End Story
By Lily
Chapter One – Jack
“Jack!” called Luke as he burst open the door to my room. “Are
you going to sleep all day?” He shook me and I groggily sat up.
“Huh, what do you want
Luke?” I said wiping the sleep out of my eyes with the back of my hand.
“I said,” he started, “are you…”
“Wait,” I said, my eyes suddenly widening. “Is that a bagel?”
“Of course, it’s a black sesame seed bagel with cream cheese
on it.” He paused to take a bite out of it. “I was going to give it to you for
breakfast, but,” sighing, he said, “it doesn’t seem like you want it. So I’ll
just eat this delicious bagel.” Luke took another bite, chewing it slowly.
“I do want it,” I said. “So give it to me.”
“What’s the magic word?” said Luke.
“Now.” I responded.
“Wrong word.” He waved the bagel in front of my face.
“Do I have to?”
“Yep.” I leapt for the bagel. He moved it above his head. I
knew I could reach it with a jump. Luke jumped, too.
“I give up. Please.”
“Please what?” questioned Luke.
“Can I have the bagel?”
“I didn’t hear a please in that.”
“Please can I have the bagel?”
“Here you go.” Luke plopped the bagel down in my open hands.
“See, it wasn’t all that hard.” He pointed to my clock, “You do know that
you’re going to be late, right?” The green face of my clock read 7:13 a.m.
“Yikes.” I pushed him out of my room and locked the door. I
threw on my best outfit, and stuffed my homework in my backpack, which was
lying in a heap on the floor and swung it over my shoulder. I heard a rustling
noise near my door. “Luke, come in.” He came in.
“Just so you know,” he started. I ignored him.
“I’m kind of in a rush, so you can tell me later.” I opened
the window. The maple tree branches scraped the glass. “Bye.”
“Jack, this is the second floor, you know,” said Luke.
“Yep. I know, and this,” I gestured to the branches, “is a
tree.”
“How do you know the branches are sturdy enough?” Luke asked.
“I’ve done this thousands of times before. Loosen up.” I stuck
one foot on the windowsill. “Besides, Mom’s not here to tell me not to.”
“Mom…”
I cut him off. “I know, Mom’s still in Miami with her tweeting dolphins, she won’t
be back for another week.” I can also miss Nora’s party, I said to myself
silently.
“Just who do you think is in Miami?”
“Mom,” I gasped. She was standing in the doorway, arms
crossed. “What are you doing here!”
“I caught an overnight flight back here because I have a new
offer. You’re coming with me back to Miami
to listen to ‘tweeting dolphins’.” She walked right up to me. “Dolphins are
intelligent creatures. ‘Tweeting’ is actually their way of communicating.”
“I’m
sorry,” I said hastily.
“How would you like it if someone called your talking tweeting?”
“I wouldn’t like it. So, when are we going to Miami?” I asked.
“Tonight,” she said firmly. “Dad already has a room.” Mom gave me a glare. “You are going to school
and Nora’s party.” I groaned. School was fine with me but the party disastrous.
Nora was my mom’s friend’s daughter who was five. Every time she didn’t get what she wanted
from someone she would throw a fit and everybody would go home and not come
back next year. I was the only one who stayed last year after she put cake in
everybody’s hair because she got a purple teddy bear instead of a pink
one. It’s embarrassing for a
twelve-year-old to attend a little kids party, but it got ten times worse when
my mom had said, “We’ll stay and help clean up.”
“Party is at 4:45. Flight is at 6:00. We leave after the
party. I think you should go because it is already,” she paused to glance at
the clock, “7:15.”
“What?” I exclaimed and leaped onto the nearest branch as
agile as a monkey. “Bye Mom, bye Luke, see you after school!” I swung down, my
sneakers hitting the ground. I took off running down the street. “Jacklyn!
Never ever do that again!” said my mom. It was too late.
Chapter two – Kate
The gravity pulling at my chest was immense. The front wheel
of the plane was off the ground. The hum of the airplane vibrated my eardrums
as I stared out the window and watched the heat waves come of the brittle
grass. I squinted in the bright Hawaiian sun and shut the window. I could feel
the plane rising. The bright sunlight was directed straight at my window. I
snapped the window shut and took out a book. I opened the window. We were
already in the clouds. Everything was white all of a sudden. We were in a
cloud!
