Chapter 6
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By January 2064 I continued to be amazed at how people could really adapt to anything. I had killed someone, yet I still went to school as if nothing had happened. I still got up in the middle of the night when the air raid sirens went off, rushed to the basement, then went back up and went to sleep. It was this, or living in a small town and facing the possibility of living under occupation. How people under occupation fared, well there were plenty of stories about that. There were horror stories of people being shot in the street for merely criticizing the occupation, people being denied food or medicine. A number of my friends told me they would rather commit suicide than live under occupation. But there were also stories of people being treated humanely, humans and aliens getting along, playing baseball together. Ofcourse most of us tended to believe the worst about the invaders, figured the other stuff was just propaganda to convince us to surrender when the time came. I had more duties by early January. My mother changed her hours so that she could work at night, and thus one of us could always watch Willow when she wasn't in school. And I began volunteering two days a week at a food distribution center. There were few jobs available, many couldn't afford to buy food. Thus these food dispensaries kept many from starving. I was as patriotic as the next person, wanted to do my part. Besides, I knew it could very well be me and mom asking for free food. Sometimes I had to bring Willow here, she sat with the other kids and nobody said anything if she took a few treats. It actually was somewhat inspiring, seeing so many different types of people come together, all united against a common threat. I had a lot of empathy for my fellow humans, the orphaned children, the people missing arms and legs, hearing Willow cry herself to sleep. All of this made me want to enlist. Mom was very adamant that I not enlist. Sge figured I had a high enough chance of being killed without going to look for trouble. I was definitely afraid of dying, but those days you could be killed just walking to school, at least if I enlisted I could fight back, take a few aliens down with me. But my 16th birthday was coming up, at which point I could join up. I did my part, volunteered, kept going to the shooting range with my friends. And I knew the time was coming where I would have to decide what to do with my life.