Finders Keepers by Annalisa Gulbrandsen Page B

is going on?   Why am I really here?   This could not possibly be about a bird.   And goblins?   Did you forget to mention I was being targeted by goblins?   That you are a goblin?   I feel ridiculous even saying that.”
     
    “Calm down Ellie.   I’m going to come to you.   Do you know where you are?”
     
    Her eyes glanced around the room.   Her cheeks warmed.   “At your mother’s house.”   He didn’t need to know she was literally in his bed.   “I’m being guarded.   There’s at least two.”
     
    “Don’t worry, hold tight.   I’m coming.”
     
    The way he said it all she could think about was Sky breaking down the door to get to her.   He was the white knight in this fairy tale.   She tugged on her ear.   “Why do you care?   Why do you keep protecting me?”
     
    For a second she thought she heard the call drop, then she heard him breathing.   “Ellie, it’s complicated.   I’m about an hour away.   Just stay put.”
     
    “But I don’t have an hour, just a few minutes.”   There was no way to know if he heard.   There was silence and when she pulled the phone away from her ear, she saw the call had ended.
     
    She shoved the phone into her pocket and bounded off the bed.   Time was running out, but she couldn’t just rush out the front door empty-handed.   First she attacked the drawers.   All of them were empty except for the bottom left.   In it were a couple extra t-shirts, a pair of jeans, and other odds and ends like socks.   She didn’t remember Flora mentioning it, but it appeared as though Sky hadn’t been here in quite some time.  
     
    “If I were Sky, would I take everything with me when I left, or would I stow some stuff away just in case?”   Dropping to her knees, she searched under the bed, then she lifted the mattress.   To be thorough she lugged the dresser away from the wall a couple of inches.   Closing her eyes her hand slipped through and felt around the back of the dresser, and then the wall.   Her fingers touched a crudely cut hole in the wall.   Using her shoulder this time, Ellie drove her body into the dresser.   It scraped across the floor another six inches.  
     
    What she found in the hole was a treasure box of sorts.   It was a small cardboard box, like a shoebox, except smaller, and it was chock full of odds and ends—tiny electrical parts and wires, old cell phones, and a large pocket knife.   She cheered silently and pulled the knife out.   Her fingers continued to sift through the box and stopped when she found a photo.
     
    There she was, Ellie Brown, smiling proudly back.   A large black crow rested on her shoulder.   The camera captured that particular moment in time only two months ago.   Two weeks before the picture was taken, Pinstripe was healed just enough to be out of the makeshift cage her dad made for him.   After he was let out, it’d been two more weeks before he’d really trusted her, and he demonstrated it by hopping onto her shoulder.   Her mom took the picture for her so she could show her dad.    
     
    A wet spot appeared on the picture.   She wiped the picture on her jeans and then dragged her hand across her eyes.   The box was shoved back into the wall minus the knife and picture.   The photo slipped into her back pocket.   The knife stayed clasped in her palm.      
     
    One thing was for sure.   She wasn’t waiting for Sky.   If her instincts were correct, he hadn’t been here in a while.   So how and when had he come by the picture?   Ellie shoved her questions to the back of her mind.   She needed to concentrate on her escape.
     
    She didn’t have much hope that she’d be able to sneak out undetected.   Her plan involved getting out and using her slightly above average track skills to run for her life.   Jiggling the lock on the window above Sky’s bed, she finally got it to unlatch.   Then she pushed.   It groaned open.