Hope for the Best

CHAPTER 2-2

“Hey, you aren’t going to leave me here?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“I can barely put any weight on my ankle. I need your help,” he pleaded.

Sighing, she returned to his side, offering her hand. “Then let’s go.”

He took her hand and she pulled him to his feet. Though he stood a head taller than her, he was slighter than she first thought, and she awkwardly supported the weight his leg couldn’t as they stumbled through a deluge of water to the front porch of the nearest house. She helped him to a rotting wicker chair and tried the door. Locked, as expected, but she considered that less of a deterrent and more of an annoyance. After locating her lock picking tools in her bag, she knelt and inserted a pin into the keyhole on the doorknob.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked as she worked on the lock.

“I’m going to open this door.”

Thunder rumbled and a stiff wind splattered raindrops against their drying faces.

“You can’t do that.”

A streak of lightning momentarily lit the sky. She tried the knob. Not quite.

“Of course I can. Just give me a few more minutes.”

“No, I mean we can’t just break into someone’s house.”

She stopped working and turned to Nick. Words weren’t enough to express all she understood but he didn’t seem to comprehend. “It’s dangerous out here. We need a safe place to stay until the storm moves through.”

Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned back in the chair. “I know how dangerous it is. I’ve been doing this for three weeks now.”

Lareina laughed. “You’ve been falling into pits for three weeks?”

“No, that’s the first pit I’ve fallen into.” He met her amused smile with a glare. “I mean I’ve been away from home and surviving on my own just fine.”

Ignoring him, she turned back to her task. In another minute, the lock clicked and with a light nudge, the door swung open.

“I’m not going in there.” He folded his arms across his chest.

“Come on, Nick, I can see you shivering.”

“Nothing you say is going to convince me to do something illegal.” The intensity of his scowl let her know just how much he disapproved of her actions. His attitude bounced from one hemisphere of her brain to the other, gaining speed, creating heat, simmering inside her head.

“Illegal.” She spat the word back at him. “Is that going to be your last thought when you get struck by lightning? How old are you, Nick?” She forced a normal breath, kept a calm expression on her face, but felt her feet move closer to the open door.

He leaned forward. “Seventeen.”

“In that case . . .” She pointed to the dark sky beyond the porch. “There’s a storm.” She pointed into the dark interior of the house. “There’s shelter.” The wind gusted noisily, and she yelled to be heard over it. “You’re plenty old enough to make a decision.”

His scowl vanished and he looked out at the black sky as if surveying the clouds for the first time. “Fine,” he surrendered. “Let’s go inside.”

Lareina exhaled, willed her shaking hands to be still and took Nick’s arm. Once inside, she kicked the door shut with her foot, locking the storm outside. They entered a comfortable living room furnished with a blue couch and two matching recliners. It appeared untouched by the elements—no dripping ceiling or flood-saturated carpet. Through a second doorway, the kitchen greeted them, pristine and ready for someone to prepare a meal. No broken windows, no scattered possessions, undefiled by looters. Its proximity to the city should have made it one of the first targets, but perhaps it had been more recently abandoned. She shivered, thinking the family may have spent their final evening in the room where she stood only a few weeks earlier.

A low rumble in her stomach drove her thoughts back to the more immediate requirements of survival. The last meal she had eaten was early that morning and had consisted of half of one of the precious candy bars stashed in her backpack.

“Have you eaten anything today?” She helped Nick over to the kitchen table.

“No, I ran out of food yesterday, and I ran out of money last week.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Lareina laughed, then regretted expressing her opinion out loud. Nick, on first impression, came across as pathetic, naïve, and inept at staying alive, but insulting the stranger trapped under the same roof for the night constituted reckless behavior.

He pushed her arm away and sat down heavily on a chair.

Sighing, she leaned against the table. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day and I’m not so good at this.”

“At what?” Nick rolled his eyes. “Having a conversation? Have you forgotten how to talk to people or do you just think you’re above all their rules?” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand and brought it to rest on the top of his head.

Reading his mood didn’t come easy in the minutes she’d known him, but his posture slackened with his last sentence.

“I don’t dislike people.” She brushed her fingers through the knots at the ends of her hair. “I just don’t trust them. Very few of them have given me any reason to.”

Nick nodded and slouched. The suspicion in his eyes momentarily vanished, and she found her own emotions reflected in his expression: fear, uncertainty, and desperation. For the first time, she recognized their similarities. They both traveled alone, both wore dirty clothes, both hesitated to trust another human being. Each of them wandered through a broken world filled with starvation, riots, disease, and the fear of war around every corner.

“I’m sorry. I was rude before. Thank you for helping me.” He rested his cheek on the table and all of his hair shifted, hiding half of his face.

Lareina knelt next to him and rolled the left leg of his jeans up to his knee. A swollen bulge the size of a large peach replaced his ankle.

“This is going to hurt,” she warned, and pulled his shoe off before he had time to protest.

Nick cried out and clutched the seat of the chair. “What are you doing?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

Shifting the chair next to him so it faced him, she lifted his injured leg onto it. “I’m just trying to help.” She stood and walked over to the cupboards. Inside she found white plates, matching bowls, and glasses—items she expected, but not what she hoped for.

“What are you doing now?”

