"So, where exactly are we going?" Keala huffed, her backpack swinging on her shoulders as she hurried to keep up with Aeron's quick pace.
"The bus station. Go back to school." Aeron's eyes darted back and forth as he crossed the busy street, watching for speeding cars or stupid drivers. He turned as he reached the sidewalk and found that Keala, his youngest cousin, was still following him. "Keala!" he yelled impatiently. "Go home!"
"Aeron, I want to come with you," the seven-year-old girl whispered, looking up at Aeron with her big brown doe eyes.
Aeron stared at her, trying to harden his heart to the look she was giving him. He opened his mouth to speak… but found himself closing it and reluctantly turning away, giving her unspoken permission to continue to follow him.
"Aunt Amy doesn't know you're here," he said as he continued down the crowded sidewalk.
"Beni doesn't know you're here either," the little girl pointed out, hoisting her purple backpack up again and plunging through the crowd after her biggest cousin.
"I'm big enough to look after myself."
"Then so am I."
Aeron rolled his eyes and renewed his efforts to push through the crowd, half-hoping that Keala would get too tired to continue her pursuit.
"Hey!" A man wearing a ragged hoodie and muddied sweatpants latched onto Keala's purple pegasus backpack. "That's mine! Give it back, little girl!
"Ouch! Let go of me!" Keala struggled to retain hold of her favourite backpack; the man was three times her size and was obviously going to quickly obtain the pack.
Aeron turned at the sound of the scuffle. "Hey!" he shouted and ran toward Keala and her attacker. "Leave her alone!" He rammed full-force into the man, knocking him away from her cousin. The guy let go of the backpack and fell to the pavement, yelping as his tailbone suffered the brunt of the force. Aeron stood protectively between the man and Keala, glaring at the man on the ground. Muttering to himself, the guy slinked off, presumably to accost another innocent. Poking her head out from behind Aeron, Keala stuck out her tongue at the man's retreating form.
"Are you okay?" Aeron knelt down to Keala's eye level.
"Yeah. That man was trying to take my pegasus backpack, but I fought him off." Keala proudly displayed her backpack, the handle hanging by a thread and a long gash cut through the flimsy material.
Aeron rolled his eyes again and stood back up, any concern he'd had replaced with annoyance. "Sure. A scrawny seven-year-old girl fought off a full-grown male attacker, and her fifteen-year-old cousin just stood there and watched it happen. Totally."
Keala studiously ignored him, inspecting the various injuries her backpack had suffered.
Aeron groaned in frustration. Keala obviously wasn't going anywhere, and while he had no love of small children, he couldn't bear to think of the look on his Aunt's face when he told her that her youngest child had been injured or even kidnapped on the San Diego streets because he had been too careless. He did love his aunt. And she could be scary when she wanted to - yet another reason to take good care of Keala. He groaned a second time. There was only one feasible option - the one he had been trying to avoid ever since he'd sneaked out of his bedroom at four that morning. He would not be going alone, after all.
"Can I have a piggy-back ride?" Keala asked him.
And, for the third time, Aeron groaned. As he hoisted his youngest and, until recently, his favorite cousin onto his back, he realized that he would be doing a lot of that over the next five hours.