I live across the street from an old, broken down house. Inside this house lives an older woman. She rarely leaves her house, and no one ever visits her. I glance at this old house on my walk home from school. I never really paid much attention to it until today. Today, there were large moving trucks outside, and movers carrying large boxes. I hurry inside and quickly drop my backpack and jacket on the counter. I turn to my mom, who is eating a bag of sour-cream and onion chips. “Mom, did our neighbor move?”

She rolls up the bag of chips and answers, “Oh! I forgot to mention that! Yes, her niece and nephew decided to move her to an assisted living home. How did you know?”

I point out the window. “The new neighbors are moving in today. Her eyebrows shoot up “Really? I had no idea the home had sold.”

“Can I go say hi?” I ask.

She holds up a finger, and then points it to the counter. “Is that where backpacks and jackets go?” I roll my eyes.

“Okay, Mom.” I drag my stuff off the counter. The rest of the day is caught up in homework and dinner, without a visit to the new neighbors. The next day, on my walk home, I catch a glimpse of a girl my age helping carry boxes in. I wave, but she doesn’t see it.

I walk in to see my mom putting together a welcome basket, complete with those little jams with the checkered fabric tops. I swing my backpack up onto the counter. “Are those for the neighbors?”

“Yeah, I was just going to bring it over. Want to come?”

I am about to respond yes when she says “But first…” She aims a pointed look at my backpack, sitting on the counter in all its dirty, germ covered glory.

I swipe it off the counter. “Okay, now I’m ready to go.” My mom chuckles and grabs the basket.

Ding. I step back from the doorbell. Ding. It continues ringing. Di-. The doorbell stops mid-ring. I adjust my posture, thinking somebody will open the door. When nobody answers, I go to ring the doorbell again. My mom stops me. “It’s not polite to ring twice.” I step back. It takes a full minute before we hear anything. Footsteps, coming from what seems like the very back of the house. Someone opens the door. A petite woman, who has brown hair and blue eyes.

“Hello! You must be the new neighbors!” My mother sticks out her arm. The petite woman, who is now smiling, shakes my mom’s hand.

“Yes! My name is Sonia! Oh, and sorry about the doorbell.” She frowns at it. “Looks like that is another thing we’ll have to fix in this house.” Sonia turns her attention back to us. “Would you like to come in? Please ignore the mess. We haven’t finished unpacking yet!” My mom smiles and offers Sonia the basket with the little jams before entering the house. I step in behind her.

Sonia was right. The house was messy. But a lot of that messiness wasn’t from moving in. It was the house itself. The stairs were stained and splintered, the floor was scratched and creaky, and the ceiling was speckled with leaks. “Gary! Clara! Come down here!” Sonia yells up the stairs. I hear the floor creak before I see a tall lanky man and the girl my age that I saw earlier today. “These our are neighbors.” My mom and I wave. Gary, Sonia, and my mom then proceed to small talk in the boring way that all adults seem to not only have mastered, but even enjoy. Clara turns to me.

“Hi. I’m Clara.” Her voice is soft, but not shy.

“I’m Katie. Welcome to the neighborhood!”

“Thanks.”

“So, are you guys going to renovate the house?” I ask in an effort to make conversation. She laughs.

“Oh, no.” She says. “My parents are historians. They move to old houses like this to discover what they can about their history. Then they turn it over to the company they work for. Then they fix up the house without renovating it, then we move again.”

“Do you move a lot?” I ask.

“Yup.”

“What about school?”

She shrugs. “I’m homeschooled.”

Just then, Gary turns to us and says, “Do you two want to check out the attic?” “Sure!” Clara seems excited about this. We head upstairs.

“What’s in the attic?” I inquire. Clara shrugs. “We don’t know. We haven’t gone yet.” “And your parents just let you explore a small, dark area of the house that they haven’t seen yet that might be infested with termites?” I am impressed. Clara just shrugs again. “I’m used to exploring new houses.” She proceeds to open a door to what I thought was a broom closet, but turned out to be a small and steep stairway. We go into the attic.

At the top of the stairs, I stand blinking, my eyes trying to adjust to the dim lighting, while Clara feels the wall for a light switch. Instead of a switch, she comes across a window cord. She pulls it, and the blinds on a small window roll up. This illuminates that the attic is completely void of furniture, but the walls, door, and even ceiling were covered in variously colored sticky notes. Some had symbols, some had bullet points, some had detailed drawings, some had paragraphs. My jaw drops. This explains why my old neighbor never left the house. She was busy doing this, whatever this was.

I begin to walk over the nearest wall when Sonia’s voice from downstairs interrupts me. “Girls! Come down!” I turn around and reach for the doorknob. Clara stops my hand.

“Wait.” She says.

“What? I ask.

“Please don’t say anything to my parents about this. They will just come up here and put all of these-” here she gestures around the room at the sticky notes “- in a box, and send them off to their employer.”

I am confused. “Why is that a bad thing?”

Clara responds, “Because this is clearly a mystery that needs to be solved, and I want to solve it, not the New York Times, or the FBI, or National Geographic.”

“Okay. I won’t say anything.” Now that I am thinking about it, the prospect of solving our very own mystery seems intriguing.

We run downstairs, careful to not grab onto the railing because of the splinters. “Did you discover anything up there?” Sonia asks.

“Meh. Just your typical attic. Full of nothing but dust and cobwebs.” I thought Clara laid it on a bit thick, but the adults believed us.

I agree with her. “Yup. Nothing there.”