Okay peeps, let's cut to the chase. You're all sick of me by now, no worries, I'm sick of me too. I mean really, who needs to be writing so many stories all at the same time? But this story is a special occasion. A limited time offer. It'll be up for a day. A day to read and give feedback. Got it? After that, I'm probably deleting it, or just leaving it to sit at the bottom of my story list for the rest of time. Sound good? Okay. Now read on please, cuz I really wanna know what you think.
I'm dreaming of it again. The day of the Division. I was only six at the time, but I can still remember every detail. I remember the names of every one of our neighbors and friends that left, not all by choice. I remember how the leaders from our city and theirs argued, debated, trying to convince people to leave, begging them to stay. I remember the adults' whispered arguments in the hallways when they thought us kids were asleep. I relive every second in my head often while sleeping.
"Do you think our parents will make us leave?" I'd asked my friend Tyce. He just shrugged. I glared at him. He used to do that a lot, and nothing had bugged me more.
"Maybe. But I don't understand why everyone wants to leave." He replied, fiddling with a puzzle he'd been working on that whole day. "I don't think we should worry about it. When we're all big, we'll make everything better." He added confidently. I shrugged, then mentally scolded myself for mimicking his annoying motion. We didn't worry much about it, that is, until it actually happened, because we'd never really considered things playing out the way they did. We'd never thought that his family would leave and mine wouldn't. The Division was a terrible day, but the real reason it haunts me ten years later is I lost my best friend that day.
I'm awakened from my dream by the sound of paper rustling and the floorboards in my room creaking softly. Most people wouldn't notice these sounds, they were so quiet, but I'm not most people. My eyes fly open, but I don't move. I listen a little longer, and here the door to my desk smoothly glide open, then shut again. It's a sound I've heard a million times before, and I immediately know who's trespassing in my room.
Slowly, so I don't alert him, I ease into a sitting position, and through the darkness I see the shadowed figure of a boy perched on the board at the foot of my bed. I don't make a sound, but his senses are as sharp as mine. His head snaps in my direction, and the only color in the whole room are his bright blue eyes. The sight of his eyes and the sharpness of his instincts only make me more sure of his identity. In the blink of an eye, the boy has bolted out the door, a thin, wrinkled notebook in his hand. I waste no time in taking off after him. The boy is fast, but not fast enough. Soon enough I've caught up to him.
I grab his shoulder and yank him back, and he responds by grabbing my arm and twisting it behind my back. I use my free arm to elbow him in the chest and break free of his grip. He begins running again, and I chase after him. Down the stairs and into the living room we run. I catch up to him once again, but this time he's one step ahead of me. He stops quickly and I crash into a wall before I can slow down. He snickers. I hop back to my feet and punch him in the stomach. He tries to catch my arm but I pull back before he can. I jump into the air and kick him in the chest hard, causing him to stumble back. I take this advantage to glance around the room for anything I could use to fight him, and slowly smile. He's made the mistake of leading me to the room where I keep my batons. The long, thick wooden sticks may not look like much, but they're useful in hand-to-hand combat and they were the first weapons I learned to use.
By now, the boy has regained his balance and is charging at me again. I simply step out of the way to avoid him. He barely skids to a stop and begins to turn back to me. I grab both batons and swing one of them at his head. It makes contact with a very satisfying thunk. He's disoriented for a moment and I quickly jab him in the stomach with the one baton while hitting him in the head once again with the other. His reflexes are quick and before I can move he snatches one of the batons out of my hand. He tosses it across the room then drops down and swings his leg out, hitting me in the ankle and knocking me to the ground. I groan and rub the back of my head. He leans over me, probably trying to take the other baton, but I lift my arm and hit him with it, aiming for the pressure point on his neck but missing and getting his shoulder. It's not quite what I meant to do, but it distracts him long enough for me to push him over onto his back. I get up and kneel over him, swinging one leg around him. I dig both my knees into the sides of his stomach, hold my baton against his neck to keep him from struggling and raise my fist into the air so I can punch his lights out if he tries to move. I'm about to hit him when I hear someone walk into the room, then groan in irritation.
"Kids, no fighting before breakfast," Our mom says, then turning and walking back to the kitchen. Beneath me, my younger brother Flynn smirks.
"You heard her Alaina, no fighting before breakfast. Get off me." I glare at him.
