Water

by Rowan Kennedy, age 13
Rowan likes to write fantasy-inspired stories, some poetry, and mysteries. She likes figuring out how stories are put together. Rowan loves the color mint blue and playing sports.

“I am running down the street, panting, and I turn around to look behind me, but don’t see the giant hole right in front of me.”

I am running down the street, panting, and I turn around to look behind me, but don’t see the giant hole right in front of me.

“Ahhhh,” I yell as I fall into the hole.

It looks like a series of tunnels. But it’s not dirt. It’s stone? They are super fancy with engravings in them, so I start to follow along them to see if there is another exit, because clearly I can’t go back the other way.

After what feels like a half an hour of walking I see a slight, rosey-ish glow in my vision of the tunnel. I run towards it, and there’s a staircase. It leads to the basement of a house from what it seems. I walk up the stairs, and I walk into what looks like a basement or a cellar of some sort. I don’t know what this is. It might be a house? I walk up the stairs, and I slowly open the door. I walk into the kitchen, and I’m wondering where I am and whose house this is. From the looks of it, it doesn’t look like a small house.

All of a sudden, a girl walks into the kitchen. She looks a few years younger than me.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“My name is Rose,” I reply. “Something mysterious happened, and I don’t know where I am. Where are your parents?”

“They are out here on the terrace,” she says. “Come on, I’ll take you to them.”

She grabs my hand and skips all the way to the terrace where her parents are. While I’m walking through the house, I notice it’s so beautiful, with marble floors in some parts and a grand staircase leading up to the second level. We step out onto the terrace, and her parents are sitting on lounge chairs talking and drinking lemonade.

The little girl says to her parents, “Mom, Dad, this girl showed up in our kitchen.”

“Um, Lily honey, can you go inside please?” they say.

The little girl whose actual name is Lily skips inside and up the stairs and out of sight.

“Where did you come from?” they ask.

“I fell into a hole, and there was a tunnel with a faint glow at the end, so I followed it, and I ended up here.”

“Hold on,” they say.

They started whispering to each other, and I only caught a few words like, Who is she? What should we do?

“Where do you live?” they ask me.

“Well, I was a runaway, so I didn’t really have one place,” I told them.

I kept quiet, not because I didn’t want to tell them, but because I couldn’t remember all of it.

“Okay, go inside, and Lily will show you a spare room until we get this figured out,” they say.

“Okay,” I say.

“Lily!” they shout to Lily who’s prancing around inside.

“Honey, can you show Rose a spare guest bedroom?”

“Okay,” Lily says.

“You can stay in one of our many guest bedrooms until we figure this out?”

I follow Lily inside, where she leads me up the grand staircase to a guest bedroom that is very extravagant with lots of fancy things.

“Here you go,” she tells me.

“Okay, thanks,” I say back.

I sit down on the giant bed and think of why I got here. I was taken from my family when I was little and kept for many years there, at that house. I finally escaped from the house and have been a runaway ever since.

And that leads to now, falling into a hole and ending up here. Wow. I think to myself how it has been rough for the last couple of years. Maybe this nice family can help me.

I am so tired I lay down on the bed, and the soft, comfortable comforter lulls me into a deep sleep.

While I am sleeping, Lily’s parents come up to make sure I was situated.

“Rose seems like such a nice girl, but who is she?” they ask each other, but I don’t hear them because I am still fast asleep.

I wake up the next morning in the soft, comfortable bed and sit up. I can’t believe all that has happened to me. And I can’t believe I ended up here.

I walk into the kitchen, and Lily says hi to me. Lily’s parents say good morning to me also.

“Oh no, what happened to your arm?” Lily’s mom says suddenly to me, as she noticed I am clutching my arm.

My arm had a long deep cut on the side of my arm that was starting to turn blue, black, and purple. I must have not have seen it yesterday because I was wearing a jacket.

“When I fell into the hole I must scraped it on a nail that was sticking out as I fell,” I say to Lily’s parents.

“Well, we must take you to the doctor and make sure it wasn’t a rusty nail and that you have your tetanus shots updated,” they say to me.

“Oh no, that’s not necessary. It doesn’t hurt that much,” I say to them even though it did hurt, a lot.

“No no no, we must. When we find your family, we must return you with a good arm.”

I knew in my heart that they would never find my family though. I didn’t even know who they were.

“Okay, I will call Dr. Smith to schedule an appointment with her,” Lily’s mom says to her dad.


The Doctor’s Office

*Ring Ring*

Dr. Smith answers the phone, “Hello, this is Dr. Smith. How can I help you?”

