The Secrets of Secede

The Secrets of Secede
“Ok class take out your pens and start taking notes. Today we are learning about Earth and our country, Secede.” “Great,” thought Braelyn. “Another day filled with stupid stuff like stars.” She quickly fixed her long, blonde hair as Cole Martin came over.
“Hey, Bradi, can I borrow a pen?” Cole asked. “Yeah, here you go, Cole.” She pulled out her purse and handed him a pen. “Thanks,” Cole said as he flashed her a dazzling white smile.
“Alright class, listen to the video and remember to take notes.” Mr. Young drowned on and on with his fake accent that made you want to fall asleep.
A young, nerdy boy with glasses appeared on the television screen. “Hey Professor Monty, why is Secede so small? What is the Darkness? How do you know?” “Well Alfred, lets tune in to my buddy, Professor Knowledge.” Professor Monty walked over to a room that had an Albert Einstein look-alike sitting on a chair.
“This is going to be really stupid” Cole whispered across the room. “Shhhhh!” Mr. Young scolded.
233 years ago, the video explained, in 2077, a comet fell and hit Earth. The explosion made a small portion of Earth that was 200 miles long fly off into space. That is our country, Secede. The definition of Secede is ‘separated’, because it was separated from Earth. Twenty people were on Secede when the explosion happened, and they were the start of our great civilization. The darkness, as far as we know, is either space or the remains of another planet. That is a brief history of our country, Secede.
“Does that answer your question, Alfred?” Professor Monty asked. “Yes, sir I know now, thank you very much.” And the television screen went black.
Mr. Young took out the tape and started talking. “You will find the comprehension questions on page…”
“Wow, I didn’t know that!” Braelyn said excitedly to her best friend Gracelyn Parker. “Yeah, I thought Earth was make-believe!” Gracelyn answered.
“Please quiet down you two” Brita Ford, the class goody-goody told them. Braelyn shrugged and continued talking to Gracelyn.
* * *
That night, Braelyn and her family’s eyes were glued to the television screen. Even Rilee, who was only two, was watching it. The leader of Secede, Rend, was making a speech. The Rend family were always the leaders of Secede, so we just call every member of their family Rend.
Rend started his speech. “I have been called here regarding news that our star-watchers learned last night. It seems as though Earth is closer than it ever has been, which is only 60,923 miles away. This is very, very dangerous. The Earth’s people will want to explore Secede and ruin our long-lasting solitude. I have been presented with two choices: to wage a war against Earth or to go into hiding. I have determined that we will go into hiding, so tomorrow morning all able-bodied citizens will start to dig an underground city. That will be all.”
* * *
“I can’t believe it! I just cannot believe it!” Braelyn exclaimed to her friend Ava Charles. She responded, “I know what will happen if the Earth people come! We will die!”
Braelyn shook her head. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. If we live underground, we’ll never get to be with friends or watch T.V., or have electricity.”
Ava walked away in disbelief as Cole, overhearing what Braelyn said, came over.
“Don’t even try to talk to them. They have got it into their heads that the ‘all-mighty’ Rend is always right. My grandpa says that he is a bad leader.
Mr. Young marched up to them, shaking his finger, saying, “Mr. Martin for that you get a weeks worth of detention. Never insult or disagree with Rend. If you were older, you would be hung. Miss Carter, same with you. Cole, I will be sending a note home with you for your grandpa. Also, both of you have detention tomorrow at 3:30.
“Mr. Young, my grandpa’s dead; he was hung by the government last year.” Cole said with a fake frown of sadness on his face.
“See, that’s what could happen to you. Now, both of you remember, 3:30 detention tomorrow.”
Braelyn walked away, disappointed that a whole afternoon would be wasted. Cole ran up to her, saying, “Hey Bradi, we should start a protest against Rend.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You know, your right and after that we can go try to be fishies in the water!” she said sarcastically, and threw up her hands and walked away.
“Braelyn!” Cole yelled and ran up to her once more. “C’mon, you don’t want to live like cavemen, do ya?” he pleaded.
“No, but…” She couldn’t take it anymore. “Alright, if other people would help.” Braelyn planned to ditch the plan once Cole had one or two other followers.
“Yes! Thanks, Bradi!” He ran off, probably to get other people to help.
At the first “Protest Against Rend” meeting, or PAR, Cole was about ready to start. “Is everyone here?” he whispered to Jordan Tall.
“I guess,” the tall boy answered.
“As many as we’re going to get.” Braelyn added.
