Indirectly Saving the World

This is a short story I wrote for English class contest last year, in seventh grade.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning crying, and only catch a brief glimpse of what caused it. Usually I'm remembering my parents, or frightening myself that I might forget them. The tears always come and go quickly, though. I tell myself to get over it, and get out of bed to do whatever I planned on doing that day.

            This is what I initially thought Leslie was doing when I heard her soft, squeaky little sobs from the bed beside me. Each sound had a shivering breath on the end of it, almost as if she was laughing, but not quite. There is some distinct difference between Leslie's cries and giggles that I cannot identify at the moment, but will surely remember later.

            "Shhhh," I whispered as I wrapped my arms around Leslie and rocked her back and forth, "Just a dream, just a dream." It was then that I realized that Leslie never does this. Only Sasha and I wake up crying. It's not that Leslie doesn't miss our parents, just she was so young when they went blank.

            "...not a dream... Sasha... gone..." Her words came intertwined with sobs, and more tears poured from her eyes.

            "Wha- oh!" I didn't even finish the first word of my sentence before I saw her, under her covers, eyes rolled back but open, tiny breaths escaping her nose. Other than that breath, she was entirely still.

            In my shock I leapt off the bed, and collided with the dresser, smashing a lamp to the floor. Not that lamps are any use to us; the power's been down for four years now. One jagged piece of porcelain raked across my arm, leaving a thick red line of blood. I squeezed it with my bare fingers, trying in vain to grab the blanket off my bed to bandage it. It hurt a lot, but not nearly as much as the hurt in my heart, a newly reopened wound that can never be truly healed, for it contained my parents and now Sasha is gone from it, too, tearing the edges until the hole is larger.

            A small part of me wanted to keep her, to feed her and dress her like she was an infant, because Sasha was my neighbor and best friend when I was young, and came to live with us four years ago. A bit bigger part of me wanted to do the right thing, to leave her to die in the forest, for this part of me knew that she is no longer Sasha. But the largest part of me was so confused and worried and scared and in terrible pain that it couldn't possibly do anything at all.

            I laid there on the floor for about half an hour, sometimes debating what to do, but mostly avoiding debating what to do. I eventually managed to rip a bit of cloth from my shirt and tie it around the wound, leaving my stomach only covered by a ratty sweater. Leslie was still there, rocking in a rhythmic motion on her bed.

I stood up, and approached Sasha with a bravery I never before had mustered. I put my hand under her shoulder, guided her into a sitting position, then slid her legs over the edge of the bed and pulled her up. The blanket and sheets from her bed were dragged off on her legs and landed on the floor. I kicked them out of the way, and took Sasha's hands. I lightly tugged her towards me, and her feet complied, taking a step forward. Leslie stared at me with curiosity. She has no recollection of our parents going blank, and has not seen a blank person since. I have made sure of that.

            I started to take Sasha out the door, and then heard a small voice. "Can I come?" Leslie asked with pleading eyes.

            "You sure?"

            She hesitated, a worried look in her eyes. "Yeah," she whispered. The shakiness had returned to her voice.

            We took the shortcut to the forest, cutting through several yards. Nobody was there to find us in their yard, for our family and Sasha's were the only ones in the neighborhood with children. Only the dead could see us here, rotting in their houses for four years’ time.

            We intended to walk her in for at least a quarter-mile, but left her sooner than that when we came across a small pile of corpses, all appearing to be around my age. I shrieked, recognizing one as Wren, a girl from my third-grade class.

            Surprised, I let go of Sasha's hand, took Leslie's, and clamped my hand over her eyes. Leslie's hands flew to her face at the sudden dark. She squirmed, and stuffed her fingers beneath my own, wanting to see what was being shielded from her. I sprinted away from the bodies, dragging Leslie with me. Twigs and branches snagged my sweater, and dead, dry leaves were caught in my hair. I could hear the crunching leaves under my feet, and it scared me, how loud we were being, because there are so many people in this forest, all of them blank. It scared me that though we were both screaming and stomping and generally being noisy, nobody could hear us.

