Rising From The Ashes

Chapter 11

Sorry I haven't updated in so long! School started last week and things have been kind of crazy. Anyway, I hope you like it :)

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Chapter 11

Forks scrap against plates, mine quicker than the others. I’m not hungry at all, the nervous butterflies made sure of that, but under my mother’s watchful eye I can’t just skip eating. So, instead I’m shoveling in as much food as quickly as possible.

Each tick of the clock makes my sense of urgency stronger. Normally my family never eats together, like well like an actual family. We’re almost never all home at the same time and my mother happens to be a horrible cook, so we usually just grab what we want when we want. Tonight, though, my mother insisted that we all sit down together. After listening to Catherine argue and beg to get out of it to no success I knew that there was no use in me even trying. I didn’t need to leave until long after nightfall anyway, but I was so anxious that sitting still like that was just plain torture.

“Are you alright, Kaydance?” my mom asked as my foot tap, tap, tapped anxiously against the floor.

“Mhmm,” I mumbled around a mouthful of food.

“You’re eating like a pig,” Catherine sneered with a look of disgust that I hardly even noticed. I’m way to preoccupied with thoughts about what I’m about to do that her criticism hardly even registered.

My mom continued to talk and Catherine threw in her snippy comments every once in awhile, but it’s safe to say that I’d checked out of the conversation. The only thing I could think about was the crime I was about to commit. I wondered if my mom would hate me if she found out what I was planning to do. If she would think I was betraying everyone by going through with it. I’d like to believe that she would understand, but I hoped I never had to find out. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. At least I hoped not.

Once my plate was clean I excused myself from the table. The longer I hung around the two of them the more likely one of them was going to suspect something. By the way I’d been acting it would be pretty much impossible not to suspect something. Anyway, I still needed to find a way to get my mother’s keys and now seemed like the perfect time.

When my mother got home from work earlier I specifically made sure to pay attention to where she placed her keys. I was hoping she would just throw them on the counter or something, but I could never be so lucky. She took them with her up to her room and so that’s where I go now.

Silently creaking the door to my mom’s room open, I’d never felt so guilty. Sneaking around isn’t something I was all that great at. If my mom caught me going through her things that would raise quite a few questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer. If I couldn’t pull this off, though, there was no way I could go ahead with the rest of the plan. And I had to. Cameron was counting on me to come through for him. No matter how many times he tried to convince me I didn’t have to go through with it, he still needed me to. It was his only chance at getting back home.

Finding the keys wasn’t even that hard once I committed myself to the task. They were lying right there on my mother’s bedside table in plain view. She had no reason to hide them because she trusted Catherine and me, which made me feel a billion times worse. Strange thing was I wasn’t even feeling bad about the huge crime I was about to commit. I only felt bad for involving her by using her keys.

Now the only thing I had left to do was wait. I spent a lot of time pacing my room for the next few hours, waiting for my sister and mom to go to sleep. Even after they are likely both lost in dreams I continue to wait. Time moved agonizingly slow. Finally, though, the clock ticked to 2 A.M. and it was time for me to go. It’s only now that I wished time had moved slower.