Jeanette and Eleanor continued to sleep though the morning, they hadn't been sleeping very at all, so last night was really the best night's sleep they had since before they left home after Miss Miller died.
Brittney, on the other hand, was up early that morning, but she didn't want to disturb her sisters, especially considering she had a surprise for them.
"Jeanette? Eleanor?" Brittney cooed softly at her slumbering sisters. "Wake up girls, look what I got!"
Jeanette and Eleanor slowly woke up, stretched out their aching bones and muscles.
"Brittney?" Jeanette mumbled, "can't you let us sleep just a little longer?"
"After I risked my neck getting THIS for you?"
Brittney shoved a box towards her sisters. "Go ahead, open it!"
Jeanette leaned her head to the side with a skeptical look on her face, so Eleanor opened it and found a dozen freshly baked doughnuts. Both of their eyes widened, both of their jaws dropped, saliva dripped from both of their mouths, all this before they looked up at their smiling big sister.
"Where did you get this?!" Jeanette exclaimed.
"It's nothing," Brittney assured them, "You girls eat up now, six for Jeanette, six for Eleanor!"
"But what about you, Brittney?" Eleanor asked in concern.
"Oh, don't worry about me, you girls eat up."
Brittney sat back down on the ground and watched her sisters gorge themselves in the doughnuts she brought them, she did feel a pint of jealousy, watching her sisters eat like pigs on the first dose of real food they've had in a week, but Brittney had to remind herself that she was the one who got the doughnuts for them, not her. But she sure was hungry, and her sisters knew she was.
"Come on Brittney, have some doughnuts!" Eleanor offered.
"No..." Brittney said sadly.
"Look Brittney," Jeanette added, "there's enough here for all three of us... each of us can have four doughnuts!"
"Yeah, have some doughnuts Brittney," Eleanor continued, "you know you're just as hungry as we are, you can't keep sacrificing everything for us, you need to do a little for yourself."
Brittney paused for a moment, but looked down.
"You girls are my top priority right now," Brittney told them, "I want you to have the best food I can find so you won't starve to death... I want you girls to have the most blankets so you won't freeze to death... I just want you girls to be alright... I don't need anything..."
Jeanette and Eleanor both looked at each other slightly confused, Brittney wasn't speaking very clearly, could it be her malnurished stomach? Or was she still so upset to the point she can't think straight? Either way, they gave Brittney the four doughnuts they weren't going to eat.
"Please eat them Brittney." Jeanette said loving to her sister.
"Please." Eleanor agreed.
Brittney sighed, and accepted the doughnuts. They were so sweet and delicious, Brittney made such a big mess salivating all over herself.
"But Brittney," Jeanette began to ask, "you didn't tell us where you got these?"
"Wuh bok thez Kwippy Kweam duhwuh eh?" Brittney spoke with her mouth full, pointing out she obviously got them from Krispy Kreme.
"Where did you find the money to get them?" Eleanor asked.
Brittney paused briefly before she swallowed her last bite. "I... uh... didn't... I... sort of... just took them..."
"You stole these doughtnuts?" Jeanette asked.
"Kind of..."
"How do you 'kind of' steal doughnuts?"
"Look, I snuck to the Krispy Kreme down the street, someone ordered a dozen doughnuts, but they stepped into the bathroom before the order was ready, so I just sort of swiped it, and left the building as fast as I could, nobody saw me!"
Now Jeanette and Eleanor were the ones who looked down in the dumps.
"That wasn't the right thing to do, Brittney." Eleanor told her.
"What else could I do?" Brittney asked her. "We haven't eaten anything real in days, just garbage, if we're going to survive, sometimes, we'll have to resort to drastic measures."
How could they argue with logic like that? They couldn't. They too realized that they would have to resort to drastic measures if they were going to survive the way Brittney wanted them to survive. It's no secret that both Jeanette and Eleanor were beginning to think maybe being spilt up and sent to different orphanges wasn't as bad as they thought. At least they'd have actual bunks to sleep in, and meals, instead of having to dig through dumpsters to find food, or sleep on and under piles of blankets on the ground. But they knew that deep down, they wouldn't make it apart from each other, all they have is each other, they need each other.
The afternoon wore on, Brittney decided it was time for change.
"Alright girls, let's move out!" She declared.
"Move out?" Jeanette asked. "What do you mean?" Eleanor added.
"We've stuck around here for too long, it's time to find new shelter somewhere..."
"I have an idea..." Jeanette began to say, "couldn't we return to our old tree house?"
It was a great idea! The best idea any of them heard in a while, but there was one problem... there tree house wasn't there anymore, let alone the tree... it was now the parking lot for a fast food restaurant.
"So much for going home..." Jeanette said sadly.
"Well, while we're here, maybe we can at least try to get some more food..." Brittney suggested.
The chipettes gazed through the front window and watched as customers enjoyed their meals of hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, fish sandwiches, french fries, milkshakes, coke, pepsi, apple pie slices, chocolate cake pieces, it all looked so delicious, and their little stomaches were growling loudly. Shortly afterwards, the three of them had snuck into the supply room, Jeanette grabbed a small carts, while Brittney and Eleanor loaded up with boxes of frozen beef patties, chicken patties, fish patties, frozen fries, anything they could get their little hands on.
