Post by Anna on Oct 26, 2008 10:02:54 GMT -5
This is a story I wrote for English class--it had to be changed from here a lot to fit the criteria, but this was the way I liked it the most, before all the editing.
Even the youngest children of Kuala camp can tell you what started the chaos that we live in today: the Mars mission. The astronauts brought back an illness that we couldn’t treat, couldn’t keep under control. They returned to Earth in 2023—ten years ago. Within six months, half of the world’s population had been wiped out. The doctors blamed it on microscopic creatures the astronauts might have brought back, or chemicals in space that had been trapped in the shuttle. It didn’t matter. Every scientist who has tried to come up with a treatment has failed. If they haven’t died first, that is.
I can’t remember how it was Before—I was only four years old when the pandemic started. But I do know that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet, simply because I am still alive. Kuala is the only settlement left in the Americas, maybe the last one on the planet. Instead of living in high-rise apartments with fancy technology and food delivered to us by the city’s robot workers, we live in teepees and huts. We wear woven dresses and ragged cloaks. We eat nuts and berries, not meat, because we haven’t the strength to chase after animals. We live on whatever we can.
The pandemic is carried on the air and in the water, as well as being spread directly from person to person. Right now we’re watching and waiting, hoping it doesn’t hit us. We have a pact of sorts, a method of survival—if one person starts showing the early signs of the sickness, everyone in the camp packs up and moves several miles upriver, leaving the potentially sick person behind. If they aren’t really sick, they follow the camp up the river after a few days. If they do turn out to have the sickness…well, there is nothing that can be done for them. The pandemic kills its victims exactly six days after they contract the disease. And it is a painful death.
At last count, there are twenty-three people living in Kuala. Seventeen of us are under the age of twenty. Once we get old enough, we have one job: to have as many children as possible, so that we can repopulate the planet. I am an outcast, in this way. I never see what the others see; I watch for ghosts in the shadows of the campfire and play out all of the what-ifs in my head. I don’t care about repopulation; in fact, I think the planet would be better off if we disappeared completely. All I want is for humans to die out. It would be better that way—for all of us.
But I do not tell this to anyone.
I am washing my clothes in the river that runs near our teepee when I hear a sharp crack behind me. Turning, I expect to see my twin brother Gabe, but instead my sister Jesse is toddling toward me on her unsteady legs. I drape my sopping dress over the bank of the river, wiping my hands so that I can pick her up. She runs into my arms, her dark brown curls limp with river water. She’s wearing nothing but her threadbare cloak, and under ordinary circumstances this would be funny—Jess is only two years old, and a spunky two-year-old at that. But I find myself immediately assessing the cold of the air, calculating the chances that she’ll catch a cold from running around like this. “Where’s your brother, huh?” I ask her, running my fingers through her hair to help it dry faster. Here on the East Coast, it’s cold nearly all year round. I could appreciate the beauty of it—the tall trees that dot our settlement, bursting now with the colors of autumn, the mountains looming in the distance—if I didn’t know that I am stuck here.
Gabe comes into view, panting and carrying Jess’s dress. “She just ran off!” he says, dropping down beside me. “I looked the other way to grab her dress after her bath, and then she was gone…” He hands me the worn cotton dress, very similar to my own, so that I can push her arms through it. I smile at him over the horizon of our sister’s head. Like me, Gabe and Jess have dark wavy hair and violet eyes, but there are subtleties that separate us—the freckles on Gabe’s nose, the dimples that Jess and I each have in only our left cheeks. Abandoning the washing for good, I scoop Jess off her feet and start to head back to our teepee. Although Gabe and I are only fourteen, we live alone with Jess. Our parents died of the pandemic two years ago.
“Aaron Esch called for a meeting tonight,” Gabe announces, holding open the door to the teepee so that Jess and I can slide inside.
I pick up two ties from the crowded floor and attempt to braid Jess’s hair. “What about?”
Gabe rolls his eyes. “If I’d known, Lea, I would’ve told you. He says it’s important.”
I give up on the braids, and hold up Jess’s tiny cotton tights so that she can shimmy into them. “Well, we’ve got nothing better to do.”
By the time we meet around the campfire, the sun has been down for hours and the stars dot the clear, dark sky like so much glitter. I hurry from my teepee to the fire, Jess clinging to my dress as she rides on my hip. I slide down on the ground next to Emily Alexis, my best friend and honorary older sister.
