“Why can’t I get a job, too?”
She shook her head. “No. You have to keep your grades up for your scholarship. No way in hell am I letting you screw that up.”
While we were eligible for scholarships due to being wards of the state, I had also landed an academic scholarship toa university in northern California with a decent pre-med program. “I can’t let you do all that, Lilah. I need to help, too.”
She stopped and turned to face me. “Em, you’resmart. You’re probably a fricking literal genius. We both lost the parental lottery, okay? But I am not a genius, and there’s no way in hell I can make it through college right now even if I do manage to land financial aid beyond the state help. Let me do this for you, okay? On the other side of things you can pay me back in other ways, if that makes you feel better. Please?”
I studied her and knew there was no way I’d ever budge her off that decision. Not so much as a centimeter. “Okay,” I quietly said.
She firmly nodded and headed off again, our destination a bus stop two blocks away. I didn’t question her as we got on and rode several miles before getting off again, and then walked several blocks to a house. She checked a piece of paper and I followed her up to the front door, where she knocked.
A middle-aged woman opened the door, cautiously eyeing us. “Can I help you?”
Lilah put on a smile. “Hi! I’m the one who contacted you this morning about the tent. We’re supposed to go on a campout this weekend with our church youth group, and our stupid brother destroyed ours last time he was out and didn’t tell anyone. If we can’t get another one, our parents said we can’t go…”
Twenty minutes later we left with not only a tent, but a large hiking pack, a tarp, two sleeping bags, and a few other camping accessories I suspected would be invaluable.
Lilah let me carry her school backpack but insisted on toting her duffle bag as well as wearing the new camping backpack.
Maybe it should’ve bothered me that she’d put together this plan so quickly, but I was also thankful for her taking care of me. She literally was a sister to me in everything but name and DNA.
“Where are we going now?” I asked as we headed to the bus stop.
“School,” she said. “There’s a soccer game tonight. Lots of people, meaning no one will notice us. The weather will be good. We can sleep out tonight and tomorrow, then we have the weekend.”
I felt terrified. “Won’t they just come get us at school?”
“Why? We’re going to school, so there’s no truancy issue. How many times have we not even crossed paths with either of them for a couple of days with their work shifts. You honestly think they’re going to turn down free money when they don’t even have to feed us?”
“What about the boys?”
“They’re not our problem,” she said. “Besides, he wasn’t talking about them. He was only talking about us.” She glanced at me. “And I suspect the ‘runaway girls’ they’ve hosted in the past weren’t runaways. Funny how none of the boys they’ve taken in run away, isn’t it?”
My stomach churned. “This is bad, isn’t it?”
“Only as bad as we make it. We’ve got this, girlie. Less than a year, and we’ve got it made. They won’t dare take you away from me then.”
There was something comforting in her words, her confidence.
I never felt confident like that. Ever.
“You’re smart too, you know,” I said. “I don’t know why you think you aren’t.”
“I’m not saying I’m an idiot. What I’m saying is I am completely realistic that my future isn’t college. Maybe later, but not right now. I’d rather work and get you into college and then decide what I want to do.”
Our plan worked great for the first several weeks. Her friend Mia even let us use her address as our own and Lilah filed a change of address form.
It worked until school let out for summer break, that was. That next week a weather system settled over our area and dumped 100 years’ worth of rain on top of the region and flooded where we’d been staying.
We’d just showered at the gym and Mia let us out the back door at closing time, so we could chill under the overhang there. She told us there weren’t any video cameras back there and that we would be okay for a day or two.
She couldn’t bring us home with her because her father was a cop and would most likely turn us in for running.
My stomach growled as I got a whiff of something good from the pizza place next door to the gym.
Lilah heard it. “Eat something, Em.”
I shook my head. “I’m okay until morning.” We’d both earned a little cash writing and re-writing papers for classmates during finals, and we’d tightly held on to it, but we were down to maybe twenty dollars between us.