“Hi, Judy. This is Penny from the Robinsons.”

“Oh, hi, Penny. It’s nice to talk to you again. How can I help you?”

“Well, this girl showed up in our secret tunnels, you know the ones that were the old maid quarters, and we have no idea who she is. She also has a giant cut on her arm that she says was cut on a nail.”

“Can you make sure she has her shots updated, and while you’re at it, will you take some blood and see if you can find out where she is from and who her family is?”

“Yeah sure, no problem.”

The next day…

“Rose, come on. We’re going to take you to Dr. Smith to make sure you arm is alright,” Penny says to me.

“Okay,” I say.

We get in the car and drive to Dr. Smith’s office, where she is waiting for us in the waiting area.

“Hi, Rose. My name is Dr. Smith. Let’s go to a room and make sure your arm is alright.

“Okay.”

We walk to a room, and Dr. Smith checks out my scraped up arm. She looks it over and then rolls over to the computer on her little wheely chair.

“Okay, Rose it looks like it’s just a very deep cut, but I’m going to have to take some blood so I can make sure it wasn’t infected since you don’t have your tetanus shots, correct?”

“Yeah, okay.”

I know I don’t have my tetanus shots updated since I’ve been on the run since I escaped.

“Okay, this is only going to hurt a little bit, okay?” Dr. Smith says to me.

“Okay,” I say back to her.

She takes a little needle out of the cabinet, and it only hurts a tiny bit.

“Okay, I will get the results back in a few days, but until then I’ll wrap your arm up so nothing gets in it.”

“Okay,” I say to Dr. Smith.

“Okay, thanks, Judy. See you later,” Penny says to Dr. Smith.

I really hope I don’t have anything wrong, so I don’t cause this nice family any more trouble.

We pull into the driveway, and once again I’m astonished of the view of house from the outside. When we get inside, I want to lay down since I just got some blood taken, so I’m very tired.

“I’m going to lay down,” I say to Penny.

“Okay,” she says.

I walk up the stairs and start walking towards the room I am staying in, when a spark of light catches my attention from one of the rooms over a few. I want to check it out to see what it is, so I walk over to it and peek inside.

It’s a beautiful mint colored room that has a light reflector on the window that makes rainbows dance across the room. I think to myself, Oh, this is probably Lily’s room or a playroom for her.

I’ll ask Penny about it later after I get some sleep. When I’m back in my room, I lay down, and my eyelids quiver as I fall into a deep sleep…


The Doctor’s Office

“Okay, let’s see what we can find out about Rose from her results and make sure she is okay,” I say to myself.

As I scroll down through the results, it looks like her arm is alright which is good. She will just need to bandage and watch it.

I look for any traces in her DNA which will help us find her family or any of her relatives.

Okay, blood type, blah, blah, blah. This is weird. “What is this?” I ask myself. Okay, DNA and genes. Wait, what?! O-M-G…

The next morning…

I wake up in the morning as the sun shines brightly into the window and walk down the stairs into the kitchen.

“Hey, Penny, is that mint blue room upstairs Lily’s?”

“… No, it’s not.”

“Whose is it?”

“It was our other daughter’s room. Her name was Aguamarine, or for short, Agua.”

“Where is she now.”

“She was taken from us at a very young age, so we don’t know. We searched high and low, but we never could find her,” she added.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say to Penny.

She just looked sad, so I brought something else up.

“Where’s Lily?”

“Outside, you can join her if you want.”

I walk outside to see Lily jumping on a trampoline up and down.

“Hey, Lily, can I join you?”

“Sure!” she says to me in a high voice.

I climb up the ladder and join her. I feel like a bird soaring through the clouds as I jump higher and higher. I feel like I could jump right to the moon. A few hours later, after a few games of tag, Penny yells from inside the house.

“Rose!!”

“Can you come inside please?”

“Yes!”

I skip inside, my stomach still fluttering from jumping on the trampoline.

“What’s up?”

Penny and Sam (Lily’s dad) are standing inside next to Dr. Smith.

“Dr. Smith is here with the test results about your arm, Rose,” Penny says to me.

“So the results came back, and your arm is doing just fine. You will just need to wrap it and make sure to take care of it,” Dr. Smith says to me.

“But… ”

“While I was looking through your DNA results, a thing popped up on my computer, and I thought it was one of my other clients, but when I clicked on it, it wasn’t. It was from you.”

“A DNA match… ”

“You are the missing daughter of Penny and Sam… ”

I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’m about to faint. I can’t get anything to come out of my mouth. I can’t believe this just happened…