CHAPTER 17

Chapter 17

*Debbie Dong*

Two days.

That’s how long I have until my team -- Chris, Sophia, and I -- must sneak into Christy’s fortress to steal the key. There’s no telling whether or not we’ll come out. After two days, there may no longer be a Debbie Dong.

The thought doesn’t even scare me, for some reason. Maybe I’m just done with life... I honestly don’t know.

But it sure does scare Leo. He’s been a nervous wreck ever since I volunteered; I’ve had to ask Alex to assign him a series of complicated, time-consuming tasks just to keep his mind off of my own impending task. Frankly, he’s worrying me more than Christy is.

And, on top of the Leo problem, things have been getting weirder and weirder in the world. Everything’s gone completely silent. No dogs barking, no children shouting... it’s like we’ve landed on the moon, with nothing but the vacuum of space sucking at our eardrums. Not a single soul, animal or human, in sight. Other than our little survivor group, of course. I don’t know if it’s something Christy’s done directly, or a side effect of the strange storm from before, but no matter what it is, it can’t be good.

Pushing my worries out of my mind, I’m just about to go check on Leo -- for the fourth time of the hour -- when another boy steps in front of me, blocking my path.

I look up. A couple inches taller than me, glasses, short spiky hair, devilish smirk.

“Hi,” I say cautiously.

“Where’re you going?” the boy asks.

I bristle. “Is it any business of yours? Who are you anyways?”

The boy smiles and holds out a hand. “No need to get defensive. I’m Jayce. You must be the famous Debbie everyone’s talking about.”

The words “famous Debbie” should have stung, but he makes it sound like a compliment.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to get snappy,” I apologize. “I guess I just got used to trusting no one.”

“Wise choice,” Jayce says. “Your life must’ve been pretty hard.”

“Yeah, it’s been a rough ride, but we’re pulling through,” I respond. “How about you?”

He shrugs. “It hasn’t really been a real life, if you get me. Like, it’s not about living anymore. It’s about surviving to the next day. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, whether we’ll be happy or sad or angry... we can only hope to live to see it.”

“That’s true,” I say, amazed by his wisdom.

“Right now, I’m just getting by. Doing whatever it takes to survive. Hopefully, I’ll stay in the game long enough to make my way to my little sister.”

“I hope you do,” I say sincerely.

“And as for trusting me...” Jayce pauses and gives me a shrewd smile.

“Don’t you be in a rush to do that.”

Then he walks away, whistling as if there were still birds in the trees to whistle back.

*Courtney Tern*

I open my eyes and blink rapidly, trying to adjust to the sudden brightness. I take in my surroundings: the room I’d woken up in with Nidhi the first time Rachel brought me here. I notice Jack, Dean, Sophie, Gene, and Rachel standing near me and sigh with relief. I’m not alone, at least.

“What now?” Sophie asks Rachel.

“Wait here,” she says. “I’ll come back later.”

With those few, terse words, she disappears into the background, leaving us to ponder our situation.

All eyes turn to me, since I'm the only person in the room at the moment who's been here before.

Feeling extremely self-conscious, I grumble, "Don't look at me. I have no idea what to do."

"I guess we'll just have to wait for Rachel," Jack says with a sigh.

“How long do we stay here before we start ‘wreaking havoc?’” Dean queries.

“One or two days at least, I’m guessing,” Gene replies. “We’ll have to be here long enough to convince Christy that we’re just normal victims, so she’ll let her guard down.”

“That’ll take a while,” Sophie mumbles with a roll of her eyes.

“That means we’re probably going to be here for a long time, so make yourselves comfortable,” Jack says, smirking as we sit down on the hard, cold stone floor.

“Rachel will likely come back soon and take us to see Christy,” I say. “We better have a story ready. You know, for how we were captured. Otherwise she’ll suspect us.”

Gene nods. “Yeah.”

Waiting for someone else to assume the role of strategist and leader, I absentmindedly doodled on the stone floor, displacing the strange powdery substance on it with the nail of my right index finger. After finishing my third complex masterpiece, I look up and falter, my finger hovering in the air, as I realize that everyone has been watching me.

“What?” I demand.

They all exchange glances. “Well, do you have any ideas?” Dean asks.

I redden under the spotlight that I’ve suddenly found myself under. “Why do you expect me to?”

“Because you’re the one who came up with it in the first place!” he retorts.

“Fine,” I mutter. “Uh... I suppose we should keep it as close to the truth as possible. So, for example, we could say that we were meeting with the other survivors, trying to gather food and water, when Rachel showed up and snatched us away.”

“That’s a good one,” Jack declares, nodding encouragingly. “Let’s use it.”

“We’ll need it as detailed as possible,” I continue, growing in confidence. “So we have to know exactly what we were doing when Rachel showed up. Oh, and we’re not supposed to know any of their names, are we?”