"Shut up fat-head." I say, smacking the side of his head with my baton as I stand up. I pick up my other baton, then set them both down on the coffee table where they belong. Flynn and I walk into the kitchen and sit down at the table.
"Morning dad!" I say brightly. He mumbles something that sounds like 'good morning' and continues reading his newspaper and drinking his coffee. Dad's not a morning person.
"Breakfast will be ready in just a second." Mom replies, watching the toaster as if she expects it to explode at any second. Which, in our world with our mother's cooking, it very well could. The most important thing to remember when you live in this city is to expect absolutely everything. I begin tapping my fingers on the table for a few minutes until Flynn gives me the glare of death. Then I begin to drum my fingers as loudly as possible just to get on his nerves. It seems to be working for a while, but then he breaks into a mischievous grin.
"What are you thinking?" I ask cautiously. He just grins more.
"Oh nothing dear sister of mine." Somehow, this doesn't reassure me. I try to just brush it off and eat the piece of toast my mom just presented before me. A few minutes later, Flynn clears his throat and I look up. There's a worn old notebook lying open in his hands. Aw man, I forgot! He took my journal!
"Give me back my journal!" I say, reaching across him for it. He just plants his hand on my face, pushing me back, and holds the book out of my reach.
"Let's see, what have we got here. Fighting lessons, championship, graduation, blah blah blah. Division, school, history, yada yada yada. Beat up Flynn," He looks up sharply. "That's a lie and you know it." I roll my eyes.
"Yea, sure," I say, stretching out my words.
"It is!" He insists.
"Whatever you say Goldilocks," I reply, making another grab for the journal. He just pushes me back again, flipping through some pages in the book. His eyes light up.
"Well this one looks interesting. 'I worry about him sometimes. I still have nightmares about the Division. He'd seemed so scared. And now, when he tries to come back, he still seems scared. Is it really so bad there?'" Flynn looks up at me and raises an eyebrow. "I take it 'he' is Ryerson." I try one last time to take back my journal, and am unsuccessful. I slump down in my seat, crossing my arms in defeat. Flynn continues reading. "You sure do mention him a lot. Are you stalking him or something?"
"Heck no!" I cry. He laughs.
"I'll be the judge of that." He flips to the back and I gulp. A slow smile stretches across his face and he laughs again. "You are stalking him!" He's found the page where I keep the newspaper clippings. Every time he gets in the news for trying to come back to town and fighting the guards that try to take him away, I cut out a little bit of the article and the picture that goes with it and glue it into my journal. He was my best friend, and even now I can't help but worry about him. Flynn keeps laughing.
"Mom!" He yells. "Alaina's stalking the crazy kid!"
"That's nice dear," she replies distractedly, not looking up from whatever book she's reading. Our dad glances up from his newspaper.
"You mean the Ryerson boy?" He asks. Flynn nods. "What interest do you have in him?"
"Well, if you can remember back that far, we used to be friends with his family." I say irritably. "And he always seems so scared when he comes here, it makes me worry." Dad sets down his paper.
"Alaina, your studying in combat, which means one day you'll be taking care of scum like him. You need to know that that's all just an act so we'll let him stay." I want to glare, but I'd probably get sent to my room if I did that.
"So are you suggesting he's a spy?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. And a persistent one at that."
"Well, you've seen all the scars on his arms right?" I ask. Dad nods. Of course he has, he's been the one to take him in half the time. "Are you saying that's all part of the act too?"
"It's possible that they've been drawn on or that he got them on the journey here. We can't prove that there's anything going on over in the Castling's territory." I roll my eyes. I know he's never going to believe that he's not the bad guy. The hatred between our city and their's is too strong.
'Whatever Dad. I'm going to the gym to practice before class." Dad sighs and returns to his paper. Flynn hops up from his seat.
"Can I come?" He asks hopefully.
"No way, I don't want to be seen with my little brother trailing me around!" I say, grabbing my gym bag and my jacket and starting for the door.
"I'm not a little kid, I'm only two years younger than you," He points out.
"Yea, that's like a century in a teenager's eyes. You're not coming, end of discussion." I say, walking out the door. I hear him trying to convince my mom to make him bring me, but his pleads are denied. This is one of the many reasons I really love my mother.
