The Boarding school

Chapter 1

I'm not like other girls. Louisa and Maddie and Evelyn, it's like were from totally different planets. It's not just the obvious things, like the facts that I grew up with palm trees, hibiscus instead of hydrangeas in my yard, tamales in place of tuna fish sandwiches for lunch. It's not that I'm faster and stronger and better at surviving then they are..... Although I am.

It's not even that my home is gone, or that I watched it being swept away, while they have their nice comfortable houses to go back to, and they can't even imagine anything bad had happening to them. It's not all the secrets I'm hiding. I will tell you the biggest differences between us. It's that they think they know what it's like to be scared. But they have no idea.

We've been in the woods for only five minutes when I start thinking this escape might be a little bit doomed. Not that we had any choice, we had to run away. Our parents sent us to a hidden boarding school because they wanted us to be safe from the dangers of the war. But it turned out we'd walked right into the worst danger of all. Country Manor School did seem like a weird place from the beginning. They took away all our electronic devices, snipped off the ID bracelets we've been wearing our whole lives, and forced us to do Homework by hands! I should have known they were evil just like that!

But I figured they were just old fashioned. Plus I liked the outdoor survival training and the friends I was making, and the chance to act like regular girl again. If I'd been rooming with cooler people, I'd have been happier than I have been anytime in the last three years.

Then everything fell apart. First Louisa's twin Maddie, got caught. The headmistress, Mrs Brownie, figured out they weren't really sisters. Then Louisa overheard an TV news broadcast saying Canada had surrendered to the Alliance.... who, in case you haven't guessed, are the bad guys in the War. Canada's only a few miles from CMS, but that's not the dangerous part. The really bad news, the news that has us fleeing through the forest in the middle of the night, is that CMS is a sleeper cell and all our teachers are Alliance agents. The Children of America's wealthiest families were brought here to be hostages. Louisa overheard their plans. and we decided none of us were going to hung around and let Ms. Brownie use us to manipulate our parents.

So here we are escaping, in the dark, with no idea how we will get back to Chicago. And Instead of any of my tough, cool outdoorsy friends, I'm stuck with my suite mates. I glance over at pale, blond Louisa. She can be cool sometimes. But the others, Maddie and Evelyn are exactly the first two people I would have picked to run away with. In fact, they're pretty much the last people anyone would want to drag through the woods. Maddie a skinny, brunette, brown eyes, looks nothing like Louisa, in case you're wondering, she's always moping and griping, plus she totally hates me for no apparent reason. In other hand Evelyn is a world class conspiracy freak, convinced that everyone is part of a secret Alliance plan. She's hyper alert all the times and she scribbles notes in her little notebook every time anyone says anything. Sure, okay, she's right some of the the times, it turns out. But she is also annoying all of the time. And plus she hates me, too. Just because I made my own friends instead of sitting with my roommates at meals.

See why I'm little worried about this escape plan? I'm not sure which is more likely, us getting captured by the Alliance, or Maddie and Evelyn throwing me under a bus at the first chance they get. Or me losing my mind. That one could definitely happen, like, by the end of the night.
Maddie start complaining first. "I'm tired," she says. "My feet hurts. Can we stop and rest?" She leans one hand against a tree and rubs her left ankle. There's chilly breeze rippling through the leaves, which make me nervous. It's only September, but we're so far North that it could get horribly cold very quickly, long before we reach Chicago, for instance. I am not big fan of the cold. Especially when I know I will be sleeping outside for foreseeable future.