AN: Fangz 2 MR2 4 helpin me wif da chapta! BTW preps stop flaming ma story ok!
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I would say that I woke up at midnight but the truth is that I never went to bed. I was on my iPad, scrolling through Tumblr and crying over how perfect Alex Turner and Jesse Rutherford were when an alarm started screaming its damn head off, but not from the black digital clock beside me— instead, from the weird pack thing sitting in my chair. My first thought? Finally, I am going to die. Not at the hands of the government, but my mother, for waking up the entire house.
So I fly out of my bed, reach for the bag. "Shut up!" I hiss at it. Not surprisingly, this doesn't work.
In a minute, if not seconds, my mother would be opening my door and questioning what I had done. My best option is to close my iPad and act half-asleep and fully blame my stupid bag for waking me up. I lie my iPad on my dresser and crawl back into bed, rubbing my eyes and waiting until she comes.
As predicted, footsteps grow louder and my bedroom door flies open. Mum seems to be in a hurry to shut up the pack, but she wakes me first, grabbing my face and shaking until she's almost broken my jaw. "We have to go now," said Mum, grabbing my pack and leaving it on top of me. "Dress very warmly."
"Why?" I asked, but she was already on her way to Madeleine's room.
I think the government is coming to get me. Get us. All because I was on Tumblr. Or perhaps it was because I had previously been blasting a song containing the lyrics "help me kill the president".
Come to think of it, that alarm might actually be coming from outside my room too. I slide off my bed and head steadily to my bedroom door, and the alarms only seem to be getting louder from beyond. Then by some miracle, they fall dead silent.
Suddenly the hallway light turns on and I literally hiss, my eyes burning in my skull. "Why aren't you dressed?" demands my mother passing my room. "We have to leave right now."
"Why?"
She makes an indignant noise and I know better than to press further. I am sent back to my room, a stomach of guilt, and I put on layers of clothes, not quite knowing what it means to "dress very warmly".
Once done, I head downstairs where I bear another verbal lashing for not having gotten my pack. I race back upstairs and grab the item off my bed. Then thought enters my mind: what if you're never coming back?
"What?" I ask myself. "That's not even possible."
But another part of me knows that I am just naive for ignoring the real and probable possibility that this will be the last time I hear that green clock above my head, the last time I have a comfortable nights' sleep. The last time I see any of my toys, some of which have been with me for longer than my memories exist.
What do you take to remember yourself by?
"ADELAIDE SH'ADOW AMNESIA JANE SANDLER!" my dad roars from the bottom of the stairs. No time to think, I reach for anything I can grab across my bed and the iPad by my bedside and I run.
Even though we're in the middle of an escape, my sisters won't budge and force me to climb over them to get to the middle seat, despite being bigger than both of them combined. "Why do you have that stupid penguin?" my dad asks, but I choose not to reply, zoning out during his lecture about 'taking what matters and not being left behind'. Mum drives out of the garage and doesn't stop until we reach an empty lot. So many cars are lined up like the entrance to some exclusive drive-in. But this is no drive-in, unless the show we are watching is some execution. Otherwise why would there be so many guards armed with rifles.
