A Great Easter Mishap

Chapter 1

Niky Dalton grunted as she made yet another unsuccessful attempt to swing a large bag onto her shoulder. Like for all her previous tries, she almost toppled over from its great weight. She huffed and glared at it as if she were daring it to become lighter. Slipping past the two distracted guards alone was a feat that was quite unlikely to ever happen again. The penitentiary was barely half a kilometre away, but Niky was walking what seemed to be like forever. The brown-haired young woman glanced back at the gray stone building with worry; while no alarm was sounded, people, especially her siblings, were most likely to have noticed her absence by now. Niky opened the bag to look once more at its content. Chocolate Easter eggs, and a whole lot of them. It was fun while she stole every single one of them from their hiding places inside the prison, but now she was really beginning to regret her impulsive act.

"Oi! Where do you think you're going?"

A startled yelp escaped from Niky as she whirled around in panic... only to come face-to-face with her younger sister Avianna Dalton, who was cheekily grinning from ear to ear with her hands planted on her hips.

"Oh, it's just you..." Niky sighed as she tried to calm her heart that was threatening to escape from her ribcage.

The eighteen-year-old took a falsely scandalized expression.

"Just me?" she asked. "And what were you thinking, escaping without me with this delicious treasure?"

"I, uh..."

Avianna snickered at her sister's distraught face, but sobered immediately as she instead looked even more worried.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked softly, putting a hand on Niky's shoulder. "Is everything alright?"

The older woman slowly shook her head and began her explanation.

"When I saw the warden and Miss Betty placing these eggs around the prison, I just couldn't resist... I collected them all in this bag and I thought about hiding them. But then I got a better idea. What if I used them to escape? So that's what I did: I waited for the right moment where neither Pete nor Emmett were looking and I slipped past them. The problem is that I haven't thought what I would do after I've ran off and now here I am, leaving a trail behind me with ten kilos worth of chocolate that I won't even be able to eat... Oh God... Miss Betty will surely punish me for this... or even worse, Averell, who surely must have wanted to have some of the chocolate eggs..."

She fearfully looked up to the taller girl and was completely floored to see her staring seriously back at her. No upwards turn of her lips, no mirthful sparkle in her green eyes. She had expected her to burst out laughing and tease her about the ridiculousness of the situation she stuck herself in. None of that showed on her younger sister's face. Instead, Avianna grabbed the bag and began running with it further away from the penitentiary.

"Hey, no, wait!" she exclaimed after recovering from her initial shock. "I want the eggs!"

Avianna stopped and turned around, before her eyes went wide.

"The eggs are gone!" a male voice shouted in the distance.

Niky froze.

"Give me the bag!" she hissed as loud, angry-sounding footsteps were approaching at a fast pace.

"No", Avianna replied. "I don't want you be in trouble because of this! I'm just going to hide them."

"Good idea", her sister replied.

But before either girls were able to step forward, they were staring at a black and yellow striped prison uniform blouse that belonged to someone way taller than them. Niky's eyes shakily met her brother's, who was frowning down at them with his arms crossed tightly on his chest. He cleared his throat, to which Avianna smiled sheepishly.