Runaway (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 4)

CHAPTER ONE

“Dear God, Oscar, what have you done?” Molly Egerton whispered.

She stared at the half-empty dresser drawer in her brother’s bed chamber and a horrible suspicion began to grow in the back of her mind. She yanked open the rest of the drawers and became even more suspicious when she saw that they also contained only some of Oscar’s clothes.

“What in the world?” Confused, Molly searched the drawers again. It swiftly became apparent that Oscar had sorted through his wardrobe and removed only the newest, thickest and his most favourite items of clothing. The rest remained untouched. On the surface, it didn’t look as though anything was missing. Molly, who did his laundry, knew that not all of her brother’s clothing was where it should be, though.

He is trying to cover his tracks by not taking it all.

Molly closed her eyes and began to silently pray that Oscar hadn’t done what he had threatened to do on several occasions since they had been forced to move into their aunt’s house; run away. Mentally, she calculated how long it had been since she had last seen him. It was no more than an hour at least.

“He can’t have gone too far,” she whispered.

Her heart leapt with hope that she might be able to find him. Molly swiftly searched the rest of the room for something, anything, that would give her some clues as to where he had gone. Seconds later and with a resounding bang, a no wiser Molly slid the last drawer closed and hurried over to the still partially open window. Sliding it up, she leaned out and checked the empty alley at the side of the house.

“Damn you,” she hissed in disgust when, unsurprisingly, she found the narrow path beneath the window empty.

Molly didn’t doubt that was the route he had taken to sneak out of the house, but where he had gone after that was anybody’s guess. Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken enough of his things with him to keep him warm should the weather turn cold.

“I doubt you have money either,” she grumbled in disgust.

Molly wanted to call out for him, just in case he was hiding, but daren’t alert their aunt to the fact that something was wrong. If there was one thing Aunt Edith hated more than anything it was noise of any kind. Edith wouldn’t care if Oscar had gone. She would, however, whine incessantly about the noise Molly made while searching for him.

“Am I clutching at straws here?” Molly breathed, a little stunned at the unexpected turn of events.

Treacherously, her thoughts strayed to the recent spate of kidnappings that had hit the area. She tried to dismiss it but forced herself to consider the possibility that someone might have kidnapped Oscar.

“All of those people were young women just like me. There is no reason why anybody should choose to snatch a young boy like Oscar. He can’t have been kidnapped,” she reassured herself, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

“Now, you have gone and landed me right in it, brother mine,” she snorted in disgust.

What Molly couldn’t quite comprehend was that after everything they had lost over the last six months, her brother had chosen to abandon her. He had simply packed up a handful of things he liked and had not said a word before he had simply walked out of her life. It hurt, more than anything she had endured over the last year; the constant fear for their future that they had been helpless to resolve, the worry about living with their bullying aunt, the hopelessness of being plunged into a life neither her or Oscar had wanted. It had all been there but had been bearable because it had been shared. Now, it felt like a slap in the face that her brother had taken matters – and his life – into his own youthful hands and had chosen to look after himself while leaving her to her own devices.

“Oscar, why would you leave me like that? I thought we were always going to stick together,” Molly whispered.

While he wasn’t there to answer her, Molly knew it was because he had been deeply miserable, and she had been reluctant to leave the only house that, while affording very little in the way of comfort, was at least shelter from the rain.

“We may as well be ghosts for all of the life we have here,” she whispered in quiet acknowledgement of her brother’s misery. “But you shouldn’t have left, Oscar.”

Tears stung Molly’s eyes as she stared at the neatly made bed and tried to decide what to do. The only person who mattered to her in the whole world was her brother. She tried to find a reason – any reason – to remain in the house and leave Oscar to spend a night or two out on the streets. A cold dose of reality would be enough to force him back – wouldn’t it? Molly doubted it.

Regardless of how much she searched his bed chamber, Molly knew she wouldn’t find Oscar any more than she could find a reason to stay in the house without him. Dare she leave? If she left him for a day or two, did she dare risk that Oscar wouldn’t just adapt to life on the streets and not want to go and live somewhere else with her if she could find him again?

“You are only eleven years old. How in the world do you expect to survive?” Molly closed her eyes and willed herself to stay strong and keep calm a seething mass of panic grew rapidly and threatened to suffocate her.

“Molly? What are you doing up there?”

Molly jerked at the sound of her aunt’s domineering command.

“Nothing,” Molly replied with a sigh.