Chapter 1
I’m now in the closet hoping that those nasty agents don’t find me. If they find out who I really am they will never let me go. I’m scared to death snuggling in the small closet space hoping not to be found. “Cough” oh no I just made a sound I hope they don’t realize I’m in here. But I am truly wrong; I hear footsteps coming closer and closer to me. They opened the door and-. “Charlotte did you make that nightmare again?” My mom is sitting on my bed looking worried. I told her I was fine then she went back to her room. I sighed in relief it was just a nasty nightmare… For some reason I had that nightmare for the past week, it’s kind of scaring me.
Now all I want is to get a nice warm glass of milk and slip right into bed again. I remember when I could sleep without having nightmares, that was about three years ago before we moved to GreenWood City. My parents think it’s the safest place to hide from those agents but personally this town is dangerous. Somehow every time I go to school I feel like somebody is watching me. When I tell my parents about it they just pat me on the shoulder and say that I have an active imagination. They always treat me like a kid, but I’m not I’m almost 14.
After a nice warm glass of milk I went back to bed and slept like a baby. The sound of a very strong wind finally woke me up. When I looked at my clock it was 3:00 am. I looked out of my window and guess what I saw. It was a tornado! The closer it got to my house, the more alarmed I was. I was frozen, stiff; I didn’t know what to do. Finally I ran downstairs where my parents were sleeping to warn them about the storm. When I got into their rooms nobody was in it. Could it be that the agents took them? I shook that thought out of my head and started to search my house. A teardrop fell from my eyes when I noticed they were nowhere to be found. I started to lose hope. Maybe the agents found out where we lived and took them. It didn’t surprise me; they’ve been looking for my family since the year 2020 which was three years from now.
After a few minutes of thinking I decided to take matters in my own hands. I’m going to steal the helicopter we keep in our huge shed for emergencies even though I was forbidden to ever use it. But this is an emergency, isn’t it? With the help of the helicopter I’m going to fly to Miami which is not really too far from GreenWood City, maybe just a 2 hour flight. I ran up to my room and took three backpacks. One with my clothes, IPad 360 and map, another with food and the last one with my sleeping bag, flashlights plus extra batteries and compass. I’m ready. I take the helicopter keys, put my luggage in the back of the helicopter and escape from my house.
I’m just a few miles away from home and I’m flying as fast as I can so that the tornado doesn’t hit me. When I looked back I see that the tornado has already reached my house and is completely destroying it. “No!” I scream as I’m bursting into tears. Suddenly I think about my parents probably with those agents, and also of my sister who went to college two months ago. I just hope they’re alright. It’s 5:00 am in the morning and I see the sun rising. I think that I should probably bring the helicopter down because everybody should be woken up soon and seeing a 13 year old girl flying a helicopter on a school day is not that normal. As I get closer to the ground I notice that a girl about the same age as me is looking up at my helicopter. Her face has lots of scars (probably because she was hurt from the tornado) and she’s beside a house that most of it is teared down. She didn’t seem to be with anyone and she seemed harmless so I went completely down until I touched the ground.
The girl observed me for a few seconds until she said “H-Hi I’m L-Lauren.” I put out my hand to shake hers, but she slapped my hand once I reached hers. I stared at her in disbelief, why did she do that? As if she read my mind Lauren said: “Sorry but I can’t just trust anybody anymore.” I get what she means, agents are everywhere in this country you can’t trust anybody anymore. “Plus most of my family died because of this awful tornado and I almost died myself. So go ahead laugh at me all you want.” I starred at her with pity in my eyes I didn’t know what to say or do after what Lauren said. But I’m definitely not going to laugh at her. Instead I gave her a big hug and let her cry on my shoulder. “Don’t worry Lauren I’m here for you, my parents were also- I stop right there. I can’t trust her just yet because maybe she is an agent and all of her story was just a lie to make us poor helpless kids talk. After a long chat in my head I noticed that Lauren was waiting for me to finish my sentence. I didn’t know what to say but I definitely couldn’t tell the truth to her until I know she’s trustworthy. “Uh my parents were also always telling me that I can’t trust anyone.” I say.
I think she was convinced by the story because she smiled and started to show me the few parts in her house that wasn’t broken yet. Finally she shows me a cute little picture of her last year with her parents beside her, and a cute boy about the age of Lauren. Lauren must’ve seen me looking at him because she grinned and started talking “That’s my twin Brother Max, girls always found him cute.” I looked down and blushed. He was cute but I didn’t know very much about him. Crushing on him would be useless and a waste of my time but I couldn’t resist still talking about him. “Umm Lauren, did Max die too?” I said still blushing. “No he didn’t he’s in the back yard resting because of a severe injury. Want to go see him?”
