As he stepped across the threshold of his house, Warren barely had time to carefully close the door behind him and the girl before his mom called out from the kitchen.

"Warren! Where have you been?" She said, rounding around the corner and appearing at the opposite end of the hallway.

She gasped as she noticed Alex.

"Oh…my god."

She gestured wildly for him to follow her and covered the couch with an old blanket.

"What happened to her?" She asked, wildly rushing to the kitchen and fumbling about for the first aid kit.

"I don't know," Warren answered her truthfully, "Found her along the short cut."

Returning to the couch with kit in hand, his mother shook his head at him.

"I don't want you taking that street anymore…who knows what might be there now that this…" She trailed off, dabbing at the dried blood on Alex's neck with a soaked rag.

Warren looked annoyed at his mother's words, but the look softened.

"We'll just keep her here for now, I'll clean her up, and---" The woman's stream of words stopped as she noticed the little girl standing cautiously next to the couch.

"Who are you?" She questioned the girl kindly.

"Ellie…she's my sister," Ellie answered. Her tears had slowed now to barely a trickle every few minutes, but she had remained stubbornly right next to Warren the entire way there, refusing to leave her sister.

Mrs. Peace looked up at Warren, who shrugged.

"Alex. One of Stronghold and Hippy-girl's friends. Goes to my school," He mumbled.

"Well then," Mrs. Peace said, looking back to Ellie, "You can stay here as well. We'll find out what happened when your sister wakes up. I'll unfold the other couch for you, you just stay here with Warren while I get it ready."

Ellie didn't say anything, but Mrs. Peace didn't seem to require an answer. She immediately set off for a hall closet. She returned within moments, her arms laden with sheets and blankets, and busied herself with preparing the other couch.

"We'll have to be sure to call the Strongholds and Layla later. I'm sure they'll want to know if anything happened to her. We don't have her phone number, so I suppose the rest of her family will just have to wait until later," Mrs. Peace rambled distractedly, still too busy with the pullout couch to take note of whether anyone was even paying attention to her.

"It's a good thing it's Friday. Now she'll have a full weekend to get all better, and for us to figure out what happened. I'm sure it was nothing…maybe just a dog attack or a bicycle accident. Do you know whether she owns a bicycle Warren? No, I guess you wouldn't…we'll just have to wait to find out."

Her son had admittedly not been giving her his undivided attention. In fact, the floor seemed to be the only thing on his mind. Warren was leaning against the kitchen counter that separated the kitchen area from the family room. His eyes were on the ground, and he said nothing to satisfy his mother's endless questions.

Alex was still lying on the couch, her head drooping off the side of a pillow. Her neck still showed an orange-red color on the back , despite Mrs. Peace's cleaning. In the light of the house Ellie could see her more clearly than in the dim alley. A few more tears slipped down her small impish face, but she stared at her sister's unconscious body without blinking, seemingly unaware of anything else.

"Sissy…"