A Letter And Rose

Hello… My name is Rose. I don’t know if anyone will ever find this, I hope someone does. I probably shouldn’t be writing this letter. I don’t have much time left, but people need to know everything that went on here. If you do find this, that means everything is okay again. I wish I could see what this place would look like if it was all different. I’ve never known anything other than this. I’m sorry... I’m starting to cry. I’m just so afraid. No, I have to be strong. My mother once said to me “The true beauty of a rose is not in its appearance, but its strength. In order for a rose to bloom, it must first have the will to grow. To grow, a rose must survive all of the seasons and stand tall during the worst of the storms.” or something like that. She taught me that what we look like is merely the book cover to the story of who we are and how we got here. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I guess I just imagine a little girl like me finding this letter. I’m sure if you’ll even get this letter, but if you’re reading this, I could sure use a friend now that my mom and dad are gone. Best Friends Forever?

Anyway, I guess I should stop stalling and tell you what’s happening. As I’ve said, my name is Rose. My friends sometimes call me Ro, but I don’t really like either of those. I like to say my name is Arizona. My mother used to talk about a place where she grew up called Arizona. My mother’s name was Catherine Anne Hastings. She worked with my dad down at the big base in North Carolina before we had to leave. My daddies name is Jacob Franklin Adams. I never met him, but he used to be a soldier in the Army before everything changed. That’s why I’m writing this. Something very bad happened and I need to tell you everything. About 11 years ago there was a war. It was a big one. I think it was the biggest war ever on Earth. I was only 1 month old when it happened. My mother told me that people over the world were fighting and killing each other for 3 years until there was nothing left. She said it all started when a man named Chris Hearth started some kind of revolutionary movement. She said that people were very tired, hungry, poor, and sad. Many of them were angry and wanted the world to change very badly. So, they followed this man Chris because he made them promises. He destroyed the old way of the world and somehow invented an entirely new system for everyone called The New Order.

Mother kept saying how everything always felt like it was finally perfect and no one would ever be sad again. People didn’t need money anymore. There was no currency. People just did what they were good at or enjoyed doing and traded for food or other things. She would show me some kind of device that she said would play her favorite song. She said that people use to pay for electricity and buy small things called batteries to put in their music devices. I thought it was silly, but she said that Chris came up with a way to power the entire world with a cell the size of one of her batteries and after that, it felt like nothing would get bad again. She would cry every time she told me this story. I asked her why she was crying when she told me the story. I didn’t understand why she was sad if she said she is happy now. I used to think it was because of me, but she told me that she felt like the war was all her fault because of her and Chris. I was scared to ask her more, but I couldn’t help myself one time when we were sitting out by the lake in the back of our old house in Minnesota. I said, “what happened between you and Chris?” She told me that the war began not long after Chris fell in love with her. She said that she had met Chris at a rally while my father was out on a tour. She said she fell for him the moment she looked into his eyes. There was “this spark”, she kept telling me. When my father had returned, my mother confessed to him about her love for Chris. She said she saw my father’s heartbreak right through his eyes when she had told him about their affair. My dad and Chris got into a fight that night at the base and my mom said she tried to stop it. Chris hit her for trying to get in the way and my father lost control, lunging at Chris with a knife, cutting his left eye. Chris left, my father left, and my mother took me back to my grandmother’s house. Mom said to me, on that night, she knew deep down that she just started the end of the world. Chris just had it in his eyes that he was going to burn the world.