I quickly put on my jacket, pull the straps of my gym bag over my shoulders, and start jogging. I have a car, but I never drive it to the gym. It seems to me like being lazy on the way to work out just starts out on the wrong foot. As usual, I'm the first one out. Everyone else is at home, eating breakfast or grabbing a few extra minutes of sleep. I seem to be the only one on the Combat course who really takes it seriously. I suppose that's the reason I'm top of the class.
Let me explain a bit. This place, it isn't exactly like other cities or towns, or whatever you'd call what we live in. Mostly because, other than the Castling's, no one knows we exist. We know all about them, our society branched off from theirs, but we've made sure to keep ourselves separate from normal people, and eventually they just forgot about us. Another reason is that in our little world, we all revolve around fighting, which is why Mom is so used to Flynn and me fighting so intensely.
It works like this. We're required to go to school until eighth grade. After we graduate, we pick a course of study: Education, Politics, or Combat. Then there are the mini-categories, which are the thing you focus most on. That usually determines what you'll be when you finish studying. It's like in college, how you have a major and sometimes a minor. Education has the most mini-categories, followed by Combat. When you go into Education, you can be studying to become a doctor, a healer, a teacher, a scientist, etc. You could also just choose to have no career, but that's very uncommon. The two most popular of those options are doctors and healers, which sound the same, but are very different. Doctors deal with the same kind of Medicine that doctors in normal places do like surgery, X-Rays, prescribing medicine. A healer's job is more intense. When they've finished studying, they're assigned to a Combat group, and they have to be prepared to act quickly and know how to fix nearly fatal wounds, because some of the Combat teams are pretty accident-prone. Then there's the kids that go into Politics. I don't know much about them, because those kids tend to keep more to their own group. I do know that they mostly learn how to debate and legal rights and things like that for if we ever get the Castling society to stop killing our Combat teams long enough to sign a peace agreement. I doubt that will happen in our lifetimes.
The last, and my personal favorite, is Combat. It has three mini-categories: keepers, guards, and The Protectors. The keepers guard the outside of the city, mostly to make sure that Castling citizens and spies can't sneak in. The last thing we need is for things to get worse and a war to begin. Seeing as a sixteen year old boy has been able to sneak past them seven times in the last six years, our current keepers aren't our finest. The next group is the guards, like my dad for example, who have been working overtime to make up for the keepers' laziness. They mostly keep the peace within the city, enforce laws, things like that. Last are The Protectors, the most highly respected group of people in the city. They're also the most exclusive of the groups. There can only be five Protectors at a time, for safety reasons, and hardly anyone wants to be one. Their job is by far the most dangerous, to sneak into Castling territory and act as spies, ensuring that any attempts to take or attack our society will be known to us before they can happen. While it's the most respected of the courses, Combat is the least popular, because of the skill, dedication, and hours of physical labor you have to put in to be good at any of the three jobs. That, and we're known to have the shortest lifespan of any citizens in the city. But every year, a brave kid or two, such as myself and soon enough Flynn, will step up and take on the challenge.
It's a difficult course to be in. Most kids put in up to 12 hours a day: two for studying different fight styles and the rest for putting them into practice. But nobody, not even the teachers, work as much at it as I do. I'm always the first to the gym and the last to leave. It's been that way so long, back when I was seven the owners of the gym just gave me a spare key so I wouldn't be waiting hours in the cold for them to show up, something I was perfectly happy to do even then.
It takes about four and a half minutes to run the mile to the gym. It's a nice day to run, with a nice breeze and the sun shining just right. I hardly even break a sweat. I shrug my bag off one shoulder and begin to reach in for the key, when I feel a hand grab my shoulder and pull me back roughly into the shadows. I struggle against them, but whoever it is grabs my wrists and restrains me.
"Alaina, calm down, it's okay." A male voice whispers. I stop struggling for a moment and look up at my captor, only to find a familiar face. My breath catches and I'm sure that for just a second, my heart came to a complete stop.
"Tyce?"
Huh? Huh? How was that. This all came to me during an all-school mass, every single detail, so I'm not lying when I say that the Almighty wants you to review. Or I think he does. That or he wanted to at least give me an excuse for not paying attention to my music teacher's terrible singing. I hope you enjoyed. Now remember, the clock is ticking on your opportunity to review this story and tell me what you think. So do that now while you still can!