Echo (Story Snippet)

Echo

~Krystal Annaliese Walsh

Prologue~

The night was dark and misty as a tall, slender woman ran through the streets, hugging a tiny infant close to her chest.  Ahead the bright gold dome, and tall cross of St. Anne’s Catholic Church loomed in the darkness, sparkling slightly through the mist in the moonlight. She slipped through the door of the church, hurrying down the dark aisle all the way up to the alter where she bowed gracefully, making the Sign of the Cross. Then, looking around quickly, she stepped up the steps and crouched behind the alter. She laid the infant on the ground behind the alter and, slipping a small silver notebook, and a handwritten note inside the blankets, she wrapped the baby up warmly.

“Shhh…my darling…you will be safe here, and mommy will be back soon.”  The woman sighed, oh how she hoped it would be true. The child looked back at her with the smallest smile, as if assuring her mother that’d she’d be fine, then her eyes closed and she fell asleep. With a final kiss on her baby’s forehead, the woman slipped back out into the night.

§

My Name is Sophia Adriane Callahan, I’m an only child to two, fairly wealthy but very loving parents and I’m really just your normal, 16 year-old, semi-shy, preppy, straight-A, high-school student. An ordinary teenage girl living in a big house right on Manhattan Beach California. Or at least that’s what I thought.  It all started this summer; I was taking a summer school course to earn extra credits so I could graduate high school early. It was the last week of summer school and I stood leaning against the wall inside the courtyard of the school after an evening government class, waiting for my friend Connor. We lived only a block away from each other and often walked home together. Even though I knew I could defend myself, being a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, I was still paranoid and it was nice to have a guy to walk with through the streets in the dark.