How does my first chapter sound?

Question:

How does my first chapter sound?

Chapter 1
Terri had no business being in Egypt in the first place. It was all her parents?? idea. Terri and her sister, Courtney, were going to spend two years in Egypt with their parents who were archeologists. Two months ago the girls got a letter from them that said the girls were now old enough to visit Egypt "if"they wanted to. In other words, they had no choice. They would be going to Egypt for two whole years whether they liked it or not.
They didn??t really know their parents. They were off excavating sites for most of the year and they only came home for Christmas and New Years. To Terri this offer seemed like a slap in the face. Her parents were off in Egypt fulfilling their dreams together and they couldn??t spare three months out of the year for her and her sister. What made it worse was when she did get a chance to talk to her parents they were

Additional Details

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always talking about all the things that happened at the excavation sites. Terri didn??t care about none of that. And all Terri wanted to talk about school and friends. Her parents didn??t care much for any of that as long as she was getting good grades.
So this whole trip was going to be long and boring. So she thought.
Terri and Courtney??s parents met them at the air port and took them to the hotel rooms they would be staying in. Terri??s mom nearly cried when she saw them. She said, ??Oh you girls are getting so tall.??

"Oh really, that??s why I seem to be about a foot shorter than everyone my age."

We missed you so much??

"If you really miss us that much, you??d be living in with us, not Egypt."

??How was your trip???

"Long. Boring"

??Fine.?? She answered. Terri??s mom continued
??And how are your grades???

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"I??ve had an A B average since kindergarten, what do you think?"

Terri and Courtney both answered ??Fine.??
Their mom finished ??You girls are gonna love it here. It??s so beautiful.??

"Yeah right. . . .How can it be beautiful? There??s thousands of miles of sand and there??s only one river and I??m sure it never rains here."

That was the end of that conversation. After that their parents took them to the hotel where they??d be staying for the next two years. Terri and Courtney were sharing a room next to their parents?? room. When Terri first saw it she thought:

Oh . . . . no. This room is pear green with pear green bed spreads and pear green lamps. The curtains are off white and there was only one table and chair in it. I??m gonna have to live in a pear green room for two years! When I go back home I??m gonna hate green . . . .especially

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pear green."

Their dad said ??You girls are probably gonna wanna unpack and get showers. You can watch T.V. but we only get one English channel and we have internet.??
Terri was still in a morbid mood and thought:

"Oh let me guess you don??t have computers ."

But to her surprise he said ??We have two laptop computers in our room which you girls can use anytime.??
Terri wanted to see this. She followed her dad into his room where he pulled out a brand new top of the line computer from a nice looking computer bag. Her dad continued ??You can use it anytime you want . . . .unless, we need it but you can??t do music or games on it because the processor is too slow.??

"I knew it. . . There had to be a but in there somewhere."

??Anyway,?? he continued, ??you girls need to get some sleep. We??re gonna wake up bright and early tomorrow morning

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and take you girls to see the site.??

"Great . . . . I??m so excited."

Terri??s mom had overheard her dad on her way in and protested ??Oh we don??t need to take them to see everyone already. They just got here and I??m sure their tired. How about we just take them to the museum tomorrow???

"Points for Mom."

Her dad agreed and there was nothing more said about the issue. Terri and Courtney took their showers and went to bed without unpacking anything except their soap, shampoo, tooth brush, and toothpaste.
The next morning the girls?? parents woke them up early. . . .Really early. Like before sunrise early. They got dressed and brushed their hair and all that good stuff and were shuffled to a nearby museum. Both girls thought this was a lame idea. I mean who wants to go to a museum right after the sun comes up? It??s hard enough to stay awake when

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you go to a museum at all and they were making them go first thing in the morning. But almost anything was better than going to meet a bunch of Egypt freaks.
When they arrived at the museum the lady at the front desk nearly shouted with delight ?? I didn??t expect to see you two here today! And who are these two beautiful young ladies???

