The Day We Fell

Chapter 1

The day was cold, way colder than anyone thought it would be. It was dark outside and nothing could be worse. Right now we were the coldest region in the United States of America. Every day I heard people dying of heart attacks. Sickness. Frostbite. The rate kept multiplying every week. My mother prayed every night that we would still be alive when everything was over.

I prayed with her. I prayed for my little sister and for my dad and most importantly I prayed for my mother. She kept us warm and cooked our meals and kept us alive. She was a real mother. One who cared so much for her family she would do anything to save them. She would do anything to save me.

I loved my family so much. Sometimes I would do all the chores so my mother and sister and father wouldn't have to work that day. My father worked from home because there was too much snow for him to drive to work. Cars were a popular thing. They had been around for a long time. But I don't like them at all because my best friend got run over.

I begged my father to stick with horses but he refused. Every. Single. Time. He didn't know how much I loved my best friend and how much I loved him and how much I loved other people. I couldn't bear to see them die from an invention created by their species.

After my friend passed away I had to find a new best friend. But all the kids already knew each other from years before. I was the new kid. There were other new kids but all the boys were so handsome and all the girls were so pretty. No one wanted to hang out with me. I was the girl with glasses and a big mole and my face. I was the girl whose best friend died. I was the lonely girl.

In class, I was seated at the back of the class. I was behind a really tall girl whose name was Shirly. As I supposed because everyone called her that. My new school was owned by a very rich woman. Her name was Miss. Eleanor Hearing. She didn't have any kids and she wasn't married. That made me think about a lot of things. Like why she owned a school but didn't have any kids of her own. My old headmaster had five kids. She loved kids so much. I wish I was back at her school.

...

At the end of the day, everyone called me Plump Penelope. I wasn't that plump though. Only a little plumper than the other girls. But they sure didn't think so.

When my mother picked me up from school me home from school we heard it. The news. Everyone had to go on lockdown until the weather cooled. I heard in some places they were on lockdown because it was too hot. The scientists came to our school the day before to tell us why the temperatures were so low. But mother said that it was all fake and that I shouldn't believe one thing they say. My little sister thinks that she is crazy and that the scientists know way more than she does but I believe her. Everything that she says.

Father doesn't believe her either. Every time she tries to tell us something he cuts her off and tells her not to tell us any more untrue things. I think most of the stuff he says is fake though.

I know that I'm supposed to be sad about the lockdown. But I'm not. I won't have any more kids calling me plump. My mother says that we are losing money so if the temperature drops any lower we will have to become stowaways and move to Florida. My grandmother lives there and my mother talked to her several times and we have everything under control. My mother says that we will hide in wine barrels and sit in the storage compartment until we get to Florida. Florida is a lot warmer than it is where we live. I don't know the exact temperature but mother says it has to be below zero degrees. Whatever that means. She never said which type of degrees. I learned that in school. I learned that there are two different types and if you don't say which one people will get confused.

Sometimes my mother says that there is a war going on. Other times she says that we won the war. Sometimes she says that a war is coming. Or it will never be there. She always has something else to say.

My mother still wanted me to have an education so she decided to homeschool me. The thing was new to me. It didn't seem very exciting. I didn't really want to have my mother as my teacher. But I wanted to be smarter than all the other kids so they wouldn't tease me anymore.

My parents never say anything about my big brother anymore. I never knew him but apparently, when I was only a baby he ran away. They said he disagreed with him and that was that. They told me to never speak of him again. But I was still curious.

A few weeks later I was playing with my little sister Anna and my mother came bursting into the room. "It's here! Finally!"

"What's here?" Anna asked. Running up and looked at what was in my mother's hands.

I didn't like what I saw next. It was... not good.

It was a sign and with big letters, it read:

PASSENGER SHIP HEADING FOR FLORIDA

It was time to be a stowaway