guesthouse. She smiled at the pink roses growing beside the front porch, which wrapped around the entire house and was bordered by the bushes the entire way.

The house looked like her house, but smaller. The outside was painted sunshine yellow with grayish and brownish stones on some parts. The porch was painted white, and there were no shutters on the windows.

Massie unlocked the door and stepped inside. She hadn't been in for a few months, not since she was getting a suitcase from the attic. A layer of dust had covered the interior of the small version of the Blocks' large house.

She walked through the silent rooms, flipping on lights as she went. First, she entered the office. The soft, wheeled chair spun when she pushed it. She turned the computer on and listened as it whirred quietly to life.

Massie left the room, leaving the glass door open behind her. Then she entered the fancy dining room, peering into the cabinet with the gleaming white china. She straightened the chairs and moved into the kitchen.

The silence was scaring her a little. She turned on the small TV on the counter, situated in the corner by the microwave. It was showing a rerun of Dog With a Blog that she didn't really like, but she watched anyways. Anything to break the unnatural quiet.

Massie turned to face the island, and walked around it. She then opened the cabinets to see if they had enough of everything. The plates, bowls, and cups were stacked evenly, but the pots and pans were all jumbled up.

It was probably from when our cousins visited, she thought to herself. She stacked them up the way she remembered, and before she closed the cabinet, pulled out a yellow ceramic bowl, and placed it on the counter. Then she opened the fridge to find if anything had been left in.

There were opened containers of yogurt and milk, and some super moldy grapes. Massie held her breath and poured the long-expired dairy products from Easter when her cousins stayed in the guesthouse down the kitchen sink, and only let herself breathe again when she had run clear water over it to wash it down completely. She just tossed the package of grapes into the trash without opening them.

Massie left the kitchen and headed upstairs to the bedrooms. They were barren of all signs of life except for beds and desks. She walked down the hall to the linen closet to pull out the sheets and blankets.

xoxox

After putting all the stuff on the beds, Massie sat down on the bed in one of the rooms. Cleaning was harder than she thought. She wouldn't have agreed to help in any other circumstances, but she was excited for their family friends to come, and she just wanted to make their visit real.

Then, Massie mentally counted. There were two bedrooms on the top floor, plus the master bedroom. There were no bedrooms on the main floor, and the basement had one bedroom.

She had skipped the basement.

Massie figured she could always play the dumb card and say she forgot. The basement was creepy unless she had somebody else with her, and at the moment she didn't. She was completely alone in the house.

She checked her phone. It was getting kind of late, so she should probably be getting home soon. She had to be inside her house by nine unless she was at a friend's house.

Massie walked down the stairs. She turned off everything that she had turned on and walked out the front door, locking it behind her. She set off across the dark lawn towards her own house, hoping that she would fall asleep quickly so that the next day would get there even faster.

Hey guys!

You probably thought I died or got arrested or moved to Liechtenstein or something, and I'm sososo sorry I haven't been posting anything on here recently! I just needed some time to get started on some new stuff, but now it's SUMMER, and I can write and post and all that fun stuff!

And, just fyi, I might need a few suggestions so I can keep this book alive enough to become a series, and that series must be four volumes long! I have all the ideas for this book and the last book and a few for the other two...

Well I should stop writing this A/N because it's getting long... tata!

xox all the shattered pieces