“I hope this house has interesting places to explore Dustin! I’ll be able to become like the explorers that I always watch on TV. That is my dream job. To be able to find things from the past that lead to more explorations.”

Rachel had been chewing Dustin’s ear off for the whole entire car ride. Rachel and her family were moving from Washington D.C. to the small town of Stow, Massachusetts. She was the most excited to finally get out of that old small house and move on to bigger and better adventures. Dustin on the other hand just wanted to be at their new house already.

“Rachel, honey, please give your excitement a break. We will be at the house in a little while. Once we get to the house you can go and have your little explorations while we unpack the car. Does that sound fair?”

“Yes mom, sorry I just can’t wait! It’s going to be so much fun!”

Rachel just sat in the back seat of the car listening to her iPod for the next 30 minutes taking in the scenery of her new living environment. She saw rolling hills and trees everywhere with her deep blue eyes. Autumn was just around the corner and the leaves were already starting to change colors. She was wearing what she would wear on any other day; jeans, a t-shirt, and red converses. She also had on her lucky baseball cap covering her straight brown hair that she always wore when she was in unknown situations.

Just as her favorite song came on her dad stopped the car and said “Everyone out! We’re here!” In front of stood the most beautiful house she had ever seen. She looked at it like it was some type of fairytale castle when really it was just a 4 bedroom and 2 ½ bath house. It had a light blue coloring to it and white shutters. There was also a farmer’s porch on the front and an apple orchard surrounding it.

“Welcome home Rachel and Dustin, welcome home” said her mother and father as they both walked up and put their hands on the children’s. “To check out the house guys and then come back and help us unpack, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay mom”, screamed the kids as they ran for the house.

The children ran into that house like a stampede of wild buffalos. They ran around the first floor of the house and looked at all the different rooms. There was a kitchen, a living room, and dining room, and a bathroom. Then they made their way up the hardwood staircase to the 2nd floor. Running between the 3 other bedrooms other than the master bedroom, they decided which room would be their own.

“I want this one Rachel!”


“No, Dustin! That’s the one I wanted!”

“Guys, stop fighting or you neither of you will get the room”, chimed in their mom as if she was a marriage counselor and Rachel and Dustin were on Dr. Phil.

Rachel decided to let Dustin have the room and she went to go explore the basement of the house. She was surprised when she got down there to see a bunch of furniture. It was an unfinished basement with cement floors and cement walls. The furniture was piled high in the far corner of the room. There were chairs, desks, couches, you name it and it was in that pile.

“I wonder who left all of this stuff here. I didn’t think that these things were going to be here. I believe that I just found my first exploration”, Rachel said to herself as she gazed upon the pile of crap as wide-eyed as a robber in a jewelry store. “I’ll set up my bedroom and then come back and go through all of this.”

She went out to the moving truck and found the box that had her name on it. She asked one of the movers if they would be nice enough to help her bring the box up to her new bedroom. As she led the man to her room, the only thing that was on her mind was that pile of junk in the basement. Rachel thoughts were drawn continually to the things that she might be able to find in that pile. Her thoughts were interrupted when Dustin came running into her room.

“Rachel, would you mind helping me hang my new Patriots poster on my wall?”

“Sure thing Dustin.”

As they hung the poster together Rachel wondered if her brother had seen what she had seen in the basement. She asked him “Hey, have you gone into the basement yet?

“No, I’m scared to go down there. You know that I’m not an explorer like you.”

“I know, but you should definitely see what is down there! It’s amazing.”

“Maybe later on I’ll come down with you but for now I have to finish setting up all of my action figures.”

“Alright Dustin. Yell to me if you need any more help,” said Rachel as she walked down the stairs.

“I don’t understand why no one else in this household thinks to do the things I enjoy doing. I hope that there’s something down there that will keep me entertained,” Rachel said to herself as she opened the basement door. As she walked down the creaking steps once again, her eyes grew wide and she started to dig through the pile of stuff.

The majority of the things were just old furniture. Rachel immediately started coughing when she started to move the pillows from the couch. Piles and piles of dust were hidden in between the pillows and all of it flew up into the air by Rachel’s face. She found an old bookcase that contained 6 shelves of old fashion looking books. Just as she opened the first book her mother yelled down to her.

“Rachel! Time to go to bed honey! You start school tomorrow morning and I want you to be nice and rested.”

“Okay mom, I’ll be right up,” as she carefully put the book back onto the shelf.

