They Call Me Elise

Chapter 1 I Was Only Looking

Copyright, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

I hold tight onto my little sisters hand as we run for our lives through the trees of El Paso. After traveling long miles from Chihuahua I fight the will to stop and rest.

"Can we please take a break. Estoy muy cansado!" I look down to my little sister. "I know you're tired but we have to keep moving."

She groans but doesn't stop as we continue. We come across a small clearing and I think at this point it wouldn't hurt us if we take a little rest.

"Cinco minutos." Five minutes. I tell her.

She nods appreciatively and moves a few branch to rest. I rub small circles over her back as she sleeps. Envying even the few minutes I'm allowing her. I snap my head behind to a a row of trees. The tall trunks are skinny and seeming to reach forever. My heart starts to thump irregularly as the sound gets louder.

"Ansley. Wake up." I say, shaking her shoulder. She stirs but doesn't wake.

The noise gets louder as the sound of leaves crunching and twigs breaking gets closer. "Ansley!" I whisper yell.

"You said five minutes." She whines.

"I know but we need to go. Now!" She sits upright and looks to me questioningly. "Why?"

I pull her from the ground,"We just do!"

We start off in the opposite direction. That three minute nap must have helped her because she's now running faster than me. So I'm thrown off guard when I run into her still body.

"Ans, Why'd you st-"

"Yeah, we've got them." I look up to the tall man looming over us. He talks into a walkie talkie before spitting out a mouthful of tobacco.

The man laughs,"You naughty little girls."

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"Ah!" I bolt upright and check the bed next to me. I sigh when I see she's safe in bed, sleeping.

The nightmares have been a regular thing now. Ever since my sister and I have crossed the border into America I always fear they will somehow find us and deport us back to where we came from. A place where we are orphans and will be forced to live in a girls home.

My father left us two years ago. We came home from school one day to find our mother weeping on the couch. She had told us that papi left us for another women. She cried herself to sleep for a whole month. Refusing to eat or do anything but use the bathroom.

My mother was just starting to get back on her feet when she got sick. She laid bed rest for a week before she finally breathed her last breath. Her caregiver had told us we better get out of there before she called the authorities.

Our mother was our last relative so we would have no choice but live in an orphanage. And that was an option I didn't want to think about. What if one of us got adopted? I couldn't even imagine life without Ansley.

The day we left I contacted my mothers old friend from school and told her everything. She said she would meet us the next town over from the border five days from then. So that night Ansley and I packed up whatever we had left and ventured out into the night.

Our journey was no picnic. Ansley's relentless whining and complaining and the fact that we were low on food and sleep put me in a bad mood so I happened to snap at her a few times. That just made me want to get across the border that much more.