The City of the Unexpected

Chapter 4

Rose: 

I am so glad that Faith said yes. Our lives have been difficult enough but I am so glad to have a sister like her with me, one that is willing to protect me no matter what. She is the only reason why I’m still alive. When I was smaller and didn’t know any better, I was late from coming home from school and our parents were extremely drunk and angry with me, they started kicking, punching and breaking empty alcohol bottles on me. If it wasn’t for Faith stepping in and saying that it was her fault because she messed with me saying that the bus only came at 4pm, I would have been dead. She landed up getting a larger beating than me though because she interrupted their punishment for me, but even then, she sat and took care of my injuries instead of her’s.

As she left the room, I instantly went to the cupboard, grabbed our backpacks, money and rope. I packed a few extra things in them like some of the snacks we had hidden and our toothbrushes, hair brushes and toothpaste. I zipped up the bags, put the money in the front pocket in one of them and wrapped the rope up just as Faith came back in.

“Okay, they are sitting by the stairs. Do you want to use the rope or do you want to run past them as fast as possible?” Faith asked.

“We might need the rope while we are gone, but at the same time there is no possible way to get past them while they are awake. If we were to pass them, we would need to sit and wait for them to pass out first and then go past them,” I said, really not knowing what to do.

“Very valid points, so I think we should sit on top of the stairs, and watch them, wait for them to pass out and then run past them and out the house, but that could take hours,” Faith said thinking.

“True, but let's try it, if it takes too long or they start coming up then we use the rope to leave out of our window,” We both nodded at each other and silently left the room.

As we reached the stairs, we saw that our parents' heads were already lolling back and forth, seemingly like they were going to pass out. We both looked at each other with our eyebrows raised as if to say, “Well that was easy,” so we sat and waited for about an hour when both of our parents were finally fast asleep that not even an earthquake could wake them up.

We turned to each other and nodded. It’s go time.We stood up and started to slowly make our way down the steps, making sure to miss the ones that we know creek, just in case they wake up. As we reached where our parents were passed out, we stuck to the wall and moved slower and more quietly, just in case. We finally made it past them and rushed for the door. As Faithe put her hand on the door handle, we heard a booming voice that we hoped we wouldn’t hear at all anymore.