Chapter 10: Adapting to my new life
Lissa and I were picking up our pictures from the store. We had taken the babies to get their pictures yesterday. "We need to leave Portland, Lis."
"What do you mean, Rose? I thought we were staying?" she asked.
"Not now. We've been in Portland for a while now and if we don't leave, then the Academy is going to find us."
"If we go we'll need to get new phones and new numbers, because they'll track us if we don't."
"Yeah, I know." Lissa was driving and I was in the passenger seat. I stared out the window. The sun was setting and it showed off many colors of orange, yellow, and pink. It brought back memories of my past with Dimitri. 'Why are you still running, Rose?' My mind was asking questions that itself could never answer. I kept getting the feeling of wanting to grab for something. Anything. The answers. To everything. I knew that I would never get all my answers. But, there was just one I was determined to get: 'Will I ever find love again?'
Lissa pulled into the parking lot. I got out and opened the back door to get Emmalyn out. I started unbuckling her. "Get in, Rose. Now." Lissa demanded.
"What? Why?" I asked.
"Do not question me, woman. Get in, now."
"Lissa, what is wrong with you-" I turned around and seen Stan Alto, a guardian from the Academy. "Holy shit." I mumbled under my breath. I quickly buckled Emmalyn back in her car seat. Lissa and I quickly got back in the car. We hurriedly got out of the parking lot.
"What are we going to do, Rose?" Lissa asked. You could tell, all-so-well, that she was freaking out.
"Lis, I don't know. I guess we go home and just hope to hell that they don't find us. Give me your phone."
"It's in my purse. Why do you want it?" I searched in her purse for her phone.
"Oh, I don't know. I'm going to text Aaron and ask him how he's been. Because, that's completely normal. Right?"
"Rose, you can't do that! What are you thinking?!" I started to turn off my phone, and Lissa's. "What are you doing, Rose?"
"Turning off your phone."
"But, I thought you were…" she stopped mid-sentence.
"You're the blondest blonde I know. You know that?" I gave Lissa a dumb found look.
"Do now. No harm done."
"Good." After I turned off the phones, I kept thinking about us leaving. 'If we left tonight,' I thought, 'we would have to start packing right away. But, it would take us at least a day to pack all our things.'
"Rose, we need to leave Portland. Tonight or tomorrow. We cannot stat any longer."
"I'm aware, Lis. But, we're staying. You even said that those lucky bastards are going to catch up to us one day. So, we're staying. I'm not running, and neither are those babies."
"Are you out of your mind, Rosemarie?! If we stay, you will never see those babies again! Do you understand that?!"
"Like I've said before, 'Bring all you got bitches, because it's going to take a lot more than what you got, to get those babies.' And Aaron's right, we can't keep running. And that someday starts with today.
A couple weeks have gone by, and surprisingly the Academy has not found us. Lissa and I have only made a few stops a week for things we needed. We have kept our phones off so it would be harder for the Academy to find us.
In the meantime, I've just been adjusting to my new life with the babies. They've been keeping me up, late hours into the night, and sometimes, during the day, Lissa watches them so I can catch up on some sleep. Raising two babies is the hardest thing I've had to do. But, I would do almost anything to protect my babies. The past few weeks have been tough. And the days I asked Lissa to watch the babies, were the days that she didn't go to work. So, we lost money. We talked about me going and getting a job, so Lissa can stay home with the babies, but we both agreed that it was my duty to stay home and protect them. There were nights that I stayed up crying, wondering why I had to keep running from Dimitri. And it was because of the babies. The babies needed to be protected. And for them to be protected, I had to run from the one most important thing of my life, Lissa kept telling me that it was my heart testing me to see how far our love would go until we both broke and gave up on running from each other. But, every time she said that, I knew I wasn't going to. Because, if I did that, it'd be like giving up on Lilyana and Emmalyn. And that's the last thing I'll ever do.