Hi guys. I was having a horrible day.. but I received a package from one of my best friends. I was just so touched by it and it really helped cheer me up. It was just amazing timing too, I really needed something like that today. It's really nice getting personalized mail from friends in the mailbox. I may like all other forms of technology, but I really do love getting mail and the thrill of finding a package at your door. Sometimes, if I'm really desperate and in need of excitement, I order clothes just to find that package of new clothes right outside my door.
Anyways, today is Wednesday Love and another chapter from my mystery story. I have no idea what the schedule is anymore, except Wednesday Love (officially known as Wednesday Advice) and Friday Q&A and Sunday app reviews.
Since I am having a horrible day, I decided to write some advice for everyone having a bad day. I was going to write about having mutual interests with the person you like and how to become friends/closer but you know, bad days just suck. Bad days just happen and it's inevitable. Our lives aren't perfect and we make mistakes, we don't think things through. My other friend H, who's one of the greatest friends I have, told me to take a deep breath. There was nothing that I could do about the situation and it was best to forget about it and try harder next time. It is true and you should use your bad day as motivation to have a better day tomorrow. It's really difficult but it helps you in the long run. And as I was saying yesterday, every bad thing has at least one good side. Yesterday, there was a different song to my advice but so be it.
Another thing would be to tell someone about it. If you don't like talking or it's really private, write it down. It helps to just unleash your thoughts sometimes. Having someone, whether it's your parents, friends, dog, etc, is really important. Finding good friends is crucial for a happy life, especially on bad days. My church is also so supportive of me and I can always talk to somebody and feel a lot better afterwards.
If you have time, I would advise you to take a bubble bath, watch funny movies, and listen to a lot of music. Whenever I'm feeling sad, I gravitate towards sad songs but force myself to listen to really upbeat songs. I made a Bad Day playlist too... and a list of favorite movies to watch. It helps, just a little. It also helps to buy stuff haha, I don't know how great of advice that is. If you're going through a really bad breakup, it might to time to change your wardrobe. You could also waste a day on Tumblr. I'm not sure how much food you should consume on a bad day. I know from experience that I gained a lot of weight from unhappiness (not this year ha!) and was unhappy about that for a while. I wouldn't do things that I know I'll regret later. For example, I was pretty upset about the guy who moved to Connecticut after seeing Facebook pictures (another good piece of advice: don't stalk past crushes, boyfriends, girlfriends, people you don't like, etc when you're having an emotionally unstable moment), so I decided to tell this other guy that I wanted lunch. He offered and was enthusiastic which totally fed my broken spirits. And then he pretty much stood me up. Point is, I wouldn't have done that if I had been happy and had been smart. Don't let other people control your happiness. :) Cheer up! Bad days don't last forever unless you let them.
I hope this helps. Sometimes all you can do is close your eyes and cry.
For all the people who came here because of the word 'Haunt' here is my mystery story. These chapters are a lot shorter than Coffee Shop. Enjoy! xx
Afternoon of the Crime
I had a nagging feeling when I rang the doorbell a second time. I heard a frantic flurry of footsteps parading down the stairs followed by the barking of a dog. I wasn’t aware that Ms. Hastings had a dog. I took out my notepad in the few minutes it took for the door to open.
“Hello?” The door opened just a crack and I looked up to see Miranda Hastings. Miranda was Ms. Hastings’s thirteen year old daughter. I was just two years older than her but I felt like I was in a whole different generation sometimes.
“Hi Miranda,” I said cheerfully and uncapped my pen. She stared at me uncannily but wouldn’t open the door any further. “Er, do you mind if I come inside?”
“Sure,” she finally said after a long hesitant look. She swung the door wide open and a golden retriever lunged for me. I bent down to pat her when Miranda pulled her leash. I never understood why people kept their dogs on their leashes inside the house.
“Bad dog!” Miranda yelled. “Sorry Vicky, she isn’t my dog. I’m just watching her. She gets so antsy whenever someone’s at the door.” Miranda heaved a huge sigh before yelling for her mother. Was Miranda the one who needed my service? I felt too awkward to ask her. Ms. Hastings came down the stairs in a slow and casual manner. She didn’t seem like the frightened and frantic woman I heard on the phone.
“Victoria! How wonderful to see you.” She smiled more than she usually did and Miranda had disappeared with the dog.
“So I’m looking for a teddy bear right?” I smiled because I had thrown a curve ball at her. Ms. Hastings started walking to the den which was across the hall. I had been in her house a couple times for the few neighborhood events that my family had taken part of.
“Yes, precisely, Victoria. It’s a bear of medium size and has brown fur and glass eyes.” I scribbled it down quickly but realized that almost all teddy bears had somewhat of the same description.
“When was the last time you saw this bear?”
“Yesterday,” Ms. Hastings said. Her answers were getting vaguer by the second.
“Where exactly was the bear?”
“Oh I always kept the bear in the den, in this very room.” She pointed her index finger lacquered with red nail polish at the bookshelf where a snow globe sat in the middle of so much empty space. I guessed that that was where the bear was supposed to be.
“Do you know if the bear is still inside your home?” My number one suspect as of right now was Miranda but that made little sense to me. I wrote her name by the few clues that Ms. Hastings had given.
“It’s not,” Ms. Hastings said inhaling sharply.
“Does anyone else own a house key?”
“No, just myself, and Miranda,” Ms. Hastings said. I paused a minute to analyze the facts again.
“What about her father?” I knew it was a touchy subject but this case was getting weirder by the second. I wasn’t sure if Ms. Hastings had ever been married. It wasn’t something that I had ever wondered about. I hadn’t ever seen Miranda’s father either.