Em turns her head to me, smiling. Her pale hair is tied back in a braid like mine, her clothes just as threadbare, but there is always something about Emily that sparkles. Maybe it’s the brightof her eyes or her pixie grin or the way that she bounces, like she can’t keep all her energy in, but she literally is a light in the darkness for all of us. “Hey,” she whispers. I smile back at her, committing to memory the highlights that the campfire casts on her face. I do this often—memorizing peoples’ features, just in case the people I love are gone the next day.
We all turn our attention back to Aaron as he starts to speak. “We have received a message, via the river, from another settlement.” Whispers erupt all over—another settlement? Impossible!—but he ignores them. Unrolling a scroll of paper, he begins to read.
“We have no time to ramble, but we have found a cure for the pandemic. We are located fifty miles north of Kuala Lake. Come quickly.” He glances up. “I’ll be concise here. Kuala’s only about five miles from our camp. We have enough food and equipment for two young people to make the journey, and the other elders and I felt the choice was rather obvious. We’ve selected Lea Harrow and Emily Alexis.”
I am dimly aware of the gasps and whispers and cheers surrounding me, the faces turned toward me. But all I can think is, I can’t save us, when I am the one who wanted us to die.
It seems that my last half-hour at camp will be spent staring at my map. Over and over again, I trace the route on the worn paper diagram of the coast. How likely is it that I will survive this trip? A familiar voice outside my teepee jolts me to my senses. “Hey, Lea, can I come in?” Emily asks.
I quickly shove the map under my sleeping mat, grabbing the nearest ripped piece of clothing and a needle. “Yeah,” I reply, my voice a bit too hasty. Em pushes open the door and sinks down on the floor next to me. I smile weakly. “Hey. I was just sewing up some of Jess’s clothes before we go.”
Emily glances at the cloth I have in my lap. “Jesse wears your brother’s breeches?” Embarrassed, I turn away and begin rooting through the leather satchel where I have placed food and clothing for the journey. Em’s hand lands on my shoulder and pulls me around to face her. “Hey, Lea, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I wipe a smudge of dirt from my nose. “Yeah. I know.”
She smiles ruefully. “Were you looking at your map, too?”
I blush. “Maybe.”
Emily’s smile is almost genuine this time. No one but me would be able to sense the nervousness behind it. “It kind of freaks you out, doesn’t it?”
I turn away from her again, because if she knows I am scared, that makes it all the more real for both of us. I need to be strong. “Just a little bit. I mean, fifty miles isn’t that far. We can get there and back in maybe a week or two. It’s not going to be that hard. Er, they made new cloaks for both of us and everything and we even have new shoes, so we’ll be warm, and we’ve got plenty of food…really no reason to worry.”
Although my back is turned to her, I can tell that Em is nodding—I know her that well. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I’m really scared, too.”
It takes us only a few hours to reach Kuala Lake, but the terrain is rough and slippery. We are in no way outfitted for this journey—I am wearing my warmest dress, a pair of woven shorts, a cotton cardigan and my new cloak, but I am still shivering. Over my head is a threadbare kerchief, and my hair whips in my face, making it hard to see. Em is a few feet ahead of me, scrambling over rocks and trying not to trip in any holes. She turns back to me for a moment. “Hey. Are you okay?”
I nod. “Uh-huh. This is fine.” Emily may be more athletic than I am, but I’ve always been small and flexible. Climbing over things is no problem for me. At least, this is what I’m trying to tell myself when I slip and fall on a jagged stone. My forehead cracks the edge of the boulder, and pain shatters my thoughts. I roll onto my knees and stumble up, dizzy and disoriented. “Blast it!”
Em is by my side in an instant. “Lea! Are you okay?”
I touch my forehead, and my fingers come away bloody. The shock hurt me more than anything else, so I nod, pressing my palm against the jagged cut to halt the bleeding. “I’ll get something to cover it with.” After a considerable amount of searching in my satchel, I pull out a pair of cotton tights, which I tie around the top of my head. I don’t care if I look ridiculous—better to look stupid than to pass out.
Emily gives me a long, hard look. “You’re sure that you’re okay?” I nod. I’m not going to let my clumsiness slow down our journey. “Yeah, I’ll be fine in a few minutes. Let’s keep going.”
She doesn’t buy a word of it. “You know, Lea, you don’t have to be brave for me,” she says quietly. “I’m not a little kid, and you’re not my older sister.” She pauses to fix me with her clear blue eyes again. “You don’t have to be brave for me,” Emily repeats.
I turn away, because I don’t want her to see my face right now. Fixing my eyes on the horizon, I start to move forward again. “I know,” I say. “I’m not being brave for you. I’m being brave for me.”
