By Diya
Chapter 1
Anything was better than being locked up. Even living in an attic, surviving off of food from a soup kitchen, spending the majority of your time either doing odd jobs around said soup kitchen as your only source of money, or searching unsuccessfully for a real job. I’ve lived like this for nearly a year. Let me revise that. We’ve lived like this for nearly a year. I couldn’t forget Elaine, the bouncy six year old tugging at my sleeve.
“What is it, Lainey?” I asked, exasperated.
“I want to see Rosalina!” she informed me, her voice actually sounding whiny, “I don’t like shopping!”
“Nor do I, but we need to get you out of those rags.” I gestured to the gown we had been forced to wear by our kidnappers. She hadn’t been shopping since we escaped, and it was the only clothing she had.
Elaine sighed. “I know. But I still don’t have to like it.”
I laughed to myself “I know you don’t have to like it. I’m asking you to try and put up with it, or you’ll be stuck in that gown forever” after a second I added “And we’ll go see Rosalina right after this.”
Elaine was about to say something, but her mouth snapped shut. I couldn’t tell if it was the mention of Rosalina or the gown that finally shut her up. We continued through the department store in silence.
The moment the kids’ clothes section was in sight, Elaine ran and dived right into the aisle with the sickeningly pink dresses. Sure, of course she didn’t like shopping. I jogged to catch up to her. When I found her, she was inspecting a hideous pink, satin, floral dress, frills and everything. The moment I caught her eye, I scowled at her. She came running over with the dress. “But I like it” she told me, correctly interpreting look.
“You need something more…comfortable. Something you can run around in. Something that blends in” I waved towards my clothes, a light green fitted t-shirt and a pair of navy blue sweatpants. Closer inspection of the dress also revealed the price tag. Enough said. “And Lainey, even if I did manage to get a job I would never be able to afford this.
Sulking, Elaine returned the dress to the rack, and came back with a pair of purple skinny jeans, a hot pink t-shirt saying “Princess Gone Bad” with a picture of a skull, a plain light pink hoodie and a pair of short white denim shorts. I was amazed at her mad shopping skills. Too bad she didn’t like it. In a couple of years I could send her for all of our food.
Eying her load of clothes, I told her “It’s a start…” I pulled the jeans from her grasp. “…except for these. How do you expect to be able to run in these…these things? They might very well cut off the circulation in your legs…” I stopped at the look on Elaine’s face. In a slightly more gentle tone, I continued “If you get them in a bigger size, then maybe…”
Her eyes brightened. “Sure, Mary. I’ll be right back…” she rushed, then raced over to the rack where she had found the jeans and grabbed a new pair and was back by the time my brain had registered that she had called me Mary again. I hate being called Mary. Smiling, I decided not to correct her. I had already scolded her enough today. My hand firm on her wrist, we walked to the cash register.
I smiled. “Yes, Lainey, we’re going right to Rosalina…and you can show her your new clothes.”
Her face broke out in a grin. “I’ll tell her I picked them all by myself” she looked at me “which I did…with some criticism from you.”
“Yes…yes you did” I told her, my mind elsewhere. Rosalina was a soup kitchen cook, and the only one who knew our story. She had been feeding us and housing us in a room in the back of the kitchen. I felt bad, so I had been looking for a job from the time we escaped. If I found one, that would take care of the food problem, but the housing problem? It would be months, years actually before I would be able to afford an apartment. I was snapped back to reality when I realized Lainey was still talking.
“Yes, I will go job hunting tomorrow, too” I answered quickly.
“Yay!”
I smiled. Elaine loved Rosalina, or as we both called her, Rosa. And a day that I spent job hunting was a day Lainey had Rosa to herself. Well, to herself and everyone else in the soup kitchen. Speaking of the soup kitchen…
I opened the door for Elaine who ran, right into Rosalina’s arms. I smiled at the older lady apologetically. “Elaine is excited. She just…”
I was interrupted by an overenthusiastic six-year-old. “No…no Marissa I want to tell her!” she whined.
Rosalina looked back at Lainey, smiling. “What is it, El, sweetie?” Poor Elaine. So many names. There was “Elaine,” of course, there was “El,” “Lainey…” I sighed. And there was what my mom and dad used to call her: “Ellie-girl.”
“I went shopping. Like a big girl. I picked out my own clothes.” Rosalina’s mouth dropped open in a well practiced look of mock admiration, surprise, and pride.