“Dad, look.” I whispered as if it were a spell that my voice
would break. “We’re in a cloud; everything is white!”
“Interesting,” said my dad without looking up from his novel.
I turned back to the window.
“You don’t seem to care,” I mumbled. This time he heard.
“I do care, it’s just that I’ve been inside a cloud before.”
He leaned towards the window, his book now on his lap.
“It’s all white!” I exclaimed in awe. “What would it be like
if the clouds went all the way to the ground? Then we could be walking through
clouds.” I turned back to look at my dad.
“That would be awesome!”
“Look,” said my dad pointing out the window. I glanced back,
the cloud was gone.
“At least I got to be in a cloud. I might not again though. My
first,” I sighed.
“No,” Dad said, picking up his book. “You’ve been in a cloud
before.” He turned his eyes away from the window. “When you were really little.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes,” he responded. “We were in a cloud.” He looked me
straight in the eye. “We weren’t in a plane, we were in a boat.”
“A boat?” I was puzzled. “How could we be in a cloud if we
weren’t in the sky?”
My dad leaned back in his seat. He winked at me. “That is what
I don’t know. It is up to you to try to figure out this mysterious phenomenon.”
“You know, don’t you?” I said.
He winked at me again. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t”
“If you won’t tell me that, then…” I said, “Where were we?”
“In a boat.”
“No, I mean where was the boat?” He wasn’t giving me the
answers I wanted so I was starting to get annoyed.
“I’ll tell you later.” He looked at me. “Maybe at the
airport.”
“Okay.” I was satisfied. I reached down and pulled my bag out
from under the blue plane seats. I reached in and took out a book and relaxed.
Chapter three – Anya
The fog of a misty morning was not dispersing as the sun rose
above the horizon line. Shortcut, I thought to myself, a graveyard
shortcut. I walked along the cracked and
bumpy sidewalk. The entrance was just a
few paces. I heard a rustle behind
me. I whirled around. Nobody was there, just a moving bush. Just the wind, I thought. What else, it was just the wind.
“Caw, caw, caw.” I jumped back. My ankle hit a root. I tried to stand but I fell.
“Must’ve sprained my ankle,” I muttered.
“Here,” said a voice. I
turned to look at the source. It was a
girl my age. Waist-length blond hair and
deep brown, almost black, eyes. Her eyes
didn’t look like dark pits, they looked more shiny black, as if they were made
of the black stone, obsidian. “Do you
need help getting up?” she asked.
“Um...Yes.” I balanced
myself on one hand and grasped hers with the other. “I might have sprained my ankle.”
“I’ll help you get home then.”
“Thanks.” I took her
hand and she pulled me upward. As soon
as my ankle touched the ground, I winced.
“My name is Anya. What’s your
name?”
“Ashlei.” She bent down
and undid her headband. “You can call me
Ash.” Ash wrapped my ankle in the
band. “Where do you live?”
“Twenty-nine
Concord Street.
That way.” I pointed east. I leaned on Ash’s shoulder and hobbled down
the street. I avoided the cracks, afraid
to injure my ankle more. After a while,
we got to the maroon house. “Here,” I
simply said. Ashlei helped me up the
driveway. “Dad,” I called once I had
opened the door. “Are you there?”
“Yes, honey?” his voice sounded from upstairs.
“Can you come down here? I sprained my ankle,” I called
out. I heard the thump, thump, thump of
Dad coming down the stairs.
“Are you okay?” he asked once he appeared in the doorway.
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
Dad just noticed Ash.
“Who’s your friend?” He
stared at me quizzically.
“This is Ashlei…” I realized I didn’t know her last name.
“Kimberly,” Ash filled in.
“You can call me Ash.”
“Hello, Ash. I’m Anya’s
dad, David McFyer.”
“Hello Mr. McFyer,” said Ash.
“No, just David is fine.”
“Come on,” I complained, “injured person here.” Dad and Ash helped me into the house.
“Ash,” asked my father. “Could you please help me bring our
suitcases to the front door? We are
leaving to go to the airport in a little bit.”
“The airport?” asked Ash.
“What for?”
“We stopped here because there was a two-day stop in between
our super-cheap connecting flight. We
live in West Virginia,
this is just my Grandma’s house, but she’s on a trip and she’s letting us use
it.”