"Oh Please! We??re not that pretty. "

Their mom started to explain ?? Hi Sherrie , these are our girls. There visiting for two years.??

"That??s right Mom tell it to the whole world."

Oh that??s great!?? said the front desk lady, ??Let??s give them a grand tour!??

"No . . . .No no no. That??s all right. . . . Too late. . . ..Ugghh!"

So, the girls got to see the whole boring shebang. This was pure torture for Courtney because she fell asleep in just about every history class she ever took. Terri, on the other

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hand, was very smart and although she was board out of her mind, she enjoyed looking at the dead mummified pharaohs. Some of the mummies had pictures of digital reconstructions of 3-D images of their faces . . . . For those of you who don??t watch the History Channel very often that means they drew their faces using their skulls and special 3-D computers.
This is the part where fate comes into play. On the about the fifth mummy something weird happened. While Terri was examining the condition of the mummy she saw it??s hand twitch.
??Oh my gosh! Court! Did you just see that?!?? She said excitedly.
Courtney looked up quickly as if to say:

"Hmm . . . .No I was dozing off somewhere. What happened?"

Terri shout-whispered ??His hand . . . . It moved.??
Courtney was sure she had heard Terri wrong and said, ??What???
Terri shout-whispered again

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again ??He moved. Look.??
Courtney looked and waited but nothing happened. ??Umm,?? she said, ??I think you woke up just a little too early.??
Terri protested ?? No seriously. He moved. I saw him.??
Courtney raised her eyebrows to add emphasis as she said ??Umm Yeah . . . .Sure.??
The girls?? mom walked up behind them in that creepy parent way that makes you jump.
??Hey girls what??s going on??? she said.
Courtney said right of the bat, ??Terri??s hallucinating. She swears that she saw the dead guy in the coffin thingy move.??
Their mom was caught off guard. ??Umm.?? Was all she could get out.
Their dad answered for her ??Maybe the heat??s getting to you. It??s a lot hotter here than back home. Here, let??s get you some water.??
Terri was frustrated. They didn??t believe her and this mummy person was either alive or cursed. The last one was more likely.

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And everyone else was looking at her as if she were nuts. There was no way she could prove that the mummy had actually moved . . . unless it decided to move again. But even if it did twitch again no one would see it because they were all looking at her and not the mummy. The mummy would have to move a lot for anyone to notice. Terri didn??t know what to say to convince them so she just said ??yeah.??
Terri??s dad took her to a soda machine and bought her a water.
??Here,?? he said.
Terri disappointingly replied ??Thanks.??
Then he said, ??Come on. Let??s go get your mom and Courtney and go back to the hotel rooms. We??ve got plenty of time for you girls to see the whole museum.??

"Really . . . .You mean we can leave?. . . . Yay! Way more points for Dad!"

So they went home and I??ll spare you all the boring details about the rest of the day because

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nothing really happened after that. The girls ate, talked, unpacked, showered, and went to bed.
The next morning, however; was an entirely different matter. The girls?? parents went off to the site, it being Monday and all, while they left the girls in the hotel room so they could do their school work. Oh, by the way, I think I forgot to mention that the girls were being home schooled while they visited their parents. So the girls were doing their school work when Terri suddenly decided to grab her video camera and walk down the block to the museum. She knew that mummy moved and she was going to prove it by catching it move on camera. On her way out the door she explained to Courtney, ??I??m going to get something to eat for lunch.??
Terri had a problem with lying. She had a hard time with her conscience so she told herself:

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"I??m not lying. I??m gonna stop and get something to eat on the way back from the museum."

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Courtney was trying her best to ignore Terri and replied with only a ??Hmm??.
So Terri left and made her way down the block. As she was walking and looking at all the buildings and people Terri thought, ??This place doesn??t look much different than the U.S . Hmm, must be a tourist hot spot or something. But ewe, look at all the weird food. I probably wouldn??t even be able say most of these foods.??
Within minutes Terri had made it to the museum and was walking through the doors. The rush of cool are from the air conditioner made her realize how much hotter it is in Egypt. Sherrie immediately recognized her.
??Hi honey.?? She said, ??are you wanting to finish the tour???

