It was early morning, August 15, 2033. I was sitting by my parents’ bed, waiting for the radio announcement. Today’s our first day of school, which is stupid timing. I have the choice not to go, but I’m going; not because I’m terribly dedicated, but because maybe I’ll be safer there. And Zoe’s going. I want to be with her. She walked into the room, with a toothbrush in her mouth. I wondered if she was truly brave, or just ignorant. In six minutes, nobody will be safe.

“Are you sure you can’t miss today? I don’t know how I’m gonna get you there,” my mom said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“If we leave now, we might miss it,” Zoe said.

“Zoe, the beginning is the worst part. We’d be in the middle of that,” I said. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? You know you can talk to us.”

The radio made three long beeps. My mom held my hand, and my dad held Zoe’s.

“This is your emergency broadcast system announcing the commencement of the Annual Purge sanctioned by the U.S. Government. Police, fire, and emergency medical services will be unavailable until The Purge concludes. Blessed be our New Founding Fathers and America, a nation reborn. May God be with you all.”

I arrived at my drama class. The teacher talked completely abstractly. I’ve always been an out of the box thinker but not even I could understand him. The way he engaged with us during his lectures made him seem possibly crazy, like someone who could turn into a psychopath if he tapped too into himself. Out of curiosity for who my classmates were, I looked towards the back of the class. I saw Julieta. I’ve heard of her before and was always fond of her, despite all the talk. I’ve never had a class with her until now. I watched her fondle her long blonde hair into a scrunchie. She was different from most of the other girls I’ve seen, and that’s what I liked about her. When her name was called during attendance, she answered in a muffled tone, and she seemed naturally annoyed, without reason. It drew me in. In the time when I awaited for my name to be called, I worried that my voice would be too scratchy, or that I’d respond too quickly, to a name that isn’t my own but is similar.

“Maia?” Mr. Weppler asked.

I raised my hand. “Here,” I said.

Some students were sleeping, others were smoking, and most were skipping class. But I was listening intently.

Suddenly I heard Molly scream from the top of her lungs. “Jaden! Jaden!”

I launched up to go find her.

“Guys, stay here!” Mr. Weppler said.

Miss Curtain tried holding me back.

I sprinted to the front of the school. Jaden laid prone on the ground, lifeless. Molly’s screams got louder the longer she stared at the blood. I held her as tight as I could.

The principle and teachers stared at us with straight faces, knowing there was nothing they could do.

Three loud clacks went off.

“Get in a room, now!” The principle said.

I grabbed Molly and dragged her while I ran. After a few feet, she started to resist.

 “I can’t leave him! I can’t!”

I took her behind a pillar that was wide enough to hide the both of us. I put my hands on her shoulders.

“Listen, breathe, okay? You have to breathe. I know you loved him but you have to be strong. He’d want that for you,” I said.

I held onto her hand, running away from the pillar.

“Where are you going?” Molly asked.

“I have to get my sister,” I said.

I remembered room 218. I arrived there, in the middle of the hallway.

I banged on the closed door.  “Let me in! I’m a student here, you know me, let me in!”

There was no answer. Molly punched and banged the door louder than I did. “Hurry the fuck up!” she said.

“I need Zoe, let me in!” I said.

The door opened and I saw Zoe. There were tears on her face.

 “Maia?” she said.

I stood in the doorway to hug her.

Molly pushed me into the room. “Get through the door, Maia!”

Zoe being three years younger than me, she has always been my baby sister. In the classroom, there were around twenty other kids her age, holding their knees and crying. I didn’t have time to think about what was happening, how this wasn’t fair and we might not make it out alive and how we were just kids and didn’t get to say goodbye to our parents, and how the trash we’ve seen in the news is happening to us, out of all people. I just had to be their protector.

“Alright, everybody get in the closet,” I said.

“We won’t fit,” some boy said.

“Yes we will.”

“We don’t know where Ms. Sackler went!” a girl said.

“She’ll show up.”

I didn’t know if this was true, but they had to believe in it.

We were all toe to toe in the closet. Our final tears were escaping us but we had to be silent. He got inside. We looked at each other. I didn’t know most of the kids, but I loved them all. I stood frozen.

