Chapter Two : Joshua

Joshua and his sister start, or continue, their story.

“Annabelle?” I whispered, trying to keep my voice down while slinking through the shadows of the tall administration building. I looked up at the five fire escapes above me, trying to catch any movement. There’s no way she could’ve gotten up there anyway. “Annabelle!” I whispered again, this time with a little bit of a hateful tone. I stared down the rest of the alleyway, hesitant to go any further. You’d think at this point I’d be used to sneaking around shadowed alleys and sidewalks but, you never know what’s in those shadows with you.

                I continued down the narrow way and flinched when an air conditioning unit came on in one of the windows above. I shook my head, feeling dumb for flinching at something so minor. I was about to take my next step into darkness when a loud screeching noise echoed through the alley and filled my head. I crouched down in an instant and covered my ears, not wanting to know what the noise was coming from. I quickly fled behind a dumpster as the noise came to a halt.

                “Whoops.” A small voice said from the other end of the alley. Unfortunately, I’d know that voice anywhere. I stood up and looked over the dumpster at the small, stick of a shadow figure a couple feet in front of me.

                “Annabelle,” I hissed, knowing she could’ve gotten us in big trouble with that dumpster rolling, “What are you doing?”

                “Calm down big bro, I was just trying to get out of my hiding place. Apparently getting behind the dumpster is a lot easier than getting out.” Annabelle walked closer, finally becoming visible. Her blonde hair was matted in the back from hiding in that tiny space. I lifted up the knot, trying to inspect it in the dark. “Ow!” Annabelle screeched, grabbing my hand and shoving it away from her head.

                “This is why I told you to dye your hair black when I did. You wouldn’t be able to see those knots,” I whispered, still in a hushed tone even though she has been everything but hushed.

                “Look, just because you want to look like a Goth punk, doesn’t mean I need to follow in your footsteps Josh.” She flicked her hair, only the right side actually moving.

                I huffed, starting to lose my patience. “I’ve told you its Joshua! Not Josh, not J; Joshua. And what were you hiding from anyway? I woke up and you weren’t there. You had me worried sick!” I clenched my fists, trying not to get to angry. Annabelle reached into her bag and pulled out two family sized Dorito bags. She threw one of them to me but, it just hit the ground in front of me after I made no effort to catch it. “Where’d you get this?” I grumbled, already knowing the answer.

                “I got it from the Walmart down the street. I can usually get in and out pretty quick but, I also got these.” She pulled out a simple pair of purple sunglasses from her bag. They couldn’t have been more than 10 dollars. She slipped them on over her eyes and nodded, smirking a little. “Apparently these things had some sort of sensor on the nose piece, which is really dumb considering it’s just a cheap piece of plastic. This big tub of a cop chased me down the street but, I got behind that dumpster over there and he kept running.” She snickered which eventually turned into a laugh. “You should’ve seen him running! It was more of a hobble.” She laughed harder, putting her hand on her knee and doubling over.

                I rolled my eyes, gritting my teeth as she laughed. “We’ve talked about this. Do you want to get caught? Stealing is not the answer!” I grabbed the bag of Doritos in her hand and threw them to the other side of the alleyway. “Do you know what will happen if we’re caught Annabelle?”

                She glared at me, her brown eyes slicing into me. “Stop with the Annabelle stuff. I told you, my names Anna. And yeah, I do know what will happen. We’ll get sent to an orphanage but, Josh, would that really be that bad? I mean, we’d have homes! We could go to school, we could have a nice dinner every night, and we could have friends!”

                “But we won’t have each other!” I exclaimed. That’s the first time I raised my voice. “They will separate us Annabelle!  We could be sent to different countries, never to see each other again. I’d be a senior and you’d be a sophomore. Is that what you want? To get separated and never see each other again?”

                She looked down, her hair covering the top of her face. “Well, no.”                   

                “I promised Mom and Dad that I’d take care of you. And I can’t do that if they separate us. Besides, we’re the only connection we have to them anymore. If we don’t have each other, we might as well have never had parents. “

                Annabelle stayed staring at the ground. “I..I know that but,-“ Her sentence was stopped by fast approaching footsteps from the dark side of the alley way.

                A loud booming voice, full of authority, shouted, “That’s her!” Suddenly, the single pair of footsteps turned into a herd. We watched as four large shadows approached us quickly.

                I looked over at my sister, her eyes full of terror. She silently nodded and we both bolted, running through the alley way and over trash. Same old day for us.