This Was Home [h.s.]

INTRODUCTION

Brin's POV

I wish I could say I woke up gracefully, to the sounds of bird chirping their morning songs. Perhaps I could have woken up to the light breeze of air, tickling the ever-changing leaves in a soft song of their own. Maybe my first inhale of the new-day air could have been filled with the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee with sweet maple undertones.

Mom would be yelling to wake up or else I would miss the bus. Somehow I always made it on time, though. During my rush down the stairs, I'd be careful to grab a banana that she would always leave me by the front door, my arms still scrambling to get each backpack strap around at the same time.

Unfortunately, this was not one of those mornings. I wasn't in school anymore. There was no bus waiting—at least running that was. If you walked about a mile down the road you would find one broken down and emptied, but that was it.

I actually couldn't remember the last time I ever experienced a morning so delicate and full of potential to begin with. Life became solely about survival now. For all of us.

The reality of the situation was a lot less peaceful and a lot more desperate. Ten years ago could have given me a morning like that, but now it just felt like a faraway dream. Instead of bedtime stories I originally got to grow up with, I heard the same stories my mom told me regarding the dangers that lurked outside our home and into the city.

Not that it was completely safe outside of city limits either, because trust me I heard plenty of those stories too. I vaguely remembered bits and pieces of a few run-ins my family had to deal with to get where we were now. It was just that the city was somewhere to never go if you could help it. Home was safe. Home was secure. Mom had made sure of it.

There were other rules that had been drilled into Alayna and I's heads. Whenever the government did their checkpoint drop-offs once a month, only mom was supposed to go. I had to stay back and watch after Alayna. She was 12 now, so that was pretty much all she ever had to know. At times I thought she was braver than me because of it. Because she didn't have to think about what she had missed out on or what she would continue to miss out on like I had.

These drop-offs were important because they contained necessary means of survival: food, water, gasoline, and medical supplies mostly. When these government assisted drops first started, it was once every 3 months and people went crazy. Mom always got really sensitive about these stories because of the things she saw. I still didn't even know the full gravity of what they were like. I was too afraid to ask anymore.

It helped explain why she was so hesitant to let me go to this month's drop-off. That was how I knew she was desperate; she was getting weaker as each day passed.

This was also the first drop-off since a rather brutal winter. Technically it was actually a little over a week ago, but we got snowed in that week and couldn't make it out. It was the last bit of winter and it caught us off guard. Instead of school closings, we instead had to worry about running out of pretty much everything because of that delay—which was absolutely happening. More and more each day.

I had to convince her repeatedly to let me go. She wanted us to eat her share of food for the time being so then maybe by then she'd be healthier and more able to go.

Except the food was already running thin and it was getting too risky. She was still really reluctant once the time came, but it was what we had to do. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous though.

But today was the day. So wish me luck.