“Right,” Gene agrees. “How about this -- we were dividing up our rations of, I don’t know, apples?”

“Sure, that works,” I say.

Sophie adds, “But we should pretend not to know of Debbie, Leo, Chris, or Sara. Courtney can say that they just went their separate ways after escaping the first time.”

Wanting to get it over with, I say, “Okay. To sum this up, we were with our little group of Alex, Nidhi, and all the others except for the four that escaped, innocently dividing up apples when a strange girl shows up out of nowhere, wraps us up in shadows, and teleports us here.”

“So believable,” Dean snickers.

“Hey, that’s how it happened the first time,” Jack protests, rising to my defense.

Dean shuts up, and I send Jack a grateful smile. He grins back.

Just then, the shadows in front of us thickens, and Rachel materializes. The smile falls right off my lips when we see her pale, troubled face.

“What’s the matter?” Gene pipes up.

“Come with me. Quickly,” she urges.

“But what happened?” he asks again.

“A traitor,” Rachel says. “That’s what happened.”

*Leo Qi*

As night falls, I run around the town looking for Debbie, my mind consumed by the strange fear that she’d been kidnapped, taken away from me.

I finally find her sitting under a tree, leaning against the trunk and looking out at the horizon.

“Hey,” I say, still breathless from rushing around for the past ten minutes.

She looks up. “Hey yourself, Leo.”

“What’re you doing?” I inquire.

She shrugs. “I like to watch the sunset.” Raising a finger, she points it at the sun, which is just barely touching the horizon, throwing brilliant streaks of purple and orange all over the sky.

I frown. “Why do you like to watch the sunset? I mean, not to criticize you or anything, but most people like to watch the sunrise. You know, hope and a new life and all that.”

Debbie takes a deep breath, and I can tell she’s about to launch into a long, long rant, Debbie-style.

“You see that? The Sun: a burning, bright ball of gas that’s trillions, zillions times bigger than us, and yet, it still manages to look tiny, just a speck in the middle of our sky, a mere needle in the haystack of cosmic significance. And you know what would happen to the Sun if the Earth disappeared? Nothing. Nothing at all. Then if the Sun disappeared, the universe wouldn’t even notice. As for us, the Earth will just keep going down its merry little path of revolution around the Sun if we disappear. That’s how small, so revoltingly insignificant we are. Do you see? Our lives, our battles, our triumphs... none of it really matters. We’re 0.0000000001 on the percentile scale of enormity.

“So I keep asking myself, what’s the point? We’re nothing. Nothing we do even really matters; no matter what happens to us, the universe will just keep chugging along, oblivious to whatever we’re thinking or feeling or going through. And you know what’s more? One day, the Sun will implode and completely obliterate everyone on this Earth. We’ll be completely powerless against it. Either way, regardless of whether or not we win our current battle against Christy, that will happen. So why even make an effort? Why fight, if our future has already been decided, if our fates are all the same anyways? It’s not like we can change anything. Not like we can make a difference.

“But then, there’s this strange phenomenon that disproves this logic, a phenomenon that happens before our very eyes. It’s the sunset. The Earth is billions of times smaller than the Sun, yet it can still block the Sun, render its light almost useless. And this small act act really does make a huge difference, because it is the reason we are all still clinging to life, the reason the human race could evolve. Without the sunset, we’d all be dead, or monkeys, or dead monkeys.

“And all of this, just because of the sunset. You know what that means? It means that something as tiny as the Earth can make a difference. Maybe not to something bigger than it, but it does make a difference to you and me. Perhaps not for long, but it’s still something that happens every day without fail.

“That’s why I like to watch the sunset, Leo. It tells us why we’re still fighting, a constant reminder, constant proof that we can make a difference. Because even though the Earth is small, it’s the only world we know. The Earth is tiny, yet it contains everything we’ve ever dreamed about, thought about, laughed about, cried about; it holds our memories, our futures, our lives. And that is the difference small things can make, Leo. We might not be able to make a difference to things a great deal bigger than us, like the Sun or the Earth, but we can change the world that matters to us. And that’s what really matters... that’s why we fight. Every single being on this Earth has a future, a life that matters to them. To be able to touch these lives and change them... well, that’s a difference, isn’t it? A difference we can make. A difference worth fighting for.”

Debbie leans back, her supply of words exhausted. By the end of her long monologue, the Sun has already sunk below the horizon, leaving us in the dark.

“That’s what it’s about, though,” I say thoughtfully. “Hope. Since forever, sunrise has been seen as hopeful and dusk has been seen as hopeless.”

“Don’t listen to those people,” Debbie responds, her voice quiet. “Sunset is proof that small things, no matter how small, can still make a difference. And so, in its own way, sunset is hopeful.”