Treacherous

Looking for You

The sun had disappeared when I woke up. I didn't remember falling asleep, and it took a minute for me to realize where I was. My stomach grumbled as I sat up and ran my hands through my hair, trying to get rid of the knots in it. When thoughts of the previous night tried to slip into my mind, I pushed them aside. Food first. I could worry about what I was going to do later.

I pushed myself to my feet and hovered there for a moment, waiting on my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. After a few seconds, I felt my way over to the stairs and slowly climbed up them, taking care not to miss a stair because breaking a bone was for sure to be a death sentence especially since I was on my own at the moment.

The store above was dark as well, but the moonlight at least offered enough light for me to see shapes. I only stubbed my toe once on my way to the back storage room. Jasper and I had found a hidden cubbyhole in there after the fall. We'd stashed things in it to see if anyone would take it and they never did. I figured it had been where the owner had kept his petty cash and spare keys for the room down below.

I felt along the wall, my hand grazing over the light switch. Out of desperation, I flipped it down, hoping that by some miracle a light would flicker on.

It didn't.

The cubbyhole was blocked by a large metal shelf that had taken Jasper and I both to move before, but now it was shoved out from the wall. I prayed that there was at least one can of soup left in the hole. Just enough to get me by until I could scavenge for something more.

I used the rusty fork from the school to pry the panel off the wall. I took that as a good sign. No one had bothered it for a few weeks, if not longer.

I dropped the panel onto the ground. Whatever there was in the hole, I was taking with me. There was no point in trying to cover the hole back up. Blindly, I reached in and felt around for something, anything. I pulled out an old comic book Jasper had put there for safekeeping. It wasn't valuable or anything. Just something he could get if he got tired of the books that we had at the house then. We didn't have books anymore. They were too much of a nuisance to move when we moved to the basement.

My hand hit something else and when I pulled it out, I could have shouted in joy. Soup. Broccoli soup, my least favorite, but it was still something to eat.

I moved out into the main room so I could see the tab on the can. I wanted to thank whoever had come up with the idea to put a pull-tab on soup cans. It saved so much time now that can openers had disappeared.

I downed the soup as fast as I could. If someone came in and found me sucking down soup, they would most likely be willing to kill me just for a drop of it. A small drop could be the difference between living and dying with food so scarce.

Dropping the can to the floor, I scanned the shop to see if there was anything else that could have been of use. I would have to return in the morning or when I had a source of light. The moon wasn't enough to let me search the building efficiently.

I slipped out of the hole in the back and onto the street. Now that I had a few weapons, I wasn't so afraid to venture out. There was one place I needed to go. I had to work some things out, right some wrongs, so to speak.

If Jasper thought that getting involved with the Tears was going to solve our problems, he was wrong. It wasn't going to do anything but cause more trouble and I was determined to show him that. If I hadn't been able to get through to Blaise, I had to be able to at least reach my own brother. Being related by blood had to mean something.

The walk to the basement was familiar. I was home, but for some reason it didn't feel like home. I felt like I had been away for months, years, and was returning to my hometown that wasn't my home anymore. Like I was a stranger.