A Sea of Red

Chapter 3

No matter how hard I tried to move, I couldn't. My feet were stuck, like I had stepped in a puddle of cement, and let it dry. The gears in my mind were spinning so fast, I thought I was going to burn out. It was too much information at one time.

I started to feel dizzy. The gears were spinning too fast, and now the whole world was rotating in an endless brain numbing cycle. I felt my legs give out, and suddenly I was kneeling. My hand clutched at my chest, and my laughter had turned into shrieks. I started to scare myself. I laid out on the floor and curled into a ball, still clutching my chest. I couldn't breath; it felt like I was drowning in my own tears.

After a few moments, I squeezed my eyes shut, and my breath came out in hitched gasps. In, out, in, out. It was a struggle to control myself, but I did it. I was still crying, but they were silent tears now.

As I was pushing myself off of the floor, I heard a knock. I whirled around, and almost fell. I caught myself on the wall and looked up.

In the doorway stood Wesley, and I heard another set of footsteps coming up the stairs. Those must belong to Juliet.

"How long were you standing there?" I asked.

"Almost the whole time," he answered quietly. He gave me a look and said, " We'll talk later,"

I wasn't looking forward to this conversation, but just then, Juliet entered the room.

"Listen, guys, I don't mean to be rude, but I just have one question."

Wesley and I both looked at her and waited for her to ask us her question, but I guess she was waiting for one of us to ask her. We were staring at each other like that for two minutes, when finally Juliet gave up.

"What are we going to do now?" She asked.

Wesley and I both looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. This must have irritated Juliet, because she threw her hands in the air.

"Are you serious?" she asked, clearly annoyed.

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Wesley asked her, with a smirk on his face.

With that, Juliet and Wesley proceeded to go rounds with each other, Juliet getting angrier by the second, and Wesley being....well, Wesley.

I just shook my head at them both and went down the hall to my room. I walked over to a blank space on the wall where a replica of Van Gogh's Starry Night used to sit. Of course, the picture was thrown off of the wall, but obviously whoever ransacked our house had watched one too many movies.

Our safe wasn't just behind the picture. It was also in the wall. It was obviously not still in use, if we buried it in the wall.

I looked around, and grabbed one of my paintbrushes. I gave the brush a glance over, and then turned it over, so that I was gripping the end with the brush on it in my fist, and the handle was pointed away.

I used all of my strength and began stabbing the wall with my brush. The brush didn't seem to be doing enough, so I threw it behind me and began to violently punch the wall. Over and over again, I could feel the rage rising and burning like a forest fire. They were gone, and I was going to hunt them down. I was going to just down those monsters who killed my parents and give them a reason to kill me. They were going to regret ever even having thought about messing with me and my family.

Through all of the screaming and smashing noises, I didn't here Wesley and Juliet come in.

"Hey!" Wesley said, and he grabbed my hands. "Stop it. You're hurting yourself, and punching the wall isn't going to bring your parents back. If you want to get revenge, then we need to think through this logically."

I kept tugging at his hands, trying to break out of his grip, but he was surprisingly strong, and he just pulled my hands closer together, if that was even possible.

He put my fists in front of my eyes, "Look at what you're doing. You need to stop!" My knuckles were split and bleeding.

I shuddered, my breathing labored. I cooled down, and slowly pulled my hands out of his grasp.

"I'm okay now," I said.

"Yeah?" He asked.

"Yeah." I said, and I knew it.

In the background, Juliet cleared her throat. When she knew she had our attention, she spoke.

"So, are we going to stay here? What's the plan? I need to call my parents. No, actually, can I go home?"

"No, you can't go home. Several people witnessed you at school in the building with the men who had guns, so you'll probably be wanted by the police. Also, those guys aren't just after me, they're also after you too. And, I can guarantee they know where your houses are, and unless we leave now, you can bet that they're going to come after your parents next."

"Great. So what are we going to do now? All of my stuff is either at school, or at my house. We can't go anywhere without our stuff."

"Actually, that would be why I was punching the wall. In this wall, where a painting used to sit, is a safe. In that safe is an emergency kit and some money. Now, I won't be able to carry all of it alone, so upstairs in our hallway closet are three camping backpacks. Wesley, will you grab those, please?"

"Sure," he said, and ran up the stairs, taking two at a time.

"Juliet, you and I will be taking all of the stuff out of this safe and sorting through it. Okay?"

Juliet shrugged her shoulders. The code to the safe was my birthday backwards

Wesley came back down with the backpacks just as we got the safe open. Inside the safe, there were six clean outfits, four for girls and two for boys. There were also three first aid kits, some weapons, and a lot of money.

I'm pretty sure I pulled out three hundred thousand dollars, and gave each of us a third. Wesley and Juliet just stared at me in shock.

"What are we going to do with this?" Wesley asked.

I just smiled and said, "Spend it." I grabbed an extra ten thousand to put in my bag, and I took a thousand dollars and stuffed it in my socks. I was ready to go.

"Okay guys." I said. "Let's do this."

"So," Wesley started, "what are we going to do?"

"That, my friend, is the question of the hour," I said. "My parents said we needed to run away, and that we needed to constantly watch our backs. So it seems like the first thing we need to do is to find a way out of Eureka Springs, before we end up like Mrs. Watermen."

"We're not going anywhere without a ride. The nearest bus station is in Branson or in Betonville