Chapter 4 (eight years earlier)

Too many years

Fighting back tears...
Why can't the past
Just die...?

               -"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" from Phantom of the Opera

"Frank! Frank! Francis, wake up! Come on, you got to get up. We're visiting Aunt Bernadette today."  Helen Sullivan tried to wake up her son.

               "I'm up, Mom," Frank said. Francis "Frank" Sullivan was ten years old. He lived a happy life, with his parents and younger sister, Amanda. Their apartment was in Manhattan, but they visited Brooklyn often, because his Aunt Bernadette and her son, Andrew lived there.

               Frank loved visiting Brooklyn. His cousin and their next-door neighbor, Erik, were his best friends. The three of them would always play pirates. Amanda was always a princess or queen that they had taken hostage.

               That day, the three friends had decided to take a walk down to the docks. They made up their minds and left, not telling anyone. Five minutes later, Bernadette and Helen were calling for them, wanting them to run an errand. Since they couldn't find the boys, they sent Amanda instead.

               Fifteen minutes later, she returned to the building. Only, it wasn't the same happy place, it was a giant crypt. Somehow, in the short amount of time she was gone, the house had caught on fire. Everyone in the house had been trapped! Thinking that Erik, Andrew, and Francis were in the building, she ran all the way home to Manhattan, in order to tell her father. Much later, she burst into the apartment, crying. Her father, who had been working at a factory, snapped. Blaming her for his losses, he tried to kill her. Luckily, the lady upstairs heard the fight and called the cops. They came and took him away.

               The boys weren't in the house though; they were talking with the newest of the Brooklyn newsies, a boy by the name of Anthony Higgins.

               "Andrew, Erik, don't you guys live in the tenement on 6th street?" the Brooklyn leader, Warhorse, asked.

               "Yeah, why?" Andrew asked.

               "Because, it caught on fire, there weren't any survivors," Warhorse said bluntly. (All those years on the street made him hard.) The four boys, Anthony accompanied them, ran back to Manhattan in order to break the news to Frank's father. They got there just in time to see him being carted away by the police.

               "Excuse me sir, why are you arresting him?" Erik asked one of the police officers.

               "He tried to kill some girl," the officer answered, then he left. The boys were left alone in the world.

SO's!

Ashley: I'm glad you like the story. Well, here's more about Amanda. Let's see how it turns out.