Disaster

“RUN!” I woke up panicking with cold sweat dripping down my face. I had this horrible feeling in my stomach, like someone was grabbing it and twisting it apart. It’s just a dream. I kept telling myself. I don’t know why that dream scared me so much. All I remembered was a blurred out face screaming in a panicked voice to run. Run.
I finally pulled myself out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom, my heart still beating two times more than it usually does. I got ready, doing my normal routine, not really thinking about what I was doing. Come on, Avery, get yourself together. It’s just a dream. I scolded myself. I took a deep breath but still felt slightly panicked.
“Avery! Come down, you're going to be late for school!” Mom yelled. I scrambled downstairs and plopped down at the table.
“I have to leave work early so I’m leaving now, okay?”
“Okay, bye.” I mumbled. She probably didn't hear me.
I swallowed the last bite of my waffle and chugged down a glass of milk. I grabbed my backpack and hoisted it on my back. Ughh. It feels like I have bricks in here. I walked out the door, making sure to lock it.
I took my phone out and started a shuffle of my favorite songs. I plugged in my ear buds and put them in my ears. I started walking on the usual route to school. I tuned out the rest of the world as I listened to my music. This is why I love music. It can erase all my worries and leave a pleasant feeling inside of me. When I was almost there I thought about my dream. It had seem so real, more than I have ever felt before.
“Avery!”"
“Really?!” I was shocked. Our school didn’t have that much bullying, it was a pretty good school. There were rarely any physical violence, and if any it was small.
“Yeah. Crazy right” I heard the bell ringing.
“Got to go. Bye!” I waved, running to my first period class, Social Studies.
4th period was PE, by far my least favorite subject. It’s not like I’m bad at it or anything, its just that my teacher was extremely mean. I mean, why be a teacher when you hate kids?
“Come on! Push it! I don’t want to see you walking!” He screamed at us, interrupting my train of thoughts. I sprinted to the finish line.
I was panting heavily with sweat sliding down my face. I walked over to the water fountain and let the cool water run down my throat. I finally started breathing again. I don’t know why, but all day I’ve had this bad feeling. I was kind of worried because usually when I have a bad feeling it turns out to be right.
“Lets go.” It was the end of the day and I was exhausted. Every day I walk home with Lily and I really enjoyed it. It was the time we got to catch up, since we didn’t have any classes together. I looked up at the sky and noticed that there was a whole lot of birds flying away from here. Hmm. That's strange. I suddenly heard a lot of dogs barking from houses around us. Okay, this is really weird.
“Lily? I think something is going on.” I said in a panic. “All the animals are acting strange and I have a bad feeling.”
“Your right..” Lily’s smile instantly changed into a frown.
RUN! A flashback of my dream suddenly hit me. Could this be?

Suddenly I felt a jolt. “Earthquake,”I yelled,”Get down!” We jumped to the ground and lied down. I looked up and I couldn’t believe my eyes. The ground was like the sea, it was moving like waves; up and down. Then I spotted a huge wave of the ground rapidly coming towards us. I screamed and tightly shut my eyes. The feeling was indescribable. It felt like I was on a very violent wooden roller coaster that was shaking me to the core. Suddenly I heard a screeching sound and I looked up. I saw a huge sign from the road that was next to us slowly getting ripped out of the ground and falling on us.
“Go!” I yelled at Lily and grabbed her hand to help her up. We sprinted to escape the sign and barely made it on time. The adrenaline was extreme now and my heart was beating extremely fast. Finally, the shaking stopped. I felt like that lasted forever, but I knew It was only about a minute.
“Oh. My. God” Lily stammered. We slowly got up brushing ourselves off. We only had a few bruises and cuts, nothing to serious. I looked around and I was shocked. The houses around us were heavily damaged, and there were a lot of debris from stuff that fell. The street had developed a huge crack and half of it had moved a bit to the right. It was devastating.

Slowly people started coming out of their houses and cars, looking around to see the damage. I could see the looks on their faces as they looked around. In the distance I could hear many sirens.
“Hey! There’s a kid trapped underneath this board!” Someone yelled. Lily and I rushed over and we saw a small kid pinned underneath a heavy billboard. More people came and we all worked together to lift up the sign.
“Did anyone call the ambulance yet?” a man asked.
“I’ll do it.” Lily said as she whipped out her phone. I could hear helicopters flying in the air. I was a mixture of emotions. Fear, relief, sadness, shock. We lived in the bay area in California which has a lot of earthquake faults so we built our buildings to be strong against earthquakes, so the damage wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
“Avery we should go to our houses and check on our family” Lily said. My family… oh my god, how could I have forgotten about my family?! I felt really ashamed of myself; I was only thinking about myself and not about anyone else, not even the people I loved.
“Avery?”
“Y-Yeah sorry. Lets go.” I stammered.
We started running up the hill to where our houses were when a green car pulled up next to us. The car door opened and my mom and dad came out.
“Avery!” they yelled. “Are you alright?” they said, fussing all over me.
“I’m fine!” I exclaimed.
“ Lily, where are your parents and siblings?” My mom asked worriedly.
“They should all be at home.” Lily answered.
“That’s good.” My mom replied.

“Attention all people. There has been a tsunami warning and we suggest you get to higher areas.” a voice said on a police loudspeaker.” A wave of panic hit over me. We live near the ocean so if a tsunami hit it would hit us hard. Also, that earthquake seemed pretty big so it wouldn’t be surprising if a big one hit.
“Lets go home, it is pretty high up the hill.” my dad suggested. We nodded in agreement and jumped into the car to drive there. As I looked out the window I could see rescue crews pulling people out of the rubble and firefighters carefully going into buildings that looked about ready to collapse at any moment to see if there was anyone that needed help. I admired the bravery of these people. They risked their lives to save others, even though they’re complete strangers.
Screech! The car abruptly screeched to a stop. My dad hit the car a couple times.
“Yes, this is the perfect time for you to break down.” my dad yelled at the car, cursing under his breath.
“Honey, lets go.” my mom said gently.
“Sorry.” my dad muttered. We hopped out of the car and started walking the rest of the way to our house. We still had a ways to go.
“Tsunami!” I heard people yelling as they ran past us. What?! I turned around and my face went pale. I saw a humongous wall of ocean barreling towards us.
“Go!” I yelled, and we sprinted up the hill, running away from the ocean. Good thing we’re all fast runners. I heard people screaming before they got swallowed by the wave. Tears were streaming down my face as I ran away. We were about ¾ there and the wave was gradually getting smaller, but it was still strong enough to take us out.
Suddenly I was overcome with a wave of pain. A piece of metal that the tsunami was carrying had hit me and the pain was practically unbearable.
“Avery!” Lily yelled. I tried to get up but my legs failed me. My eyesight was getting blurred and I could barely make out my parents running towards me and Lily yelling run.
“RUN!” like from my dream. My thoughts were getting hazy and my vision began blacking out as I felt the spray of the water from the ocean when I felt strong hands picking me up. I passed out.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Avery later woke up with a bandage around her head. The earthquake/tsunami took many lives, and Avery and Lily were lucky that all of their families didn’t suffer any life threatening injuries or death. That earthquake was a 7.8, it was very big. There was a lot of damage done to the town, but eventually they fixed it up.