Wait

I.

Chapter One - Mamma's: Point of View

"Mamma, I've got my lunch and my books. Is it alright if I walk to school today?" She asks, making her voice as deep as she'd done the other day, being unfamiliarly uncomfortable in the knowledge that we were being listened in to. The hair on the nape of her neck stood on end as she stared at me, waiting expectantly for an answer. We'd all come together and tried to come up with a plan to any scenario where Sammy would be in threat of being caught as a girl. She'd promised to try her very best to act as if nothing played out last night, but the whites of her eyes were bloodshot and her lip would quiver when she'd think I'm not looking.

I nod abruptly, but I tease a smile letting her know I'm not just about to let her out of my eyesight in the upcoming week and that if she feels that she's being watched, she should not fret because it is her mamma seeing her baby make her way to school.

We could not think, feel, act apprehensive, the greatest performance of our lives was awaiting its curtain opening by the Montez family. I couldn't and wouldn't lose my baby to some cheating boss of my husband's and his equally disgusting son.

My baby had to be the most brave and courageous she's ever had to be in her life; she could not waiver in her boyish mask or else she could be caught. It worries me so to think so many families have been equally as cunning and tried to lie to the cheating Mr. Montez and have failed, what if my family follows in their footsteps and we won't make it?

I called Nana as soon as Sam was out of the house and on the front porch. I asked her if she wanted to go on a walkabout the town for a while because I was not needed at the hospice today and she did. Her diminutive Peugeot stopped outside the green gate and I rushed to open it for her. Once we were inside her car, I told her the real reason why we were going for a breather in one of the most polluted towns in the state.

"Sammy needs me, we'll take a detour that way to avoid being seen, y'know. If it seems like I'm following her, someone might get suspicious.  So Nana, we're going to pretend this is a careless walk which just so happens to cross a few of the streets dear Sammy takes to school." Nana nods her head supporting my plan and starts the engine

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Sammy's POV:

As soon as my papa recognised the sleek shiny Jaguar pulling up into our driveway, he had mamma rush me towards our garden shed. He warned me to be as quiet as possible. That perhaps the reason for the arrival of his boss was to discuss a business matter or prepare a colleague ball, like the one they had in July. It did not go amiss by me that there had been the flicker of apprehension and anxiety present in the gingerness with which he held his clammy hands behind his back. He was afraid I would catch sight of how they trembled, too alive to be controlled by him.

Mamma had just shut the door of the dingy toolshed after I'd stepped in and I'd turned the key in the knob, when I heard footsteps which I was foreign too, having never heard the new rhythm of a rich man walking. Seconds must've ricked by only when I heard my mamma's voice asking them if they wanted their cloaks hanging up because of the rain that had punishing our area for days now. A few seconds later, I heard the coffee machine beep signalling that it would be adding the first ingredients into the mug placed inside the holster. I remembered once when I'd forgotten the mug and found a pool of hot chocolate liquid oozing on the tiled floor. I'd scurried around like a mouse to clean up the mess I'd caused before papa was home from work and mamma was home from her daily visit to nana. It had been a battle, a matter of time. It taught me to double-check any instructions found on machinery.

I felt my heart pounding in my throat and ears as I heard the brief chitter chatter here and there. The toolshed had been built at the end of the garden for papa to work on the wooden sculptures he liked to make without his hobby interrupting mamma's duties brought home from work or to prevent me from losing concentration from my schoolwork. It made it frustratingly impossible to hear what the adults were discussing in the room. But I didn't think the topic of the conversation would stray from me for far too long, because if papa's boss was to really go along with what papa had so unseeingly signed me up to, his boss wouldn't waver to meet me and see that I am what I say I am: a fresh eighteen year old boy, since two o'clock this rainy August morning.