Breathe

I clamp my hands on our mansion’s stairway balcony as I stare over the edge into our living room area. I hear the sound of my mother’s heels come pounding across the granite floor and she appears at the edge stairway. She looks up at me with bloodshot eyes, mascara streaking along her eyelids. “Jordan-,” She gasps and I remain frozen where I sat.

“Where’s Dad?” I whisper, so light, I don’t think she could hear. But I think she read my lips.

Suddenly, we hear the front door slam. This is not an intruder, because if it was, the alarm would go off. My mother sprints toward the front door and out of sight. I drop down the railing and sit on top stair. Though I did not have any idea what was happening, my heart is racing. It is racing so fast that I thought it was going to leap right from my chest.

“Jordan, get your brothers, please!” Mom calls to me from the kitchen. She must be on the verge of a severe anxiety attack.

I stare down at the stairs for another few seconds. The color of the carpet on the stairs is clean, cream white. There isn’t a spot of dirt or crumbs. But you can see the small streaks of evidence of the vacuum. I was not sure why this thought ran across my mind, but I think it was because there is not any kind of maid that can clean up this new mess.

Looking forward again, I finally grew the courage to get to my feet. For some strange reason, I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t sleep tonight. Waiting for my parents to come home just seemed like a good thing to do.

I walk toward the room at the end of the long hallway, the one with the large green dinosaur on the door. I shove the door open and then flick on the light. Both of the twins wince and groan loudly.

“Wake up! Something is wrong. Mom and Dad want us up,” I barge into the room and toss the covers off them both, lying in matching color twin beds.

“Where is Daddy?” Trevor asks, rubbing his eyelids.

“If I knew, I would tell you,” I say and I turn to look at Michael. “Wake up!” I slap his bottom and he jumps. “Seriously, get dressed. This is a real emergency,” I order them and stomp back into the hallway.

I always knew that we were going to be leaving soon. But not like this. All I could do is text my friends and leave them voicemails at midnight that I was leaving Washington DC, and that I would not return for a long time. My parents mentioned that they sold the house last week, and that we were moving soon. In this case, I didn’t plan on telling my closest friends that I was leaving two weeks early.

“Jordan, how are you doing?” Mother paces into my bedroom, as if she were late to work. “We’ll be back in two weeks to get everything else, so just bring what’s important.” She seems better. She doesn’t seem as worried and frantic as she was.

I toss all the shirts, blouses, underwear, socks and jeans that I could possibly fit in the large suitcase. I try to force the top down so that I can zip it up, but it decides to be difficult. I sit on the suitcase, and try it that way. Finally, it zips shut. I’m going to need another suitcase for the rest of the stuff I need.

“Hurry up, honey. We need to move.” She scolds me.

“I’m going as fast as I can!” I pull my suitcases off my bed and toss them in the hallway. “Well, it’s just- why do we have to leave now and go completely MIA?” I change the subject back to where it was before.

“Because of this, Jordan. There was an attack on the Global Dome. Where your father was,” she explained.

Fear crumbles down my legs as I look into her eyes.

“He is okay, Jordan. The Government wants your father to get away from here so that he’ll be safe. Therefore, he’s being relocated and so are we.”

I sigh with relief and walk into the hall, picking up my baggage. I look back at Mother and she heads toward the twins’ room, “we’re almost ready.” I turn my head around, both hands holding my heavy suitcases and coats.

My father suddenly appears at the peak of the stairs, causing my stomach to drop. His dark hair is still perfectly set, but his ocean blue eyes are bloodshot. He is still nicely dressed, in a white shirt and blue tie, but he looks severally stressed out. It is not exactly the way I thought he would look after the night he has been looking forward to his whole life. He walks toward me, but all I could do is stare back sadly, and terrified. I haven’t said a word to him since this morning-, before this attack on America.

“I’m so sorry to do this to you, Jordan,” He tells me in a very hushed tone and disappointed expression. He looks like he had been crying. I don’t remember a single day that my father was crying. “We’ll come back to say goodbye to your friends, I promise. It seems a little last minute…”

I hesitate, but force myself to make words. “—Are we going to be okay?” I stutter, with tears beginning to fall.

“Sweetheart, of course we are going to be just fine. Come here.” He puts his arms out and I run to him, dropping my things on the floor. He pulls me into a tight hug and I am still shaking like crazy. He can tell. I start crying into his shoulder. I am just really happy to know that he is okay.

Mom comes out of the bedroom, along with the twins. They are both look half awake, but once they see Dad, their eyes light up. “Daddy!” They both scream and join in on our hug.

