"There." I said to myself. I had just finished my last chore for the day.


"Mom," I yell towards the living room." I'm going out with my friends." All the teenagers in my community go out to a place called The Hide. The best thing about it is that no adults know where it is.


"Ok. Make sure youget home by 11:00." Mom yelled from the couch.


I walked out the front door into the beautiful, fugitive community of Rhona. Well, not really fugitives. We didn't commit a crime actually.


The earth used to be normal. It used to be peaceful and not perfect but normal. Before I was born.


One day about 20 years ago a terrible thunder storm hit the earth. It covered the whole earth, and out of it came some kind of alien creature. We call it The Storm.


They started killing off every single living thing that they saw and took over the earth. They destroyed everythingon the earth and made their own planet on our earth. They call it Otha. The few humans who escaped made communities like ours.


I walked down the street past the last house on our block and turned the corner. After walking a little while I came to the tree that opens up into the Hide. The Hide is a hidden basement and this dead hollowed out tree has a latter that goes down to it.


I turned and checked to make sure no adults were watching and then opened the hatch door and began shimmying down the latter. When I got to the bottom I looked out to the underground room and saw two people in the far corner. One of them was my best friend, Rayne, that I meet here every friday. The other was a guy named Leif whos family was new to the community. I hadn't talked to him much but I knew who he was.


"Hi Jasper." Rayne smiled at me."You know Leif right?" Rayne has long straight white (almost blue) hair and striking blue eyes.


"Yes I do. Hi guys." Leif smiled. He has long shaggy black hair and beautiful dark green eyes. He is really hott. I realized that I was staring at Leif and turned my attention towards Rayne. "Where is Apryl?" Apryl is her little sister who never leaves her side.


"Oh she is grounded. I am so glad to be rid of her." She looked glad. I haven't seen them apart since a year ago when Apryl got a bad case of the flu.


"Man! I've got to go. My mom just paged me." Rayne was getting up to leave. She had pulled out her pager while I was thinking about Apryl.


"Awww, well I guess I'll see you tommorrow then."I was really disappointed because I didn't know Leif well enough to be left alone with him. We won't have anything to talk about.


"Bye guys." Rayne climbed up the latter and left us there on the floor.


"Well this is going to be boring. No one's even here. Mabey we should just go home and meet next friday," Leif said. I got the feeling that he didn't really know what to say either.


I nodded and we both got up and started towards the latter. All of a sudden a huge crash of thunder hit. That could only mean one thing....The Storm. I collapsed against the wall in the corner in shock. I looked towards Leif and he had done the same thing. In his eyes I saw the same thing that I was feeling. Hopelessness. We both knew that as soon as that thunder hit all the people in our whole community were dead.


"What are we gonna do?" I mumbled. It was all I could say and then I dissolved into tears. I tried to get control of myself but couldn't even see straight. Long enough to see what Leif was doing.


"All of a sudden Leif's arms were around me and he was pulling me into his lap. I may not know him well but as of now he was the only one I had. Eventually we drifted to sleep not knowing what the morning held for us.

To Be Continued.....