There were 20 people at the PAR meeting, including the Carter, Martin, and the Tall families. When Cole started to speak, they quieted quickly. “Ummm….ok. This meeting is for people who want to protest against Rend and his scheme to go underground.”
A man raised his hand. It was Mr. Lucien, the town’s pharmacist. “Excuse me, you did not put that on the flier. I do not wish to protest, all the responsible adults will be put in jail or hung. Who agrees with me? Let’s go!”
He stood up and, most everyone got up with him, and Braelyn, Cole, and Braelyn’s little sister Rilee were left sitting on a bench.
“Just let them go, Cole.”
“I just can’t believe it. All of them are terrified of Rend, even Jordan Tall.” Cole said.
“Yeah, I know, but what can we do?”
“We can go to Earth. All three of us.” Cole said with an excited look on his face.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, it is a perfectly good idea. I bet Earth is just beyond the Darkness. Me, You, and Rilee can go and prove to these cowards that they can and should stand up for themselves.”
Braelyn desperately wanted him to forget about this idea. Who would even try to venture out to the Darkness? Was he stupid? “Cole, c’mon, our parents would worry…”
“Stop making excuses, Bradi. They don’t care, remember when our class was locked inside school and they didn’t notice that we were gone for a whole weekend?”
“What about food?”
“So you’ll agree to it?” Cole said earnestly.
“Ummm…. I guess.” She sighed and started to put on her coat.
“Hey, we better start getting ready. Save your food, I will steal some supplies from the storehouse. Oh yeah, you should bring a bag of like, regular stuff. Thanks a lot, Bradi!!” He ran off with a big smile on his face.
“When will he learn?” Braelyn looked down at Rilee, who smiled and kept drinking her sippy cup.
* * *
At home, Braelyn couldn’t help noticing that her parents didn’t really want anything to do with her. The only reason they probably kept her was because of the $1,000 extra dollars a year you get per child. She casually grabbed a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and ran up to her room.
It was difficult deciding what to pack, since Braelyn did not know how long she would be gone. She figured they wouldn’t be gone for more than three days, so she packed for two.
Braelyn and Rilee saw Cole waiting for them at the storehouse at midnight. She felt guilty that she was carrying a small backpack, while he had a gigantic duffel bag, a huge camper backpack, and a demented-looking bike.
Braelyn guessed that Cole made this odd bike, since it was extremely modified. It had a front board about 2 feet by 4 feet long, and a baby seat in the front and what looked like a car trunk attached to the back.
“ I had to renovate the bike to make room for you and Rilee. It might not be as comfortable as a bed, but its better than walking,” Cole explained.
“Oh, that’s ok. What did you all bring?” she said, trying not to stare too much at the bike.
He responded, “I have chips, some water jugs, coconuts, cookies, medicine, stuff like that.”
Braelyn felt guilty that all she brought was stuff for peanut butter sandwiches, so she just said, “Yeah, I have some of that kind of stuff too.”
“Well, we’d better get going,” he said.
Braelyn sat on the bike while Cole put Rilee into the baby seat. He handed her two small blankets and told her to put them on when it gets cold.
He put the bags of food into the trunk, and started to mount the bike.
Just in time, Braelyn said, “Thanks.”
Cole started to pedal the bike, and at first it seemed as though they were hardly moving. Braelyn swore she could’ve walked faster, but she didn’t say anything. As he got more used to the weight of the bike, they began moving more briskly.
When she first got on the bike, Braelyn was extremely uncomfortable. It felt as though she was sitting on a hard rock. As the time wore on, she was so tired she fell asleep.
“Braelyn! Bradi!” Cole was whispering in her ear.
She stretched and answered, “Huh?”
“I have to stop. How about we camp out in that cave?” he said, looking weary.
“Uh, I don’t want to wake Rilee. Can you just go there alone?”
He answered, “Sure, good night.”
Braelyn closed her eyes as Cole walked away. Of course, they were both too tired to realize the danger of sleeping in an unknown cave. Braelyn just fell asleep, almost at ease.
At what seemed to be about six o’clock in the morning, Rilee started crying. Braelyn rolled off the bike, and got on her feet. She felt like her muscles had been ironed. She took the uncomfortable Rilee from her baby seat and brought her to the woods to go to the bathroom. She felt very grateful that the toddler was potty-trained.
When the sisters came back, Braelyn saw that Cole was still sleeping in his cave. She decided to make a small breakfast for them, and then she realized she did not have any paper plates in her bag. Braelyn looked in Cole’s bag and sure enough, there were some paper plates. She made three peanut butter sandwiches, and went to wake up Cole.
