The Beginning of The End

Orlando encounter

Scarlett

America the land where dreams come true but the only dream I had was to escape the nightmare. Florida is considered the sunshine state but the sun wasn't shining on my life and I fear that now it never will. The problem with the trap I face is that it is one that is difficult to escape from. How do you correct 17 years of mistakes that caused one event without a time machine? The past is set in stone for now and I have very few options in terms of paths for the future and I fear that each one is bleak. I am quickly running out of options. Soon I will only be able to let fate run its course and hope that I make it through still breathing but it might already be too late. If things had gone differently back then, I might not find myself in this position today - aimlessly searching for a solution to an unsolvable problem but not knowing the answer until I can do nothing about it. So many things could have prevented this but I can't change them now. My life is set on this path and I can only hope that a better option comes up in the future. Who knows what will happen? If I had been there at the start of the chain I could have attempted to stop the gust of wind from blowing the dominoes over. But I wasn't. Now I have to try an intercept the trail mid-flow and hope that that is enough to stop it from starting an inescapable problem. And looking back could hold the answer of how to do just that.

***

We reached the plane with seconds to spare. Other than our families 6 other people had made it across with their lives. Our plane was nearly caught in the aftershock of the exploding engine. The bees were scattered after the explosion and couldn't follow us further. They returned to Stanville to regroup and rebuild their seemingly invincible army. The other plane plunged to earth taking with it the lives of hundreds. The death toll has risen again. How many more innocent people would see the same fate?

1 of the other six died of hyperthermia on the plane journey. His aging body couldn't deal with the shock of the freezing air in the atmosphere. The heating was on full blast to warm the rest of us in the hopes that we would not suffer a similar fate. Kira was shivering for hours but she did recover and suffered only from a mild cold which subsided in a day or two. We were lucky.

We landed in Orlando 7 ½ hours later. America was as busy as I thought it would be. Everything was done on a much bigger scale. I had been used to the quiet hustle and bustle of a few townsfolk as they went about their daily lives but now I find myself caught in the middle of large numbers of people all busy to get somewhere. I felt myself being dragged places by the current of people. It looked similar to how I would imagine London to be although I have never actually been there. The sun shone down on everything - no wonder Florida was considered the sunshine state.

We were forced to organise a shopping trip to get the stuff we had lost from the plane crash. Luckily I had saved a few things in my rucksack. I was quite glad of the costume change as my standard clothes were making me stand out from the crowd for all the wrong reasons. Every girl wore a skirt. My baggy jeans, although practical, really didn't make the cut. The tight, designer tops made my favourite top purchased in Newlook the best shop in the nearest town seem cheap and tasteless where it had been the main attire of a lot of girls in my class excluding the ones with parents who gave them a gold credit card and paid for everything they charged to it.

The house itself was larger than the one we had lived in back at home. Of course, I already knew that the thing I didn't expect was to be able to fit 5 people in the back seat of the 5 seated black Porsche we were renting until the car we were planning to buy was ready to collect. We hadn't been intending to get here before my school year had finished and even then we hadn't decided where I was going from there. In America, all the schools were already on summer vacation. Students flooded the shopping centres paying over-the-top prices for designer brands and ignoring the same item for a 1/3 of the price in the non-designer shops. Brands such as Jack Wills, Abercrombie and Fitch and Superdry were everywhere for as far as the eye could see.

Following the complete identity change, we found our house. It was like every other house on the street. Friendly, cosy and nice to look at but it didn't have that same charming appeal that had won my parent's hearts when we visited last July. The plans for the move have been ongoing for years now but now we were actually here we regretted it or at least I did. The character had been lost and with it my friends. The life felt taken out of me and even when I saw the pool in the back garden I was not excited. My heart was elsewhere as if I had come to America but left everything that was fun about me behind. It was on that plane that had fallen to the ground lost forever; it was in the exploded airport and in the destroyed school grounds. It was trapped in the locked abandoned house that I was separated from by an 8-hour plane journey that would no longer take me directly back to my home village. That was the main problem haunting me - I had no way of turning back. Stanville felt like it had been permanently taken away from me.

We were settling in. The day was a long one with the time difference and everything. We fell asleep early that first day. The weight of everything that had happened still pressing down on us. I felt like I was still alien in this world even though we hadn't actually left the earth.

The following day was as busy as the first. The general problems with moving added to the stress of starting a new life. We had left everything in a hurry. I no longer felt like I could be normal. Everyone around me seemed to look at me strangely as if I had a massive sign on me which said I was different.

But as I was starting to get used to the concept of being in an entirely different country miles away from everything I was used to, we had visitors.

Alex and I answered the door. Now we felt closer than ever. We had quite literally been through hell and back together. The faces behind the door were friendly. A girl with long yellowy blonde dead-straight hair grinned at me as I peered through the open door. Her skinny frame clothed in the standard designer dress code that most American teenagers wore. Her deep golden amber eyes stood out against her porcelain skin that had not yet been touched by the sun's rays. A boy who looked about the same age stood next to her. His short blonde hair was of a similar shade and was slightly messy. His grey eyes had many layers within them. He was also in designer clothes and an American style sports jacket. His frame made it obvious that he was very athletic and his average height made him come to a head taller than the girl.

