Chloe Donica was not what you would call the usual kid. This sixteen-year-old appeared to be like any other sand-blonde haired, blue-gray eyed teen, but that was not the case. She was unique, in a category that no one else fit into. But Chloe was unaware of this; she only felt odd at times and slightly dizzy at others. Nothing really spectacularly strange and unusual happened, until the school trip.

Chloe attended the Madeleine Academy’s School for Boys and was in her third year there. She felt so grown up and secure in her surroundings. Chloe was known in the small school for her passion about odd things in history. She knew that the school had originally been for boys only (hence the name) and that when the principal in 1958 died, he left the school to his daughter which allowed the entry of girls. In her school there were one hundred and forty-three students. In her class there were twenty-seven and they were all shoved together for homeroom and history which were taught by the same teacher. In the middle of October, Chloe came to school feeling slightly nauseated. She guessed it had to do with the class trip to the old Governor’s Mansion. It had been kept the same as it was when Thomas Kearns had lived there in the early 1900s. It still had the stone block out front that had helped ladies out of their carriages so not to dirty their skirts and the stone horse head mounted above the carriage house door with its ears missing because Mr. Kearns’ son had shot them off with his sling-shot. Inside, it had the dumb-waiter and the tiles that had been hand lain. Chloe was so excited to see this big historical site that she could barely sit still through her morning trigonometry class. She had stopped paying attention the minute it had been announced that the trip would take place during the second half of the two hour period.

“Now, if everyone would kindly put on their blazers and line up at the door, we will start down to the mansion,” Chloe’s teacher finally said. The blazers were part of the private school uniform.

“Too cold,” someone complained as they retied their tie. The girls pulled off their sweatshirts and stuck their arms into the half frozen sleeves of the navy jackets. The mansion was downtown along with the school, so they didn’t bother with the buses.

“Oh, I’m not so sure about this,” Alexandria, a blonde girl who was a little jumpy about most things, said when the house was in sight, “I’m really bad with dead things!”

“There isn’t going to be anything dead, except maybe a bug, I promise,” Chloe said trying to reassure her friend.

“Yeah,” piped in Chloe’s friend Deana from behind them, “Because anything that died in there would have rotted by now so we’d smell it before we’d see anything. So, if you smell rotting flesh-“And Chloe cut her off before she cause Alexandria to start twitching.

“Not helping, De.”

They reached the gate of the house and were lead into the house by a stout elderly woman: their tour guide.

“Welcome, to the Governor’s Mansion,” she said and walked them up the outdoor stairs. The woman seemed to be bored with her job, not exactly used to having to explain details to a room of uninterested sixteen year olds. “This very entry way was made completely by hand. The tiles were personally selected and the mortar hand poured.” She walked on. “This is the original design for the kitchen…” But Chloe had stopped listening. The woman’s monotone was difficult to listen to for very long.

“Look at this,” Deana said as the group left the kitchen. She pulled open the door to the dumb waiter. “Weird.” She stuck her head inside the door. “It’s really dusty and creepy in there.” And Chloe had to pull her away from it before they got completely separated from the group. “It would have been a really quick ride!” Deana protested.

“No, Deana, let’s go,” Chloe said pulling on her elbow.

“Killjoy.”

“It’s old and might have broken.”

“I’m not that fat!”

“I never said that you were.” And Deana grumbled until they found the others.

The class had wandered upstairs. There were rooms up there that had been converted into offices and they were off limits to the general public. They went in room after room and where about to head down, when Chloe noticed a silver ring on the floor of the room they had just left. She picked it up and looked at it. Not mine, she thought and pushed her way to the front of the pack. When she caught up with her, the tour guide didn’t recognize the ring that the girl was holding.

“You can keep it,” she said, “I think it belongs to your group.” So Chloe kept it in her blazer pocket and was silent in thought on the walk back even through Deana’s incessant chatter.

When she entered her classroom again, she asked the girls who went on the trip if they had lost a ring. No one had. She was confused. On the bus ride home that afternoon, she was unusually quiet, and people had learned the hard way that when she is silent, leave her alone!

“When does the car come back,” Chloe’s twin Mason asked.

“Two weeks,” their dad said.

“You really didn’t see the tree?” Chloe asked him.

“It came out of nowhere!”

She went up stairs and barricaded herself in her room in order to finish her homework. In the middle of her history notes a glimmer caught her eye. She decided that she had the time to examine the ring again. It looked very old and very beautiful. It was a thin silver band encrusted with what looked like diamonds and amethysts. It sparkled in the lamplight. And on to the War of 1812, she thought. Around eleven- thirty she realized that she had no idea what she had been writing about for the last twelve minutes so she gave up. She changed into her pajamas and went to sleep.