Leonenia

Chapter 6: Vigilantes

"What the hell did I just walk into?" Jordon Harris questioned, standing in the open doorway to Sonya Valentine and Emery Bass's apartment.

Even for a two bedroom apartment, it was in such a state of disarray that Jordon felt like she had entered a room full of obstacles; clothes were scattered everywhere on the floor, books toppled over each other on every surface, unfinished snacks had been laying on tables for unknown amounts of time, and the only part that was even organized in the ginormous mess was the table that the girls did their makeup on.

"The place that the group decided to throw the party at," Emery huffed, picking up the scattered clothes and throwing them into the second bedroom, which they called "The Hoarding Room," in an attempt to clean up the apartment before their guests arrived.

Sonya was gathering up all of the toppled books and returning them to the empty shelves where they belonged. It was obvious that the girls rarely threw parties in their apartment since it was a hassle to clean up the large mess that they made.

Jordon shut the door behind her, struggling to walk over to the table where they ate their meals, and grabbed a garbage bag to help them clean before the party started. She gathered all the takeout boxes, paper cups and plastics across the table and tossed it into the bag.

"How did this place even get this dirty?" She asked in disgust, picking up a rotten banana peel before throwing it in the bag, shuddering at the shriveled peel. "Heck, how do you even manage to get around with this mess?"

"It's not as hard as you think," Emery responded, "once you get used to the lay of the land."

"I found that lip gloss you wanted, Em" Sonya stretched out her arm to Emery with the lip gloss held by the tips of her fingers, it had been buried in one of the cushions of the sofa.

"Finally!" Emery pocketed the lip gloss, a smile plastered on her face.

Jordon went over to where all the clipped up bags of snacks were, unclipping and throwing away the bags of stale food. She stepped on a sequined shirt, lost her footing and fell over; her arms spread out to catch herself before she face-planted on the floor.

"You both need to change your living habits." Jordon said, irritated by the mess, as she stood up. "Who's this party for anyways?"

"Vivian," Sonya answered, "she got back to the base last night."

"So, it's like a Welcome Back Party," Emery continued.

Jordon looked surprised but also genuinely upset; she was thrilled that Vivian was back but she was disappointed that Vivi hadn't called her yet. Jordon and Vivian had been friends for a very long time, in fact, they had been friends ever since Jordon was recruited to Nighttide.

~~~~~

In the alleyway, when all the surfaces were covered in cold white snow, Jordon sat inside of a box big enough for her eight-year-old-self to fit inside. She was wrapped in pieces of old fabric that she had found in the alley's dumpsters.

Her teeth were clattering, every limb on her body gathered tightly against herself to keep warm; she had gotten sick from falling into an icy river nearby.

Jordon was alone, she had no one by her side. Her mother left Jordon in the alleyway, she was waiting for her mother to take her back. She remembered the cold look on her mother's face when she abandoned her; there was no emotion in her eyes, a look of hate and scorn in her gaze. Her mother turned and left, never looking back, Jordon was dead to her.

Jordon didn't hate her mother, she honestly found it fair that she had abandoned her. Besides, Jordon had taken a life that was very important to her mother but it was only to protect her from harm's way.