Ashlei looked stunned for a moment.
“Okay,” she said, seeming to get what I was talking
about.
“You had better hurry. We have to be at the airport soon,” Dad
said. He shut the door after Ash and I
had hobbled past. “Anya can you wake
your sister?”
“Sure,” I called behind me.
Ash and I were almost to the stairs by now. She was practically dragging
me as I attempted to hop up them on one foot.
“Ash,” I said once we had gotten to the top. “My room’s the one on the left. No, wait, I mean right” I hopped down to the
door on the left of mine. The door
opened with a creak. I quickly shut the
door behind me after I entered the room.
There was some light peeking through the windows. “Heather,” I whispered. No response.
“Heather,” I said a little louder.
“Heather, Heather, Heather!”
“What is it?” Heather
groggily said.
“Are you awake yet? We
need to leave to get to the airport.”
“Yes,” she said, the covers pulled high over her head. “The suitcase is by the door if you are
looking for it.” I shook her as best as
I could on one foot. “What?” she
groaned.
“You have to carry the suitcase downstairs,” I said.
“Why?” asked Heather.
“I sprained my ankle.”
Heather waited a moment, then got out of bed.
“I guess I’ll do it.”
She looked at my foot hovering above the floor. “Just don’t forget you
owe me.” I hopped out of the room and
accidentally put my foot down. It did
not hurt anymore. Heather came out of
her room and noticed my foot on the ground.
“So, you were lying!” she exclaimed.
“No,” I said. “It was hurting then but now it doesn’t.”
“Anyway.” She tossed me
her suitcase. “You can carry this now,
right?” I sighed.
“I’ll bring it down,” I said.
Tugging it down the stairs, I rounded the corner. What did she keep in her suitcase? I thought.
Rocks? Concrete?
“Did your foot get better?” my dad asked.
“Yeah, it just suddenly did.”
“Then it probably wasn’t a sprain.”
“Most likely,” I said, hauling the suitcase into the
trunk. “Let’s get going.”
Chapter Four - Izzy
The thump of the suitcases against a marble floor was like a
heart beating. I opened the employees-only
door. A few passersby gave me strange
looks like, “ What’s that girl doing going into an off-limits place?” And, “Should I call Security?”
“Izzy,” I heard a voice call, “how are you?” My mom came around the corner just as the
door slammed shut.
“Good,” I replied.
“Can you take this letter to Ms. McGregory at the information
desk?”
“Sure,” I took the letter from her and turned to run.
“Wait,” called Mom. I
turned. “You might need this.” She took her ID tag off her neck.
“Why?”
“There’s someone new at Security. He might give you a little bit of a
hassle. So just show this to him.”
“Thanks,” I said, dashing out the door.
I had only gotten about ten yards when Fred, the head of
Security at the airport, walked up to me.
“I heard that an unidentified young minor had gone through an
off-limits door.” He paused and gave me
a friendly glare. “Was that you?”
I crossed my arms.
“‘Unidentified young minor,’ who else?”
“Knew it!” He said triumphantly. “So best be on your way.”
“Bye!” I said, sprinting down the hallway.
“Izzy, no running!”
Fred yelled after me. I slowed to
a jog before speeding up after I rounded the corner, out of view.
I got to the Security checkpoint and started to walk through.
“Wait!” yelled
someone. I paused to look at him. “What are you doing? You need to wait in line.”
I sighed. “I have a
letter to deliver to Martha McGregory at the information desk.”
“Do you have an ID pass?”
He asked. I grabbed my mom’s pass
and handed it to him. He eyed me
curiously. “Come with me,” he said. I followed him to the Security office. “In,” was all he said when he opened the door
to Fred’s office.
“Izzy!” exclaimed Fred, spilling some of the coffee he was
drinking. “What are you doing here?”
“Well,” I started, “I was going to see Ms. McGregory but…” I
pointed behind me.
“I see,” he said.
“Jacob let her go to Ms. McGregory.”
He spotted the ID pass in Jacob’s hand.
“Izzy did not steal that pass.
Laura Green gave it to her.”
“Why would Laura give it to her?” Jacob pointed at me. Fred
sipped his coffee.
“Simple reason. She’s
her daughter and she does her errands, right?”