"No way! You must be kidding."

Terri replied ??No. I was just wanting to browse around while I was taking my lunch break.??
Sherrie answered back,

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"Ooh no. I??d rather ask the janitor than ask you anything."

Terri reassured ??thanks??

"Not"

Then she continued on to the area where the mysterious mummy incident occurred. When she got to the room she looked around. It was difficult to distinguish one exhibit from the next so she wasn??t completely sure this was the right one. She thought back to yesterday to see if anything stood out. Umm . . . . There was little paper dealy that had something about a hundred wives or something . . . . Umm. . . . Where was it? Oh here it is.

"Ewe this guy had more than a hundred wives . I wonder how many kids he had."

She opened her camera screen, turned it on and started recording.
??O.K.,?? she said to the mummy , ?? alright I??m ready . . . . Move.??
She waited a while. And a little while longer. And a little while longer.

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Then at about the time she was fixing to give up her camera screen messed up. It was showing that white-ish fuzzy blackish screen. Terri started hitting buttons on her camera trying to fix it.

"O.K this button doesn??t work. And neither does this one. Or this one. Oh hey! That??s what that button does. I always wondered what that button was for. Cool!"

Suddenly, something very big caught Terri??s eyes from behind her camera. What ever it was, was big. She looked up over her camera screen and the mummy was standing right in front of her. Somehow it had gotten out of the glass case and there it was coming closer and closer to her. Terri??s mind went blank. This whole thing was way beyond mind boggling. What was she gonna do? The thing stepped toward her and she stepped back. The mummy took another step forward and she took another step back.

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She was backed up against a decorative pillar. The mummy stood right in front of her now. Poor Terri screamed bloody murder.
Then it occurred to her. This mummy is over three thousand years old. It can??t run, it??s already missing a whole lot of bones, and if I were to hit it the bones would definitely brake. The mummy grabbed her hand and tugged on her arm. Terri screamed again and closed her eyes. The mummy may have been helpless but it was still the scariest thing she had ever seen. She felt it pull her arm even harder and then she heard this weird swooshing noise. She opened her eyes to see what happened.
The mummy was gone and so was the museum but something was still pulling on her arm so she looked down at it. There was a real human hand on it instead of an ugly mummy??s hand and attached to the hand there was an arm and a

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arm and attached to the arm there was a guy. Terri jerked her arm back instinctively and was about to slap him for scaring her so much when she realized that he was dressed different and his hair was weird, too. He looked like someone out of some ancient Egyptian movie. Terri looked around trying to figure out what was going on.
She was in a smallish room with one table and chair, a couch thingy, several torches hanging on the walls, and a lot of hieroglyphics on the wall. O.K. something was terribly wrong. She started glancing around trying to make sure this wasn??t a dream.
The guy started to talk but Terri couldn??t understand him. The longer this went on the more bizarre it got the more Terri freaked out. She stared at the guy and the guy stared at her. Apparently, what ever happened was freaky for him, too. The longer she stared at him the more familiar his

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seemed. Where did she see his face before? And then it dawned on her.
??You??re the. . . . The . . . . Guy. The guy from the . . . . Thing! The picture thing! The Uhh . . . . That dead guy!??
A moment of realization washed over her.
??You??re "not" dead and I??m "here".??
Somehow she was in Ancient Egypt and the guy standing no more than a yard from her was the mummy. Only he wasn??t a mummy, he was alive . . . . And young . . . . About her age. . . . no a little older . . . .hmmm and good looking too . . . . but he??s rich . . . and he??s probably a snob.
When the outburst of shock fear ended she pulled herself together. If the little portal thingy could take her their, it could take her back. That makes sense, right? The only problem is, is that neither of them could talk to the other. He spoke Egyptian and she didn??t. So Terri tried to come up with

