Valerie Stumpf

In the Details

Anthea hated dusting. Truly, of all the mundane domestic tasks she had been charged with since her parents had begun their new business venture of buying and flipping abandoned houses; dusting was the absolute worst. The “deal” had been that if Anthea agreed to help her parents with cleaning up these houses for reselling, she could keep anything “cool” that was found inside them. Anthea had agreed; images of lost diamond rings behind radiators and forgotten stacks of cash beneath floorboards flooding her decision making. Unfortunately the most exciting things that had been unearthed after an entire summers worth of relentless toil on Anthea’s part were some fantastically boring old books, some random rusty pieces of silverware, and what Anthea thought was a Monopoly piece, but her mother had informed her was a thimble…whatever that was. The last several months’ worth of neglect to her social life and hard labor she had put into these musty old houses were, in Anthea’s opinion, a complete waste of time.