Earthen Elements

Christin Daoud

Description

Cheryl Chase is a 10-year-old girl dealing with her best friend moving away and her brother mysteriously disappearing. To make matters worse, she'll be attending middle school alone with the snobby queen bee Sherry Anders. But one day, she discovers a mysterious gem necklace in her backpack, and with it, a whole other world filled with magic. She and one other must protect this magical world from an evil force that is threatening all life there. Along the way, she'll also meet new friends and deal with hardships at home.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 05 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669873983
• Langue: English

Extrait

Earthen Elements
 
 
The Beginning
 
 
 
 
 
Christin Daoud
 
Copyright © 2023 by Christin Daoud.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023907228
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-7397-6
 
Softcover
978-1-6698-7399-0
 
eBook
978-1-6698-7398-3

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Rev. date: 05/31/2023
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
852895
CONTENTS
Wednesday, September 1
Thursday, September 2
Friday, September 3
Saturday, September 4
Monday, September 6
Tuesday, September 7
Wednesday, September 8
Thursday, September 9
Friday, September 10
Sunday, September 12
Monday, September 13
Tuesday, September 14
Wednesday, September 15
Thursday, September 16
Friday, September 17
Saturday, September 18
Sunday, September 19
Monday, September 20
Tuesday, September 21
Wednesday, September 22
Friday, September 24
Saturday, September 25
Monday, September 27
Tuesday, September 28
Wednesday, September 29
Thursday, September 30
Friday, October 1
Bonus
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
T ODAY IS MY first day back at Chesterfield. I’ll be starting fifth grade, which I guess means that I’m now a middle schooler. I should be excited. I should already have my first-day-of-school outfit all planned out and prepped on my bed. I should be eagerly counting down the minutes until school starts. But none of that is the case for me. As a matter of fact, I am NOT looking forward to it.
It’s not because I don’t like school, if that’s what you’re thinking. In fact, typically on the first day of school, I’m as giddy as a birthday girl, with my outfit all planned out and my school supplies tucked neatly inside my backpack. But this year is different because I have nothing to look forward to. My best friend moved away and my brother is gone.
Let me start at the beginning. My best friend’s name is Chloe Campbell. She and I have been best friends since kindergarten, and we’ve always been close. We would do practically everything together -- sleepovers, birthday parties, etc… We were inseparable. Or so I thought. Over the summer, Chloe moved away.
We had no idea it was going to happen. The last month of school, we were both super excited for the upcoming summer. We had all these fun activities planned that we were going to do once school was officially over. Slumber parties. Trips to the beach. Spa days with our parents. Once school was out for the summer, we couldn’t wait to have a fun-filled summer together. But then that same day, Chloe’s parents announced that the whole family was moving. Apparently, her dad had gotten a high-paying job in Phoenix, Arizona.
So instead of our fun-filled summer, we spend most of our time together packing cardboard boxes with books, pillows, furniture, and everything else in the Campbell household. Then a few days before July started, Chloe and her parents officially left. I remember as their van drove off, Chloe waved goodbye to me from the back window. I also remember waving goodbye back and not stopping until that van was out-of-sight. I haven’t seen or heard from her since. But worse than her moving away was what happened to my brother Kyle.
Kyle is a year older than me, but despite that, the two of us have always been close. I’ve always viewed him as a second best friend. Whenever I wasn’t with Chloe, I was usually with Kyle. Like me, he went to Chesterfield, but he was very unpopular and friendless there. I’d often see him at lunch sitting by himself and at recess playing alone. Chloe and I would’ve gladly accompanied him, but since we weren’t in the same grade, we had different lunch and recess times, so sadly that wasn’t an option. Kyle always assured me that he didn’t mind, but I doubted it.