            The stench of death was bombarding us from all sides, and in those few seconds it took to run into our house and slam the door, my life was a nightmare. I became calm for a moment, then glanced into the cracked mirror of our front hall, and felt very, very small. My face was red with tears, my body and hair dirty and covered in scratches and leaves, my clothes worn and tattered, and my feet bare. I felt small, lonely, weak and sad. I knew in that moment that children should never have to do these things. Leslie and I worked ten hours a day on Robby's farm -or at least it looked like that much, since we left as soon as we woke up, and went home when it got dark- , we dealt with the death of friends, and we were paid in food, but not enough. It felt unfair. I felt like I couldn't do it, and needed to hide. It felt like the opposite of claustrophobia. Instead of needing open space, I needed something small and familiar, something that isn't so overwhelming.

            I realized my left hand was still over Leslie's eyes, and released my grasp. I did not let go of her hand, though. I took her with me into our bedroom closet, and locked the door. I took a notepad and a pen from a box, and stared at the paper until my eyes adjusted so I could see by only the thin strip of light from under the door. And I made a list. It was a list of everything we needed to do so the world could get better. Our supply of paper was nearly depleted, so I probably shouldn't have done this, but I justified my actions with the fact that nobody should be able to tell a twelve-year-old they can't write.

            I made my list, and was very proud of it. Then, I only needed to number the steps so I could take action. And it seemed that we couldn't do anything without getting electricity back, so I labeled "get eletricity" with a 1. I then put numbers by the left side of every idea on the list, and crossed out a few. Twenty steps in all. I devoted a page to every step, putting the steps in the right order.

            I sat and stared at the page labeled "get electricty" for a long time before I noticed that Leslie was still there. She was sitting beside me, her head on my shoulder.

            "What are you doing? What is that?"

            "I'm trying to think of how to get electricity back."

            "How is that helping?"

            "I'm going to write down how to get the electricity back. Writing is like drawing, except it is simpler, but means more complicated things." Leslie can't read and write. I tried to teach her when she was five, but it's hard to teach a little kid to read when you're ten and starving. We were one of the last families to start working on Robby's farm, and resorted to foraging in the woods. However, we mostly just ate plants out of the backyard, because even then, the woods smelled of death.

            "Tell me about electricity, again," Leslie only retains faint memories of warm winters, telephones, and TV.

            "Electricity is like magic. We hadn't started the unit on electricity yet when they had to shut down the schools, so I don't know how it works. It makes wonderful things happen, like talking to people thousands of miles away, and taking photos. That's how we have photos of Mom and Dad."

            We spent our morning talking about electricity, how we could get it, and all of its uses. Pretty soon, every inch of my "Step 1: Electricity" paper was coated in my notes and Leslie's pictures. I wrote captions beneath her drawings, for they contained little detail.

            "Which plan should we use?" Leslie's eyes scanned the page, focusing only on her pictures, which meant more to her than writing ever could.

            "I like this one the best," I suggested, tapping our fourth idea with my finger, "But these two should be our backups, just in case."

            I felt a pride in myself that I had never felt before, to think that I could actually be saving the world. Thousands of lives could be saved, all because of my spending a morning in the closet thinking about things others thought impossible. I'll be famous, one day, I think, glowing.

            A smile crept onto my face, but I quickly wiped it away. How could I be happy mere hours after the death of my best friend?

            "We won't be able to do this alone. It's going to be hard, and we'll need all the help we can get. We should go to Girls Helping Everything today, and maybe they'll help us," I said. Girls Helping Everything is a new organization run almost entirely by nine-year-old girls. So far, they've done nothing this challenging. They mainly assist little kids in learning to take care of themselves. GHE has taken over an old office building, and its members sit in their offices thinking of ideas all day. They managed to get sponsored by several nearby farms, so if you work for GHE, you are not required to contribute to agriculture in order to survive.

            "Isn't that really far?" Leslie was looking worried, like we might not go if it's too far. Even if it were thousands of miles away, we would still go. She didn't recognize the extreme importance of this. I remember the electricity, therefore it is of importance to me, and I rely on it. There is no other option, no other method. She has lived most of her life without electricity, and sees no reason we should pursue it now. We can't sit here holding this idea in our hands, when society has collapsed. In a world full of children, somebody has to be an adult.

