The ABC's of My Life: Abandonment, Bad Guys, and Capture|| Prologue||

Prologue: My Happy Life - sort of

"Guess what?" I yelled through the bathroom door.

"What?" my sister replied, her voice muffled by the sound of the shower running.

"I'm starting a load of laundry."

"Nooo!" she groaned. "I'm going to freeze to death!" I laughed, but only because this was one of the few ways I could annoy her without getting in serious trouble.

"Alright. You can do the laundry if you want. But this is the time I'm doing it, and that's not going to change unless you do."

"Ugh. Fine. But if I get hypothermia, it’s your fault!"

"Why do you like to exaggerate so much? Whatever. Don’t answer that. You've been warned." The thing with out water heater was that if you start the washing machine, the water in the shower goes cold. So I normally do the laundry - when it's my turn - when my twenty-two-year-old sister takes a shower. Duh.

After nearly tripping and falling on my face because of a pair of leggings hanging out of the laundry basket – my sister's, of course – I dumped it all out and sorted it. The annoying part always comes first, right? Throwing one pile into the open machine and turning it on, I listened for the tell-tale screech of the water going cold. After hearing it, I nodded. Danica was my alarm system. If I don't hear her scream when the washing machine is on, I know something's wrong with the water heater or the washing machine. And she's free, too.
And where are our parents amidst the screaming and the thirteen-year-old girl doing laundry, you may ask? Who knows? Three years ago, when I was ten and Danni was nineteen, they ran off, or escaped, as they might put it. They never really liked or appreciated their three kids. I'm almost positive me, Danni and my brother, Matt, were all "accidents," to use the common term. Matthew was twenty-nine and still lived with us. He'd never moved out, hadn't even bothered to look for a job or an apartment. My dad actually once called him "a lazy-assed freeloader." Shows how careful they were with language around kids, right?

Anyways, Matt was, of course, too much of a bum to take care of us when they left, so Kari was left to support the two of us. I still think he went to live at his current girlfriend's house, until he got kicked out. He probably alternates between the street and girls' houses, I’ll bet you anything. It's just the kind of person he was.

So my sister and I lived in a tiny apartment until recently, when we were able to rent the small but nice house we live in from some old guy who had too much money and bought a house for nothing really. Since he had so much already, he didn't even charge that much for rent. I could've probably paid it every month from the babysitting money I make, since that's one of the few jobs a girl can have at age thirteen. They can't get a real job, can she? Stupid child labor laws. They should have exceptions for willing and able children who need the money.

~

And that nice little prologue, you could call it, is the only really pleasant life that Danica and I ever had. Until we got evicted for no apparent reason, and met a few people even the strangest or bravest – so they might call themselves – humans on earth would be absolutely terrified of.