She made sure Rilee was all right eating, and walked to the cave. The first thing she saw was spiders scurrying away from her feet. She yelped and hopped away to the left side of the cave where Cole was. She went over to him and shook him gently.
“What the…” When Braelyn touched him, she felt that he was stone cold.
“Cole, wake up.” She was getting scared now. She didn’t allow herself to think what was probably true, so she kept on shaking him.
“Cole! C’mon wake up!” She was screaming now. She felt his pulse. Nothing.
“No! He’s dead! Oh, no, why now?” Tears started pouring down her cheeks as she kept screaming “Why did this happen?”
Braelyn sobbed into the cold, dead body and felt something tickle her hand. She shook it off, but a minuet later it was there again. She looked at her hand and on it was a red and blue spider.
“Ahhhhh!” She yelled and shook it off. After a moment or two, she realized what had happened. This spider was poisonous, she knew by the colors, so it must have killed Cole. For Rilee and her safety, they must get out of the area or they would meet the same fate as Cole. But first, she had to do something.
Braelyn spotted the spider on the cave floor and walked over to it. With her shoe, she stepped on it and smashed it into the ground.
“That one’s for Cole.” She said to the deceased spider.
She walked over to Rilee and started to grab their things to leave. Then she realized that she should do something about Cole’s body. She couldn’t just leave it there; it would be mean to his spirit. She walked to his corpse and tried to pick it up. She wasn’t strong enough, so she staggered along with it. Finally, she came to the grass. Braelyn set the corpse there and grabbed a water jug from the bags. Knowing it was wasteful; she dumped it in the dirt by Cole. She set the water jug aside and started digging with her hands. At about 12 o’clock, she had a big enough hole.
Braelyn lifted Cole’s body into the hole and quickly filled it back up. She then put a wildflower on top of the mound. She thought about how determined and nice Cole was and tears slowly started to roll down her cheeks. She said a little prayer for him in her head, and then grabbed Rilee and went on their way.
As the two sisters walked along the muddy paths, Braelyn saw a trickle of water. Since they had not taken a drink for an hour or two, she was glad they would come to water soon. They quickened their pace and after a while, they came to a muddy pond. Braelyn, who was awfully hot by now, waded into the water. For an instant she forgot about Rilee, and just enjoyed the cool water. Braelyn heard a bubbling sound coming from the water in back of her and quickly turned around.
“Rilee!” She looked just in time to see a blonde little head disappear under the water. She ran as fast as she could over to Rilee, and pulled her out of the water.
“Owwy!” Rilee said faintly in her squeaky little voice.
“I’m so sorry Rilee…” Braelyn thought about what would happen if she had not looked in time. “Oh, I’m so sorry…”
Apparently, Braelyn reasoned, staying by the pond was not a very good idea. After packing up their things, again, Braelyn decided to head for home.
“It’ll just be the other way we came from,” she said, mostly talking to herself. “But the problem is, where did we come from?”
Braelyn knew there was a river that ran through her city, so she decided followed the pond until she came to a river. But after miles of hiking over the next few days, all she saw was dirt, grass, and woods.
Not giving up hope, she kept walking. She wondered if the community of Secede would take them back. She really hoped they would, because the two had nowhere else to go. Rilee, dirty and weak, noticed something in the sky.
“ ‘Moke! ‘Moke!”
Braelyn didn’t know what in the world the two-year-old was talking about. She knew it must be important, because Rilee kept pressing on, saying ‘moke, ‘moke.
Suddenly she saw what Rilee was so wound up about. There, against the sky blue of the sky, was a thin sliver of silvery smoke.
“What the…” Forgetting all their things, Braelyn snatched up Rilee and scampered off, full speed, towards the smoke.
When the two got there, the abandoned fire left smothering in the dirt saddened Braelyn.
“Oh, when will this be over?” Braelyn fell to the grass and started crying. “We’re never going to get home. Never.” She softly wept.
She heard a shriek from Rilee and looked up. The little girl was running towards a dark silhouette in the distance, laughing.
“Rilee, no! Stop!” Braelyn ran off towards the scary shape, screaming. Suddenly she fell hard against the ground.
“Ahhhhh! No!” She screamed and tried to get up to save her little sister. The weeping girl hobbled towards Rilee.
“It’s no use! I’ll never catch up with her.” Braelyn sat down. She wondered, “Why does this always have to happen to me?”
