Expect the Unexpected

The heavy roar of the wind and rain almost drowned out the slap of our water-filled shoes hitting the pavement as my best friends and I ran down Belmont Ave. “El”! My closest friend Bri yells behind me urging me to slow down and wait for her. I could run the fastest out of our crew which meant a lot of having to “hurry up and wait” for everyone else to catch up even though I wasn’t meaning to leave them behind. I rounded the nearest corner into an alley where I knew Bri and my other four friends,who were more like family to me, could see me making my exit off of the main sidewalk. I ducked behind a dumpster once they all came around the corner and they quickly lined up against the brick wall next to me, squatting down and trying to steady their breathing. We all waited and tried to listen for footsteps when finally we could hear two voices cursing under heavy breathing, making commentary about which way they thought we went and trying their best to locate the six of us after we fell out of sight. We all held our breath until we could no longer hear the two voices from the men that were chasing us. “We gotta get out of here. They’re gonna start back-tracking soon once they realize why they can’t find us and figure out we took an alley”. My friend Mason huffed out in between breaths. The twins, Iris and Ivy, agreed and started to stand from the crouching position we were all in. We started heading down the opposite direction of the alley to get to our camp in an abandoned warehouse on the east side of Chicago. We had about a 30 minute walk so I started making a list in my head of all the things I needed to get in order to stay holed up for the next few days to avoid Giovanni Bianco’s henchmen after we finally lost them. Gio is the kingpin of the Bianco Mafia and has been trying to get ahold of me and my crew for about 2 weeks for a debt that he thinks we still owe but that myself, Bri, the twins, Mason and the youngest of our crew, Reid, felt we paid and then some. “El, you good”? Mason asks, bringing me out of my thoughts about which grocery store or market we could hit up easily that wouldn’t be hard to snag a few food items from without the clerks noticing that we were taking it. I know, stealing is wrong, but we’re all foster kids that escaped the clutches of CPS and the shitty foster homes we got tossed into with questionable “guardians” who didn’t guard or protect us at all. “Yeah, just trying to figure out where to go grocery shopping between here and home is all. You ok?” I ask, knowing we would never tell each other the truth about how we all felt with our current life situation and how we wished things were different but we all stopped dreaming of that day coming a long time ago, considering we’d been in the system a majority of our lives. “Just tired of being wet is all. Why couldn’t we have been born around a place with a beach and sunshine”?! He quipped, which all had us laughing and started talking about what we thought the beach would be like. That’s one thing we did dream about because we knew it was real and actually existed, the beach. We all promised each other that the first time we stuck our toes in the sand and felt those salty waves would be together, as a crew, as a family. We just had to wait until all five of us were eighteen years old when Child Protective Services would legally stop caring about trying to track us down and we could get real, adult jobs that didn’t involve us running the streets stealing and reselling items like phones,computers and airpods in order to survive. Myself, Bri, and Mason were all months away from turning eighteen while Reid had another 18 months and the twins had a little over two years. The three of us eldest kids would get jobs and save for an apartment for all of us to stay at so we wouldn’t have to keep sleeping in the back office of the warehouse we were at currently. It kept us dry and warm (mostly) so I can’t complain but I was ready for my first home, even if it was only a rental. My first ever comfy mattress and blankets that weren’t donated and dirty was something that sounded too good to be true so I didn’t get excited about it and won’t until I’m bringing it in the front door to use. “Guys, let's go to Fischer's Market and pick-up a few things to keep us from having to go out again for a few days. Bri, you grab mac and cheese. Reid, you grab beef jerky and some canned fish. Mason, grab bread and some drinks if you can manage since you have the backpack. Ivy and Iris, grab some canned vegetables and fruit. I’ll get the other things we need and DON’T GET CAUGHT. We don’t need the fuzz hauling us back to our foster homes or worse, a group home facility.” Everyone nodded to confirm that they heard their intended task. Once we finished at Fischer’s, we quickly made it back to the warehouse. Mason tossed the backpack on our make-shift table and fell back on one of the two couches in the office, letting out a big sigh. “HEY! Watch it! You’re gonna squish the bread”! Bri snapped as soon as the backpack gave a loud thud. “It still eats the same, doesn’t it”? Mason sighed out “And this is why we can’t have nice things”. Bri responded.