The Earthquake

(Hi! This is my first story on Wattpad, "The Earthquake." I hope you enjoy it!!)

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A major earthquake decimates most of the world. A girl, Alicia, is in school when this happens, and she survives the earthquake. But that's just the beginning -- in a world of no rules, no authority, and no support, she finds herself in the world of survival of the fittest.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Earthquake ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the teacher wrote the equations on the whiteboard, the room was silent except for the squeak of the dry erase marker and some whispered conversations. As she began to explain something, whispered conversations filled the back of the classroom. Some people passed notes and a couple of girls texted under their desks. The teacher, obliviousto her student’s distraction, continued on.

“Did everyone copy down the problems on the board?” she asked the class patiently.

There was a general mutter of assent, so she swiftly picked up the eraser and slowly began to clear all the writing from the board. As she turned her back to write down the next equation, people started to talk more loudly. The teacher pretended not to hear it, knowing their impatient behavior was due to the incoming summer vacation. She let them talk and kept writing.

A girl in the middle of the class with shoulder length brown hair and large brown eyes sketched on the corner of her paper. She was drawing shapes and random squiggles.

“And the answer to this,” said the teacher, turning to face the girl, “is what, Alicia?”

The girl jumped. She hadn’t been paying attention for the last half hour. “I don’t know,” she responded, glancing up for a moment. She could see some numbers on the board, but she had no idea on what step they were on.

Some people snickered. The teacher pointed to 9x+1x, which was written clearly in large letters. Embarrassed, Alicia muttered the answer and turned back to her paper, hiding her face from the flush that threatened to cause even more embarrassment. She was sketching a tiny island on the corner of the page, with a little palm tree and some fold-out chairs on the side of the beach. A sun set over the horizon.

The teacher was talking again and so it seemed relatively safe to look up. Alicia turned to the window and looked out at the warm blue sky and the gentle white clouds floating peacefully. She longed to jump from this desk and plunge out into the open, where the air was fresh and she felt alive. This stuffy room was almost unbearable; in the heat she fanned herself with her paper, reveling in the cool artificial breeze she had created. A bird swooped through the air, it’s black contrasting sharply with the blue of the sky. It soared so freely that it made her wish that she could sprout wings and fly too. Dreams. She watched in fly higher and higher until it was almost out of view. She kept stretching her neck to see it, but finally the bird was gone.

That was the moment when it started.

Everything shook. At first, it was light. Some people screamed, but nobody fell down. The teacher was speaking, “Everyone, stay calm please, we just have to –“

And then it happened again. The peace was broken with violent churning. People screamed as furniture went flying. Desks flew in the air and crashed into other ones. The windows broke and shattered all over the room. The ceiling fell in places. All the noise was a deafening roar of terror and confusion. Alicia clung to the side of her chair desperately. It tipped over with force, knocking her to the floor and landing on top of her with a bang. The lights went out and it was completely dark. Then there was more screaming and shaking. And then nothing.