As she crawled into her bed that night, she decided that all she had to do was survive school tomorrow and then she could come home, do her homework, and get right back to her new found Heaven.

The next morning the last thing that Rachel wanted to do was go and be the new girl at school. She was never very good at making new friends and she always kept to herself for the most part. She put on her clothes, tied her converses, and walked downstairs and to the car.

Walking into school that day was the worst feeling for Rachel. She was used to being invisible, but now she was the only thing that people saw. A few girls came up to her and introduced themselves, and Rachel just politely said “Hello” and kept moving. The talk of the school Rachel’s first day was about this 8 year old girl going missing. She was a normal kid, went to school, and had many friends. A few weeks before, she had just gone missing. Poooof! She was gone. There were no leads at all to where she might have gone, but all people knew was that her family was dying to get her back. The topic of the little girl’s disappearance interest Rachel and she wondered if she could explore where the girl could have gone.

Rachel ran into her house full speed after that first day. She had a little bit of science and math homework, but she could have it done in 20 minutes. Grabbing a snack, taking the stairs two at a time, and slamming her door shut, Rachel got right to work on her homework. She whizzed right through it and packed up her backpack. Back in the basement, she picked up right where she had left off. She grabbed the books one by one and started to flip through the pages. Most of the books were either old novels or science fiction books. She wondered to herself who had left these books here as she opened the third to last one. Just as she opened it, a small picture flew out from the book. As she flipped through the rest of the pages more and more pictures of the same person came fluttering out and dropped to the floor. She examined them and they looked as if they were taken from someone stalking another person. The person in the pictures was about 7 or 8 years old and it was a female. In every picture she was walking on the streets, entering a house, or just talking to her friends. Rachel wanted to put more thought into it, but her brother came running down the stairs.

“Rachel, Rachel! Will you help me with…what are you holding?”

“Oh these? They’re nothing, just some pictures that came with this book. What do you need help with?”

“I was going to ask you if you could help me with my Social Studies homework. I don’t really understand it.”

“Um, yeah sure. I’ll be up in a second,” Rachel told her brother as she ushered him back up the stairs. She didn’t want him to see the pictures she had just found. She wanted to keep it a secret, but now he knew of the pictures. She wondered how long it would take for her brother to tell their mom what Rachel had found in the basement. She put the pictures back into the same book she had found them in, shut the book, and climbed the stairs with thoughts all throughout her head.

Walking into the kitchen she was bombarded with questions from her mother. “What have you been doing? What is so interesting in the basement? Anything that you would like to share with me? I could help you if you need to figure something out.”

Rachel just shook her head with every question that was thrown at her. She wanted to solve the mystery on her on and didn’t want any other help. She had a feeling that she would be able to figure out who the girl was and why there was a bunch of pictures of her in the basement of her house. Rachel helped Dustin with his homework, ate dinner, and then went to bed thinking about all of the things that had happened in the past day.

The next morning was a Wednesday and Rachel was not looking forward to going to school anymore than she was the day before. The hallways of the school were like a maze to navigate because there were so many students just cluttered throughout the halls. The only thing that was different from the day before was that there were poster taped on all of the walls, doors, lockers, and practically everywhere that your eyes stopped to look.


Rachel’s jaw dropped as she looked closer at one of the flyers. She had seen that face before, but she didn’t know where. It was later on in her History class that she finally remembered where she knew that face from. Her mind brought her back to the day before in the basement. She saw her hands open the book and the picture of the same little girl fly out and go down towards the ground. Next thing she heard was her brother coming down the stairs and the memory was over. She knew what her case was. She knew what the next lead in the kidnapping of the little girl was and she held it.

She never thought that the small little pictures would lead to something this big. She wondered if she should turn the evidence into the police or if she could handle it by herself. The only thing that crossed her mind for the rest of the day was the little girl and how she was going to be the one to save her life.

Right after school ended, Rachel called her mom and said that she was going to go to the library. She said that she had a project that was due and that the book she needed was at the library. She walked all the way there and right when she got there the librarian asked if there was anything she needed help with.

“Actually, there is something that I was trying to figure out. I wanted to know if you have a list of all the people that have owned homes in this town. I wanted to find out the history of my new house so I thought I would start with who the last owner was.”

The librarian answered, “Sure sweetie. If you follow me I was take you back to the computers which hold all of the records for homes in the town. Which street do you live on because the street names will be in alphabetical order.”

“I live on Birch Road. It will be right in the beginning I hope. There it is. Thank you very much.”

