Canna walked around her room. She was bored and possibly scared. She hated her life. She felt like she was trapped. She felt like it had been forever since she and her sister, Baizlee, ran away from their parents. They now lived in a small town called Yevia, where everything felt fine, until Baizlee started acting like their parents. Their parents had always mistreated them. They hit them, they yelled at them, and they neglected them. They ran away three years ago when Canna was nine and Baizlee was fifteen. Maybe Baizlee was scared too, but that only fed Canna’s fear.
Canna was almost dead. She was so thirsty from trying to occupy herself all day along. She made her way to the kitchen and reached for the glass. She grabbed a glass with pretty flowers on it. She put it on the table and went to get the filtered water jug from the fridge. Right as she turned around she heard something shatter. The cup was on the floor and in pieces. Canna heard a scream and footsteps coming from Baizlee’s room.
“What did you do!” Baizlee yelled as she entered the room.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll pick it up,” Canna said as she scrambled around to find the broom.
“What are you doing? Use your hands,” Baizlee insisted.
“But…”
“Just do it.”
Canna sat on the floor picking up the little shards of glass. It was little things like this that Baizlee did to Canna to torture her. It seemed harmless until the little pieces of glass penetrated her skin and caused her to bleed. Canna held back tears while she threw the pieces into the trash. Before her sister could yell more, she ran to her bedroom.
She laid on her bed, crying silently. She wished she could just remind her sister why they had run away. She wanted to remind her that they were still sisters. She thought sisters were supposed to be there for each other. Then Canna caught herself thinking bad things, like abandoning her sister or reporting her sister to the police. In the year 3034, the government was really big on health and mental health. If Canna reported her sister, only God knows what they would do to her.
The government took away things that they thought made people feel any negative emotions. Some of the big things they took away included schools, electronics, and taxes. They made up new alternatives to these things; every month you had to get a “knowledge shot” at the doctors. For electronics, there was really nothing else, and housing was free. They also thought that if they got rid of sadness and negative emotions, they should get rid of happiness and positive things because they need to even things out. Something they took was the bright blue color of the sky. The government called the new sky a “muted blue” when in reality it was grey. By doing this they thought that people would be at peace. Not for Canna though; her peace was just out of reach, on the tip of her fingernail, way above her head. She was getting tired of trying way too hard to reach it and she’d almost given up.