Father embraces all three of us, but then looks into the eyes of my terrified Mother. His attention moves to her and he walks toward her slowly. Mom lunges forward and kisses him and she sets her forehead against his, trembling.

“Hey,” he whispers and takes her hands, “Everything is going to be fine. I promise you. I am going to find out what happened here. I swear and may God strike me down if this be untrue, I will not let anything happen to you and the kids.”

She stares into his eyes for a few more seconds and then nods.

“Mr. Chandler?” A random voice asks behind all of us and we all turn our heads around to see Paul, Father’s security guard. “Five minutes,” He says patting his watch. We all stare blankly back at this well-dressed man with black shades.

“We’re almost ready,” Father says and Paul nods in agreement. Ready for what, exactly? “Let’s go,” Father tells us and we make our way down the stairs.

When we reach the bottom of the stairs and walk toward the front doors, I just remembered something important. Out of everything that I remembered to grab, I forgot the most important thing! My medicine.

“Wait, I forgot something!” I pull away from my family and sprint toward the kitchen.

“Jordan, honey!” Mother cries, “We can get that!”

“I will get Jordan,” Father tells her and rushes toward the kitchen as Paul follows close behind him.

“Mr. Chandler, three minutes!” He chases him.

Father turns around and silences him with the wave of his hand, “Shut the hell up about the time, Paul! I am getting my daughter,” he says and pursues after me.

I reach the kitchen and lunge for the medicine cabinet. I grab my small pink inhaler and my rescue inhaler, just to be safe. As I close the cabinet door, I spot something disturbing outside our window. I know I’m supposed to hurry, but something wasn’t right.

I look out our sliding glass door and stare at the brick wall that surrounds our family pool. The wall was tampered with. Someone had spray painted words across it. My fear reaches its boiling point as I read the haunting words.

“DEATH TO CHANDLER”

I froze there in shattering fear when all of a sudden a hand clasps over my eyes, startling me, and pulls me away from the window.

“Jordan, I told you not to come in here,” he says, picking me up off my feet and carries me out.

“Dad, please tell me what is happening!” I cry.

“There is no time for that, Jordan,” he tells me, setting me back down to my feet. He takes my hand and pulls me out the kitchen. Even though I am trying to keep up, his grasp and pull on my wrist starts to hurt.

He rushes me toward the front door. Once the front doors open, I am blinded by a strong ray of light. I fling my hand over my eyes and caught the outline of a large black helicopter outside our house. Rows of Police cars line across our entire yard. There are two black U.D vehicles that wait in the center of the driveway.

I take a step back when the strong beam of light hits my eyes. Impatient, my father completely lifts me off my feet again and carries me down the steps.

“Dad!” I scream. “I know how to walk!”

He doesn’t listen. He carries me to the black vehicle without paying any attention to my wines. Paul opens the door and father sets me inside.

“Put your seatbelt on,” He orders and slams the door shut. I look over my terrified mother next to me and she pulls me into a hug.

“Everything is going to be okay,” she assures me.

“Wait!” I shout. “What about Dad?”

“He got in a separate vehicle,” Mother tells me with tears streaking down her face. “Your father is going to be fine, Jordan, I promise.”

The driver door opens and Paul climbs into the seat. Another Dominion agent that I am not aware with joins him and gets in on the passenger side.

“The family of Chandler is currently being evacuated. We are taking the family to the airport, John Chandler will be joining us in Congress,” Paul says into his Bluetooth headset.

“The White House?” I gasp and shoot up in my seat.

“Jordan, sit back!” Mother orders me, using her arm to shove me back into the seat. I think they call this the Mom seatbelt, “put your seatbelt on now.”

With trembling fingers, I do as she says. I take my belt and shove it into the lock. Once I do, the vehicle moves. With a sharp turn around the corner of our driveway, we are driven out of the yard along with an escort of more U.D vehicles.

At the corner of our street, Paul does not even stop at the stop signs. He races through the street going forty instead of the speed limit of thirty. I stare out the window at the reflection of the red and blue lights that lead us toward in the interstate.

Paul takes another sharp turn on the interstate plane. As we gain more speed, I stare out the window. There are people outside, walking on foot. Some are running. What could of happened to this city to cause this much chaos. Families that are walking stare back at us as we drive by at a very fast speed. I knew that some of them must have been wondering who we are and what we are doing.

It did not take seconds for Paul to reach speeds of almost 100 miles per hour. And just like that, the escort of ten police and United Dominion agents escorted my family to the airport in a beam of red and blue lights.