This is a special guest post.  My daughter Annie’s short story 🙂

“Today is the day” said Scarlett.

Emily raised her head up, “What’s today?” she asked through a mouthful of goldfish.

Scarlett gasped, “It’s the Easter egg hunt today, and the golden egg will be mine this year! We are going to crush those puny kids!”

“Aren’t we too old to be doing stuff like that?”

Scarlett grabbed the closest thing to her, which was a pillow, and threw it at Emily. She fell down, picked up the pillow and threw it back. Scarlett pushed the static-y red hair out of her face after the pillow hit it. She got up, grabbed Emily’s hand, and ran down stairs.

“Mom!” she yelled when she entered the kitchen, “when are we going to leave?”
“After lunch.”

Scarlett looked around, there was no food on the table or on the counter, even her little sister Allie, who always was chewing on some toy or something, had nothing. So she took action! She grabbed bread, peanut butter, ham, cheese, and plates. Scarlett made a ham and cheese for Mom and Emily, and peanut butter for her and Allie, but for Allie she cut it into smaller pieces so it was easier for her to eat it.

When they were finished eating mom told them to go up stairs to the play room to find the Easter basket.

“When was the last time you cleaned this room?” Emily looked around to see toys covering the floor, shelves, and one stuffed animal was stuck on the ceiling.
“It’s been a while. Anyways let’s find that basket so we can get out of here.”

Scarlett walked to the closet in the play room very carefully following a path with the least amount of toys. When she reached the closet door, she took a deep breath in and opened the door. She jumped back right before a mass of toys spilled out. Scarlett smiled, Emily rolled her eyes, and grabbed the Easter basket which was on top of the pile of at least 1,000 toys.

“Where is your basket?” asked Emily.

“I don’t need one, I’m only going for one thing.”

“What’s in the egg anyway?”
“You will see when we find it 1st.”

They headed down stairs to get their shoes on. After that they got in the car, but of course someone wasn’t there.  “Mom where’s Allie?”

Mom looked back at the two girls one with red hair and green eyes and the other with black hair and blue eyes, “Did we leave her inside?”

Scarlett rolled her eyes and was about to get out of the car when she heard a noise behind her. She peeked over to what it was. She saw frizzy brown hair and big blue eyes starring back at her. Allie giggled as Scarlett pulled her back to her car seat. Mom started the car and then they headed to their church.

When they got there, there were tables with things like food, face paint, crafts, and more food. And there was the Easter bunny, as soon as Allie saw that she ran for it and mom chased after her. “Ok, so what do you want to do? The egg hunt doesn’t start for another 30 minutes,” said Emily.

Scarlett grabbed Emily’s hand and dragged her to the food table that was filled with colorful desserts. Like a huge cake covered with pretty pastel icing, cookies with colorful eggs on them, and little cupcakes with bunny ears poking out the top. Both girls grabbed one of each and went to sit on the grass.

“Ok,” Said Scarlett, “Where should we look 1st?”

Emily looked around, “I don’t know maybe at the football field?”

“The football field?!” Scarlett gasped, “Do you know who is hiding the egg this year? It’s Zein and Zein hides it good, the football field has zero, zip, zilch hiding spots. He would probably hide it at the playground or by the stairwell. So we are going their 1st.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

“I have no idea.”

Both of them finished their snacks and got up to go find mom and Allie. They found them waiting in line for the face painting. “Scarlett, Scarlett!” Allie said jumping up and down, “I’m going to get my face turned into a bunny!”

“Awesome” Scarlett smiled.

Mom looked at her watch, “5 minutes.”

“Em, let’s go to the starting line,” she grabbed her hand and took her to the front of the church. The bunny, who this year was played by Mr. Al, was standing next to the pastor of our church. All the kids started to make their way to the front where the girls were standing.

“Ok, everyone,” said the pastor, “Is everyone ready to have some fun?!”
Everyone cheered except for Scarlett who said to Emily, “Why are they here to have fun? This is war!”

After the cheering died down the pastor started to count down from 10 and everyone joined in, “9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, …. GO!”

All the kids ran to the nearest colorful egg that caught their eye, but Scarlett dragged Emily to the playground. No one was there, yet. Scarlett went to the metal play house, she looked under the bench, at the roof, and in the window. Meanwhile Emily climbed the latter to the tallest slide to get a good look around.

“What does the egg look like?” Emily yelled from the top.

“It’s gold!”

“That makes sense” she slid down the slide and ran to look at the swings, and Scarlett went to look at the monkey bars. Both of them found nothing there. Next they went to look at the stairwell. They looked through the tall grass that hadn’t been mowed in at least a year. They found nothing there too. Scarlett told Emily to keeping looking there while she went back to where they started to look in the bushes there. She saw a few pastel eggs that the little kids had not added to their collections. When she started to look through the bushes, there was a noise behind her. She looked to see what it was. It was Allie, she was smiling, “I found it!” she yelled, “I’ll show you where it is!”

Scarlett smiled too and followed her sister. Allie led her to the front of the church near where the sanctuary is. Then she saw it, the beautiful golden egg, but it was in someone else’s hand.
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!” Scarlett fell to her knees.

It was Adam who had it, the 7 year old who picked his nose and ate it. The kid who would hit Allie if she did something he didn’t like. He was a demon and did not deserve the golden egg!   Emily came up from behind and pulled Scarlett to her feet, “Sorry Scarlett, what is in the egg anyway?”

As she asked that Adam pulled out a 25 dollar gift card to the candy store down the street from her house.

“You really need more sugar?”

“Yes Emily, yes I do.”