Short Story

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“Nick, wake up. Nick wake your lazy butt up!”

“Uhh why? It’s 5:45 in the morning.”

“Don’t you remember what mom told you last night? That we have to wake up extra early today.”

“For our 2 week trip. Duh.”

“Oh shoot. The cruise.”

“Finally waking up, aren’t you?”

 

          Nick is almost an adult. He is  half way into  his teens. He is 16 years old, and has a younger sister named Jenny she is 12. Nick lives up in Sacramento. Jenny and Nick are children of very rich parents by the names of Mary Straus and Richard Straus. Now, if you haven’t figured it out already, Nick and his family are going on a cruise to Antarctica. This is the first ever boat to attempt to go all the way to the famous Antarctica.

 

“Are you kids ready to go on our first ever cruise as a family?”, asked his Mom.

“ What is the purpose to go on this trip any way?”, said Nick.

“Well I guess its just to get some relax time as a family, and so dad and I don’t have to think about work for a good 2 weeks.”

“Yeah I guess you’re right. I’m just surprised you let us miss an extra week of school on top of the 2 weeks off for Christmas vacation.”

“Well, it’s not like you really learn anything at that dumb school of yours.”

“Actually we do learn some stuff but only because we are forced to.”

“Well learning is good especially at your age so then you don’t have to try to learn stuff when you’re an adult. That’s when it gets really tough.”

“Well, I’m going to fall asleep on the ride to the harbor which is about two hours away.”

 

          As soon as I arrived, I was so glad I was skipping school for this cruise. The boat was huge and the things that you could do on the boat were amazing! You could play soccer, tennis, basketball; any sport you can think of you could play on this boat. It even had it’s own little rollercoaster in the inside of the lobby area so whenever you got bored, you could just walk down to the lobby and it was like going to Six Flags but only this one was with in walking distance. Knowing Jenny, she went straight to the mall and she had her wallet full because dad gave me and her 1200 dollars to spend on the cruise for whatever we wanted. This is going to be a week I will never forget in my life!

 

          Yesterday, was one of the greatest days of my life. My heart still hasn’t stopped beating from the excitement. So what I did yesterday was I played a pickup game of soccer with some other kids on the ship. Not to be surprised, but I scored some goals and we ended up winning 9-7. I played with some of the best kids ever; I have never played with better players in

 

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my life. I’m pretty sure Jenny had fun too. I think she met some girls and spent the whole day at the mall. She came home with 2 new purses, 5 bags of clothes and 2 new pairs of shoes. And not to forget she only came home with 300 dollars left over. So basically she spent 900 dollars of the money she was given. Me on the other hand, I only spend around 20 dollars for some drinks and snacks. I also met this one girl that I can’t stop thinking about. I think her name is Stephanie but I’m not sure yet. I am so looking forward to tomorrow.

 

           As I wake up today I tell myself that today is a new day and a new chance to get to know Stephanie better.

 

          Today was a good day. I spent a lot of time with Stephanie and got to know her better. Everyday I am starting to like her more and more with every time I see her. On the other hand, Jenny has made friends with some other girls of her age on the cruise. One is actually kind of cute too.

 

          So far, it’s been 3 days on the cruise. It was been really fun so far and I think my parents are enjoying each other on their week off of work. The captain says that we will be arriving to the Antarctic soon so I am excited. Well, it’s time for me to go to sleep. I wonder what I have in store for tomorrow.

 

“Wake up!!!!” said one of the cruise workers. “Wake up if you want to live!”

“What? What is going on?” screamed Nick.

“our ship has just hit an iceberg and we are sinking at high speed!”

“Oh my God.”

“We need all of the kids and women to the right of the ship and all of the men on the left side. Before we do that, though, we will need the men to help the women to the right side of the ship. We need to spare them if we can.”

 

          I have been living in this inflatable boat with 12 other random people I have never met before. Now it has been 3 days that we have been floating and drifted whichever way the ocean decides to move us. Everyone is desperately waiting for the Coast Guard to come and find us. In the beginning, we were a total of about 60 boats. Now I can only see about 5 in my sight.  I have kind of lost hope on the Coast Guard. I feel that our boat will just go with the flow of the water and by everyday that goes by, I start to feel closer to home. Now we are starting to get low on food, but the water is all over the place. The best part is that we have a purifier to make sure the water won’t dehydrate us instead of hydrating.

 

          As I wake up, I think to myself it has now been 7 days since I left California. It also cleared up in the sky so that means we are getting closer to land and that is always a good thing. As today goes by very slowly, I just

 

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can’t stop thinking of Stephanie. Now, instead of only 5 boats in sight, I can see about 12. Rumors are spreading that we will be hitting land tomorrow.

 

          I wake up and so far we haven’t hit land yet. I’ll be lucky to come out of this alive. Our food will last us about 2 more days, so if we don’t find land soon we are pretty much screwed.

 

          Now it was been a total of 9 days that this life taking cruise has been under way. At this point, if this went on like a week or more then I would rather die by the freezing temperature of the ocean than starve for the next couple days.

 

“Wake up!!!!” said a random person on the tiny inflatable we have.

Sure enough, as I turned around I saw land but it wasn’t frozen; it was forestry. Who knows were life will take you until it does. And who knows how my life will be on this small island we have miraculously found.

 

 

 

Dear Reader,

        My name is Alberto Ceresoli and I am in the 8^th grade and attend HTMMA. This book is the first book that I have ever published is was donated to you from me for a class project. This book is meant to be a short story but filled with some adventure. I hope you enjoyed my book.

From,

Writer and Publisher Alberto Ceresoli