I sighed. I was packing my clothes. " This is the worst day of my life," I thought, brushing my dark brown hair out of my eyes.
It had started out just like any other day. My mother and I had sat down to breakfast. Fly, our slave, had breakfast all ready. Fly was a tall, strapping fourteen year old. Fly was also from another planet. He had a duckbill and his skin and hair were white.
My mom was telling Fly to put more sugar into her tea when the siren went off. Fly ran to the intercom and pressed the on button. Our announcer, Jim Tucket, came on.
"Attention all citizens. The Union of the Plants has taken over our planet. We have lost the war. They command that all children from the age of seven to twenty must start packing their things. They will be leaving in three days to go to Camp Watswall on Galdrisa. All slave children in the same age vicinity will also be leaving that day to go there as well. All adult slaves will be leaving in five days to go to Galdrisa to locate their families.
The Union orders you to stay in your homes or you shall be gunned down. You're new announcer will be T-bone Swattcat. This is Jim Tucket, signing off."
I was glad that dad was hearing this at work. If he saw Fly smiling he would boil over. Even I could see that he was trying not to jump for joy at the thought of not being a slave anymore. It wasn't like we beat him or anything; it was just that he was always telling me how much he missed his family.
Mom and I finished our breakfast in silence. Then I walked upstairs to start packing, while Fly started cleaning.
"Thorn, did you pack enough socks?" yelled Mom from downstairs, startling me from my thoughts.
"Their all in the wash, Mom!" I bellowed back. Mom was in distress about me going to this camp. She thought that slave children (with the exception of Fly) were all carrying deadly germs, and in spending a lot of time with them I would catch some horrible disease and die. That's why we only have Fly. She says that one clean slave is better than five dirty ones. That's Moms motto. She hates dirt. Fly told me that when we got him he must have had five baths before he could come into the house. He said he was so wet that they could have filled a swimming pool with all the water. I don't remember though because I was only three at the time.
Moms always chiding Fly about cleaning the house. She goes through it with a magnifying glass looking for spots that Fly misses, even though he never misses a spot. But somehow he manages to make a lot of noise in doing it.
Yet he was suppose to be cleaning now and the only thing I could hear was mom crying. I tiptoed over to Fly's door. It was closed! Fly never closed his door.
"Weird," I thought.
I tiptoed quietly back to my room, closed the door, and locked it. Then, as quietly as I could, I moved my chest of drawers away from the wall. There, in the wall, was a hole the perfect size for me to crawl through, and that's what I did. It opened into a walkway with lots of little peek-holes all over the wall. I went to one and opened it. It was right over Fly's pallet, and there was Fly. He was lying on his stomach and playing what looked like a video game. I leaned on the wall to get a closer look.
"Bad idea," I thought as the wall fell forward right on top of Fly.
Fly painfully wiggled out from under the wall. He was covered in dust. He looked all around the room and at the wall. Then he looked at me.
He sighed and said, "Get in the tunnel and I'll put the wall back."
Silently, I did as I was told, but when Fly was lifting the wall I heard a crack, and Fly dropped the wall. He looked at his left arm. It was at a weird angle. He grimaced in pain.
"Great," he said and sighed, "You pull and I'll push."
Then he put his right shoulder on the wall and pushed while I pulled, and together, we put the wall back into place, but before I went back to my room, I opened a peek-hole to see what Fly would do with his arm. He looked at it and took out a tube with some strange words on it. Then, very slowly, he set his arm down and made it so that it was its usual shape, his face was a pitcher of agony. Then slowly he squeezed the stuff out of the tube and applied it to his arm. He gently rubbed it in. Then, suddenly, the arm seemed to glue the broken bones back together! I could tell that by the way Fly's face relaxed. Fly moved it up and down experimentally. It was as if it had never been broken! Then he got up and started cleaning the room of dust.
I tiptoed back to my room and lay on the bed with my thoughts all in a jumble about what I had seen.
That night, I was walking down the hall to go get a cup of water. Fly stuck his head out and waved his hand for me to come over to the doorway.
He whispered, "Could you please not tell your mom about what I did?"
"If you don't tell her about the wall," I replied quietly.
"Deal, and Thorn, please don't lean on any more walls that aren't stable," he said sarcastically.
"What ever you say," I replied.
Then he went back to bed and I continued walking to the kitchen. I realized something at that moment. I had made a friend, even though we were both very different. Are agreement had sealed that friendship somehow, and maybe, just maybe, going to camp won't be so bad with Fly around. I got my water and went to bed, not knowing what the next day would bring.