The next day, after a fitful sleep, Braelyn set of to find the black shape. She decided that was the darkness, the unknown area that she learned about in school. Whenever Braelyn thought of school, it seemed a like a million years ago.
When she came to the darkness 15 minuets later, she stood by the opening of it, amazed. It was more like a cave, except darker and more frightening. She gathered up her remaining courage and walked inside.
After a few paces, Braelyn almost turned back. But then she thought, “Cole would’ve; he wouldn’t have thought twice about it.” She walked on, occasionally tripping on dead roots and rocks. Suddenly, she heard a tiny voice calling out from the dark.
“Baylee! Baylee!”
Braelyn was dumbfounded. Rilee had heard her coming. She felt a great surge of love for her sister. Rilee hadn’t given up on her, so she won’t give up on this trip. She sprinted until she came upon Rilee.
“Rilee! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!” She picked up the toddler and hugged her hard. She looked down for a moment and saw a small pool of water, about 3 feet across.
Their reflections showed in the water. What Braelyn saw there astonished her beyond belief. They did not look like Braelyn and Rilee Carter anymore; they looked like they were two small orphans who had just come out of a pile of dirt.
Rilee looked smaller and more fragile than ever. She had lost weight, and both of their once light blonde hair was now brown with muck. Braelyn looked like she had lost ten pounds, and she had something stuck in her hair.
“I’m so sorry, Rilee.” Braelyn whispered in they baby’s ear. She couldn’t stand seeing them like this anymore.
“Hey, Rilee, do you want to take a bath?” She tried to sound cheerful, even though she was crying from the inside.
Rilee immediately sat down and started to pull off her worn-down socks and shoes. Braelyn leaped around, making sure the water temperature was all right and there were no sharp rocks they could cut there feet with on the ground.
A minute after Braelyn touched the water, Rilee screamed, “Bubbles!”
Braelyn looked over and saw that the whole water pool was boiling. “Wow!” she said to herself, and grabbed up Rilee. She touched the water with her finger, and clothes and all, the two were pulled into the pool with a force too powerful to imagine.
Rilee and Braelyn were getting pulled through a petrifying tunnel. They were going so fast; both of them were blinded for the moment. Closing her eyes, Braelyn desperately prayed that this would end, and, what seemed like years later they were pushed out into an outlandish place. It looked like Secede, with the blue sky and green grasses, but once she saw the brown-skinned man she knew she was somewhere different.
The odd man walked over to the tired girls. “Hello, what are two little ladies like yourself doing in Jamaica?
Braelyn drew together the very last droplets of bravery she had and spoke to the stranger. “I don’t really know,” she mumbled.
“Well, do you at least know where you came from?” he asked with a quizzical expression on his face.
“Umm, I think we came from Secede.” Braelyn didn’t want him to think she was crazy, so she tried to pretend like she was guessing.
“Oh,” he said. He laughed and spoke in a language unfamiliar to the girls and another man came over.
He grabbed their shirt collars and pushed them into a gnarled looking house. Braelyn closed his eyes as he sent them down what felt like a slide. Braelyn held close to Rilee as they traveled down the slippery slope.
When they hit the bottom, Braelyn opened her eyes. She could not believe her eyes. The two girls were standing in front of her house in Secede. They both ran inside and screamed joyfully. Braelyn sprinted to her mother and ran into here arms.
“Mom! I missed you so much! I love you Dad!” She shouted joyfully and gave her bemused father a big hug.
“Braelyn, what’s going on? Are you ok?” the parents asked simultaneously.
“Now I am!” and, sitting down at the kitchen table, she told them of her adventure.
Her parent’s reactions were not at all what Braelyn thought they would be. She thought they would be crying covering her with hugs and kisses. But instead, they stared at her befuddled by her strange behavior.
Her mother spoke up. “Braelyn, honey, you’ve been gone ten minutes. Stop making up stories and go bring Rilee upstairs to take a bath. You’re scaring us.
“But-but- I left in the middle of the night…with Cole…I’m sure of it.”
“Get upstairs now, Braelyn. It is 2:33 PM on May 3rd. Stop making up people, too. You know there is no one named Cole, and if you don’t stop, you will be grounded. Get upstairs now!” Her father yelled, and Braelyn grabbed Rilee and scurried upstairs.
“Well,” Braelyn thought, “they will never know the secrets of Secede…” She chuckled to herself and vowed that she would one day tell everyone the secret. “But for now, this’ll do.”