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a way to talk but the only thing she could think of were scenes from Tarzan where Tarzan and Jane meet for the first time.
Well, it worked for Tarzan .I could at least try it.
She directed her arms toward herself like she saw in the movie and said
??T. . .EERR. . . . EEEE??
Then she pointed her hands toward the not dead mummy guy. He didn??t say anything. So Terri repeated
??T . . . . ERR. . . . EEE??
Then she motioned for him to say his name too. This time he caught on. He enunciated carefully
??A . . MEN. . . . HO. . . . TEP.??

"Hmm. He was very precise with his accents . . . .he must be a perfectionist . . .or maybe I??m just stupid."

He repeated it so Terri could sound it out with him and Terri did the same for him. After it was established that they knew and could speak each other??s names, Terri tried to focus on more important matters . . . . Like

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getting back to the museum.
How would she get him to understand that she wanted to go back? She patted her hand on the wall where the hole thingy that she was pulled through was. Amenhotep understood what she was trying to say and rushed to the table and grabbed a paper and handed it to her.

" Umm. No. I can??t read this."

She handed it back to him. He paused for a moment trying to think of a way to explain what happened to her without words. He began to read the paper out loud and when he finished a clear-ish watery glassy looking round thing appeared on the wall. Terri walked up to it to look at it. Amenhotep stepped forward, too. She could tell he was worried about her running away through it but Terri didn??t want to leave, not just yet anyway. She wanted to figure out what happened. She cautiously reached her hand into the

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the thing and moved it around. It felt cool like water except it was dry. She pulled her hand out of it to examine it and as soon as her hand left the goopy hole thing it made this weird swooshing sound and closed up abruptly.
Terri jumped back from it and when it was gone she looked at Amenhotep with her eyes wide open with a surprised expression on her face. He gave her a blank look.

"He obviously doesn??t express himself very much. . . .At least not with his face."

She wanted to see the hole again so she softly patted her hand against the wall again. Amenhotep understood and began reading aloud again. Then Terri got an idea. She dashed to the desk and began rummaging through the papers, scattering them around the room in the process, until she found a blank sheet. Then she fumbled around in her purse for her little pen.

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This of course took a few minutes. After digging through practically everything in the purse she finally found it.

"Aha. Now I??ve got you. Thought you could hide at the bottom huh?"

She quickly slid the paper near her so she could write on it, positioned her hand to write and waited for the guy to begin. She looked at him eagerly as if to say:

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"I??m ready now." Start talking. Amenhotep gave her a funny look as if to say: "You??re weird." and began reading aloud again and Terri started scribbling as fast as she could. She was having a hard time trying to sound out the words and write them at the same time and to top it all off the guy was talking too fast.

"Umm . . .Wait. . . .Stop. . . . Slow down. How do I get him to stop?"

Terri started to repeat what he said slowly as she was jotting everything she could down. Amenhotep stopped and corrected her. Terri looked up at him and tried to repeat the word like he said it, but he corrected her again slowly pronouncing the word. Terri repeated it again adding a few consonants and dropping a few vowels. This time he made a face of approval and Terri wrote it down as quickly as possible. Then she read her paper from the beginning so that Amenhotep could help he

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her with the other words she had already written down. This took about thirty minutes.
Amenhotep was very intrigued by with the way Terri was writing. She could write much faster and if she needed to change a word she could just change part of it instead of having to change the whole thing. And he thought that the pen was awesome. She could hold it firmly and press as hard as she wanted to and it never needed to be dipped in ink. Some how, it seemed to write without ink.
When Terri finished she slammed the pen down out of habit, proudly grabbed her paper, and walked toward the wall. Amenhotep seized the opportunity and grabbed the pen.
Terri began to say what she had written down . . . . Slowly. . . . Very slowly. The words were odd and foreign to her tongue. When she finally made it to the bottom of the page, the portal thingy opened up.