“No problem. Just tell me if you would like to print anything off and I would be more then glad to help you.”

Rachel looked through all of the listing for houses on her road until she found 47 Birch Road. The screen read that the house was built in 1959 and had been standing strong ever since. The next thing on the page what was Rachel had come into the library looking for. It was a list of the previous owners of her house. The house was owned by 4 different people throughout the years. It started with John Warren, next was Michelle Frost, the third was Anthony Carpenter, and finally was Richard Levine, her father’s name. The house was put up for sale about 2 weeks before Rachel’s family had moved in. Anthony was the man that had put it up for sale and could possibly be the leading suspect in Rachel’s case.

The next thing that Rachel researched was Anthony Carpenter. There was one man in the town of Stow with that name. He was about 40 years old and had recently moved to the other side of town. Rachel wrote down his name and his address and then moved onto her next topic of research. The next thing she was going to look up was the article of the little girl who had gone missing. As soon as she typed in the key words, article after article came up on the screen. Every single one talked about an 8 year old girl named Jacqui that was taken as she was walking home from school one day. Jacqui was a very bright girl and took karate so she wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. This furthered Rachel’s idea that it was Anthony. If he was about 40 he would most likely be strong and be able to put up with a little girl. She decided that she had enough information for now and went home to start her homework. On her way home, she realized that she was the only one that may know the whereabouts of little Jacqui and she had to help her.

Lying in her bed that night, she decided that this was way too big of a job to do by herself. The next morning she would tell her mom what she discovered and have her mom drive her to the police station to report it.

That Thursday morning came around and Rachel got ready as usually, but then when she went downstairs she confronted her mom. Her mom had heard about the little girl and rushed Rachel to the police station to turn it in. Her mother drove crazier than ever because she was scared that something might have already happened to the little girl. As she slammed the car into park, Rachel ran into the police station. She said that she needed to talk to the head detective ASAP. She mentioned that it was about the girl that had disappeared and that caught the dispatcher’s attention.

The dispatch called the detective down and said that there was a break in the case. She heard a desk draw slam upstairs and heavy footsteps rushing down the flight of stairs. A man in a police officer’s uniform came rushing through the door and the first words he said were “Hello, I’ve never seen you around. I heard that you might have some information for me.”

Rachel told the story the same exact way that she had told her mom. By the time she was finished explaining the detective’s and dispatch’s jaws were on the floor and they quickly knew that they had found their kidnapper. The man had had other cases of suspicious acting, but all of them had fallen through. They gathered all of the officers for a meeting. Rachel and her mother were also allowed to stay because they mentioned that they might need Rachel’s help.

The officer’s devised a plan with the help of the Levines and they said that they would put it into action today. The plan was that they were going to disguise Rachel as a Girl Scout and send her up to the door. She was to ask Anthony if he or anyone else in his household would like to buy some cookies. After he said yes or no the police officers would move into the house and search the house for the little girl. They decided that they would bring all forces and would do it that after. Rachel’s job was to find a Girl Scout uniform and a cookie order form and they were ready to go.

At 4 o’clock, Rachel walked up the pathway to Anthony’s house. She rang the door bell and awaited an answer. She heard some movement from inside the house and then the door opened and the suspect walked out. He asked what she wanted and Rachel replied that she was a Girl Scout from the local troop and was there to see if he would like any cookies. Rachel kept pushing and pushing until finally the captain told all officers to move in on the subject and the house.

As the officers approached the house, the man looked as if he was going to run, but then he ended up cooperating and getting down on the ground. While two officers put handcuffs on him, the others went into the house in search of the little girl. They found her in the basement sitting on a couch with a plate with a moldy sandwich on the ground. Jacqui yelled with joy and ran up to the officers and hugged them. They took her out of the house and reunited her with her family. Anthony was taken to the station and written up for the kidnapping of the 8 year old girl.

The whole town had a sign of relief when they found out that Jacqui was safe at home. After they got over her return they turned to the person that had saved her life. They saw Rachel as a hero. She was the one that had done all the research and all of the hard-work. Without her help, Jacqui probably would have still been in the dirty, dingy basement waiting for someone to come and save her.

Once Jacqui settled back into her normal life she thought that she should pay her savior a visit. She went to Rachel’s house and rang the doorbell. Rachel answered and saw Jacqui and knew that that little girl was there today because of what she had done. Jacqui jumped into Rachel’s arms and said 6 words that changed Rachel’s life forever…”Thank you for saving my life.”