Song of Emma And Me

Probably the biggest mistake we made was joining the circus, but there were plenty of others-- mistakes that is. Maybe I should start at the beginning. Maybe.

1.

It wasn’t raining the day they told us he was dead. I remember that. And it was quite sunny when our mother disappeared. The morning they put us in the custody of our uncle, there was a beautiful sunrise. Emma woke me up to watch.
He didn’t have poor intentions, our uncle. He was nice. They kind of guy we liked to spend a day with. Not a parent. Not a parent, at all.
And so we left. We left our home of seven and thirteen years. We left our beds, unmade. We left our uncle unaware. We left a note. I think.

2.

Our father spent his youth on the coast in California. He had buried a shoebox on beach there, we knew that much. We didn’t know what was in the box. My sister, Emma, said we needed to have an adventure. She said our world needed saving. As my older sister, I would have followed her to the crater of an active volcano. I followed her into the back yard.

3.

We walked west, away from the sunrise. We found a bag full of dead squirrels. We were lost. We came to the stream running along the back of our subdivision. Emma turned to me the early morning sun bright on her face and said, “well, here we go.” And there we went. Straight into the water. Our journey westward begun.

4.

His first words to us were inaudible.
Emma asked him his name and he said Hector. He was in his forties, mulleted, mustachioed. He was working on his car and humming the national anthem.
“Where you kids going this time of morning in the summer?”
Emma answered: “California.”
“Well it’s going to take you a while on foot.”
“Yes it is.”
“I can get you kids as far as Canada.”
“That is no where near the right direction.”
“It’s where I’m going. At least you’ll be moving.”

5.

We went with Hector to Canada because he was right, we needed to keep moving and Emma said we needed to learn when to yes to people who were trying to be our friends.
I at least knew when to give up control.
Hector told us we should join the circus because it traveled and we could ride on elephants.
So we did.
And it was a mistake.

6.

The ringleader of the circus was called E. Alfred. We worked thirty six hour days. He had a special clock. It was madness. There were freaks and animals and strong men. We were small. We were lost. We were trapped. We were kept awake constantly. Any time we had a break we were placed in a small pit with hungry tigers, to keep us alert. When we finally fell asleep, I think it was a year later, we woke up in Mexico in the backseat of a cab. Hector was driving and apologizing. For the circus.
“But you have to admit, you are now much closer to California.”
“We are we going?”
“Away from him.” Hector gestured backwards.”
We turned around and saw we were being pursued by E. Alfred. He was riding a galloping elephant. He was bearing down on us. The world was getting hotter all the time. The cab was going three hundred miles an hour. I noticed it was on fire. But we were committed. This was do or die, probably both.
And then, just like that, we crossed the border. We were in California and Hector was downshifting like mad. The border patrol had commandeered Veil’s elephant and were using it to hose down their bicycles.
Hector pointed towards the beach our father had buried the box on. Well he said it was behind the hill he was pointing at.

7.

Behind the hill was a subdivision. the houses went right up to the ocean. Our father buried that shoebox in 1976. For all we knew it was either excavated in the building of this place, or it was now a part of someone's foundation.
We walked towards the ocean, beaten, beleaguered. We immersed ourselves in the water. I looked at Emma and she looked at me and somehow we both knew what the other was thinking.

NOTE: I wrote this as a rush assignment for class based on a much more detailed Idea, so yes, sketches.