Kids always love Saturday mornings, and Saturday morning is never a quite morning in the Miller household. Brittney was in the den flipping through TV channels to see if any good shows or movies were on, Jeanette was gathering a stack of books she wanted to read, while Eleanor happily cooked breakfast in the kitchen for the family.
"Okay everybody!" Eleanor called out, "Breakfast is ready!"
Brittney was the first to arrive to the kitchen and promptly took her seat at the table.
"What are we having?" Brittney asked rather impatiently. "Oatmeal, toast, and orange juice." Said Eleanor just as Jeanette walked in. Eleanor served her sisters their breakfast, but something was a miss in the kitchen, and it didn't go unnoticed.
"Hey... wh-where's Miss Miller?" asked Jeanette, somewhat concerned. Like all senior citizens, Miss Miller was always up and awake before sunrise, but today, something wasn't right. Eleanor walked out of the kitchen and to the bottom of the stairs, and called up to Miss Miller. "Miss Miller? Breakfast is ready!"
No answer.
Eleanor was worried a little, so she walked upstairs, and knocked on Miss Miller's bedroom door. "Miss Miller?" she asked so softly, and in an a varied tone, to which Eleanor still received no answer. Eleanor opened the door to Miss Miller's room and walked in to find her still in bed... but something tells her she wasn't sleeping... moments later, Eleanor trudged back into the kitchen, her eyes wide and red, and her cheeks completely drained of color.
"What's the matter, Eleanor?" Asked Jeanette. "You look like you just saw a ghost or something."
Eleanor looked up at her sisters in horror, and tried to tell them what had happened, but words weren't coming out.
"What is it?" Brittney asked.
Finally, Eleanor let it out in a scream. "Miss Miller... is dead!"
"What?!" Both Brittney and Jeanette yelped out at the same time. "Are you sure?" Jeanette asked, not wanting to believe her little sister. "Positive!" Eleanor said in a panicky tone. "She's not moving, she's not breathing... she's not doing anything, she's just laying there!"
"Confirm it!" Brittney demanded of her brainy sister, Jeanette, so a few seconds later, Jeanette had checked Miss Miller's pulse, listened to her chest, placed her hands on her cold face... it was true... she was dead.
"I can't believe it..." Jeanette mumbled, on the verge of tears, "She's dead... our mother... our mom... she's... dead!"
The girls felt horrible. All of them. Especially Brittney, because the night before, Miss Miller had grounded her for bringing home yet another report card with all Fs, and the last thing she had said to her adoptive mother before locking herself in her room was 'I never want to see you ever again! I hate you Miss Miller!'
"I'm such a bitch." Brittney said out loud.
"What?" asked her sisters.
"Remember last night? I... I told Miss Miler that I... that I never wanted to see her again? And that I hate her?" Brittney burst into tears, as did Jeanette and Eleanor, as they huddled together.
"You didn't mean it... did you Britt?" Asked a choked up Eleanor.
"Of course I didn't! I didn't hate Miss Miller! I loved her! She was the best mom I ever had! She was the only mom I ever had! I wish I never said any of those things to her! I wish I never fought with her! I wish she was still here now so I could tell her sorry I am for being such a bitch!"
Later that afternoon, a coroner had determined that Miss Beatrice Miller passed away in her sleep, sometime around the two o'clock hour that morning, of natural causes. Because she had no other relatives, there was no need to turn the funeral into a big deal, so the only ones who showed up were the chipettes, and Dave with the chipmunks.
"It really is a shame," said Dave sympathetically. "But, I guess it was just time for her to go..." Dave added as a tear rolled down his cheek, while each chipmunk consoled his respective chipette.
"I'm sorry Miss Miller died, Brittney," Alvin told his girlfriend. "Me too," was her tearful response.
"This is quite a sad occasion, isn't it?" Simon asked of his favorite girl. "It sure is," said a sad Jeanette.
"Miss Miller was really the only relative you had, wasn't she?" Asked a teary eyed Theodore. "Yeah, she really was... I don't know what we're going to do without her now." Said Eleanor.
Brittney knew what they had to do. After the Sevilles left the funeral home, the Miller girls stayed behind to pay their respects to their mother a little longer, while Brittney told the girls what they had to do.
"You realize what's going to happen to us now that we don't have a mother?" Brittney asked hesitantly, though her sisters were too upset to think straight. "They're going to take us away! They're going to split us up! Send us to the orphanges!"
Jeanette and Eleanor snapped out it then.
"But... but... maybe... maybe Dave could let us live with him and the boys?" Suggested Eleanor. "It's out of the question!" Barked Brittney. "Remember what happened the last time he tried to adopt us? We couldn't stop fighting with the boys! Having to put up with three boys is bad enough, but three boys who are fighting with three girls? It was too much for him! We can't go through that again!"
"But we've got nowhere else to go Brittany," responded Jeanette, "no one else to turn to!"
"That's why we have no other choice... Dave won't adopt us now, and if no one adopts us, they'll send us away to the orphange... that's why our only choice at this point is to run away!"
That was an entire week ago when Brittany suggested that. A week later, the chipettes were sitting in an alleyway behind some trashcans, their clothes had been torn to shreds, and they only brought enough extra outfits and blankets for warmth, but by then their extra clothes had become filthy with debris, or oil stains, so they were running very low. Jeanette's glasses were broken from where she had fallen off the top of a dumpster, and landed flat on her face. The dumpsters were the best source for them to find food. Any food they found, Brittany made sure her sisters had more to eat than she did. Eleanor had gotten chubbier, not because of what she was eating, as a matter of fact, she had been eating less and less all week. The problem was lack of exercize. What a lot of people never realized that Eleanor wasn't really fat, as she was muscular, which was achieved from her playing so many sports at school, and participating in soccer games, basketball games, football games, volleyball games, all kinds of games for each season after school. Now, all the muscle Eleanor had built up turned into flab because she was doing nothing to keep fit. All this, meanwhile, Brittney was exhausted. She suddenly found herself in the position of being mother to her little sisters, and sometimes, she felt she couldn't handle it.
The afternoon skies grew a dark shade of blue, as Brittney walked back to their makeshift campsite with some more firewood, while Jeanette managed to get the fire going. They all sat around the fire, watched it burn, the only sounds they could here were the cracking of the fire, the traffic of the city, the sighs of their mouths, and the gurgles of their stomaches.
"This won't last forever Brittney." Jeanette finally spoke up, after she had rarely spoken all week long.
"Huh?"
"The authorities will more than likely find us eventually... we can't keep this up, it would be pointless."
"I have to agree," added Eleanor, "maybe we shouldn't have run away?"
"Then what?" Asked Brittney. "Have them split us up? Take us all away to different orphanges? And never see each other ever again?"
Jeanette and Eleanor both knew it was senseless to argue with Brittney.
"Well make it through this... we have two more years before we're legally adults, right Jeanette?"
"Right." Responded Brittney with a sigh.
"If we can keep this up for that long, we'll make it! After that, we'll just have to play the game of life by ear. Come on, let's get some sleep..."
Jeanette and Eleanor both slowly shook their heads as Brittney got up and covered the both of them with whatever blankets they had. Brittney always wanted to make sure her sisters were as warm, and as comfortable as possible, so she always let them have all the blankets, while she bundled up in newspaper, while tucking her arms into her shredded sweater. But even then, Brittney had her doubts about their situation. She kept driving it into her minds that she and her sisters will make it through this, and once they're officially eighteen, they can start a whole new life for themselves... maybe even one day reunite with their boyfriends. But until then, all they can do now is live life on the streets, and hope that nothing seriously bad will happen to them.