“Oh no, William, William Richards, doesn’t have a key.” I found it odd that she referred to him by his first and last name, especially to me.
“Um does he visit often?” I knew for a fact that Miranda stayed with him every Tuesday of the week.
“Yes, but he always waits in his car for her to come out. He has never entered foot into this house.” The shrillness of her voice was coming back.
“So you are always present when he comes to pick Miranda up?”
“Yes,” Ms. Hastings said with a nod. I wrote his name down next to Miranda’s. There couldn’t be more suspects.
“Thank you, I’m going to go talk to Miranda for a second.” Ms. Hastings nodded. I went up the stairs and knocked on Miranda’s bedroom door. The house had three rooms upstairs and one bathroom. There was another bathroom downstairs as well the dining room which segued into the kitchen. The living room was connected to the dining room as well and the den was its own separate room.
“Come in,” Miranda said and I opened the door. The dog was laying down on the carpet and she had a couple textbooks open.
“Hi, so can I ask you a couple questions about the bear?” I saw a shiver crawl up her spine.
“Sure,” she said snidely. Miranda didn’t look much like her mother. They had the same curly strawberry blonde hair but that was where the similarities ended. She had a perpetual sneer on her face and her eyes were piercing blue.
“So um was the bear a childhood toy?” I remember my mother freaked out when my father accidentally donated one of the old baby blankets. My mother went to every thrift store before she found it.
“No, I’ve touched it maybe once. My mom loves that thing like a daughter,” Miranda said staring down at her nails. They were painted the same bright red that her mother sported.
“Why is that? Was it your mother’s old toy?”
“I don’t know, okay? I think it was passed down by my grandma.” Okay, so it did have sentimental value.
“Has she been really upset after it disappeared?”
“You don’t even know. She’s been crazy lately,” Miranda said. Her eyes momentarily lit up and it was almost like having a normal, nice conversation. She immediately stopped laughing and glared at me again.
“And tell me about your dad,” I said slowly.
“My dad is so cool,” she said almost smiling. “We eat pizza all the time and go bowling. He takes me to concerts and amusement parks during the summer.”
“Why don’t you live with him?”
“I like this school.” Her voice was softer and I could tell that she wasn’t lying.
“Okay, well thanks Miranda. I hope I can find this bear,” I pushed the cap onto the pen and exited her room. The dog just watched me from the floor.
“I hope you do too,” she whispered as I was leaving. I still heard it and smiled as I walked down the stairs.
“I’ll be going now,” I told Ms. Hastings. She nodded and opened the door for me.
“Thank you,” she said. I walked home and couldn’t shake a weird feeling off. All I had learned was that the bear had gone missing yesterday and it had always been kept in the den. Miranda’s father couldn’t have stolen it because he had never stepped foot into the house. I still resisted from crossing his name off the suspect list. Miranda had sounded jealous when she said that her mother never let her touch the bear. She might have stolen it to get attention because Miranda was that type of person. But there was something I couldn’t put my finger on about her. There was something genuine about the way she looked at me and her little bursts of true personality. I felt sad for her all of a sudden. I wanted to scribble her name off the suspect list but there was an irking feeling. I had two suspects but neither of them seemed to match up perfectly. Why would a normal man plot to steal a stuffed bear? None of this made any sense.
I returned home to see my mother setting up dinner. I put the notepad down and helped her set her plates and silverware.
“So Victoria has her first case,” my mother said during dinner. My father didn’t seem that surprised and loosened his tie. He was a college professor and his whole math department wore suits and ties.
“That’s great,” Max said biting into a bread roll. My grandmother always made dough for these rolls that she gave to my mother and my uncle every time we visited her during holidays. “Dad, my band got a gig downtown this Saturday.”
“Great, you can have the keys this weekend,” my father said avoiding any eye contact with my mother. Max was a senior and because of my mother, he was probably the only guy without a car in our grade. He would’ve done anything to have a beat up pick up truck like the one his best friend Tyler drove every day. Tyler only lived a couple blocks away from us so he gave us rides to school. Max and Tyler would talk incessantly about music while I was in the back seat with all sorts of rotting food and trash that Tyler never threw away.
“So honey, tell us about your first case,” my father said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t even call it a case, Dad. I’m finding some teddy bear that Ms. Hastings misplaced.” Misplaced? Where had that come from? And then it hit me. Maybe that was the answer to this problem. That’s why none of the clues made sense. She simply misplaced it and I was looking in all the wrong spots.
“Well you have to start somewhere,” he said and Max nodded a little too enthusiastically. I blew a raspberry at Max. I knew that Max was just waiting for the moment to rub it in my face that I would never be a detective. Max and I were polar opposites. He was good at music and math while I was more of a logical writer, horrible at math but good at deducing clues and writing about them.
I helped clean up the plates afterwards. My father watched TV in the living room while Max was doing something in his room. I slunk up the stairs after all the dishes had been washed and put away. Thursday nights meant that my mother was at a neighbor’s house playing bridge.
I looked at the detective notebook to see if I had missed anything important. I wrote down the word misplaced and circled it with a red pen. Ms. Hastings had to wash that thing once in a while. She probably left it in the laundry basket or the cabinets where all the blankets were folded away. I tried to concentrate on math but felt my mind wandering away. The phone rang ominously.
PS:
Are the labels helpful? I don't know if it's possible to get email subscriptions and I'm not really sure what purpose the labels serve except organization. Because you have to read, or scroll down I guess, to the end to find out what label it's categorized as. You guys are just so good at finding which are Coffee Shop. I'm guessing the titles... but yeah I'm still new to Blogger and so I'm still learning!
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