It wasn’t long after that when Chris decided that the world wasn’t good enough for him to want to save it anymore. Mother told me that Chris felt that the world he spent his life fighting to save wasn’t worthy of his love anymore because all the world did was hurt him, and he had just seemed to not be able to handle the torment inside of him anymore. She said Chris was a sad, angry man who had a very tough childhood. That was why he was so ambitious and driven to make a change. It just didn’t seem like him, she said. It was like he became someone else. All of the good things turned into bad things. What was once a dream had now become a nightmare. The New Order seemed perfect, but it had one flaw. It was mostly owned by Chris Hearth. The unlimited energy, the food, water supply, clean air, the entire grid, everything was in his name. Overnight, it was all gone… just like that. The world had gone from an unimaginable utopia to a wasteland in just a year. The entire time, people were forced to live like animals, killing each other, relentlessly, just to survive. An entire world war had broken out and I was born during it. Mother said I was born on a cold, snowy night, in a cabin far away in the forest. She never told me why back then, but I never had any reason to ask. I didn’t know what was going on. The war just all seemed normal to me, growing up. I know now that we were hiding from Chris. He has taken over the entire world. There is not a trace of love left in sight anywhere. Everything is black, cold, and there is a deep sad feeling wherever you turn. It almost feels like you’re breathing it. My father was captured like the rest of the survivors and is now a prisoner in the Night Tower. I never got to meet him... I’m not even sure if he knows I exist.

My mother said she tracked Chris down one day and told him that what he is doing can’t go on and it isn’t what he stood for. Chris told my mother that if no one will love him then “there will be love for no one.” That is where she broke down crying on the handwoven dress my grandmother made her, saying “I’m so sorry, my Rose. I’m so so sorry…” Later that night she came into my room while I was sleeping, (well, I was pretending to sleep because I always had trouble falling asleep) and I heard her walk up to me and whisper softly into my ear. “My precious little Rose. I’ll always love you.” I tried keeping my eyes closed and not to make any sudden movements as she kissed my forehead and brushed a piece of my hair off of my face with her hand. I don’t know why, but I didn’t move at all, even after she had left the room that night. I just fell right to sleep. The next morning I woke up and everything just felt strange. I found a heart-shaped locket in my hand, and when I ran downstairs to ask my mother about it, she was gone. I screamed until I cried, and I got so tired that I just sat down on the cold, hard stone ground where our garden once was, wondering why my mother would ever leave me.

I woke up the next morning on my steps and the first thing that I saw was the locket on the floor. It must have fallen while I was asleep. It was open, and as I picked it up, I noticed that it was a picture of my mother and my father from when they first met. They were kissing, and on the back, it read: “Our First Kiss - Photo Booth 2011.” On the back of the locket itself, it read: “If my heart gets lost, help make its way back to me.” I paused briefly, thinking about what my mother used to say to me about surviving, and I realized that this locket may be the only love that is left in the world, and maybe I could use it to save my father. I found where Chris Hearth’s base was, and I told the soldier to tell them my name was Catherine Anne Hastings, hoping Chris would hear the name and think of my mom. He did. As they brought me inside, I could see all of the prisoners. There were people in cages with no clothes. They looked lifeless. There were even small children like me. That’s when my heart stopped...I found my mother. She was in a cage just like everyone else. I turned and I starting hitting the soldier, yelling “let her out! Let her out, now!” “Enough!”, said Chris. I stood there in shock. It’s him. It’s really him, thinking to myself. “Tell him to let her out now!”, I told him. He laughed and said, “you tell him. He’s your father.” I couldn’t believe this soldier, whose skin was pale and dry, eyes blackened like his soul, was my father. Everyone seemed so dead inside. The look of satisfaction in Chris’s eyes was displeasing, to say the least. For a moment, I had lost all hope. Then I remembered, the locket! The other guards grabbed me and started taking me away to the cage I’m in now. I dropped the locket and I said “Dad, look! This was you and mom! Don’t you remember? Please remember! We need you!” I don’t know if it will work, but if you find this letter, that means that it did work and my dad remembered. I just know he will save mommy and me. I’m going to hide this letter before the guards find it. They keep taking the other little girls into a different room and they’re not bringing them back out. I don’t know why. Uh oh, I think I heard something. They’re coming back. I have to go now. I’m sorry. To the little girl like me that’s reading this, everything is going to be okay. Don’t worry. Best Friends Forever, remember?

- Arizona