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She looked at the guy for approval but he looked at her like: "Yeah you did it, but your accent was terrible." Terri rolled her eyes; she hated perfectionists even though she proudly proclaimed herself one all the time. She was going to be proud of herself anyway and no "not" dead mummy person was going to take that satisfaction from her.
Terri now had a way to leave and come back now that she could open up the portal and she really needed to go. Courtney was probably worried sick about her. She had been there almost an hour now. She grabbed her purse and hurried toward the portal and when she was just about to run through it she stopped herself abruptly . She turned around and smiled as if to say: "Oops, I??m sorry. I forgot I was 'kidnapped' Can I leave now?"

The "not" dead mummy guy said something. Terri didn??t know what in the heck it

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meant but she knew it didn??t mean no. She squealed with delight. She ran to Amenhotep and gave him a hug and she happily scurried through the portal. Her hug and fast exit had obviously caught him off guard but it was Terri??s nature to be like that.
As she walked through the portal it swooshed again and Terri found herself being thrust into the museum. She caught her balance and then she hurried out of there as fast as she could repeating to herself over and over
??I??m not dreaming. I??m not dreaming. I??m so not dreaming.??

"No. . . . But I wish I was dreaming."

Terri was so intent on her thoughts and getting back to the hotel that she didn??t even hear Sherrie say goodbye to her on her way out of the museum.
When she finally got to the hotel room Courtney chewed her out for making her worry.
??Where were you??? she asked.

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"Ancient Egypt"

Terri replied ??I went and got lunch.??
Courtney wasn??t satisfied with that. ??Well what took you so long???

"I was kidnapped by a mummy at the museum and get this he didn??t speak English! Go figure."

Terri answered ??I dined in.??
Courtney still wasn??t satisfied ??How come you turned your cell phone off? I tried to call you like ten times.??

"I 'didn??t' turn my cell phone off. Cell phones apparently don??t work in Ancient Egypt."

Terri retorted ??I don??t know.??
Courtney was still mad. ??Well next time call me so I don??t worry so much.??
??O.K?? said Terri.
Terri sat down at her school books and realized that she had left her pen.
??Awe man,?? she said, ??I left my pen at.??
She was about to say at the museum but she caught herself and finished ??at the caf㩮 Can I borrow one of yours???
Courtney threw her one of hers.

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. Terri was fixing to start on her school work when Courtney interrupted her.
??So what??d ya eat for lunch???

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I know it's a bit confusing. When I copied and pasted the italics didn't copy so everything separated by paragaraphs and has quotes around it is supposed to be italcized. I realize the grammar way off but I planned it that way and the grammar is even more sloppy in the quotes because I wanted it to sound like people were actually talking. I'm only leaving this on for four hours which is long enough to give a best answer and it's only my first draft so it's probably going to be drastically changed so I'm not that worried about plagerism. I've done months of research so I'm very informed about the time period. And yeah the chapter is very long and yeah it is alot at once but mellowing it out makes it even longer.

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I'm also waiting for someone to say it sucks cause then I'll work on it harder.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: 4 days ago
always talking about all the things that happened at the excavation sites. Terri didn??t care about none of that. And all Terri wanted to talk about school and friends. Her parents didn??t care much for any of that as long as she was getting good grades.
So this whole trip was going to be long and boring. So she thought.
Terri and Courtney??s parents met them at the air port and took them to the hotel rooms they would be staying in. Terri??s mom nearly cried when she saw them. She said, ??Oh you girls are getting so tall.??

"Oh really, that??s why I seem to be about a foot shorter than everyone my age."

We missed you so much??

"If you really miss us that much, you??d be living in with us, not Egypt."

??How was your trip???

"Long. Boring"

??Fine.?? She answered. Terri??s mom continued
??And how are your grades???