Four days—that’s all the time it takes to reach the Mir settlement. We know it by the large, slightly burnt-looking sign about forty-five miles north of Kuala Lake. I don’t really register the exchange of the medicine; it all crowds my mind. In my tired and hungry state, I can’t pay attention to anything. All I know is that Emily enters a large shack and comes out looking very pale, carrying two boxes filled with syringes. I follow her, completely docile, back over the hills that surround the strange camp. My existence is wavering now, and so is Emily’s. We don’t speak until we are approaching our settlement again, six days later. Hills surround Kuala Camp from the North, so we cannot see anything, and in a way I’m relieved. I want to know, all at once, that everything is the way we left it.
“You ready?” Em asks me as we climb the last few yards of the hills.
I give her a strange look. “For what?”
She shrugs her thin shoulders, shifting her dark green shawl. “I don’t know. Everything’s going to be different now, is all. We don’t have to be scared anymore.”
I nod and swallow, then mount the top of the hill and look down at our camp again, new in my eyes—a place where no one needs to be left behind.
The medication turns out to be vaccines, which the adults administer to all of us around the campfire a few days after Em and I return. As we stand up to leave afterwards, Jess pulls away from me, tripping gracefully toward our teepee. I watch the firelight color her hair—red and gold and pink, all the colors of a sunrise—and for a moment I am transfixed. I honestly don’t know how I could have wanted her to die, even for all of the greater good in the universe.
Emily comes up behind me, her bare feet beating out a rhythm on the dry and dusty ground. “Hey, Lea,” she says softly, pride framing her voice. “Seen any good movies lately?”
I turn to smile at her—as usual, she’s won me over. But I still can’t hide my lingering feeling of doubt and curiosity. And since I speak to Em as freely as I speak to myself, I voice what I am wondering. “Do you think,” I say quietly, turning away again, “that we did right?”
The vaccine could be a hoax; we could all die from an infection on the needles. But there is a flame of hope that has ignited deep inside my chest—hope that maybe, someday, we won’t have to live every day in fear anymore. And maybe one day I’ll leave Kuala again, to swim in the ocean or feel the sun on my face or breathe in air that doesn’t taste of uncertainty. But uncertainty, I think, has a strange beauty to it. There is no way of knowing what will happen, so we’ll just have to do what we think is best. When there is nothing left to believe in, I’ll just pick myself up and keep going until we find a way. Everything has a bright side to it; it will be up to us to find that light and carry it, a torch, a tiny flame of hope.
Emily links her arm through mine, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “I think,” she says, “that we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Even the youngest children of Kuala camp can tell you what started the chaos that we live in today: the Mars mission. The astronauts brought back an illness that we couldn’t treat, couldn’t keep under control. They returned to Earth in 2023—ten years ago. Within six months, half of the world’s population had been wiped out. The doctors blamed it on microscopic creatures the astronauts might have brought back, or chemicals in space that had been trapped in the shuttle. It didn’t matter. Every scientist who has tried to come up with a treatment has failed. If they haven’t died first, that is.
I can’t remember how it was Before—I was only four years old when the pandemic started. But I do know that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet, simply because I am still alive. Kuala is the only settlement left in the Americas, maybe the last one on the planet. Instead of living in high-rise apartments with fancy technology and food delivered to us by the city’s robot workers, we live in teepees and huts. We wear woven dresses and ragged cloaks. We eat nuts and berries, not meat, because we haven’t the strength to chase after animals. We live on whatever we can.
The pandemic is carried on the air and in the water, as well as being spread directly from person to person. Right now we’re watching and waiting, hoping it doesn’t hit us. We have a pact of sorts, a method of survival—if one person starts showing the early signs of the sickness, everyone in the camp packs up and moves several miles upriver, leaving the potentially sick person behind. If they aren’t really sick, they follow the camp up the river after a few days. If they do turn out to have the sickness…well, there is nothing that can be done for them. The pandemic kills its victims exactly six days after they contract the disease. And it is a painful death.
At last count, there are twenty-three people living in Kuala. Seventeen of us are under the age of twenty. Once we get old enough, we have one job: to have as many children as possible, so that we can repopulate the planet. I am an outcast, in this way. I never see what the others see; I watch for ghosts in the shadows of the campfire and play out all of the what-ifs in my head. I don’t care about repopulation; in fact, I think the planet would be better off if we disappeared completely. All I want is for humans to die out. It would be better that way—for all of us.
But I do not tell this to anyone.
