Rising From The Ashes

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I’ve never been happier in my life. My beautiful baby girl has finally been born. She stares at me now with those wide eyes that she shares with her father. Giving birth to her has weakened me more than I care to admit, but with little medical assistance out here is the wilderness there was always the risk of complications. I’m just thankful that my little girl is so very healthy, even if I am not.

She was right. The security file was exactly where Catherine had said it would be. Even though I believed her, it was still something entirely different to actually get my hands on the file. It was an exhilarating feeling knowing that I held the answer to a lot of our problems in our hands yet I was also saddened just the tiniest bit. If there was no security detail file than we would have to think of and plan other ways of getting Cameron home, which would undoubtedly take a lot more time. However, with the information we have now he could probably be gone tomorrow if he wanted.

This last thought nails me straight in the stomach like a brick, leaving me breathless. Too soon. It was way too soon for him to leave me. A world without Cameron would be a world without excitement for me. Although, I suppose he wasn’t exactly leaving the world, just crossing to the other side of it. God, I’m going to miss him when he goes.

Squaring my shoulders, I tucked the folder into my backpack. If Cameron was going to hold it together than so would I. I was zipping up my bag when my mom entered my room. She took a look at my backpack and then raised her eyes to mine quizzically.

“Going somewhere?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah. School, remember?” I replied with a forced laugh.

School was something hard for me to even think about with all the other things going on, but if I missed any days my mom or the school would eventually get suspicious. So better to suffer through it then to get caught just because I’m having some concentration issues.

“Oh, right,” she laughed gently. “I must be getting older than I thought.”

“Nah, things have just been crazy lately,” I said, shrugging it off.

“You’re right. Can I expect you home after school?” she questioned me. “I was hoping that maybe you and I could go shopping or something. It’s been awhile since we’ve done anything together, just the two of us.”

“Oh, that sounds really nice, Mom, but I have to volunteer at the nursing home today. Maybe tomorrow?” I lied straight through my teeth without so much as flinching. I really was starting to get much better at this. Must be from hanging around Catherine.

“Oh, yeah. Okay,” she replied while trying not to show her disappointment. Guilt settled into my gut as I watched her. I’d been so caught up in other things that I’d hardly given much thought to my mom at all. Other than, you know, debating whether she was on our side or the Officials. Not anything I could exactly talk to her about.

“Love you,” I told her and then gave her a quick hug.

“Love you, too, sweetheart.”

And with that I’m off. School had never been something I really liked all that much, to be honest. I think most kids feel the same, but with me it was different. I didn’t mind the work or the waking up to go or anything like that really. My problem is that we were only being taught half the story. The majority of our day was taken up with classes such as Female History, Women’s arts, and a million other things that related to our gender alone. Anything that has to do with our “disgraced” male counterparts had been completely written out of our history books. Because of this, huge chunks of time are missing from history. The only time we’re taught about men is whenever they’d done something wrong such as most of the wars that have occurred. We’re only taught the portions of history that made man seem like a savage beast.