            "It should take three hours tops. Not too far at all." When you're walking, that really is a long way. During that first year, I figured out how to drive a car, and used Mom's, then Dad's when the gasoline ran out. We had no gasoline anymore, but some people had traded for a lot of food by selling gasoline. We didn't bother giving up a month's worth of food for one small tank of gasoline. I wished we had saved some. It could have been a lot of use to us, saved us a lot of time. Time that was precious, crucial. Sadly, our only option was to walk.

            "We'll spend the night there. It would get too dark to walk home," I thought aloud.

            "But won't there be electricity when we leave? Can't we use electricity to take away the dark?" Leslie was confused. She didn't realize it could take months to get the electricity back, perhaps even years. Maybe never.

            "It could take a while to get the electricity back," I admit, "We have to try, though. Nobody can live much longer without electricity. It's�"it's just the most helpful thing in the world. We could focus on curing the disease, instead of working on a farm. Life would be so much easier. And if we can't cure the disease, then everyone will die. Notice how there aren't any little kids anymore? When the now five-year-olds are thirteen-year-olds, they'll be the youngest and the oldest. They'll be the only people on Earth."

            "Okay," Leslie whispers. And without another word, we embarked on our journey to indirectly save the world. I took with me two coats, one for myself and one for Leslie, my notepad, and a few emergency granola bars. I hoped we wouldn't end up needing to eat these, because to buy new granola bars could cost us more than I can imagine.

            It was a miracle I could remember how to navigate the tree lined streets, all of them identical. We only needed to take a few turns on our route. Otherwise, I would have gotten us lost.

            When we finally left the dark former highway, the sun hung high in the sky, signifying noon. Trees abruptly changed to abandoned office buildings, only a few child-shaped shadows visible through flimsy blinds.

            Having no memory of the city, Leslie's eyes widened. "What's that?" Her eyes shifted upwards, fixed on some point in the sky.

            I followed her gaze, and saw one building towering above the rest. "It looks like an important building. Like a city hall or something."

            As I dropped my eyes to the pavement, I experienced a feeling like my faint memory of the bad-tasting gel dentists use when filling cavities. But this was not limited to my mouth and nose, but lightly coated my entire body. A cloud filled my head. What are we doing here again?

            "Leslie, I think�"I think I’m going blank. We have to find GHE. We need to run," I said as I limped along the road to an office building bearing a sign: "Girls Helping Everything Ink."

            Tears filled Leslie's eyes, and threatened to fall. She stood beside me, and I leaned on her shoulder. She slowly pulled me towards the door, and the world felt farther and farther away. As we walked into the building, tears from us both splatted onto concrete steps, stained a dirty red carpet.

            "We need to see the President! My sister knows how to get the electricity back!" Leslie screamed at the surprised looking girl at the front desk.

            "The President is busy," she snapped without looking at us.

            "You're not listening! She's going blank, and she can get the electricity back! I'm being serious!" Leslie started to pull me toward some stairs, and I tried to function my feet, but I was looking at the world through a backwards telescope. The inside of the telescope was made of a soothing gray haze. It would have been so easy to let go, to stop trying. But to stop trying meant death, and I told myself that over and over as I listened to Leslie's distant shouts. Why is Leslie shouting?

            Footsteps descended the staircase, carrying increasingly faint screams with them. And for a second, I remembered. I moved my fingers, which seemed to be glued together. I managed to get my notepad out from under my coat. It fell to the floor.

            "My notes," I muttered, meaning to yell, but my breathing had become slow and even. I had no recollection of why they are important, just that they were. I've got to give them to Leslie. Who was Leslie, again? Who am I?

Reviews

[Prime]

Spectacular! Unlike your story, "I left," this focuses on the main character's positive nature. Although the ending was a total gone-wrong, and heartbreaking at some point. :/

[Turquoise Unicorn]

Thanks so much for the review! The two main characters are very different, aren't they?
As you can probably tell, I don't like happy endings much.

[Prime]

Yup, they are. And I, as well, hate happy endings. I just cancel my tragic plan and put on a twist for my readers. Hehe :D