Although Kyle was undoubtedly lonely at Chesterfield, no one really bothered him. At least, not at first. But a couple years ago, a snobby rich girl by the name of Sherry Anders transferred to Chesterfield, and not long after, she became the school’s new alpha. She’d walk around the hallways with her head held high, wearing designer clothes and carrying an expensive purse around her fingers with perfectly manicured nails. But it wasn’t just the arrogant way she walked! It was her attitude that was the main issue. She often made snarky remarks about others, whether it’d be about what they wore, what they did, or what they said. For example, this one time, Chloe and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria when we witnessed Sherry making fun of a fourth grade girl’s “last season” shoes. There was also another time I wore a pink flower headband to school and Sherry walked up to me before class started and said that it looked stupid.
Sherry was a nuisance and a pain, but I could’ve easily ignored her if not for one thing: her primary target. Kyle. My brother Kyle.
I don’t know why Sherry chose to make Kyle of all the people in that school her primary target, but I guess it had something to do with the fact that he was friendless at Chesterfield. Though Sherry was rude to a lot of people, she was an absolute witch to Kyle. She’d torment him on a daily basis. She’d make fun of practically everything he said or did. She’d play cruel tricks on him like tripping him in the hallways, shoving him against lockers, sticking gum in his hair, and taping notes to his back that read things like GEEK or LOSER. The worst part was that somehow, Sherry had gotten practically the entire school to participate. Kids in lower grades did the little things like tripping and shoving while the kids in higher grades did the bigger things such as stuffing him inside his locker or unzipping his backpack in the hallways (causing all his stuff to fall out). This was back when he was in fourth grade and I was in third.
When he started fifth grade and I started fourth, I expected him to be unhappy about having to go back there, but to my surprise, he wasn’t. He explained that it had been almost three months since he last saw everyone and by now they were bound to have gotten over picking on him.
“It was just one bad year,” he’d told me. Still, I was worried.
For the first few weeks, it appeared as if Kyle was right. Hardly anybody gave him the time of day, and slowly my worry for him decreased. But just as I began to think that he was safe, Sherry got everyone to restart the drama, forcing Kyle to go through another year of vicious tormenting.
Because of this, a few weeks before he was due to start sixth grade, Kyle begged Mom and Dad to let him transfer schools. Mom and Dad were against it, however. I remember listening in on their argument on the top of the stairs.
“Please don’t make me go back,” Kyle pleaded. “Can’t I transfer to another school?”
“Kyle, there isn’t another middle school in this area. The nearest one besides Chesterfield is Lincolnwood, and that’s ten miles from here. No bus from Lincolnwood comes here, and no way can your mom and I drive you ten miles to and from school everyday,” Dad had said.
“What about Westridge?” Kyle suggested.
“Westridge?” Mom exclaimed. “Kyle, that’s a private school. A very expensive private school! We can’t afford it.”
“Besides, you only have one more year there. Then you’ll move on to junior high and won’t see most of those kids again,” Dad added.
“No! Please! I can’t bear another year getting bullied by those horrid classmates!” Kyle exclaimed. Tears were threatening to come out of his eyes.
“Honey, maybe those kids won’t bother you this year,” Mom suggested. “Maybe they’ll forget all about it and leave you alone.”
“That’s what I thought last year, and that didn’t wind up happening,” Kyle retorted.
“Well, honey, what else can we do? Transferring is not an option, and we tried talking to the principal, but she wasn’t able to do much,” Mom said.
Kyle thought about it. “What about homeschooling? Just for this year.”
“Homeschooling?” Dad exclaimed. “Kyle, your mother and I both have jobs. We don’t have time to homeschool you.”
“But Mom only works part-time. Maybe she can do it,” Kyle suggested. He was beginning to sound desperate.
Mom and Dad glanced briefly at one another before looking back at Kyle with sympathetic looks on their faces. They sadly shook their heads.
Upset, Kyle burst into tears and ran out the front door. Mom prepared to go after him, but Dad stopped her.
“He’s upset. Let him go. He’ll come around and be back soon.”
That turned out to be a mistake. Kyle didn’t come back. We waited an hour… two hours… five hours, but he never returned. By the time it got dark, Mom and Dad got worried, so they called the police and filed a missing person report. There was a search, but the police found no trace of him.
So that pretty much sum