Alone Together

The Plan

 It was an emotional day when my parents died. Even though they dissolved from existence three years ago, that very day scars and burns my memory. I was overflowing with uncertainty, my heart was telling me to feel one way, but my brain told me to feel another. I went with how my brain felt.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my parents and my heart ached with a longing to see them again, but my brain was right. How dare they leave my sister and me to fend for us! My parents admitted to death, they were too headstrong to get real medical attention. My sister and I were not going to be milquetoast and cowardly, there was no way the Goldston sisters were going to reside in a children's home, Elise and I were capable of doing things for ourselves.

Being the older sister, I was the one to bury our parents in the backyard. I was only 12 years old, and Elise at 10 years. When I came back into the house, stinging tears falling down my cheeks, I sat on the couch in silence. Ten minutes dragged by.

"Amber, what are we going to do? We aren't old enough to live on our own, what about mom and dad's jobs? Shouldn't we tell someone? What I-" Elise cut her sentence off and looked at me, a serious look in her eyes, and then lay her head on my shoulder. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Don't worry, we'll think of something. It's spring break and we don't have school until next week. We are in this together, we can't tell anyone what happened, we can't trust other people."

The truth was, I was nervous. This was really serious! I pulled through, though. I was only 12 years old at the time, but I made a plan. We wouldn't tell anyone, not even our best friends at school, what had happened over break. Elise and I would take over our parent's business. They had an online antique/vintage item business. They would find classic items, take professional pictures of them in our back room with a professional set-up to post on their website and social media, find buyers online, and then ship the requested item to them. It was a really good business, I mean it must have been really good because our parents made enough money to buy a three-story house and send their two daughters to the best private schools in the state! The best part of this plan was that we didn't ever have to do any face-to-face social interactions with customers; we contacted them online to see what item they wanted. Some customers did prefer to call, but I managed to pull off the best "adult voice" I could.

To save some time, Elise and I also made a homework schedule so we'd be more efficient. Every week we would switch off with homework, one week I would do both of our math homework assignments and the next week l I would do both of our English assignments. Elise did the English the week I did math homework and math the week I did English homework. We were both intelligent students, so it wasn't too much for us to handle. Things went so smoothly and we were worry free! But I made this whole living plan, from running the business to school work, three years ago. Now things were taking a sharp turn from peaceful to risky.