The Thief // pjo

Chapter One // I Get "Kidnapped" and Make New friends

    The rain pounding against the bus is the only thing that fills my ears as I pull my jacket hood further over my face as if it could block out the too-loud intrusive thoughts raging through my mind.

    My backpack sits in my lap, held in my free arm tightly as if it was the only thing anchoring me to my seat on the smelly bus.

    I was running away again.

    Now listen, I'm not some kind of twelve-year-old child delinquent or something. I am just running away from a life that doesn't want me in it anyways.

    Meaning I'm running away from my aunt.

    I can see my uncle's sorrowful face flash in my mind as I imagine him and my cousins reading my farewell letter, telling them not to follow me or to come and try to find me because I was never coming home again.

    I didn't want to leave them, but I had to.

    My mamá was dead, my aunt hated me, I had no dad I knew of, and I was not happy at home, so why would I stay?

    I wouldn't.

    Also, I think that I overheard my aunt talking about sending me away to some boarding school, Yancy Academy, which did not help the situation at all.

    That is why I am now sitting on a bus, hiding from the glances of nosey adults and smelly and probably high teenagers.

    My hand unconsciously goes to the chain around my neck, which is the home of the last gift from my now-dead mom.

    A bronze ring, the metal twisting in a beautiful swirly design, a faint worn symbol etched into the surface of a particularly smooth part of the piece of jewelry.

    She used to tell me it would keep me safe, "Put it on, and you will be protected from evil, I promise, mi pequeña lirio de agua."

    Every day up until the day she died from the cancer raging through her body, she would tell me that, always calling me the nickname she came up for me since I was young.

    My little water lily.

    And every day after she got sick, I would beg for the ring to save her.

    Save my mom. Bring her back to me. Please!

    But no, she still died when I was seven, leaving me to the care of my stupid aunt.

    Some kind of protection it was.

    I flinch to myself as I think about my time with my aunt and quickly push those thoughts away, not wanting to think about them under any circumstance.

    But no matter how upset I was with my living situation, the jewelry, and the empty promise it held, I kept it, too scared that I would lose all connection and memory of my mom as I grew up.

    I shift my gaze from the ring around my neck to the doors to the halting bus screech open, and three young voices fill my ears.

    I peer out from behind my curtain of damp sunkissed chocolate brown waves and spy three kids my age boarding the bus.

    The first kid was a girl with kinky golden curls piled up in a ponytail on the back of her head. She was drenched, but that did not take away the brightness of her orange t-shirt with a faded image of what I thought was a pegasus. Her hands regripped her backpack straps as she stepped further into the bus, her sharp gray eyes swinging around, taking in her surroundings.