This is the first part of my book that I plan to submit to a Brigham Young University writing contest. I haven't revised it yet, so please give me a lot of tips. Thanks!
Caina rushed through the streets with her book bag hanging off one shoulder. She nearly collided with poor old Mrs. Jenkins and her yappy little dog. But she barely noticed. All she could think about was what sort of punishment she was in line for with a fifth tardy. Last time she’d been sent to detention for lunch. Maybe she was looking at a day long detention. Whatever she was in for, she’d take it all out on Grey after school. She’d had to help him hide his insane machinery again this morning. Storm, her snake-shaped essence, was wrapped around her forearm as usual. She was a deep gray -blue, the color of a sky before a threatening rainstorm.
As she’d expected, the halls were deserted when she got there. She reached her room, and peering through the window saw her class already far into the lesson. As if her teacher, Mrs. Gerring, wouldn’t notice, she slid through the door and tiptoed to her seat. For a moment, the teacher actually seemed not to have noticed. But just after Caina sat down, a suspicious look from Mrs. Gerring confirmed that she had not remembered seeing her there before.
“That’s the fifth tardy in a row, Ms. Marsing. What excuse do you have this time?” Mrs. Gerring asked. Her banana-yellow essence bobbed above her right shoulder.
“Slept in,” Caina said resentfully. Though not with resentment toward Mrs. Gerring. She was the best teacher Caina ever had. She was just out of school herself with short blond hair and warm hazel eyes.
“That means detention after school.”
“I know.” But Caina was glad to learn it was only an after school detention. She silently promised herself she wouldn’t be late again.
Even though Caina probably held the school’s record for tardies, she was a straight A student. And she wasn’t a bad girl. She never got into trouble at school, she was simply more curious than the rest of her friends, and school sometimes seemed like a second priority to her and Grey’s crazy charades.
At the end of science, the bell rang for lunch. Storm, who had been glowing patiently on her wrist, unraveled herself and hovered over Caina’s shoulder, excited to see Grey and his silver, triangular shaped essence, Guardian.
“Glad to see you made it to school,” Caina greeted.
“Caina, you’ve got to see how far I am on the hover disk. I’m so close to finishing it. Come over after school and see it.”
“I have detention after school, thanks to you.”
“Then after detention. I’ll wait for you outside the school.”
“All right,” Caina agreed. She absently watched Owen, the town bully, threatening poor little Jonah who was small for his age. Owen’s blob of an essence was lazily slouching on his shoulder looking as if it’d had too much to eat.
“I wish we could leave some people behind when we escape. They don’t deserve to live on land,” Caina said.
Grey didn’t seem to notice. He was probably dreaming about his new invention. But then he said, “You know there’s still that problem. I’m not even close to figuring out how to fix it,” he said, shaking his head.
Caina was silent as she usually was when he talked about the glitch in their otherwise brilliant plan.
After lunch, Caina dragged through the rest of school oblivious to the lessons. Her mind was full of plans and premonitions for the future.
When detention had ended, she met Grey outside the school and they began walking back together. They decided to take the shortcut past the edge of town where the streets met the calm ocean surrounding them. The waterline never rose or fell with the tide, and the townspeople were never bothered by waves, because an invisible wall surrounded the settlement a mile out into the sea. During storms, giant waves sped toward them and crashed seemingly on thin air before they ever reached the town. The invisible wall was designed so people of their kind could never pass through it.
As they passed the open sea, Caina stared at the waves crashing on the invisible wall. It was eerily calm after the lightning storm that had disturbed the ocean night before, and the sky was devoid of clouds. But just as Caina was about to turn back to the street in front of her, she noticed something neon orange bobbing on the water only ten feet from where they were standing. The waves were carrying it toward the town.
“Grey, look,” Caina pointed to the floating object. He reluctantly returned to the sea and watched with her as the thing grew closer. As it approached, the details became clearer. Suddenly, they both realized at the same horrifying moment that it was a person.
“It’s a girl!” Caina exclaimed unnecessarily. “What do we do?”
“I’ll run get help. You wait until she gets closer, and if you can, reach out and grab her so she doesn’t drift away,” Grey said, and he ran as fast as his trained runner’s legs would go.
Caina kneeled helplessly on the outermost edge of the street reaching her hand out to grab the girl’s lifejacket. After what seemed like hours, she was just within arm length, and Caina nearly fell into the water when she finally caught the girl.