Molly found a metal water bottle and held it like a baseball bat. She waited for the right moment and slowly opened the door.

Clank! She banged it against his head, with more force than gravity. He fell to the floor. She took the gun and shot him.

I guided the kids out of the closet. We had to have been relieved, but honestly I didn’t even know what we were feeling.

“Are you okay?” I asked the kids, not thinking about how pointless the question was. How could they be?

We made it outside, at the front of the school. The coast was clear and we couldn’t stay in one place, we would’ve lost our minds. We saw an old lady with grey hair and a scarf over her head, about twenty feet in front of us. She was rocking back and forth and staring at the ground. She didn’t seem to notice us.

I kept Zoe behind me. “Stay back,” I said.

The lady looked at us.

“Whenever she went out, the little girl wore a red riding cloak,” she said. “One morning, Little Red Riding Hood asked her mother if she could go to visit her grandmother as it had been awhile since they'd seen each other.”

The kids looked at each other with puzzled faces. Molly could take the lady down if she got out of hand.

“”That's a good idea," her mother said.  So they packed a nice basket for Little Red Riding Hood to take to her grandmother.”

 “Ma’am?” I asked.

Molly rushed up behind me and held onto my arm.

The woman gasped. “Little Red?!”

Molly wrapped half her body around me. “No! She’s not-”

The lady took out a sharp knife from her pocketbook and held it, like it was a fork and she was about to have a meal.

I’m gonna be honest, I was okay with dying, but I didn’t want the pain of being skinned alive. I felt paralyzed again. I just escaped the feeling of fear and now it was coming back to me.

We all screamed at the top of our lungs. Before she could get to me, the woman got shot in the leg. She squirmed around on the ground, struggling. She couldn’t even breathe, but she was laughing.

“It’s all over for you,” she said.

 “Kids, lets go,” said the woman who shot her.

“It’s the end of the world. It’s the end,” the old lady said.

The kids walked over to me.

“Thank you for saving my life,” I said to the woman who shot the lunatic.

She smiled slightly. “I’m Mrs. Bailey.”

“What’s going on?” a boy asked.

Mrs. Bailey sighed. “Kids, come with me.”

We found shelter in Mrs. Bailey’s house. We were wiping our tears from our face and dirt from our bodies, sitting down, and drinking water. Her house had many windows. I was looking out one of them, on guard.

“We can’t stay here,” I said.

“Nowhere’s safe, Maia,” Mrs. Bailey said.

Julieta walked up to me. “Hey, are you okay?” she asked.

I smiled. “Yeah. Are you?”

She bowed her head and didn’t say anything in response.

It was about an hour until sundown. Mrs. Bailey made chicken and ramen for us. Julieta scooted in a chair next to me. Zoe shovelled bites into her mouth.

“Maybe later we can play a game. You have cards right, Mrs. Bailey?” Elliot, one of Zoe’s classmates asked.

Mrs. Bailey smiled. “Crazy Eights, Uno, and the traditional.”

“We just can’t be too loud,” Ainsley said, another classmate of my sister’s.

I gave a reassuring smile. “We’ll be okay.”

We finished dinner and got the cards out. I always hated cards, but I played anyway for Zoe’s sake. Uno was first. A red five was placed down, and Zoe realised she didn’t have any cards to play. She drew about five or six cards until she got one she could put down.

Ainsley kept looking out the window every five seconds.

“It’s okay, you can relax,” I told her.

She gave a slight grin.

There was a loud bang on the door.

“Guys, get down under the table,” Mrs. Bailey said.

Elliot started to run.

“Elliot! Stay here!” Molly said.

We squeezed under the table, and that didn’t do us any justice at all. We weren’t hidden. I put my hand on Zoe’s head. I kept a peak out at the door. Three men entered. I panicked and held Zoe tighter.

“Kids, put your hands up!” I said.

“Listen, I just want one thing,” the man said. “And quite frankly, you should know what it is.”

Mrs. Bailey stood to address him.

“Are you gonna hand it over or would you like to try something different?” The man asked.

Mrs. Bailey wouldn’t budge.