"How can we eat this?" Asked Eleanor, "it's all frozen!"
"Don't worry about that..." Jeanette mused out loud as she quietly snuck into the kitchen, making sure no one saw her, as she swiped a large skillet, and a spatula before sneaking back into the supply room. "We can cook this all over our campfire!"
Brittney complimented Jeanette on her quick thinking. "You're a genius, Jeanette! Now let's get out of here before they find us!"
The chipettes snuck out of the restaurant and ran off for their next campsite.
Later that afternoon, Jeanette and Eleanor were walking down the empty street in the area of where they had set up camp. This time, they set up camp in an old, crumbling section of town, and after they finished their mid-day meal, Jeanette and Eleanor tried to fight boredom by checking out what each storefront used to be, and maybe find one that wasn't locked for them to seek shelter in.
"I'm worried about Brittney," Eleanor said to Jeanette, "she's doing so much for us, and nothing for herself..."
"I know," Jeanette replied, "she's trying so hard to make sure we're okay, she's exhausting herself in the process... I guess since she's the oldest, she feels obligated to mother us..."
As Jeanette and Eleanor pressed on, they didn't realize they were being watched.
"If we could only convince her she'd done more than enough for us?" Eleanor suggested.
"We can't," contradicted Jeanette, "she's just too thick headed to realize..."
"What do we have here?" A gruff voice interrupted the girls, causing them to slowly turn around to see who called them out. They found themselves being encountered by a street gang. There were six of them, and the girls could tell by the look on their faces that were looking for trouble. Jeanette and Eleanor took off as fast as they could, but the gang wasn't about to let them get away, so they split up, three of them chased after Jeanette, while the other three went after Eleanor. The gang members were able to grab the girls and tackle them to the ground. That's when they all prepared to rape the two girls. Jeanette was too scared to even attempt to fight back as the three gang members, which included the gang's ring leader, roughly ripped her shredded clothes from her body, but Eleanor, on the other hand, was stronger, and more courageous than Jeanette, so she actually put up a fight. This made her attackers angry.
"Hey, Cheeks! The little fat one here's putting up a fight!" One of the gang members shouted to his leader.
"Is that so?" He responded as he got off of Jeanette, signalling the others to do the same. "Well then, we'll just have to teach her a little lesson then, won't we?"
Jeanette pulled what clothes she had left back on her body as she watched the rest of the gang walk over to the scuffle. She so wanted to help her baby sister, but she knew she wasn't strong enough to take them all on. She needed Brittney's help. Brittney could bring tears to a grown man's eyes. Jeanette picked herself up, and quietly ran off to get Brittany for help, until...
BANG-BANG-BANG.
Jeanette froze instantly. She heard nothing after that. She slowly turned around and quietly gasped when she saw the gang standing over Eleanor's body, and a stream of blood flowed from where she laid. One gang member looked over his shoulder and saw Jeanette had vanished.
"The little nerd got away, Cheeks, what are we gonna do with the fat one here?" He asked their ring leader.
"Grab that bag over there, and we'll just drop her in the ocean!" He ordered, so two of the gang members walked over to the nearby dumpster, grabbed the large, black trashbag, which they loaded up Eleanor's body in, tied it off, and pressed on the for the docks at the edge of the area to toss her body into the ocean.
Jeanette was devastated.
Back at the campsite, Brittney, who didn't hear anything, was fixing up two sleeping spots for her sisters, when a pale Jeanette returned.
"Find anything?" Asked Brittney, who wasn't even really facing Jeanette. Jeanette didn't answer, so Brittney looked up to see if she didn't hear her or anything.
"Hey, you okay? Where's Eleanor?"
"She's gone."
"'Gone'? You... you mean she's...?" Brittney began to ask hesistantly.
"This gang came up out of nowhere... they tried to raped us, but Eleanor was putting up a fight with them... so they all ganged up on her... I came to get you for help... then... then..." Jeanette couldn't finish. She fell to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and cried hard.
"They what?" Brittney asked, on the verge of tears herself. It took a while for Jeanette to hold the tears back, but she finally did long enough to finish telling Brittney what had happened.
"I heard three gunshots... I turned around, and there she was, lying in a pool of her own blood..."
Brittney slumped down to her knees as well. She couldn't believe this was happening. First her mother, now her baby sister. Brittney hung her head in distress.
"It's all my fault!" Jeanette cried out. "I should have tried to take them on... but... but..."
"No," Brittney said to her, "it wasn't your fault, Jeanette... you did what you thought was the right thing to do..."
"I ran like a coward..."
"You just said you were on your way to get me for help!"
"I was supposed to protect her... I'm her big sister, too... I let her down... I let them kill her..."
Jeanette cried harder and harder, just the sight of her crying made Brittney cry even harder as well. They wrapped their arms around each other, and sat there in the alley crying with each other, each devastated at the loss of their little sister.
"Besides... it was my fault..." Brittney finally spoke up through her tears. "It was my idea to live like this... and look where it's gotten us?"
Jeanette wiped her eyes and nose and waited for Brittney to say something more.
"If this is the gang's turf, we need to get out or here!"