Dragging her onto the cobblestones, she studied the mysterious girl’s face. She had shoulder-length muddy brown hair and innocent features. Her face pictured that of a girl on the brink of young womanhood, gentle and ignorant. She guessed the girl was around eleven, four years younger than Caina, but moderately small for her age.
Grey returned with the doctor and security chief of the town, Chief Mellon, who looked hyped up about his first job in years. The stout mayor came huffing up behind them with a couple of council members on his trail. His pudgy eyes grew wide as he processed the scene in front of him.
“A girl! Just floating out on the waves, you say?” he asked Grey.
“Yeah.”
“A shipwreck, no doubt. Caused by last night’s storm. Is she alive?”
The doctor stepped in to check for a pulse and do various examining procedures. “She’s alive, but barely. We must get her to my office immediately.” The security chief picked her up and followed the doctor, whose blood red essence hovered over the girl and glowed bright with healing powers. Caina and Grey followed were luckily unnoticed in the rushed confusion. Residents of the town were beginning to gather on the streets to watch the procession in curiosity, while the police chief dutifully informed them that all was under control. This, of course, only made the interest rise.
When they arrived at the doctor’s office, Chief Mellon placed the girl on the examining table. Caina and Grey quietly crept into the room still unnoticed by the adults.
“It doesn’t look too serious. I’m sure I can cure her in just a short matter of time,” the doctor informed them.
“What will we do with her after that? She must stay somewhere. And relatives will be searching for her. We must inform them,” one of the council members said.
“This will be sorted, my friends. We will hold council tomorrow, and afterward, notify the town,” the mayor stated matter-of-factly.
Caught up in the excitement, Caina blurted, “I can keep her at my house.” They all turned to her. The color rose in her face, and she added tentatively, “We have an extra room, and my mom won’t mind.
“She did find the girl,” the council member pointed out.
“Hey! I’m the hero who ran to get help,” Grey said. They ignored him.
“Perhaps, but we’ll discuss it tomorrow. Meanwhile, you children should go home. These matters at present do not concern you,” the mayor said.
As they walked back home, Caina couldn’t stop thinking about the girl that came floating in from the sea. It probably was a shipwreck, but the town hadn’t ever had a resident from the outside world before. This could change everything. But Grey had other things on his mind.
“I think it’s time we had a new mayor. It would be easy to get rid of him. No one would ever have to know what happened.”
“You’re such a little boy,” Caina said, punching him in the arm. “A girl just washed up on the streets of our town from the outside world and all you can think about is our fat, self-obsessed mayor?”
“Thanks for proving my point. You realize what this means, don’t you?” he said, beaming with ecstasy. When she couldn’t answer, he said, “The glitch in the plan! She can get us out of here!”
Suddenly Caina’s eyes lit with the most extraordinary realization she’d ever experienced. After fifty years of imprisonment, she and Grey, two teenagers, would be the ones to free the people. Storm pulsated rapidly on Caina’s wrist communicating her equal exhilaration.
“We need to have that girl. I know my mom will take her in,” Caina said. After everything that had happened that afternoon, they’d forgotten about the hover disk. They both walked home in a daze and promised to test it as soon as they had the girl.
Caina seized her chance that evening at dinner to bring up the strange girl. She told about how she and Grey had found her floating toward the town and reminded them about the extra room they had.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. I mean, just until we can locate her family,” her mother said. “What do you think, honey?” she called to her husband watching the news.
“Hm? Oh, yes. Just fine,” he muttered. Caina twirled her noodles on her fork pretending to be impassive.
“So, she can stay with us?”
“Why not?” her mother smiled. “What does she look like?”
“She looks like she’s about ten or eleven, shoulder-length brown hair. Small.”
“You can have a little sister for a while.” Caina smiled sadly. She’d always wanted siblings. Storm was drifting excitedly over her shoulder, wondering about her personality.
Caina replied with the excitement of almost having a sister.
The council was held the next day. Over breakfast, the loudspeakers stationed around town declared the news, and the whole place was a buzz you could hear all over the Atlantic Ocean. There was more excitement than they’d seen probably in the history of the sea town, and that’s topping the riots about small town gossip. No one had ever marooned on their island of cobblestones before. So Caina and her mother wormed their way through the unusually crowded streets toward the lighthouse/town hall.