"Hey. I'm Adrian and this is my sister Ella, we're your next door neighbours and we thought we would stop by to see if you were all settling in well." His accent was thick - a born American but his tone was as relaxed as his stance.

"Yeah, sorry about all the noise it's been a bit of a complicated move." My voice was friendly; I was trying to be polite. I was going to ask them in but the girl, Ella, spoke first.

"Oh, of course, you two are from Stanville, right? We saw the news broadcast, it's quite amazing actually." That wasn't the word I would have used. I was surprised that reporters had ventured in but where there is a story then you can guarantee the press will be there. I was surprised though that somewhere as big as America had heard about our small town. No one had before.

"Yeah, no one really expected that to happen." Alex was thinking the same thing as me, I could tell by meeting his eye.

"So, Scarlett, Alex what do you think of Florida?" Adrian was trying to steer the conversation away from the potentially difficult ground. I was sure we hadn't told them names though. They could have gotten mine through the people we bought the house from but there was no way they should have known Alex's name. Alex's family coming with us was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It hadn't been planned it just happened.

"It's nice." I thought the sentence sounded too forced so I did the typically English thing - talk about the weather. "It is much sunnier here than it was at home." I still called Stanville home. At least one of my family members has been there for over one hundred years. My Nan, who died just last year, lived there when my parents moved into the house next to Alex's.

"Well, they don't call it the sunshine state for nothing." He was trying to joke. I smiled because I knew that I couldn't manage a laugh. I hadn't laughed since I came here; since I left my 3 other friends behind; since the bees attacked the school.

I could feel that Ella wanting to say something but fearing to. She settled on a matter-of-fact statement. "We weren't expecting you to come until the end of the month."

"Well, sometimes plans are forced to change." Alex's voice was hoarse beside me.

Ella looked like she wanted to say something else but quickly decided against it after the glare she received from her brother. He seemed to know exactly what she wanted to say. I guessed it was the fact that they were brother and sister - they should know each other but they were able to communicate as well as Alex and I could and that was something I could never achieve with my own brother.

"So how old are you?" It seemed like a stupid question. From their image, I would have guessed that Ella was my age and Adrian the year above but their eyes suggested they were much older. There were many layers in them that added depth and made them look older, wiser like they knew too much.

"15." They answered together at the same time.

"We're twins." Adrian answer was easy as if they had often explained this. The twin thing did explain why they looked so similar. It also helped to explain why they had a much closer relationship than most siblings.

"So both of you are exactly the same age?" I knew what being twins meant but this was a good way of keeping the conversation away from us and finding a bit more out about our neighbours.

"Well technically, Adrian is 10 minutes older but basically yeah." Ella seemed very enthusiastic about herself without even really realising it. She was the one that seemed to have the important questions and in fact, she seemed to be a copy of myself in an American format. "Where are you thinking of going to school after the summer?"

"We haven't thought that far ahead yet, everything's kind of been a rush." The change of subject didn't last long. In fact, mum had decided that I would go to one of the local schools but we weren't sure which.

"You should come to our high school. It has excellent science facilities. There's also a school debate team which is the best in Florida in all the competitions." Adrian spoke to Alex and then me in turn, perfectly assessing our characters and main interests. I was surprised that they didn't mention anything to do with sport as it was obvious that Adrian was on a lot of sports teams and Ella had the perfect build to be a cheerleader. Instead of addressing their own interest as things they find good about the school they had mentioned the things we would like. I was impressed by how good they were at assessing characters.

The twins kept meeting each other's eyes. Messages passed between them with speedy efficiency. They knew exactly what they were trying to say and reacted accordingly. Both of them had big personalities. They were probably popular kids - confident in themselves, said what needed to be said and actually had an opinion. They were easy to talk to but it was weird that they knew so much about us when we had only met minutes ago. It felt like they had known me for a lifetime but I had only just met them for the first time today. Alex's thought mirrored mine. After being the only ones who really understood each other it was a strange sensation having people instantly work out complicated things about us. It was like they already knew how the conversation would go and they were just reciting the script. It was a script that I didn't know. One I had never seen or ever knew existed but they knew it word perfect as if they were born actors.

Through this very strange conversation, I had forgotten standard formalities. "Would you like to come in?" It felt like too little, too late. It is easier to talk when you are not standing in a doorway.

"No that's ok. We should probably get going anyway." Adrian answered quickly. His body language was still the same but he looked different - glazed over, his eyes focus on a blank spot in the distance.

"Oh ok. Well, thanks for stopping by. I'm sure we will end up at your school. It sounds nice." I was saying everything at once, shocked by the sudden change in attitude of the two strangers at the door. But they didn't feel like strangers, not really. It felt as if some distant part of me knew them and I mean really knew them in a way that would take years to learn.

They turned and made a hasty retreat, talking together in a hushed tone that meant I couldn't quite understand what they were saying but it sounded like Adrian was asking whether they had said too much. I dismissed it. My ears often played tricks on me and my imagination would often help me jump to conclusions that didn't even make sense.

"Well, they seemed nice." Alex used the same adjective as I had used just moments ago. Shock did strange things to people. A girl with her head for debates and the smartest kid in our old school couldn't think of a better word to describe the encounter than 'nice'. The world must really be falling apart now I thought and I wasn't far off.