And safe Charlotte stays, until the next day, when Nicole discovers that it is very much Clean Up Your Room Day.
“Just the day I needed!” she says, glancing at the calendar.
“Alright, sisters, let’s get at it!”
Sophie makes absolutely no response.
Actually, Toria, who’s just eating dry cereal, hardly responds either. “Hmm?”
Nicole reaches over, pulls Sophie’s headphones off and repeats herself. “Let’s get at it!”
“At what?” Sophie asks.
“Cleaning! It’s clean your room day! And a good thing too, because we need to find all of our socks and all of our shoes.”
“The shoes actually shouldn’t have been hard to find,” Toria says. “Sophie hid mine and I hid hers so we could go barefoot on No Socks Day, but then when we checked yesterday, they were all gone!”
“And it wasn’t me,” Nicole says, “So we need to ask the cousins. Okay, noted.” She writes that down on a big piece of paper.
“But some of my shoes are also missing and both of you said you didn’t hide them.”
“We didn’t!” Toria confirms.
“And the cow socks that I was wearing on No Socks Day are also gone.”
Sophie giggles. “Oh, um, well . . . it wasn’t me, but I know who it was!”
“Who? And WHEN did they go missing? When I was taking a nap with Saila?”
“I don’t know that, I just know who it was!”
“Well then, who was it?”
“I’m not telling.”
“Toria, was it you?” Nicole turns to her second sister.
“Nooo. I knew about this, but had no part in it.”
“And you won’t tell me who it was?”
“No.”
“Fine then.” Nicole writes ‘Figure out who took my socks and where they are’ on her paper.
“We also need to – actually, never mind, the bedroom and main room look pretty tidy. Did you guys do that?”
Toria shakes her head. “Wish I could take credit for it, but it wasn’t me.”
“Me neither,” Sophie says.
“So, to be clear, neither of you cleaned, neither of you stole my shoes, and neither of you stole my socks? Correct?”
“Yep.”
“But where are the rest of the socks?”
“Oh,” Toria says. “Hailey and I put them in a bin and took them to ForestPoodle. I think they’re now with ForestPoodle’s socks?”
“Okay.” Nicole adds ‘Get socks back from FP88’ to her list.
“I think this calls for a trip to Peace in the Pines,” Sophie says, opening the door.
Apparently, Hailey has no clue where the shoes are, but confirms that ForestPoodle88 has the socks.
“But not the cow ones,” she says. “We couldn’t find those.”
Nicole interrogates Charlotte next. “Have you seen my shoes or socks?”
“Which ones?”
“The cow socks and my running shoes. Actually, I’m missing my sneakers, one winter boot and a dress shoe as well. And all of Toria and Sophie’s shoes are also missing.”
Charlotte looks at Sophie. “It wasn’t me!”
“Really?”
“Yep! Well, at least most of it wasn’t . . . ”
Nicole sighs, but she’s smiling. “Charlotte, where are my socks and all of our shoes?”
“Okay, okay. I took your socks, but I don’t know anything about your shoes.” Then she glances at Toria and Sophie. “Only theirs.”
“What?! YOU took our shoes?” Toria throws her hands up.
Charlotte nods, very proud of herself. She shrugs. “You guys didn’t hide them well enough.”
“Alright, that’s fair, but you’re gonna have to come over and help us find them.”
“When did you take my socks?” Nicole butts in.
“Well, you and Saila were napping . . . ”
Saila and Nicole had stayed up late scrapbooking and although they did sleep a bit, by the time lunch came around, they were dead-tired. Nicole offered up her bed and the two had snuggled down for a long nap.
Sophie, and Charlotte, who had wandered over, saw their opportunity.
While Sophie stood guard . . .
. . . Charlotte carefully tugged Nicole’s socks off her feet.
“Only, I left them in the empty room,” Charlotte said, “and they’re not there anymore.”
Just then, Saila comes in. “What are you looking for?” she asks.
Nicole, with Charlotte’s help, tells her what the problem is.
“Oh, those socks! Yeah, I put them in the sock bin, I thought they were ours.” Saila runs to go get them.
“Sorry about that.”
“Do you know where my shoes are?”
“They’re missing?”
“Yeah, I left them in the bedroom . . .”
“Oh, yeah, I tidied them up a couple days ago. Your home was looking messy so I decided to help out while I was there. They’re in the pink box in the living room.”
“Oh Saila! Maybe next time warn me when you’re cleaning?”
Saila smiles. Nicole doesn’t have to know that she overheard Sophie and Nicole talking and did it on purpose. Some secrets can be Saila’s to keep.
* * *
And there you have it! All’s well that end’s well! I do hope you’ve enjoyed this photo story series, and get ready for more posts at some point soon. I’ve got a long list of things, including a couple of tags and some never-before-seen photos! (Well, duh, I’m not going to go about repeat posting the same pictures XD)
Anyway, yes. It’s very much exam season right now, but my french exam went well yesterday, hopefully my English one tomorrow night will also go smoothly. (I’m not counting on it though . . . how on earth does one study for an English exam??) Still, I’ll be done everything on Thursday, and ready to enter the chaos that is the holiday season.
I hope everything is going well for all of my dear readers, and thank you for sticking around and commenting even when my posting is rather sporadic!
-ForestPoodle88
Hedgehog Hollow 