Running Away

Chapter 3

The girls laid on Brittany's bed looking to the ceiling.
"Your room smells of paint." Mabel said.
Brittany narrowed her eyes to her. She laid in the middle.
"No,  it's actually nail polish." Aria corrected.
"You said something about babysitting yesterday." Brittany said looking at Aria. Aria nodded.
"I just said it anyway. I didn't intend for us to start anything." Aria said. Mabel sat up and turned to her.
"It's a good idea really. I need some extra cash." Mabel said in haste
"Who doesn't need some extra cash?" Brittany asked.
Aria sat up and Brittany did the same.
"First out parents needs to know. I don't want to make plans only for it to be ruined by a big 'no'." Mabel said. Aria nodded.
"Then we get in touch with those parents. " Aria said.
"Yes. Parents that need sometime away from their kids." Brittany told them. Aria took time to analyse the words. Her mother took sixteen years to be away from her. She never showed up not even once.
"Or we'd make flyers. It's better that way than meeting them." Mabel suggested. "I mean the parents." She punched the buttons on her phone and smiled at it.
"Who do we ask for the prints? Like how much it'd cost." Aria asked.
"Jeremy might have an idea." Brittany said. She pushed Aria's legs and then she came down from the bed. She went to the mirror and picked up a brush.
"Who is Jeremy?" Aria asked.
"My older brother. He works in a cafe down town."
"He is super cute. With his sweet...."
"He has a girlfriend, Mabel."
"So what? I'm just admiring him." Mabel said with a smirk.
"Alright, so we'd know what we are up for by the weekend?" Aria asked.
"Hopefully." Both Mabel and Brittany said in unison.
"So you guys have any food?" Mabel asked Brittany after a while. "I'm starved out."

Olivia walked slowly past the pews. She couldn't sleep the previous night as her heart kept condemning her for what she had done sixteen years ago. She felt restless and troubled and she believed that this was her only resort. Her only hope. Doing a proper confession to someone might ease the weight off her chest. She didn't feel like carrying the burden alone. If Jesus could carry it for her then no problem. But he'd probably want her to bear the consequences of her sins. To suffer for what she'd done years ago.
She glanced at the image of Jesus that was hung to a wooden cross. He wasn't on that cross anymore. If he was he wouldn't be able to help her since his hands would be nailed to the wood. She heard her heart beating against her chest.
A priest walked in from a door near the altar. She bowed and then went towards him.
She accessed him as she walked, his bald hair and the blue sash around his neck that had the embroidery of a cross on both ends.
"Good day, I want to do a confession." She told him.
He nodded. "A priest is at the confession box." He told her.
She walked to the room. It as so tiny that she felt she would die of air loss. A sudden foreboding clouded her but she had to complete what she came for.
She sat on the seat and from the triangular holes she saw the white robe of the priest.
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned." She said. The words escaped her lips with a part of her guilt. Something throbbed inside of her. She felt it and from within, it burned her.
"Confess your sins that the Lord may forgive you." She heard the priest say.
She opened her mouth but her eyes did the release. When she closed her lips, she sobbed. Her sins were numerous.
"If only we are ready to confess our sins, the Lord remains faithful and just to forgive."
Olivia sighed. She got out a handkerchief and dabbed her face as well as the corners of her eyes.
"I have committed so many atrocities in my youth..." Her lips hung open and nothing came out. Thoughts of all the evil she had done raced in her mind and she cried. Quickly, she picked up her bag and rushed out. She heard the priest calling on her but she ran, she wasn't ready to let go. She couldn't tell anyone, not a mere priest who couldn't forgive her sins. She gave up her daughter. For sixteen years, no human would forgive that. Most times not even a priest.
When she entered her car, she placed her head on the steering and cried out until she had no tears left to cry.

Sasha was among those girls in school that younger girls were scared of. She had her own clique and they dressed so gorgeously to the envy of the other girls in their grade. Everyone wanted to be in her clique. To flaunt their style and have all the boys on the football team follow them like flies and spoilt food.
"I hate her." Mabel said entering the hall. She was a mess, her hair was covered with spaghetti and oil dripped down her face.
"What happened?" Brittany asked standing up from her chair. Aria did the same, she moved closer to Mabel to help remove the spaghetti that seemed stuck in her hair.
"That lousy imp you call a sister. She and her friends... "
"Sasha?" Aria asked?
"Yes."
Aria paused. She bit her lower lip and picked up her bag. "Where is she?"
"In the cafeteria." Mabel replied.
"What are you going to do?" Brittany asked following  Aria who was already heading out the hall.
"Watch me." Aria said closing the door behind her. Her friends doubled there steps behind with Mabel working her hands on her hair.
Sasha was laughing with her friends when Aria got in. Aria walked directly to her, picked up the plate of lasagna on the table and dropped it on Sasha's head.
"Jesus Christ!"
"What the hell?"
Sasha got up and pulled Aria by her blouse. Aria slapped off her hand, she pulled Sasha by the hair.
"It seems you got ears but you use them for something else. I gave you a simple warning but you want to play coy with me huh?"
Sasha pushed her. Aria fell backwards crashing into a table.
"FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" The students chanted.
Aria stood up and smacked Sasha across the cheek. She pushed her angrily and they both started to fight. The fight went on for a while until the principal arrived.
"Both of you in my office now."
Both girls broke free, they dusted and straightened up.
In the principal's office, they sat there like dogs waiting for a meal that would never come.
"Both of you will be in detention. Two weeks. Three hours after school."
"But she started it." Sasha blurted.
Aria looked steady at the principal's moustache. But she really wanted to turn and slap the life force out of Sasha.
"I don't really care to know who started it. I caught both of you fighting. I thought you both were sisters?"
"She is not my sister.  She is just some rejected girl my parents picked up." Sasha said.
Aria couldn't hold it. She turned and slapped Sasha across the face.
"Aria?" The principal called.
"Increase my detention to a month. I don't care, but I'm glad I slapped her right now because she had no right to insult my parents. And yes... " Aria turned to Sasha, "I'm not your sister. I can't be a sister to some spoilt brat who has no manners."
"I'm calling your parents. Now you both leave my office and detention starts today after school."