“Kelsey! Oliver!” I could hear my mom screaming, and I heard her running down the halls pounding on our doors, but it was a Saturday and it was so early. “Kelsey,” she said, barging into the room, “Kelsey, please you need to get up it’s the flood!” She was now desperately shaking me so I forced my eyes to open and looked at my frantic mom in front of me. She was breathing heavily and was still screaming for my younger brother Oliver to get up. 

“Mom, mom what is it?” I asked. Seeing her like this worried me, it looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep and it seemed like she was going insane.

“The flood, it came early, we need to get out of here.” She said in between breaths. 

The flood. It wasn’t supposed to come for another couple of weeks. We live in Australia, in a small little complex across the street from the beach, and the sea levels have been increasing for a while now but they’ve been getting really bad recently. We were all planning to evacuate and move in towards the city with plenty of time but now that the floods here this early, no one’s prepared.

My mind immediately goes to Addison, she’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember. We’ve been through so much together and were planning on moving to the same area. 

“Allison, where’s Allison?” I questioned as I got out of bed to get my emergency kit. We made the kits awhile ago and I never thought I’d have to use it. 

“I don’t know sweetie, I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. Now please get your stuff together and go and see if people need help while I get Oliver ready.” She answered as she started walking out the door. I could tell that she was panicking, a natural disaster like this was one of her biggest fears. 

There are 7 houses on our street and we are right in the middle. I could see the damage before even stepping outside. The winds were really bad last night but they didn’t bother me. 

Trees were down everywhere and there was tons of chaos. The winds were still pretty strong so I had to be careful walking around. The street that was just so cheerful and bright yesterday had changed drastically overnight. 

“Kelsey! Thank goodness you’re here!” Mrs. Smith exclaimed, running up and hugging me. Mrs. Smith is my next-door neighbor, she’s been super close to us ever since we moved here when we were little. 

“The damage is insane, is there anything I can help with?” I asked pulling away to take in the awful destruction around me. The once nice bushes were blown over and there were sticks and leaves all over the street.

“Well, there’s a lot that needs to be cleaned up but you can start over by the Whall’s.” She answered pointing across the street to Whall’s house. I made my way over to see what I could do. 

A tree had fallen right next to their house and was blocking part of the street. 

“We need to get this out,” One lady said trying to get everyone together.

“Well we won’t be able to do it ourselves, we should just call people to come and do it professionally.” Some man said in response.

“No, we need to get rid of this now and they never care about our problems.” The same lady answered, her voice getting louder with each word. 

“We have way more to worry about right now I think it’d just be best if we get someone else to take care of this.” He exclaimed, turning to face her. 

“Hey, what’s going on here?” I asked, walking up to Ellie, the one girl in this neighborhood who’s around my age. 

“Everything’s a mess, people won’t stop fighting long enough to fix the problems, and the floods coming any day now.” She responded. There was now a big swarm of people crowding around the tree. 

I started making my way back inside when a blaring noise started coming from all of the houses. Chatter broke out in the neighborhood, talk about it being the flood warning, to take cover, gather your things and leave. I raced inside to make sure that my mom and Oliver were okay.

“Mom! Oliver! Where are you guys?” I screamed, racing down the halls, it seemed like the noise was just getting louder and I was starting to freak out. I ran into my brother's room to find them sitting on the ground.

“Mom? What are you guys doing? We have to get out of here, the alarms going off.” I screamed over the alarm and helped her get up. She finally turned around and I could see tears coming down her face.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, we should've been safe, people could’ve stopped it, fixed it.” She said, her voice shaking with fear. Oliver gave her a hug to try and comfort her but it just made the tears come down harder. Seeing them like this made me angrier than anything. How did people not catch onto this? I mean they must’ve known it was a problem, so why didn’t they care enough to do anything.

“I know mom, I know,” Oliver whispered while patting her on the back. It stayed like this for a minute, my brother trying his best to comfort her, him tearing up a bit too. 

“Ok, I’m fine, we better get going if we wanna make it safely.” She finally said, taking a step back and wiping her tears. 

We grabbed our things and made our way back outside. Everyone was now running around, trying to find their families and things. It made me think of Addison, how I still didn’t know where she was and had no way of finding out if she was okay. The best thing I could do was stay positive and make sure my mom and Oliver were safe. 

“Alright, how about we all get in the car and make our way out of here.” My mom instructed while unlocking the car.

“Mom, can we please swing by Allison’s house, I just wanna make sure she’s okay,” I asked, I couldn’t leave without having heard from her. My mom nodded her head in approval and we all hopped in the car.

Allison lives pretty close to me, that’s how we became such good friends. We would always walk to school together since we live close to the school too. 

“Woah, look at that!” Oliver exclaimed, pointing out the window to the beach. The amazing beach that used to be across the street from us had been eaten up by the dark blue waves. All of the trees on the beach were all scattered around in the water. I didn’t know much about weather patterns or warning signs but I could tell that a flood was coming. The water looked like it was about to attack our small little community and it was starting to lightly rain. 

“Yeah, a flood is coming soon,” My mom answered taking a glance at the sky, which had all of a sudden become dark and cloudy, “Allison better be around here somewhere because I don’t think we have much time.” She finished, turning into her neighborhood.

The damage here was probably worse than on our street, we had to stop short of her house because there was a massive puddle blocking the road. I quickly jumped out of the car and ran around the puddle through her neighbor's yard.

“Allison? Allison?” I screamed while pounding on her door, she must be in here, she must. After a couple of seconds of pounding, the door finally opened to reveal a man I had never seen before.

“Hello miss, I heard you screaming for my granddaughter, is there any way I can help you?” He stated with no emotion on his face. 

“Is she here? Do you know where I can find her?” I questioned in between breaths. How was this man so calm? Did he know what was going on?

“I’m sorry to say that she isn’t here right now, she left a little while ago to go and help the neighbors and we haven’t seen her since.” He answered, still with that blank expression on his face. He then slammed the door shut and left me standing on their porch alone, without any clue as to where Allison was. 

“Kelsey?” My mom screamed running to meet me, I could see on her face that we needed to go but I couldn’t. I couldn’t just leave her, I had a feeling she was in danger. 

“Mom, please, please help me,” I begged, trying to portray how important this was to me, “Allison isn’t here.” I finished giving her one last look, trying to be convincing. Her expression stayed the same, and she grabbed my hand, dragging me back to the car.

“I’m so sorry but we need to go, hopefully, you’ll be able to forgive me when you’re alive living somewhere safe.” She yelled, still yanking me back to the car. I couldn’t believe it, I was going to leave without her, how could I do this to her? 

We started driving towards the city and the whole time I couldn’t keep the tears from coming down my face. I knew that what we were doing was for the best but it still felt wrong leaving her. 

A couple of hours later we pulled up to the hotel that we’d stay at until we figured everything out. I immediately ran inside and put on the news to hear more about the flood. The town I grew up in was being surrounded by water and slowly destroyed. I turned it off, unable to watch the rest of it and turned to my mom and Oliver who were both still trying to calm down. Once she noticed me standing there she came up and wrapped me in a blanket.

“Sweetie,” she started, tears starting to stream down her face, “I just got a text from Addison’s mom, and um, she didn’t make it.” She finished, her voice shaking because she was on the verge of tears. I took a step back, it was like my brain couldn’t comprehend what it was hearing, it didn’t want to. Tears started pouring down my face uncontrollably, I didn't even try to stop them. I just sat right on the ground, wrapped in the blanket, crying my eyes out. I knew then that I wanted to make a difference in our community, I made a promise to myself, that I’d never let a problem get this bad again if there was something I could do to help.