Page 75 - Girl's World (October 2019)

confused tone. “What new house?”
keep such a huge secret from us? I need to figure
out what’s going on.” Louisa picked up her cat and
started looking around the house for moving clues.
She noticed the living room was filled with large
piles of clothes and got a little concerned, but
she tried to stay positive. Maybe Mom and Dad
are just doing one of their cleaning sprees again,
she thought. They love those.
When Louisa realized that all of the clothes
were Ryann’s, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Her sister was getting ready to head back
to college to finish up her degree in interior
design, so it made sense for her to be packing.
The rest of the house looked totally normal …
until Louisa made her way to the garage. There,
she found stacks of cardboard boxes piled up
near her dad’s golf clubs.
“Those are moving boxes,” Louisa whispered to
herself. “And there are way too many for them to just
be Ryann’s, even with all her art supplies and the
summer school projects she’s been working on.”
Louisa was trying to stop herself from crying when
she noticed the arm of a stuffed animal hanging over
the trash can. She rushed over to the garbage bins to
check it out. “Oh, my gosh,” Louisa sniffled. “These
are all of my childhood toys. Mom and Dad are really
packing everything up!”
Louisa let out a loud sob as she ran back inside the
house. She could hear both of her parents talking in
the hallway upstairs, so she went to confront them.
They looked startled as Louisa bolted toward them.
“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” her dad asked.
“We’re … moving … away … from … Grandma,”
Louisa cried, barely able to get a word out.
“What?” her mom questioned. “Louisa, what are
you talking about?”
“I found the map of the new house,” Louisa
whimpered. “And I saw all of the boxes in the garage.
You’ve even started tossing out some of my old toys
that were in the basement. I just don’t understand. I
don’t see how you could find a better house than this!
What will Grandma do without us nearby?”
“Map of the new house?” her mom repeated in a
“If we’re moving away from Grandma, that’s news to
me,” her dad added.
Louisa wiped her tears and looked back at her
parents, puzzled. “Huh? We’re not moving?”
“Louisa, where did you ever get the idea that we’re
moving?” her parents asked.
Louisa led them back to the kitchen, where she
pulled the map out of the drawer.
“See? This is a map of an entirely different house.
You guys even marked which bedroom will be mine
and which will be Ryann’s.”
Her parents studied the map for a few second
before her dad let out a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Louisa demanded.
“Oh, Louisa! We’re not moving.”
“Then what’s this map for?” she asked.
Can you figure out
an explanation for
the mysterious map?
Louisa’s parents revealed that the map was
created by her older sister, Ryann. As Louisa noted
as she was looking through the living room for
clues, Ryann is a design student in college. The
map Louisa found was actually one of her sister’s
design projects for school. The assignment involved
creating a layout design for a house, and Ryann
happened to use the names of her family members
for the room labels. It was her big summer project,
so she’d stashed it in the drawer for safekeeping.
The moving boxes that Louisa found in the
garage were boxes that her parents had been
collecting for Ryann to move her belongings back
to college. The items in the trash were from a
basement cleaning spree. Her parents just wanted
to tidy up the house — but not because they’re
moving! After they cleared everything up, Louisa and
her parents had a laugh over the misunderstanding.
They even walked down to her grandma’s house to
tell her what had happened!