Run

Chapter Two

I wake up to sunshine shining upon my face. The rays of light warm my skin on contact. I sit up in bed and find my mom knocking on the door.

    “You need to get to school, you’re going to be late” she says.

    I lazily get dressed and walk down the empty street towards the school.

    Inside, the school smelled smartly of varnish and wood smoke from the potbellied stove. On gloomy days, not unknown  in this region. The windows emitted a vague, gauzy light, not much reinforced by ceiling lights. We squinted at the blackboard, that seemed far away since it was on a small platform, where Mrs. Diane's desk was also positioned, at the front, left of the room. We sat in rows of seats, smallest at the front, largest at the rear, attached at their bases by metal runners, like a toboggan; the wood of these desks seemed beautiful to me, smooth and of the red-burnished hue of horse chestnuts. The floor was bare wooden planks. A Tri-force flag hung limply at the far left of the blackboard and above the blackboard, running across the front of the room, designed to draw our eyes to it avidly, worshipfully, were paper squares showing that beautifully shaped script known as tri-force wars.

I hear Mrs.Diane do here daily lecture on how we are lucky to be alive, blah blah blah. I mostly just zone here out most of the day. I walk to the lunch room and sit at my lone table in the corner by the window. I look at my some-what full lunch tray. I slowly eat my apple while I remember a place. For a half hour, every school day, for a few months, I was really happy. A

friend and I would go to the drainpipe, and we would sit, talk, eat our lunches, and listen to my walkman. It was the perfect place: It was quite, beautiful, and it was full of peace. It didn't matter whether it was cold or hot, somehow you didn't feel anything sitting on that drainpipe. You would feel the wind on your face, and it made your face cold, but inside, you felt warm and cozy, and you almost felt like you couldn't be harmed. Then her testing time came, and she was murdered for being of the other group. I never went to that drainpipe again, not after that.

    After school I walk to the meadow and lay down on the silky grass. I let the sun shine on me as I slowly close my eyes and drift off into oblivion. I wake up with someone shaking my shoulder. I look up and see that it is the boy from the fruit stand.

    “come on, we need to get out of here.” he says.

    I am full of confusion as we  run down the road. Then I realize what we are running from. The troopers. They are coming to do mandatory checking of the homes and families. If anybody is found outside past curfew, which I have clearly slept past, they are executed.
I run to my house as fast as I can and slam the door behind me in relief.