Confined

Chapter Two

* Hope is now 16. Enjoy!*

  "Hope, the children have all gone home, you can actually move around now." I let out a sigh of relief as Faith came and sat on the bed.

  "That took longer then usual, was a parent late?" My mom runs a daycare service, so from ten in the morning to six at night, I can't leave my room. Thankfully, it's not everyday, only weekdays.

  "Yeah, Mr.Quinly worked later then usual, and got stuck in traffic." Faith is two years older then me, so she helps my mom out. We sat in silence for ten minutes, until Faith surprised me with a question.

  "How do you do it? How can you stand to stay in here 24/7 for ten years?  I can't stand staying home for a whole weekend, but here you are, doing it for most of your life. And you'll keep doing it until you can somehow leave, but even then you'll have to stay low for a while." Faith had tears in her eyes as she looked at me, and I looked at the floor.

  "I guess I just remind myself that I'm not the only one at risk here. It's all of us. If I take the risk of  going out during the day, I'm endangering us all. I don't know if I would be caught, but I don't want to take the chance. It's not like I haven't been out, I just do it in complete darkness, when nobody can see me." I walked over to my sister, and gave her a hug.

  "I- it's just that I get so scared with all the new laws that are attempting to be passed." I looked at Faith with a confused look, and her eyes widened.

  "What laws? What are they trying to do?" Faith looked away, tears streaming down her face. "Tell me, please Faith, it involves me too." She finally looked at me, and took a deep breath before responding.

  "They're trying to pass a law that would allow them to put some kind of device that would tell then exactly how many people are in a house, using the heat that radiates off our bodies. If they passed that law, you would be found out, unless we were able to send you somewhere before it was installed." I sat on my bed in disbelief. This was the end, because that law would absolutely be passed. Every other one has been passed, with no questions asked.

  "Hope, Hope it's ok!" Faith began to shake my shoulder, trying to get me to look at her. "Hope, open your eyes, it's ok! Please Hope!" I sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. Faith was leaning over me, tears streaming down her face. Before I knew it, I was sobbing into her shirt, while she rubbed my back.

  "It's ok, it was only a dream. I'm right here." We stayed like that for what seemed like forever, and I didn't want to leave my sisters warm, safe embrace. Even though I was sixteen, I loved hugging my sister, and snuggling close. She just made me feel safe, as if I don't have a target on my back for being a fourth child. Really, we should both be forbidden, but since our parents first pregnancy was twins, the government allowed either one more child, or another set of twins, but that's it.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I shook my head, bracing for the lecture. "Hope, you know what dad says. Talking about your nightmares will keep you from being scared, because you're being comforted by someone, telling you it's ok. How can we help you, if we don't even know what to say? The nightmares will only get worse if you don't talk about them." I sighed, and looked away.

"I know, it's just not that easy." I don't want to add these fears to anyone else, adding to my already heavy burden. I mean, it's hard enough providing food for me, and doing their best to provide me with an as-normal-as-possible life, but then you add the times I make them worry when I sneak out at night, when it's pitch black, or when I sneak through the vents in our house. Why make them worry about trying to keep my mind off of my fears?

  Two hours later, I was eating cereal on my bed while my family enjoyed dinner with some friends across the street. When I was finished, I put my dishes in my dirty dish basket, and got a water out of the fridge. I was bored out of my mind, but I couldn't think of anything to do. I had been listening to music, reading, sleeping, and playing video games all day, and was sick of it. I looked over at the large family picture that was taken when I was six, and a sly smile crept onto my face. Here I go again, adding more burdens. I took the picture down, revealing an air vent. I took the cover off and climbed in, carefully replacing the cover before crawling into the darkness.

  A week after my mom found out she was pregnant, my dad began building this house. Our whole neighborhood was in the process of being built, and my dad paid A LOT of money to be granted the permission of picking his spot of land, how much land he had, and building his own house. He mostly followed how it was supposed to look on the outside, but the inside was completely different. First, he dug a huge hole, which would be my playroom and my room, separated by thick walls. After finishing with that, he made the rest of the house. Big bedrooms, huge kitchen, tall ceilings, lots of windows, and those huge vents that you see in old movies that are big enough for a grown man to crawl through. He put those in for me, so that I had more then one way to get to the rest of the house(the other is through a passage under Faiths room, and into her closet. I thought that he had built my room when I was six, but all the measuring was to decide how tall and wide my furniture could be. Thankfully, they have gotten me more mature furniture since then, so that my playroom doesn't look like a playroom for the rest of my life.

  I crawled through the labyrinth, knowing the way like the back of my hand. I climbed up, crawled left, right, left, left, you get it. When I finally reached a hole, I immediately went through it, and fell doooooooowwwwnnn, until I landed on a giant bean bag with the beans replaced with soft foam.

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Hi, so how are you liking it so far? I realized that the last "chapter" wasn't very long, like, at all. So, I'm hoping that this one turned out a lot longer.
 
   So, I'm going to soon be adding another one or two of my stories, and they're my newest ones, so I'm hoping that they are more intriguing then this one. I like them more, but that's just me.

   Anyway, vote, comment, & WHAT IS SHE GOING TO DO? I know, of course, but I won't ruin it for you. 😎😌😏

   Ciao!!
     
                                            -SailorLexie