One Last Hope

Twenty

Jasmine leaned against the cold wall in a dark alley behind a bunch of stores. She was starved and sleep deprived. It's been two weeks since she ran away but it felt like an eternity to her. It wasn't easy sleeping on stacks of hay and eating random berries from the nearby bushes. She heard all about the wedding from Logan. Apparently, the whole family was vacationing at Hawaii this week. She tore the wedding picture Logan had given her into pieces. Those people stole her sister from her, she hated them.

She watched Logan walking over and boy, was she relived. He had a bag of Taco Bell in his right hand and an icy cold drink in the other. She snatched the bag out of his hand, unwrapped a burrito, and scarfed it down like a savage.

"Slow down there, you're going to throw up." Logan was more concerned that she would finish the 10 burritos left in the bag. Sure, she was perfectly skinny, but she and her sister really knew how to eat. 

"I'm hungry, okay?" She glared at him, chowing down her second burrito. She is real serious about her food.

Logan sat down on the floor next to her and waited for her to finish her fourth burrito. She took one last sip of the soda and then stood still. He grinned at her, wiping off left over burrito from her cheek.

"We should go get these burritos to Cody." She smiled and turned away. 

****

"Thanks." Cody rudely took the bag of food without showing much gratitude. Logan gave him a sarcastic 'your welcome look' and then took a large sheet of paper out of his bag.

"I think I may have a plan on how to get those gangster guys to stop chasing you." Logan uncapped a large sharpie and started marking the over sized paper.

"I have no idea what that's supposed to be.. looks like an upside down winky face.." Jasmine tilted her head and squinted.

"It's a map of the city! Don't you see it?" Logan was convinced that his scribbles on a paper was a map.

"Why didn't you just buy a map from the gift shop?" Cody smirked.

"Does it look like I have a money growing tree?" Logan shot a mean look at Cody. They were both acting awful strange.

"Good point." Cody rolled his eyes. 

"Exactly. Anyways, I have been keeping an eye on these guys for days and I think I have their hang outs pin pointed." Logan put three bright pink highlighter dots onto his home made map.

"Could you be more specific? I still have no idea what I'm looking at." Jasmine was half serious, half teasing. He really needs to work on his penmanship.

"The pink dots mark their 3 most popular hangout spots." Logan pointed to them. "This one here is a house on 3rd street, that one is supposed to be an old abandoned library, and the last one is the coca cola factory."

"So what are we gonna do, walk into one of these hangouts with guns and make a deal with them?"

"Pretty much." Logan stratched his head.

"That is the worst idea you could possibly think of. No way were doing that." Jasmine shook her head.

"Actually I think that might just work. Wont hurt to try." Cody hated to agree with Logan. 

"It wont hurt to try? Your telling me that when the 3 of us are on the floor bleeding out from a gun wound, it isn't going to hurt? You guys are idiots."

"....but we're your idiots." Logan grinned.

"C'mon, I know where we can get some guns." Cody signaled them to follow him.

"Wait, we have to talk about this!" Jasmine said to no one because the guys were already running towards the car parked in the back. She rolled her eyes. "We're so dead."

*****

The three of them drove into the grass area near the back of the coca cola factory, guns in hand. Cody had snuck into his friends house and took his rifle and his hand gun. He said he was borrowing them.. forever. Jasmine knew they weren't going to win this fight but she wasn't about to let her idiots get themselves into deep shit without her. 

Logan took the rifle out of Cody's hands and stormed in through the front door and started shooting bullets out of that thing like crazy. It wasn't until he ran out of bullets that he realized that nobody was in there. 

"Well, I feel stupid." He looked blankly at the large crates and metal railings with bullet holes in them. 

"Now I can see the resemblance between you and your brother. You should leave the guns to the professionals." Cody swiped the gun right out of Logan's hand. 

"Are you calling us stupid?" Logan crossed his arms.

"That's enough." Jasmine shushed them both up. "Now what do we do?"

"We can try one of the other two locations that I know they hang out at." Logan shrugged. 

"No, this is stupid. Your dumb ideas are just gonna get us killed. Let's just go, Jasmine." Cody grabbed Jasmine's arm and pulled her.

"Okay, what's gotten into you two? You've been acting like assholes all night! Is there something you need to work out?" Jasmine angrily pulled herself out of his grasp.

"Why don't you ask Logan? He's the one who's upset that your living in the barn with me." Cody crossed his arms.

"What?" Jasmine turned to Logan.

"Jazz.." Logan sighed, "You found your brother, you nursed him back to health or whatever but I think its time you go home. You should be doing school work, making friends, and having fun.. not fighting a bunch of big bad gangsters. This isn't your battle."

"This isn't my battle? Do you even hear yourself right now? He's my brother, I'll never leave his side. Especially to go back to that hell hole full of people I hate. I'm never ever going back and if you're not going to support that, you're just as bad as Kaylee." Jasmines face was red and full of rage.

She was staring at the boys who were both looking at her funny, pointing. She felt something behind her and quickly turned. The pack of gangsters were here and they had their guns pointed straight at her. 

"Hey, hey, hey.. put those puppies down.. We just want to talk." Cody slowly inched over to Jasmine with his hands up.

"We want you to stop bothering us. This whole being chased by vicious gangsters thing is getting old." Jasmine straight out said it.

"Okay." One of the gangsters nodded and put his gun on the floor.

"Really? Your not going to put up a fight?" Logan raised his eyebrow.

"Really. We were given orders to stop the chase last night." The other gangsters put their guns down too.

"Now get out of here before I shoot that guy." The last gangster with a gun pointed at Logan. "Jon never said we couldn't shoot him." 

******

They made it all the way back to the barn with more questions than they started out with. Jasmine wanted to know why Jon had let them off the hook so easily. She was afraid for what was coming next. Logan took a blanket and a pillow out of the trunk of his car and handed it to Jasmine. She gratefully took it and hugged him.

"I'm sorry about what I said earlier.. I didn't mean it.. about either you or Kaylee." She started making markings in the dirt with her shoe.

"It doesn't matter.. Just promise me something, Jazz." He whispered.

"Anything."

"Promise me that someday you'll come home." He put his hand on her shoulder.

Silence.

"Promise me." He said once more.

"I promise." She crossed her fingers behind her back and then embraced him once more.