I just nodded and followed her to the back yard. Sitting on a chair was Max. He looked very sad and in a lot of pain. When Lauren saw him she hugged Max. Then he noticed me for the same time and started to smile. I looked down, trying not to make eye contact. “Uh Max meet, actually I haven’t had the chance to learn your name.” Lauren said. “My name is Charlotte; sorry I haven’t told you earlier.” I said apologetically. Then Max came up to me and I panicked. What was he going to do to me? “Well hey Charlotte and welcome to our home, well the rest of it.” Said Max in a very sweet tone. I felt my cheeks become hotter as I stood very awkwardly in front of him. Lauren felt my pain so she asked us if we wanted to go in the front yard and wait for the orphanage to come since she called them because their parents died. That’s when I remembered that my helicopter was still in the front yard and that I should probably return to it before somebody notices it. As I was heading out of Lauren and Max’s house some kind of agent went up to us and said “Freeze”. I panicked; I can’t let myself be taken away by these nasty agents. I decided to run as fast as I could to my helicopter. Max and Lauren also not knowing what to do followed me. Suddenly the agent threw a net and caught Lauren. When all looked back and saw that Lauren was struggling to get out of the large net, unfortunately there was nothing she could do the net was too big. Max and I tried to run back to Lauren and save her but we were too late. Lauren was already in the agent’s truck and being driven away to who knows where
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
I wish I could write like this when I was 11! There isn't much that you need to fix on this. Just a couple of minor things that you will learn as time goes on.
I think you might want to add more description of the scenes, it would really bring this to life. Like, instead of "Most of her house is teared down" (also, you might want to fix some grammar, like that would be *torn*) you could say "Her house was in shambles, splinters of wood covered up what was once a lawn, metal beams were twisted and bent, laid low by the forces of nature..." etc. If you described your scenes (and you'll want to use all of the senses, since you are doing this in the first person. So you can say "The darkness of the closet enclosed me." for sight, or you could incorporate smell "The smell of mildew and dust made me cough". Also you could use touch "In the darkness, I could feel the smooth outlines of metal shelves." and also you could hear "The slow, menacing footsteps came ever closer, ever louder, sounding like the pounding of a gong.". And last, but not least, you could do taste, which I find personally is the hardest. " The horror of being found brought the sour, acidic taste of bile onto her tongue.")
Other than grammar and more description, the only thing left is to use better words. Like instead of "He looked very sad and in a lot of pain." you could write "A look of sorrow overwhelmed his features, mixed in with a terrifying agony." For doing things like this, you should use the fool-proof method that I have found, and it is to take your sentence, and find your adjectives, and then look them up in the thesaurus (thesaurus.com is a great resource) and then replace them. "I was happy." can be replaced with "I was overjoyed." It is stronger, and brings the reader into the story more.
All in all, though, this is really good. Never stop writing!
I'd like to critique this: I'm not trying to be mean on this.
I felt that this story was too fast paced. She goes into a closet thinking these agents have come, it's only the mom, she goes to get a glass of milk, slips into bed, and goes to sleep. And than suddenly at 3 am there is a tornado, her parents gone, and this only happened in a couple of paragraphs. I also found quite a couple of grammar mistakes.
" “Cough” oh no I just made a sound I hope they don’t realize I’m in here. "
I suggest putting something more like "A soft cough slipped out of me-I became panicked that the agents might've heard me." (correct me if I made a grammar mistake myself.. lol)
"He looked very sad"
The word sad isn't very descriptive. I try to avoid words like sad, happy, fun, stuff, awesome, cool, things, etc. Perhaps you could use a more descriptive word, all you have to do is search up "synonyms for sad" or you can refer to an adjective list.
As I was heading out of Lauren and Max’s house some kind of agent went up to us and said “Freeze”.
Correction: As I was heading out of Lauren and Max's house, some kind of agent went up to us and said, "Freeze."
When all looked back and saw that Lauren was struggling to get out of the large net, unfortunately there was nothing she could do the net was too big.
Correction: When I looked back and saw that Lauren was struggling to get out of the colossal net, (put a more describing word in place of large) unfortunately there was nothing she could do; the net was too big.
"Lauren was already in the agent’s truck and being driven away to who knows where"
Correction: Lauren was already in the agent's truck and being driven away to who knows where." (there has to be a period.)
I also felt that the battle went way too fast.. and there was plenty of grammar mistakes. This story, however, has potential for something great.