I wake up in the middle of the night to hear Justin and Corinne talking in the kitchen, they've been doing that a lot lately. I can't go back to sleep now, so I get up and tiptoe down the hallway until I can hear what they're saying. They're trying to keep their voices quiet so they don't wake us up, but the walls here are so thin that it's pointless.
I peek around the corner so I can see them, Corinne is sitting in one of the chairs while Justin leans against the stove puffing on a cigarette.
"But what are we supposed to do? Immigrate to Laja?" Corinne says, "The process to become legal citizens takes years to go through with, and even then, what would happen once we're there? We'd have to start all over again, find work, a decent enough house, a school for these kids. I don't want to stay here, that's obvious as hell, but leaving the country is near impossible, especially with Hatari on the brink of war with Laja."
Justin rubs his face, he's probably tired from all that's been happening.
"We can find a way to get out of Hatari and into Laja, under the radar. I'll figure it out, I'll do whatever it takes to get us away from this God forsaken place as soon as possible."
He puts out the cigarette and crosses the room to where Corinne is sitting. He holds her hands and looks at her all mushy. Adults are so gross.
"Trust me. I'll get us the hell out of here. I promise." Justin says quietly.
Oh crap, I need to sneeze. Okay, I just need to focus on not sneezing. I'm a badass 8 year old who faces off robbers during the day. Badasses don't have time to snee-e-e-
"Achoo!"
Corinne and Justin immediately look in my direction, I jump back and hope they think it was some weirdo outside. I try to hold my breath so they can't hear me.
"Leo, I know you're over there."
Damn, they found me out. I peep out from behind the wall.
"We knew you were spying." Justin says, "You're a pretty good ninja but you can't fool us just yet."
"What are you guys talking about?"
Justin rubs my head, making my hair stick up even more. I shove his hand away.
"Nothing you need to worry about, kid."
"But I want to know!" I insist.
Corinne pulls me over to where she's sitting.
"Sorry Leo, sometimes there's things just us adults need to think about on our own. We'll let you know soon, okay?"
Her logic sucks, but I nod my head. Corinne pulls me into a hug and kisses the top of my head.
"See you tomorrow, bud. Get some rest."
"Okaaay."
I slowly walk back to my room and crawl under the covers. I can't fall asleep for a long time, but as I finally close my eyes I can still hear Corinne and Justin murmuring to each other.
🗙🗙🗙
The next morning at the breakfast table, Justin looks like he has two black eyes as he switches between a cigarette and a cup of cinnamon coffee, which he usually only drinks on Christmas or New Years. It looks like Corinne tried to hide her sleepiness a little better, at least she used some concealer. Still, I can tell she's tired because she keeps rubbing her eyes and drinking cup after cup of green tea.
Breakfast is sugary cereal. It used to be my favorite. And then we started having it every morning for the past month. It started tasting gross after the second week.
"Cooorinne. Why can't we have bacon and eggs for breakfast? Or pancakes? I'm so tired of cereal!" I flop down on the table in front of my bowl.
"Leo, I get it. We're all tired of cereal, and if I could get eggs and bacon then I would. But you saw those guys with the guns yesterday, it's getting really dangerous out there and we haven't had any time to go to the stores. Most of them won't even have fresh produce there, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to have rotting meat for breakfast. Cereal's the best we can do for right now."
"Okay, I'm sorry Corinne."
She rubs my head and she knows I hate it.
"I forgive you. If you really want to, you can have a handful of grapes from the freezer."
She pulls out a bunch of grapes from our half-broken freezer and holds them out for me, I try to get as big of a handful as possible. It's a little game we all play, the handful game. Whenever we have food, we need to make sure we only get enough to fit in our hand. But I know Justin doesn't play along, he always gets the smallest handful out of all of us.
I eat my grapes slowly, letting them melt in my mouth until they're soft like normal grapes. They don't taste like normal grapes, they taste like what a freezer-water popsicle would taste like. I don't complain about them though, better than cereal I guess.
While we're all quiet for the time being, Justin pulls out a map and finally tells us what him and Corinne were talking about last night.
"I was up early this morning searching up train schedules. It looks like there's a freight train that runs from Hatari to Laja. If we pack up all our things this afternoon and leave at dusk, we can jump on one of the trains and ride through Batil during the night. Tomorrow morning we should be on the outskirts of Laja."
"And then what?" Molly asks.
"I...haven't thought that far ahead."