I am washing my clothes in the river that runs near our teepee when I hear a sharp crack behind me. Turning, I expect to see my twin brother Gabe, but instead my sister Jesse is toddling toward me on her unsteady legs. I drape my sopping dress over the bank of the river, wiping my hands so that I can pick her up. She runs into my arms, her dark brown curls limp with river water. She’s wearing nothing but her threadbare cloak, and under ordinary circumstances this would be funny—Jess is only two years old, and a spunky two-year-old at that. But I find myself immediately assessing the cold of the air, calculating the chances that she’ll catch a cold from running around like this. “Where’s your brother, huh?” I ask her, running my fingers through her hair to help it dry faster. Here on the East Coast, it’s cold nearly all year round. I could appreciate the beauty of it—the tall trees that dot our settlement, bursting now with the colors of autumn, the mountains looming in the distance—if I didn’t know that I am stuck here.
Gabe comes into view, panting and carrying Jess’s dress. “She just ran off!” he says, dropping down beside me. “I looked the other way to grab her dress after her bath, and then she was gone…” He hands me the worn cotton dress, very similar to my own, so that I can push her arms through it. I smile at him over the horizon of our sister’s head. Like me, Gabe and Jess have dark wavy hair and violet eyes, but there are subtleties that separate us—the freckles on Gabe’s nose, the dimples that Jess and I each have in only our left cheeks. Abandoning the washing for good, I scoop Jess off her feet and start to head back to our teepee. Although Gabe and I are only fourteen, we live alone with Jess. Our parents died of the pandemic two years ago.
“Aaron Esch called for a meeting tonight,” Gabe announces, holding open the door to the teepee so that Jess and I can slide inside.
I pick up two ties from the crowded floor and attempt to braid Jess’s hair. “What about?”
Gabe rolls his eyes. “If I’d known, Lea, I would’ve told you. He says it’s important.”
I give up on the braids, and hold up Jess’s tiny cotton tights so that she can shimmy into them. “Well, we’ve got nothing better to do.”
By the time we meet around the campfire, the sun has been down for hours and the stars dot the clear, dark sky like so much glitter. I hurry from my teepee to the fire, Jess clinging to my dress as she rides on my hip. I slide down on the ground next to Emily Alexis, my best friend and honorary older sister.
Em turns her head to me, smiling. Her pale hair is tied back in a braid like mine, her clothes just as threadbare, but there is always something about Emily that sparkles. Maybe it’s the brightof her eyes or her pixie grin or the way that she bounces, like she can’t keep all her energy in, but she literally is a light in the darkness for all of us. “Hey,” she whispers. I smile back at her, committing to memory the highlights that the campfire casts on her face. I do this often—memorizing peoples’ features, just in case the people I love are gone the next day.
We all turn our attention back to Aaron as he starts to speak. “We have received a message, via the river, from another settlement.” Whispers erupt all over—another settlement? Impossible!—but he ignores them. Unrolling a scroll of paper, he begins to read.
“We have no time to ramble, but we have found a cure for the pandemic. We are located fifty miles north of Kuala Lake. Come quickly.” He glances up. “I’ll be concise here. Kuala’s only about five miles from our camp. We have enough food and equipment for two young people to make the journey, and the other elders and I felt the choice was rather obvious. We’ve selected Lea Harrow and Emily Alexis.”
I am dimly aware of the gasps and whispers and cheers surrounding me, the faces turned toward me. But all I can think is, I can’t save us, when I am the one who wanted us to die.
It seems that my last half-hour at camp will be spent staring at my map. Over and over again, I trace the route on the worn paper diagram of the coast. How likely is it that I will survive this trip? A familiar voice outside my teepee jolts me to my senses. “Hey, Lea, can I come in?” Emily asks.
I quickly shove the map under my sleeping mat, grabbing the nearest ripped piece of clothing and a needle. “Yeah,” I reply, my voice a bit too hasty. Em pushes open the door and sinks down on the floor next to me. I smile weakly. “Hey. I was just sewing up some of Jess’s clothes before we go.”
Emily glances at the cloth I have in my lap. “Jesse wears your brother’s breeches?” Embarrassed, I turn away and begin rooting through the leather satchel where I have placed food and clothing for the journey. Em’s hand lands on my shoulder and pulls me around to face her. “Hey, Lea, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I wipe a smudge of dirt from my nose. “Yeah. I know.”
She smiles ruefully. “Were you looking at your map, too?”
I blush. “Maybe.”
Emily’s smile is almost genuine this time. No one but me would be able to sense the nervousness behind it. “It kind of freaks you out, doesn’t it?”
I turn away from her again, because if she knows I am scared, that makes it all the more real for both of us. I need to be strong. “Just a little bit. I mean, fifty miles isn’t that far. We can get there and back in maybe a week or two. It’s not going to be that hard. Er, they made new cloaks for both of us and everything and we even have new shoes, so we’ll be warm, and we’ve got plenty of food…really no reason to worry.”