“By…by yourself?” Rosa stuttered.
Elaine smiled triumphantly, angled her head upwards, and closed her eyes just the slightest bit. “By myself” she confirmed.
“Show me what you bought.”
As Lainey started to pull the clothes out of the shopping bag, I headed to the back of the soup kitchen, silently, leaving them to their chat.
Once through the door separating the actual kitchen from the eating space, I looked around. The only people there were Lawrence and Anna, two of Rosa’s friends. Lawrence turned to say hi to me.
“Hey, Marissa. Where’s the little one?”
“Out front with Rosalina.”
A throaty chuckle escaped from Lawrence’s throat. Anna turned to face me. “That girl. She really admires Rosalina, doesn’t she?”
“Anna, that might just be the understatement of the century” I joked.
Lawrence looked into my face, his eyes glinting with mischief. “How can Rosalina poison the mind of our Ellie?”
Anna looked at him like he was insane, and then started to laugh. After a second she turned to me. “Well, Lawrence didn’t mean to keep you captive here. Go on with whatever you were doing.”
I smiled at both of them again, and opened the door to the supply closet. I crept in, then pulled the string which pulled down the trapdoor in the ceiling and let down the ladder. At the top of the ladder, I emerged into a dark musty attic. Home.
* * *
A bit later, while I was stretched out on the makeshift couch, reading, Elaine came up and spread out her clothes on the floor. “Marissa? Where should I put these?”
I got up without a word, and pulled a large shoebox out of the corner. Elaine took it from me and started carefully folded the clothes, all except for the jeans and t-shirt, smoothing out every wrinkle. Gingerly, she placed them in the box, picked up the clothes she had left outside, and then looked at me, back on the couch.
“Should I put my box next to yours?” she asked, uncertainly.
“Go ahead” I mumbled, my face buried in my book.
She pushed her box to the end of the couch and ducked into the corner surrounded by blankets hung from the low ceiling to change. Seconds later she emerged, the pink t-shirt saying “Princess Gone Bad” with the skull contrasted very interestingly with her tousled hair and her too big should-be-skinny-jeans. She definitely looked like a Princess Gone Bad. More accurately a preppy zombie.
She smiled proudly. “Looks good, right?” Oh, that’s right. I still haven’t bought a mirror for inside our ‘changing room’.
“Well. It looks okay” I told her, standing up. “Maybe I could…” I put down my book, picked up my hairbrush and started yanking it through her straight, red hair. She bit her lip, and waited until I was done. Poor girl. She hadn’t brushed her hair with an actual brush since her capture. One by one I worked the tangles out of her hair, then stood back to look at her. The zombie look was almost gone. Now she looked something like a deranged giant lollipop, the kind you get at theme parks. Between the bright pink t-shirt, the bright purple jeans, and her bright red hair, it almost hurt to look at her. After a second, I came up with an idea to reduce her flamboyant appearance. I picked a rubber band out of the pile I use to restrain my curly brownish hair, and tied her hair up in a ponytail. Much better. “There. That looks great.”
“Can I go show Rosa?”
I shrugged. “I’m not stopping you, am I?”
Elaine whooped, then flew down the ladder to the supply closet. I sighed, and hopped back onto the couch with my book, leaving the trapdoor open. I never closed it while I was up here and Lainey was down in the kitchen. She couldn’t reach the rope to open it, so she wouldn’t be able to come back up if the door was closed, unless she had the assistance of one of the kitchen staff.
A few minutes later, Rosa’s head appeared above the trapdoor. She climbed the stairs, and came to sit beside me. “She looks like a popsicle.”
Without lifting my eyes from my book, I answered “I was thinking a multicolored lollipop, but that works too.”
Rosa grinned. “Now she’s down posing for Anna’s camera.”
I laughed, caught off guard. “That’s Elaine for you.”
The door in the supply room below slammed and a voice rose from below. “Rosa?”
“Speak of the devil…” I muttered, already sucked back into my book.
“What is it, El?” Rosa called.
“Nothing. I just wanted to know where you were.”
Rosa rolled her eyes at me, laughing to herself, then turned just as the blinding Elaine appeared through the door. “El, the floor might just collapse, there are so many of us here. Why don’t we go downstairs?
I sent a silent thanks to Rosa for saving my reading-time, watching as Elaine then Rosa disappeared through the trapdoor.
(for more, visit this link: TIME FILES)
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