He winked at me. Jacob left to go
back to his post. He gave me back the
pass and I went through Security easy.
When Ms. McGregory’s desk came into view I slowed down to a
walk. “Ms. McGregory,” I said, taking
the letter out of my pocket. “This is
from my mom.”
“Can I help you?” She
looked up from her work. “Oh.”
“A letter from Laura,” I said.
She took off her glasses which hung upon a string around her neck.
“Thank you, Izzy.”
“You’re welcome,” I said before dashing off into the crowd. Run right, run left, dodge the woman with the
baby carriage. I ran toward a girl
standing alone in the center of a decorative circle shaped like a clock on the
airport floor. Was she muttering
something? I couldn’t make out what she was
saying. I couldn’t stop running. Everything
seemed to slow down around me. I hit
her.
Chapter five - Jack
I kicked a rock as I walked along the rocky shores leading
down to the ocean. Something glimmered
out of the corner of my eye. I walked
over and picked it up. It was a stone,
rubbed smooth by the beat of the sea so it looked vaguely like sea glass. The stone glistened like a jewel, its colors
changing from blue to fiery red in the sunset.
Pocketing it, I ran up the worn stairs to the bench in front of my
house. The wet grass soaked my feet. I
sat down on the warped wood and stared out over the ocean to the West and
watched the sun set. It had been a
horrible day, and now a party I didn’t even want to go to, and just to make
things worse, we had to fly to Miami
right after that. My mind shifted to the
stone. I pulled it out of my
pocket. It shimmered in the dying
sunlight, sparkling like a thousand diamonds.
I cupped my hand around the stone so no light would shine. I marveled as the stone still held some
glow.
“Wow,” I exclaimed.
The last rays of the sun were dying out over the ocean. The
sun was being swallowed up by the waves’ ebb and flow.
“Jack, time for dinner,” came Mom’s voice from the porch.
“Just a minute,” I cried back.
“Don’t be late or I’ll feed your dinner to the cat.” She
turned away from the edge of the porch and went inside. I trudged up the slight slope, hearing the
slish, slash, slack sound my sneakers made against the ground. I started to climb the steps. The sky was dark, but no stars shined. The wind began to howl. Then the rain came
down in sheets. I was underneath an
overhang so I barely missed getting wet.
“Jack” shouted mom, leaning out the back door. “Jack!”
“Mom!” I yelled trying to be heard over the wail of the wind.
“I’m over here!”
Mom looked down, her face concerned. “Hurry.” I climbed the stairs, my back pressed against
the wall to avoid getting soaked. I
quickly leapt through the doorway. Mom
closed the door behind me.
“Time for dinner,” she said as if the storm was not raging
outside. I walked into the dining room
and sat down at the table.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked.
“Buffalo salad with extra mayonnaise and Brussels
sprouts.” She handed the bowl to me. I
quickly pushed it away, wrinkling my nose.
“Yuck, I hate that,” I said.
‘I should have come later then she would have feed my dinner to the cat,’
I thought.
“You should just try it,” she said.
“I’ve tried it a thousand times.”
“Then you should try it one more time!”
“I said I ha…” Mom gave me a glare. “Extremely dislike it.”
“You should try it,” said Luke from across the table “Don’t
worry, it tastes good with ketchup.” He
was pouring a mountain of ketchup on his dish.
“Eww, Luke don’t do that in front of me!” I tried to block him and his stomach-lurching
meal from my view.
“Sure, Jacklyn,”
“Don’t call me that,” I practically shouted.
“Sure, Jacklyn I won’t call you that,” he said sarcastically.
I sighed. “can I be excused?”
“You haven’t touched your food!” Mom exclaimed.
“I’m not very hungry,” I lied.
“Okay,” replied Mom, “but I can’t guarantee that there will be
leftovers.”
“That’s fine.” I left
the dining room and climbed the stairs to my bedroom. I fished out my old jewelry making kit that I
had gotten for Christmas five years ago.
Then I pulled the stone out of my pocket, examining it closely I saw
that there was a small hole that I could put a chain through. I fished a silver chain out of the box and
looped it through the hole.
“Jack, come, now,” yelled Mom from downstairs.
“Coming,” I replied. I
fumbled with the clasp and got it around my neck. I glanced at the clock. It was only 3:56. Nora's party was at
4:45. Not bothering to dwell on it any
longer I rushed downstairs.