The bottom floor was a huge gymnasium with a stage in front. Seats covered the remaining part of the circular lighthouse wall. Half the town had already congregated inside, and a crowd was gathering by the elevator to the town hall on the second floor. A man Caina recognized as one of the mayor’s right-hand men was shouting over the hum of the crowd while blocking elevator access.
“…Will notify everyone of their decision. Once again, if you would like to offer a place for the girl to stay, please make an appointment. Thank you.” The competition seemed to rouse Caina’s mother, and she pushed to the front of the crowd.
“Wait just a moment, my daughter was the one who found this girl. We’ve already made an offer to take her in,” she shouted to the council man who was scrambling to get into the elevator. He turned back to them.
“What was that? You’re Caina?” he asked, pointing to Caina.
“Yes,” she answered hopefully.
“The council would like to speak with you. Come with me.” The crowd grew a couple decibels, and Caina and her mother rushed into the elevator.
Once they were safely in, the man sighed and said, “It’s amazing to see how desperate we all are to have even the smallest connection to the outside world. Sad, really. We’ve been out of the loop for so long.” The elevator doors dinged open and they faced the information desk for the town hall. They were led down a hall to their right and through the oak door at the end. A bronze plaque labeled it the conference room.
About ten council members sat at a wooden table in front of windows overlooking the sea. The mayor sat at the head and pulled back from his intent conversation with a neighbor when they entered.
“Sir, Caina and her mother,” their guide said.
“Ah, Caina! Mrs….”
“Marsing,” her mother said.
“Yes, Ms. Marsing, and Mrs. Marsing. Welcome to the town hall. Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing to two empty seats at his side. Caina couldn’t help wondering if he’d kept them empty on purpose.
“Firstly,” he began after they sat down, “we would all like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for rescuing that poor little girl. Goodness knows what would have happened if you hadn’t happened to spot her.”
“Well, Grey saved her too,” Caina pointed out.
“Yes, of course. But that is not the only reason we called you here. We’ve been discussing the matter of the girl’s temporary home, and decided that since you were the one to find her, you should be the one to keep her, at least until we can locate her family,” he said with a grin that was strangely annoying to Caina. “Of course, if that’s all right with you, Mrs. Marsing?”
“It will be a pleasure.”
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed with a jovial clap of his hands. “We’ll make arrangements to move her immediately. Please, keep discussing our previous matter,” he said to the council. Then he led them to the clinic.
“I’m very glad you agreed to this. I have heard only good things about you and your family Mrs. Marsing. I trust the girl will be quite safe under your care.”
“Thank you, Mayor Goodrich.”
“Please, call me Greg.”
Caina felt like her breakfast was coming back up her throat. Who had elected this guy?
She’d never been so happy to see the clinic in her life when they walked into the waiting room. They stepped up to the desk just as the doctor came around the corner.
“I saw you coming from my window. You’re here to pick up the girl, correct?” he asked Caina’s mom.
The mayor answered for her, “Yes, they are. Downright saintly of them, don’t you think? Well, must get back to the council. Decisions to make, you know. For the good of the town.” And he left not a moment too soon for Caina.
“You know, it’s almost hard to give her up. I was talking care of her all night, and it was almost like having a daughter again,” he said sadly. Caina felt awkward whenever he mentioned his past.
“We’ll take good care of her, Martin.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will.”
He led them into the room where she was still peacefully sleeping. Her brown hair was splayed over the pillow, and her childish face was calm and almost happy.
“She hasn’t moved a bit since you found her Caina. But I’m not worried. That’s natural after such trauma.” The bed doubled as a stretcher, and he helped them wheel her toward the back door. He decided to help them wheel her to their house.
Luckily, most of the town was still gathered at the town hall, so only a couple of people started while they passed. It was strange for the streets to be so silent. This only happened when there were huge special events going on. While Caina walked alongside the stretcher, she listened to waves lapping at the invisible wall in the distance. It was the only sound made by nature here. She’d read about the sounds the wild made in the outside world. Wind whistled through the trees and beautiful little animals called birds sang all different kinds of songs. She looked at the sleeping girl who had seen and heard all of these things, and who could tell her exactly what they were like. Her own personal view to the outer world.