She crossed the room and opened the doors to a floor-to-ceiling pantry. “I’m looking for supper, and I think I found it.” Reaching into the back corner of the darkness, she pulled out a can of chicken noodle soup, a nearly empty bag of raisins, and a bottle of salad dressing. Pushing the bottle back onto the shelf, she announced, “Soup and raisins it is.”

“Mmm, something warm sounds great.” All accusation faded from his voice.

“It does,” she agreed. “Too bad no one has been paying the electric bill.”

Nick didn’t say another word as she divided the soup and raisins into separate bowls and carried them to the table. Lifting a spoonful of soup to her lips, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine warm steam tickling her face and soothing her dry throat.

He gagged after his first bite. “How old is this?”

Fantasy shattered, she opened her eyes and lowered the spoon. “What?”

“The soup. Did you look at the date on the can? It tastes like it’s been in that cupboard for half a century.” Dropping his spoon in the bowl, he slid it away.

“I don’t look at the dates. Expired food is the least of our problems.” She shrugged and swallowed another mouthful.

Eventually, he decided he was hungry enough to eat the slightly metallic tasting soup and managed to swallow it by pinching his nose. Even with that strategy, he grimaced and complained about the probability of food poisoning.

Lareina ignored him, letting her eyes drift across countertops and through a doorway leading into a dark room. The house looked huge from the outside, and she imagined four large bedrooms, all decorated with curtains and matching bedspreads, all with their own bathrooms that contained long, deep bathtubs. Bedrooms meant clothes. According to the stories, every house contained excess clothing. With her hunger satisfied, the discomfort of her sopping clothes clinging to her skin demanded her full attention.

“Where are you going?” he asked when she was halfway to the door.

“Upstairs to find some dry clothes.”

“Rochelle, this isn’t our house. All of this stuff belongs to someone else.”

The new name felt more authentic with every passing minute. She could feel herself slipping into a new life, shedding her old problems, and running toward something bright. There would be no going back, only forward. She continued toward the door. “No one’s coming back here, Nick. They’re all gone.”

Gone. All gone. Those words echoed through her head and followed her up the wide stairway. The saddest notions are those that are true. She had read that phrase in a book, but she couldn’t remember which one.

Silently, she padded across the soft carpet and into the first room at the top of the stairs. Never in her life had she encountered so much pink. The walls were painted pale pink, the bedspread matched, and even the carpet, although a darker shade, shared the color scheme. Three dolls sat on the bed and a pile of teddy bears guarded the corner.

Gliding over to the bed, she picked up a doll wearing a green dress. She had never owned a doll, or much more than the clothes on her back for that matter. The air grew thicker, heavier, almost painful to force into her lungs as she thought of the little girl who once slept in that room.

“Please let her be safe out there,” she whispered. After carefully replacing the doll exactly where she had found it, she wandered across the hall.

In the next room clothes covered the floor; sheets, pillows, and blankets spilled off the bed to add to the chaos. Two posters—one depicting a man holding a basketball and the other a guy balancing a soccer ball on his knee—covered one wall.

She pulled a t-shirt out of the closet and held it up. Perhaps a little big for Nick, she thought, but at least it’s dry. After a quick search of the room she also found a pair of sweatpants, a pair of jeans, and a clean pair of socks.

Leaving her new finds for Nick in a pile at the top of the staircase, she crossed the hall, passed a bathroom, and entered the last room. It was simple enough with white walls, beige carpet, and a green comforter on the neatly made bed. Two dressers lined one wall, but she headed to the closet. One side contained button-up shirts, black slacks, and an assortment of ties in different patterns. The other side housed skirts, slacks, blouses, and dresses hanging according to color. Selecting a pale blue dress, she held it up in front of her. She didn’t allow herself to look in the mirror because she would want to keep the dress, but it wouldn’t help her to survive. Instead, she returned it to the closet and chose a belt from a hook then reluctantly closed the door and crossed the room.

Each drawer of the dresser revealed new surprises. Jeans, t-shirts, shorts, sweaters—all stuffed the drawers so full she had to yank them open. Leaving her old clothes in a pile on the carpet, she dressed in the clean, dry t-shirt and jeans she chose from the assortment. Sitting down in front of the dressing table mirror, she picked up a brush and ran it through her tangled hair. The reflection looking back at her was exactly who she expected to see—the same long black hair, the same thin face, and the same wide brown eyes.

But I’m not Lareina anymore.

“Hello. My name is Rochelle Aumont,” she whispered. A smile formed on her lips. She liked the way the name sounded and the freedom that accompanied her new identity. The name conjured memories of warmth, the promise of family, and a forced goodbye from the only place she’d ever wanted to stay.

Would they welcome her back if they found out she became a thief and fugitive? Would they remember her eight years later? Would they even be there anymore? She closed her eyes and saw the blue-and-white stripes on the awning above the candy store, felt warm sunlight filtering through green trees in the park, smelled cookies baking at Rochelle’s house. She opened her eyes and felt a slight disappointment at finding herself back in a dark bedroom with only her reflection for company.

“I’ll go back there,” she whispered to the mirror. Rochelle would remember her—she had promised. Even if Galloway followed her outside of San Antonio, he would stop before she got to Nebraska. “I’ll be safe and warm. I’ll have a family.” A family—the one thing she couldn’t steal from the market, the one thing she wanted more than anything else. “Everything I want is out there, and it’s time for me to start running toward it.” Her mirror image smiled and nodded in agreement.