Run Away

Chapter 23

I woke up the next morning, with the same routine. Get dressed, brush my hair, make breakfast. When I walked downstairs to the kitchen, I saw Zack had already started.
"What's for breakfast?" I asked.
"Anything."
"What do you mean?" I was confused. Mr. Felton had always left a note telling us what he wanted for breakfast. We never got to make anything we wanted. "Where's the note? The one Mr. Felton always leaves us. Where is it?"
Zack pointed to the counter closest to me. I saw there was a note. I picked it up, and read a loud;
"'For breakfast this morning, you can make anything you want. I will be out all day at work. I still expect you to get all of your chores done. Might be back tonight, might be back tomorrow. Depends how much work I have.' Sweet. Gone all day?"
Zack laughed. "Yeah, I know. Guess we have a lot of 'work' to do."
I smiled, knowing what he meant by 'work'.
We quickly ate our breakfast, then went to the Private Room.
"So what's the plan?" I asked.
"I need one of us to be in the spy room, while the other continues to search."
"Okay, I'll stay in the spy room if you want to go search."
"Alright sounds good. Now there's one thing I need to show you before we start. Come."
Zack led me into the spy room, and picked up a headset.
"I want you to wear this. I'll have the other one. It'll be easier to communicate." He started. I nodded my head. "I want you to watch where I go, and keep an eye on Mr. Felton, so we can see when he gets back. Also, I'm going to start up this machine here," He pointed to the machine we had seen yesterday, the one that will do the chores for us. "I played around with it last night. I was able to make it do the chores at our speed, and it will stop as soon as Mr. Felton comes home."
"Nice."
He blushed a bit, "Thanks. Now let's get started."
Zack handed me a headset, as he grabbed one for himself. He jumped down one of the trap doors, and I sat down in the chair, trying to find where Zack was. After quickly searching through almost every monitor screen, I finally found him. I double clicked, and Zack appeared on the monitor in front of me. After playing around with the settings, I had figured out how to keep an eye on Zack without having to search through every monitor. I had also decided to do the same with Mr. Felton, so I knew when he came home.
"Kendall can you see me?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, just checking."
It had been almost 3:00pm when an alarm went off.
"Kendall what's happening?"
"Mr. Felton's home!"
"Already? He said he was going to be gone all day."
"I know! What do we do?"
"Find the trap door that leads us into the living room. I'll meet you there."
"Okay."
I placed the headset on the desk, ran to the trap door that said 'Living Room' and jumped down. It felt a bit weird going down this time. It was almost like being on a waterslide that's pitch black, and is going extremely fast. I hadn't notice it last time. Could've been because I was tired. At the end I saw the trap door open, and it pushed me up into the air, just high enough for me to get out without a huge drop. A second later Zack had appeared.
"Quick start working on something from the list." He tossed me the list Mr. Felton had made for us.
I looked down the list to see it was on chore 39, straighten the cushions, and pillows. I quickly walked over to the couch, and started on that chore. I glanced over to see Zack was dusting the lamps, coffee tables, and end tables. Just a second later we heard the front door open.
"Children I'm home!" He yelled. He walked into the living room, and saw us. "Oh there you are. I thought I'd stop by to see how everything was going."
"Fantastic Sir." Zack replied.
"Oh good, good. Glad to hear." He stared at us for a few seconds as if he forgot what he was going to say, but didn't want to admit it. "Oh yes that's right! Children, we will be having visitors tonight. They're thinking of adopting you-"
"Adopting us?" Zack blurted out. "How did they know? You didn't tell them, did you?"
"No Zack don't be so silly, I would never do such a thing. I love all the children I take care of." Zack and I looked at eachother. I don't know about Mr. Felton, but I wouldn't call this love. "To answer your question Zack," Mr. Felton continued. "The news has been talking about you two lately. They've- um- think they know where you are staying. So, I, being the caring person I am, said I knew where you two were, and would let a nice couple adopt you. If they wish, and to my surprise, they said someone had already put in the offer. Guess who it was?"
"Who?" Zack asked. I could hear he was a bit nervous.
"Mr. and Mrs. Cook. Yes Zack, your parents want to adopt you both. Isn't that great?"
"Yes, just fantastic." I could hear the sarcasm in Zacks' voice.
"Well I better be heading out. I am to pick up Mr. and Mrs. Cook at 6:00pm. Now there's no need to make dinner, as I will bring something home. Go continue your chores, and once you're done, relax. Oh, and change into your old clothes, not the ones I gave you. Well I'll see you at 6:30pm."
He left the house slamming the door behind him. We waited until we heard his car drive away. I looked back at Zack. I wasn't sure how he took the news. I mean his own parents, who he ran away from, are taking him back, and adopting me. I studied his face. It was really quite hard to know how he was feeling. He showed no emotion really.
"Zack?" I asked in a very quiet, shaky voice. "Ar-are you okay?"
He looked away, taking a deep breath.
"I don't know." He answered.
"Please Zack, tell me. Tell me what's wrong. I want to know."
"You already know."
"Zack, all I know is your parents are taking you back, and adopting me. That's it-"
"What more do you need to know?" He looked me straight in the eye.
"What they're like." I answered in almost a whisper. "Are they horrible people? Do we need to escape tonight? Go back to B-Dads? Or- or are they good people? Will they love us? Protect us? Zack, what I'm trying to say is, why did you run away from them? Are they really that bad?" He hesitated, then sighed.
"No they're not horrible people. That's not the real reason I ran away from them."
"Then why?"
"Because-" He hesitated again. "Because everything changed too fast. My real mom died. My dad had promised he would never get married again. He knew it would be too hard on my sister and I. But a year later he announced he was getting married. At- at that point I was ready to leave. I packed up some things I would need, and left. I-I left before the wedding day, hoping they would cancel, and look for me."
"Zack, I'm sorry. I had no clue. You don't have to say anymore if you don't want to."
"Why would they want me back? I only caused them trouble." He asked.
"They want you back because they love you. They forgive you. Zack, I know they never stopped looking for you, even when it seemed like you were gone forever. They had hope. Hope they would find you, and be a family again."
He looked away for a few minutes, sniffled, and cleared his throat.
"We should, uh, get back to work. They'll be home in about 2 hours."
I nodded my head in agreement. We both heading back to the Private Room, still searching for a way out. Just in case.
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Alright so here's the next chapter! I'm sorry it took over a month to get this out, I'll try not to take that long for the next chapter.
Anyways, don't forget to vote, share, and comment what you thought of this chapter. Also I want to thank everyone for all the views! I saw just the other day that this story was at 1k! Honestly guys, that's amazing. I never thought so many people would actually like what I wrote. So thank you all so much!!!! Hope you all have/had an amazing day.