Alone Together

Braiding the Promise

First, I looked at possible house locations and big apartments for rent to house all the furniture. I found so many cool places to live, and most of them weren't that expensive! The apartments were more promising because they were cheaper and some were closer to our schools. I smile spread on my face as I found a house for sale that was near our schools and it was a reasonable price. I looked up the address and was ready to call the realtor when I had a sudden thought.

"How old do I have to be to legally own property as my own?" I wondered.

I looked it up and apparently, I had to be 18 years old to legally have the property owned under my name. That's not good; I'm only 15 years old! I desperately searched for a loophole in the legal system, but it was no use, I don't want to lie about my age. I couldn't become an orphan, a bad sister, and a convict! I slammed my computer shut and ran my fingers through my long hair. Elise was right; we can't keep living with the burden of our parents' death. I glanced at the clock; it was only six o'clock in the evening.

Elise slowly stumbled down the stairs, awake from her nap.

"Amber," she yawned, "What time is it?"

"Oh, it's only six o'clock," I replied.

Elise paused on the second flight of stairs and looked down at me sitting on the couch. I stood up and walked into the kitchen. Elise bounded down the stairs and caught up with me by the fridge. Not sure what we should eat for dinner, I exchanged eye contact with Elise, suggesting that she should choose what we eat. She grabbed tomato sauce from the top shelf. I turned around and picked up the flatbread from the counter. Elise nodded at we both got to work on making pizzas. We generally like all the same things, so we merrily decorated our pizzas with identical toppings. I laughed as we sang songs and danced around the kitchen, making a big mess in the process.

Elise and I had a great dinner, the pizzas were so good! We finished dinner at around eight o'clock in the evening and we started to clean up the mess in the kitchen. As Elise washed the dishes, I wiped tomato sauce off of the walls (we got carried away with the dancing). I smiled to myself as Elise hummed to the tune of a song. We were having so much fun that I forgot about the whole "we need to move out of the house before the government finds out that our parents are dead" fiasco.

After we finished cleaning, we did our homework and got ready for bed. We sat on our massive combined bed and I braided Elise's hair.

"Amber, we're going to be okay right? Everything's going to be fine and no one will take me away from you... right?" The tone of Elise's voice was downcast.

"Of course," I said as I finished braiding Elise's hair, "we're going to be okay and there's no way anyone, and I mean it, there's no way anyone can take you away from me." 

I hugged Elise from behind and she leaned into my arms. My eyes started to tear up and I thought dark thoughts. I wasn't sure if everything was really going to be okay, the future was uncertain and we were balancing on a very rickety bridge held together by our crumbling past.