Maria

Chapter 9

Lola

The holidays are fast approaching, in two weeks time almost every orphan will be going to visit their family. I don't have any relatives in this country and my allowance isn't big enough to pay for a trip to America and back so I will just have to stay here for the holidays. Sadly Maria is going to North Wales for a week to stay with her grandparents but she promised she'd email me every night. 

One night Maria and I snuck into the library and used one of the old dishevelled computers to look at where she was staying. I gasped in delight when I saw that the village was right on top of a massive hill, it's craggy rocks and deep green woods looked like an adventure waiting to happen. In the picture we could see the lights from the village twinkling like smiling eyes, the path leading up to it was lined with warm fairy lights; a villager's touch I presumed. We had to stop looking then as the crude voice of Miss Posey snapped us away from the beautiful village and into the crumbly, dark framework of the orphanage, "Just what do you think you girls are doing in here after hours? You know that is against the rules and yet you still blatantly disobey?" she yelled at us, going on and on about how she was going to tell the Head and how she could ban us from the library, we had to try very hard to resist wiping our faces from the spit that was currently flying out of her mouth. Finally she let us go and halfway up the stairs we both collapsed into a fit of laughter and proceeded in scrubbing out faces clean of saliva.

It's Saturday morning and it's our turn to do the food shopping for the next week. The town that the orphanage is situated in is small and cooped, there is nothing for young people to do so it's mostly just old aged pensioners that live here. There is one supermarket that provides only the bare necessities. The weather is warm and sunny, the clouds lolling across the sky, rolling slowly in the wind. 

Maria and I make our way out of the orphanage and into the broad smiling sun outside, our sandals slapping the hard ground like snapping glowsticks. We reached the supermarket and welcomed the cool breeze from the air conditioning with open arms.

About ten minutes later we emerged from the doors of the supermarket with two carrier bags each full with vegetables and freshly baked bread. 

We were at the traffic lights when it happened, what exactly happened I don't know; it was so fast and over so quickly. All I remember is the screeching of wheels and the shouts of people. I remember realising that the car was heading straight for me, suddenly I was rooted to the spot, unable to move like roadkill trapped in the headlights of a car. 

The pain is the only clear thing about the memory, I remember hitting the ground with a thud so hard it hurt worse than the hands that used to carve my back into scars.I remember feeling the warm, sticky blood oozing out of my head and the shots of pain racing through the muscles in my back; making me afraid of movement. My head felt like it had a heart in it- boom... boom...  boom, endless throbbing and thudding like a monster in a cage. I remember seeing the freshly baked bread lying on the road. I remember seeing the curly black hair and the panicked face of Maria, tears traced down her pale face, making tracks that looked like a snail's. My eyes began to close, then... nothing.

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Told ya there was some plot twists coming up :)  I hope you liked this Chapter, I'm sad to say that this story will be coming to an end soon, thank you to  @cagedbird229 for dedicating Chapter 2 of LAST MINUTE to me, if you haven't read it yet- I recommend it.