Although my back is turned to her, I can tell that Em is nodding—I know her that well. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I’m really scared, too.”
It takes us only a few hours to reach Kuala Lake, but the terrain is rough and slippery. We are in no way outfitted for this journey—I am wearing my warmest dress, a pair of woven shorts, a cotton cardigan and my new cloak, but I am still shivering. Over my head is a threadbare kerchief, and my hair whips in my face, making it hard to see. Em is a few feet ahead of me, scrambling over rocks and trying not to trip in any holes. She turns back to me for a moment. “Hey. Are you okay?”
I nod. “Uh-huh. This is fine.” Emily may be more athletic than I am, but I’ve always been small and flexible. Climbing over things is no problem for me. At least, this is what I’m trying to tell myself when I slip and fall on a jagged stone. My forehead cracks the edge of the boulder, and pain shatters my thoughts. I roll onto my knees and stumble up, dizzy and disoriented. “Blast it!”
Em is by my side in an instant. “Lea! Are you okay?”
I touch my forehead, and my fingers come away bloody. The shock hurt me more than anything else, so I nod, pressing my palm against the jagged cut to halt the bleeding. “I’ll get something to cover it with.” After a considerable amount of searching in my satchel, I pull out a pair of cotton tights, which I tie around the top of my head. I don’t care if I look ridiculous—better to look stupid than to pass out.
Emily gives me a long, hard look. “You’re sure that you’re okay?” I nod. I’m not going to let my clumsiness slow down our journey. “Yeah, I’ll be fine in a few minutes. Let’s keep going.”
She doesn’t buy a word of it. “You know, Lea, you don’t have to be brave for me,” she says quietly. “I’m not a little kid, and you’re not my older sister.” She pauses to fix me with her clear blue eyes again. “You don’t have to be brave for me,” Emily repeats.
I turn away, because I don’t want her to see my face right now. Fixing my eyes on the horizon, I start to move forward again. “I know,” I say. “I’m not being brave for you. I’m being brave for me.”
Four days—that’s all the time it takes to reach the Mir settlement. We know it by the large, slightly burnt-looking sign about forty-five miles north of Kuala Lake. I don’t really register the exchange of the medicine; it all crowds my mind. In my tired and hungry state, I can’t pay attention to anything. All I know is that Emily enters a large shack and comes out looking very pale, carrying two boxes filled with syringes. I follow her, completely docile, back over the hills that surround the strange camp. My existence is wavering now, and so is Emily’s. We don’t speak until we are approaching our settlement again, six days later. Hills surround Kuala Camp from the North, so we cannot see anything, and in a way I’m relieved. I want to know, all at once, that everything is the way we left it.
“You ready?” Em asks me as we climb the last few yards of the hills.
I give her a strange look. “For what?”
She shrugs her thin shoulders, shifting her dark green shawl. “I don’t know. Everything’s going to be different now, is all. We don’t have to be scared anymore.”
I nod and swallow, then mount the top of the hill and look down at our camp again, new in my eyes—a place where no one needs to be left behind.
The medication turns out to be vaccines, which the adults administer to all of us around the campfire a few days after Em and I return. As we stand up to leave afterwards, Jess pulls away from me, tripping gracefully toward our teepee. I watch the firelight color her hair—red and gold and pink, all the colors of a sunrise—and for a moment I am transfixed. I honestly don’t know how I could have wanted her to die, even for all of the greater good in the universe.
Emily comes up behind me, her bare feet beating out a rhythm on the dry and dusty ground. “Hey, Lea,” she says softly, pride framing her voice. “Seen any good movies lately?”
I turn to smile at her—as usual, she’s won me over. But I still can’t hide my lingering feeling of doubt and curiosity. And since I speak to Em as freely as I speak to myself, I voice what I am wondering. “Do you think,” I say quietly, turning away again, “that we did right?”
The vaccine could be a hoax; we could all die from an infection on the needles. But there is a flame of hope that has ignited deep inside my chest—hope that maybe, someday, we won’t have to live every day in fear anymore. And maybe one day I’ll leave Kuala again, to swim in the ocean or feel the sun on my face or breathe in air that doesn’t taste of uncertainty. But uncertainty, I think, has a strange beauty to it. There is no way of knowing what will happen, so we’ll just have to do what we think is best. When there is nothing left to believe in, I’ll just pick myself up and keep going until we find a way. Everything has a bright side to it; it will be up to us to find that light and carry it, a torch, a tiny flame of hope.
Emily links her arm through mine, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “I think,” she says, “that we’ll just have to wait and see.”