The other man stook his head under the table and gave a creepy smile. “Hi guys.” He looked up at Mrs. Bailey. “Are they all yours?”

Mrs. Bailey grinded her teeth together, but continued to stay silent.

The man laughed. “Alright.” He grabbed Ainsley by the arm from under the table. We all screamed, but Ainsley screamed the loudest.

Zoe held onto Ainsley’s hand, and I held onto Zoe’s hand to help her let go of it.

“Okay, okay, stop! Let me get my purse,” Mrs. Bailey said.

“I already gave you a chance,” the man said. He continued to pull Ainsley away from us. It was too late.

Molly launched onto the man’s back.

“Molly! Molly!” I yelled.

Molly groaned in pain after being slammed on the floor. A gunshot was fired into the air. “I thought I said I wasn’t messing around!” The man said.

Zoe held onto me about as tight as I was holding onto her. Molly was knocked unconscious.

“Let’s make a trade. You’ll get them back, if you let us have this place. What’s more important: a house, or your own people?” The man said.

“We have nowhere to go! These are children! You see how it is out there, please don’t do this,” Mrs. Bailey said.

“We’ll be outside waiting for your decision.”

One man carried Ainsley, and the other dragged Molly outside of the house.

I ran up to the door.

“Maia, wait!” Zoe said.

“We need to get them back, now!”

Mrs. Bailey grabbed me. “Wait a minute, we have to think about this.”

“What’s the point of all of this if we just let them die like that?!” I asked.

“I have to protect all of you,” Mrs. Bailey said. “We need this place to do that.”

“We can find another place, Mrs. Bailey!”

Julieta walked up to us. “I’ve seen those guys before,” she said. “They’re friends of my uncle’s.”

“Oh my god,” Mrs. Bailey said.

“Could you talk to them? Would they let them go if they saw you?” I asked.

“If you trade me for them.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. “No.”

“I can’t have other people suffer because of him.”

I shed more tears and went to go find an empty room.

Julieta knocked on the door. She opened it and sat next to me on the bed.

“We just have to make it through one night. Just one. And if something happens to you, I couldn’t be okay with that. I’d never be okay with that.” I said.

“They’d kill Molly. They wouldn’t kill me.” Julieta said.

“There has to be a way to make sure everyone’s safe.”

“They’re my family, Maia.”

“No they’re not. We’re your family now.”

There was a moment of silence.

“They’ve been bad this whole time. My whole life I’ve been afraid that they would do something to someone, someone I cared about. I didn’t say anything because I was afraid I’d be seen as one of them.” Julieta said.

I held her hand. “I’d never look at you like that.”

“Maia! Maia!”

I rushed to my sister’s voice.

“Zoe what is it?! What is it?!” I asked.

Mrs. Bailey came to us. “Honey what is it? What happened?”

Zoe was sobbing. She couldn’t speak.

Julieta’s had a somewhat straight face, but I could tell she was enraged. She opened the door.

“Julie, wait!” I yelled.

Mrs. Bailey put her hands on my shoulders. “Stay here.”

I didn’t listen to her.

Zoe held onto me. “No, Maia! Maia!”

Screams came out of my heavy lungs, and my tears raced. I fell to my knees.

“Julieta! I never expected to see you here,” he said.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Julieta told him.

Zoe hugged me from behind, holding me from falling even more.

He folded his hands together and laughed. “I asked for one thing. One simple thing. You thought you could get away with not doing what I asked!”

Mrs. Bailey fell to the ground. “Oh my god.”

1 MONTH LATER:

I was woken up by Julieta placing my hair behind my ear. I wiped my eyes.

“I want Starbucks,” she said.

 “We’re gonna be late to school,” I said.

Zoe opened the door. “Maia, can I borrow your charger?”

I sighed and got out of bed, unplugged my charger from the outlet, and gave it to her. “Just return it by lunch time.”

I spread peanut butter on bread and put goldfish in two Ziploc bags.

 “You know, you don’t have to pack my lunch everyday,” Zoe said.

 “I know.”

I looked at the family picture on the counter. It’s part of my daily routine to see my parents. I smiled. It’s my biggest responsibility to take care of my sister the way my parents took care of us. We drove to school.