I sneaked into the eerily-quiet study room, the light from the still-awake neighboring houses entering through the window, grabbed my backpack from below my desk and filled it with the I-thought-might-come-handy-in-emergency stuff with a pair of spare clothes and tiptoed into the living room.
I quickly slipped on my Nike running shoes, wore my Sonata watch and almost made it out before I remembered another important thing. I cursed under my breath and tiptoe-ran into our humorously haunted bedroom where my sister, Chloe, was sleeping soundly (thankfully).
The off-white walls were veiled by the kind of artwork we found amusing; like the electrocuted skeleton touching the plug socket and the frightened black cat standing with its back arched upwards, its hair pointing out like spikes. But they didn't hold my interest at the moment.
I grabbed my kindle from below my pillowcase and once again almost made it out before I ran back to stuff the extra pillows under my sheet and then ran out. Finally.
I opened the front door and slipped outside and then shut it at a snail's pace. Our front door made a horribly loud clicking sound when it shut which was surely gonna wake my parents. Hopefully they won't think anything was wrong and go back to sleep giving me a few hours lead which was more than enough.
It was two in the morning and, yes, I was running away but for a better cause than the silly 'follow your dream' cause, and I was going to return in less than a week. I mean, that's what I kept telling myself. Meanwhile, to keep them from calling the police I had written a letter and stuck it to the main door with 'it's me, Jo' written in block handwriting so they won't miss it somehow. The letter was a simple one:
Hi, mom and dad, this isn't a suicide letter XD. It's just that I'm on a confidential mission with my team. Yeah, it sounds weird but it's true and would take at most a week. I will return and explain everything, had to leave at night, no choice. Sorry, but I'll be back before you realize it. P.S. Tell Chloe to keep away from my stuff.
I took the lift to the ground floor where the watchman lay asleep on his chair and quickly stepped out into the chilly night. I involuntarily shivered and was glad for the school jacket I now wore over my t-shirt and made it to our rendezvous point. It was nothing special like a secret passageway or the oldest tea-shop or something like that. It was the playground that came somewhere in-between both of our places.
I sat on a swing, rubbing my arms to keep the cold at bay. It wasn't working. I could swear the temperature had dropped like a rock down a cliff since I had stepped out of the lobby of our building.
Finally when I thought he might've freaked out and gone back to his cozy sleep, or worse, hadn't even woken up, he showed up walking with his own jacket hood pulled over his head and his hands stuffed in his jeans' pockets. Sam had a towering figure, with light-brown squinty eyes, which betrayed his excitement he was barely hiding beneath his poorly-practiced-grim expression. He was wearing his favourite pair of clothes, his grey t-shirt on his black jeans with his brown jacket.
"Hey," Sam said in a quaky voice.
"Took you long enough," I replied curtly, before standing up and walking out of the playground. He quickly caught up and we started walking up the road. In five minutes we realized that waiting for a taxi was pointless and an Uber taxi would rob us of our cash so we started considering the less ideal options we had.
'I can get us two cycles," I offered.
He scoffed, "Oh, yeah we would go to airport on cycles, and considering we could get there on time without running out of energy ourselves, would the watchmen even let us in? We might end up making a world record of 'First People To Go To Airport On Cycle' closely followed by 'declined by watchmen to ent -'"