Mom grabbed my shoulders. “Do you have all your stuff in the
car?” she asked me. Startled by her sudden attitude all could do was nod. “Come on, let’s go.” She practically shoved me out the door and
into the car.
Once I was in the car I asked her my question. “What’s going
on?” Luke stuck his head into the back seat.
“You see, because of this unpredicted catastrophic weather,
our flight has been cancelled. The plane
company, Southwest, has been so kind as to give us a flight on an earlier
plane, as in, a 5:15 flight.”
Giving a sigh of relief that I didn't have to go to Nora’s
party anymore, I leaned back into my seat.
Chapter six - Anya
The rain drizzled on the window making a tap-tap-tap sound.
Tap-tap-tap. I glanced up. The tapping
noise came from my sister.
"Hey spacey Anya, who was that girl?"
"Girl?" I asked.
"Blonde hair, creepy jet-black eyes, wandering about our
house with your suitcase. Remember anything now?"
" Oh," I exclaimed. "Ash."
"Nice name," Heather retorted, her words coated in
sarcasm, "matches her eye color."
“Ash has obsidian eyes not creepy jet-black, ash-colored eyes.
Plus her full name is Ashlei."
"Well, she went home," said Heather.
“Mmm.” I went back to staring out the rain-soaked window in
silence.
We pulled up to the airport terminal in a yellow taxi cab. The
gruff driver unloaded our luggage and we wheeled it to the ticket counter. We
checked in our baggage and got our tickets. We walked over to the security
check point. I took off my shoes and coat. Heather put her purse in one of the
baskets. I stepped forward through the metal detector with no beeps. I saw a security guard, whose tag read Jacob,
wince as he moved my sister’s suitcase off the conveyer belt for
inspection. I stifled a laugh. I put on my shoes and hurried over to look at
the arrival and departure board.
"Gate C4 to Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. Gate C17 to Detroit, Michigan.
Gate A11 to Chicago, Illinois. Ah, there it is," I murmured.
"Gate B13 to Sacramento,
California." Just then
someone hurled forward toward me and hit me at full speed. The wind was knocked
out of me. The girl looked my age, 12, and she had long black hair that was
tied neatly in a ponytail. That was all I remembered.
Chapter 7 - Kate
The
impact made me feel as if I should be dead. I was thrown back and forth against
the seat. Every bone in my body ached with the weight of the sky falling down
on me. Everything around me shattered,
my seatbelt snapped, the plane was falling apart. I was floating up from my seat. Everything slowed down around me, then sped
up. I curled my arms around myself,
bracing for the impact as I flew into the cockpit door. The glass shattered in front of me, covering
my arms in wounds that stung worse than a million hornet stings. They burned my
skin, and froze it. I was being torn apart.
I hit the plane windshield, or where it should be. The impact of my head against the fresh air
jarred my vision. I tried to take a breath but my throat wouldn't work, and the
ever-black sky turned darker. I saw two
girls sprawled on top of each other, another girl next to them with
brown-blonde hair. Just then I knew the
answer to my dad’s riddle.
“Fog.”
Then
I felt nothing, eyes closed I plunged downward, towards solid earth. I knew that I was going to die.
“...Up,
Wake up.” My vision blurred into
focus. I saw three girls standing around
me. The girl with the black hair spoke.
I recognized her voice as the one who first spoke to me.
“Can you hear me?” I nod.
“Who are you?” I ask. The girl
with the frizzy red hair smiled and answered “Survivors.”
“Your
name?” The frizzy haired girl went first. “Anya,” she said. Then the brown
haired girl. “Jack,” she said. The
black-haired girl replied, “Izzy.”
I thought for a moment and then said, “I am
Katerina Lariat.” A voice in the back of
my head whispered, ‘You should be dead.’
Then I remember. The plane crash,
everything. I dropped my head, and gripped
the covers of my bed. ‘I should be
dead,’ I think, ‘but that isn’t what matters. What matters is that I’m
alive.’ After what seemed like hours of
silence, thinking about what happened, reviewing the scenes, I slowly looked up
at them. “I…” the words caught in my
throat. Taking a deep breath, I said my words with as much confidence as I
could muster. “I think it is time to write
a story.” I forced a little smile onto my face. “Our end story.”
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