Running through the wilderness. Faster, faster, faster each time she runs. A wild, terrifying animal follows her. She feels like if she was being followed and stared at. A thousand eyes are looking at her. It seems like she has been running for a whole lifetime. Finally, she arrives at the cave, its the only place where she feels at least a bit invulnerable. Her heart beats very rapidly and loudly. She is able to hear it. To enter the cave, there is a small hole hidden behind some trees. Its hard to get in but she has always been able to come through; specially since she is eating less food everyday and getting skinnier by the minute. When she gets in, she sits down in the hard, cold floor. She takes out all her “possessions”. Her family picture, her 5 blueberries found near the river, her two little hairpins, and her mother’s beautiful comb. She stares at all of them, it makes her remember about her family; her mom, her dad, and her two big sisters, she hopes they still remember about her and that they are looking for her. Also, she thinks about how she ended up where she is now. Hot and salty teardrops run down her cheeks and she sighs.
Everything started with a little mistake. Nobody could have ever thought about it all turning into something so dangerous. It was a warm Sunday morning at the 4th of July festival. She was holding her mom’s hand tighter than ever. There was a strange feeling in the air. Something didn’t feel good, though nobody knew what it was. There were red and blue balloons, cakes, and everything else you could possibly imagine. Her whole family was there, happy and exited about their country’s Independence Day. There was an innumerable quantity of people in the festival; some they knew, and some people where just unknown strangers. This was a day where every American kid would have fun, specially a 10-year-old girl like her. There were clowns, lots of food and a thousand other kids to play with. She, Valerie, was having fun but wouldn’t stop holding her moms hand. She felt a little scared about being in a place with so many other people. After a long discussion between our sweet and terrified Valerie and her mom, she was finally convinced to go play with her friends and let her mom socialize with her own friends. For a split second she felt safe enough to walk away and go to her friends Rebecca and Nicole, but then her heart started beating faster, and faster, and faster. She wanted to go back to her mom but she couldn’t find her. Her fear grew stronger every second and she felt her face go red and her hands were sweating. She looked around her and spotted a thirty something-year-old man staring, or mostly observing her. His eyes were blue and his hair was a soft tone of brown. His skin was pale and his hands looked huge. He was tall, and well dressed. The man started walking towards Valerie and she was so scared, that she couldn’t move. When the strange man finally got to her side, he grabbed her by her hand and with his other hand, he covered Valerie’s mouth so nobody could hear her shouting. He ran with her and got into a car in the parking lot. He explained what he was going to do to her and she started crying, she was so scared and couldn’t even think about the small possibility of her survival. He told her that he was going to put her in a jungle, a wild jungle where there were hundreds of animals. After a couple hours, Valerie woke up by the cold feeling of the wind. She opened her eyes and saw the jungle around her and no sight of the stranger.
After that, nothing else happened other than her discovering of the cave and that there was tigers in the jungle. Terror was all she was able to feel and all she thought about was how to survive, and primarily, how to get back home.
Now Valerie is at the cave and her stomach hurts so much she feels like throwing up. She wanted to eat so badly but all she had were her berries. She eats them in such a desperate manner, that if anyone could have been there to see her, they would feel pity. She is still hungry and decides to sleep trying to forget about it and wait for the next day and see what she can do.
Meanwhile, her parents are looking for her everywhere. They called the police and everybody was looking for Valerie. But how were they supposed to find her? There were so many people in that same city that could have gotten her, and how could they possibly figure out she was in a jungle, a thousand miles away in the middle of nowhere!
Valerie wakes up and since everything looks so bright, she figures out that it is already the next day. She stands up and decides to go find some food. After a while, she finds a bush with some berries. Without thinking, she threw herself to what she though was food. Valerie stuffed her mouth with those berries. Suddenly, she feels weird. Everything starts to look blurry and she feels like if her head was spinning. She falls to the ground and tries to stand up again. She is not able to do so and decides to lay down and wait to feel better. After what seemed like a couple minutes, she closes her eyes in a hurtfully manner and then, painfully died.
Her parents never found her; nobody did. She just stayed there, lying on the floor next to the bushes probably until some wild animal ate her. She was against all odds and didn’t survive.