Behind Enemy Lines (SHORT STORY)<College Work>

{{ This is 100% dedicated to makemebreakmebabe17. Without her this wouldn't even be up here! Anyway, this was one of my assignment pieces I handed in. This is the first section.. Ill upload the other sections in a bit. Because the story had a word count, it's not as good as it could be. I am hoping to expand on it and even make it into a full book. The grade I got for this piece was a B :D.. enjoy )

It was a week into the program at LiSafe. A company dedicated to helping those in need and every summer for the past two years, a place where I felt at home. My mom was always telling me that my need to help others was a rare quality, and that by joining LiSafe I was ‘embracing my inner compassion.’ There were times though, that I felt like this rare quality was in actual fact a curse. In high school I was The Pushover. Anything you  ever needed, Myra Rezesky was your girl. But joining LiSafe changed that.

There had been talk of a replacement in the camp. One of the foreign exchange helpers had dropped out with nothing but a shrug of her shoulders, leaving everyone bewildered as to who would be able to take her place. Apparantly she was the only one fluent in more than two languages. But as the days passed, I noticed a change amongst my hometeam. They all seemed to hold an air of excitement that I was apparantly missing out on. In my morning First Aid class, I quickly took my seat at Tilly’s workstation and nudged her.

“What’s going on?” Even now, when I looked around, everyone was chattering happily; some of the girls were even letting out random squeals before letting out hushed giggles.

“The replacement,” she shrugged. Although Tilly had become my closest friend at the camp, she had an annoying tendency to explain everything in two words, and just expect everyone to know what she meant.

I stared at the girls at the front workstation and frowned. “Well, what about the replacement?” I asked, not understanding how one person could cause so much fuss. But it all made sense once Tilly answered my question.

“He’s an Eulanthi.”

Eulanthium, or Eulanthi for short, was a country that had gained independence from the European Union a few years ago. The place had gradually started to blow up in the media until it became embroidered in the Western world as the kingdom of ecstasy. Its water costs three hundred dollars a bottle and its fabrics are too expensive for even the most popular fashion designers. And with the natives naturally consisting of fiercely attractive women and men, with the purest of skin and the deepest of blue eyes it was, and still is, home to what us westerners consider ‘The most beautiful humans to have ever lived’.

America always welcomed the increase in Eulanthium immigration. Took pride in it even. They were born into a world of never ending riches. Their economy was booming, their products the most sought after and their people the most loved. And yet they chose to come to us.

It was the tastiest compliment the Western world had ever chewed on.

Yet it seemed as though I was the only one who had little interest in the place. I mean I knew the language, but that was only because a few years ago the cartoons—that I, admittedly, still loved to watch—had added Eulanthi subtitles at the bottom. But unlike everyone else, I wasn’t wishing I could get the Eulanthi action figurines, or the posters, or the clothes, or anything really. It was just a place to me. A country like any other.

So I understood their excitement. I just didn’t feel it.

I had been too wrapped up in my thoughts to notice the sudden silence that had filled the room. Tilly’s arm nudged my side, but I ignored her, snorting at the factsheet that had been given to us.

“The human body can live without a stomach, a spleen, a lung, a liver and most of its intestines. Would probably feel like crap-”

“Myra,” Tilly hissed. My eyes snapped up and I noticed that in the surrounding silence it wasn’t just the class who had heard my speech on the human body. The foreign exchange replacement stood at the front of the room, watching me with a small smirk on his face. I sat, breathlessly engulfed in the blue of his eyes. His jet black hair lay cropped, with only a few strands falling over his forehead. A dark blue sweater hung over his jeans, and I noticed a small motif on the cuff of his sleeve. The closest I  had got to seeing a Eulanthi in real life was from the Christmas photo my mom had of her mentor, Dr. Kristan. Now I understood the sigh that always left my mother’s mouth whenever I asked about him.