(12)
"Up and at 'em Sunshine. It's time to shoot some cans." A voice shouts as I feel weight get added to the side of my bed. Making me roll closer to them. I groan and shake my head, curling into a ball and pulling my blanket closer. "Come on, we gotta get going." He says shaking me. I groan again, squeezing my eyes even further shut. "Mazlynn, come on. They're going to leave us." I sigh and lay on my back, opening my eyes to see Blake.
"Fine, I'm up, I'm up." I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, so we are sitting next to one another. I can still feel the heat radiating off of him. Sadly, I know I need to get dressed so we don't get left behind. "Will you wait outside?" I finally ask, causing him to look over at me.
"Oh yeah," he lightly chuckles, scratting the back of his neck, "yeah I'll be in the hall." he stands up and makes his way out the door, shutting it behind him. I can't help but chuckle at how awkward he is. As I stand up from the bed, I feel my muscles stretch. I shuffle through my clothes before pulling out a pair of jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a Minnesota Wild sweatshirt. I change as quick as I can before walking out to see Blake leaning against the wall, seemingly talking to himself. His eyes flick up to meet mine, a smile breaks across his face.
"You like hockey?" He asks, looking down at my hoodie. My dad brought me up on hockey, I went to my first game when I was six. It was basically a requirement to be home to watch all of the Wilds games. Nothing was a good enough excuse to not be there, not even school. Once my father called my brothers and I out to come home and watch an afternoon game, my mother didn't let that happen again.
"I love hockey. Minnesota Wild is the best team in the world." I say, smirking. I see his smile waver as he clear his throat.
"You know, the Wild is good, but I mean they aren't as good as the Maple Leafs." His smile quickly turns to a smirk as he shrugs, putting his hands up in defense.
"The Maple Leafs? Toronto, really? I have never heard of someone from Minnesota even liking them, let alone saying they were better than the Wild. You're actually crazy." I finish as we catch up to the group gathered at the gate, ready to go to the makeshift shooting range. Blake seems to get a little flustered as we walk.
"Well I love hockey, or really all sports in general. I love the Vikings and my dad liked the Twins, but when we actually watched sports it was mostly hockey and sometimes football." I nod along as he speaks. "I also really like the Redskins and the uh...Bears." My eyebrows scrunch a little. I didn't watch much football, but Nolan loves the Vikings. Every chance he got to bad mouth the Bears he did, they were the Vikings biggest rivals. I didn't understand how he could like them both.
"Well you're just all over the place aren't you." I chuckle as we turn onto the path that leads to the shooting range. Great another day of shooting tin cans off of a fence.
"I guess I am," he chuckles as we make our way to the edge of the field and he jogs down to set up a can. "Now," he says as he makes his way back to me, "same as yesterday, legs apart, back and arms straight, shoulders back," he orders standing just behind me. I quickly follow along with his list then make sure the safety is off. "Breathe out then fire." I inhale and exhale slowly before pulling the trigger. Wood splinters off just next to the can causing me to groan in disappointment.
"That's close enough isn't it? If the can is their head, I just nicked the shoulder didn't I? That'd have the same effect." I flip the safety on and drop my arms, turning to face Blake. He looks down at me and smiles, shaking his head. "Oh come on, if the target was bigger I would have hit it."
"I think you're missing one important fact, if that was a real person they'd be moving, they'd be firing back. When tomorrow comes, you have to be ready for that. They are going to be real people, can you handle that? They could have a wife, brother, sister, parents, kids even. You have to be prepared to put that all aside and make the decision on if it'll be them or you." His words hold a rough tone, but his eyes are soft and caring. "You have to make the right choice Mazlynn. You-" he pauses looking over at the others, "you can't hesitate," he looks back at me, "not for a second, cause they won't. They're trained not to." Fear quickly floods his eyes and all I can do is nod.
"I won't."
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"You did good today," Blake says as we finally make it back to Arcton. I had actually succeed in shooting the tin can off, multiple times actually. Not that that means I'm ready to take on the entirety of the Republic of Amly's army, but I think I could take one dude. If he was gunless...and blind. The gates open for us, revealing a large group of people gathered around Cyrus. He's higher than everyone else, probably standing on his own soap box to further emphasis him being 'above' the rest of us. There's a map of Minnesota pinned to some kind of board and routes mapped out. As we get closer we can hear what exactly he's preaching about.
"I don't want to split groups up, Henry's people will go to the Little Falls camp along with 10 of our people, Blake and Sage will pick which ones. If you wish to go with them, talk to the two of them. The rest of us will stay here, defend against the Republics people. They should be here tomorrow, my guess would be around noon, maybe a little later. We need to get ready, make sure our guns our loaded and our heads are clear. Henry's group will leave at 8 am, it should give you lot plenty of time to put some distance between you and the Republic. Even if they decide to turn around and retreat during our initial attack you'll have four hours on them. When they get here, we attack hard and fast, don't give them the chance to see it coming. For those going to Little Falls there's an outpost just outside of the city, a town called Randall. They have men stationed there, it's a sort of training camp. That might become a threat, they could radio over and call in the reinforcements. Everyone needs to rest up tonight and prepare themselves for tomorrow. Blake, I need to speak with you." Cyrus finishes nodding toward the building.
Blake excuses himself and makes his way over to the door Cyrus walked through. I watch as everyone slowly disperses and goes about their business. Most don't seem overly worried about the impending doom we are facing. My father waves everyone over and we quickly join the rest of them.
"I want everyone to keep a sharp eye out tomorrow. Something isn't sitting right with me. We all need to stay together, I don't care what goes down we are not splitting up. I know this is going to be hard, but shoot to kill. They have more training and frankly more skill. I don't want to lose a single one of us tomorrow. Have each other's backs." He finishes nodding around the group at one another. My eyes lock with Enzo's, his cloud with worry almost instantly following my father's words. The realization finally starts to sink in that I might not be looking at all of these people this time tomorrow. I look at my parents and brothers as I begin to imagine not having them. I lock eyes with James and it seems the two of us have reached the same conclusion. He swiftly pulls me into a tight hug.
"I know what you're thinking and it's not going to happen. We are all coming back tomorrow, all of us. Don't even think otherwise." He pulls away and places his hands on my shoulders. "I'm your big brother so you have to do what I say. It's like a law." He jokes causing us bother to chuckle. "Now go get some sleep, I don't want a drowsy Mazy covering my back tomorrow." With a light shove from James I make my way back to my room.
I change into some leggings but leave the two shirts I have on. I crawl between the sheets, still processing the possibility of losing a family member or a friend. I feel the panic begin to raise inside me once again causing me to sit up, unable to sleep.
I try to keep my mind off of tomorrow, but I can practically hear my heart rate picking up. "Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road." I start to sing to myself, remembering how Blake talked about how it helped him. "Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go. So make the best of this test, and don't ask why. It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time." I continue singing, stumbling through the words. The song was kinda old, but my dad loved old rock music and Green Day just happen to slip it's way into his list. Meaning he likes to blast it on long car rides, making the car rides feel even longer.
Although it didn't completely eliminate my stress if helped to lessen it. I lay down the time, looking up at the ceiling as I sing the song once more. I let my eyelids flutter closed as I repeat the song once again until I'm finally asleep.
أنت تقرأ
End of Days
قصص المراهقين"Trust you? Are you kidding? I think it should be pretty evident to you that we don't trust you." "Henry, I would like to speak to you alone." Cyrus says, now ignoring Nolan. My father shakes his head slowly, "if you want to talk say it here. I'm n...
