Country Rivals

By Cambria Perin

Lori Ballier is a young, proud citizen of Hideberg. She expects to spend her summer having a blast with her best friends until the day she receives an ominous letter that will change things. Suddenly, Loris whole world is turned upside down. She attends a brutal academy that shapes and molds her. From day to day, Lori is faced with constant challenges and dangerous enemies. Throughout her journey, she discovers startling truths about herself and her family that no young girl should ever have to face. During her fight, Lori remembers the love of her friends, and she discovers what it means to be a true patriot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524507466

Cambria Perin

Cambria Perin, the author of The Fairest Queen: A Snow White Story, lives in Los Angeles, California. As an only child, she has always had plenty of time to be on her own and allow her imagination to grow. Cambria has loved writing short stories and sharing them with her family since she was seven years old. She loves to tell stories, be they fictional or real. Cambria considers herself to be, in one word, an entertainer. She loves to make people laugh. When Cambria is not writing, she is acting, singing, dancing, reading, studying, hanging out with friends, and working with children.

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Copyright © 2016 by Cambria Perin.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016909099

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5245-0747-3

                eBook             978-1-5245-0746-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/08/2016

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Contents

The Move

Blooming June

Big News

Twin Talk

Welcome to the Youth Military Academy

Official Students

First Month

Second Month

The Final Month

Graduation

Goodbye

Basinside

Archer the archer

More Battles

Trapped!

Gold self or gold world

The Unforeseen

Friend and Foe

Distortion

Reality check

Reunion

Home Again

For my loved ones and my teacher

The Move

What do you want to do today, Lori? asks Kim, my best friend.

It doesn't matter. Whatever you want. I say.

Kim's twin brother, Tim, pipes up. I want to go riding. Let's go!

He starts to run off, but Kim gives him a look that says that's not very good manners. Tim recognizes his sister's look and says, Um, I, mean, if it's all right with you, Lori. Tim's a scrawny kid and a bit short for his age. We're all fourteen, but he looks and acts like he's ten. There are pros and cons to that. He's a bit too spontaneous, but at least he's still playful, unlike most of the boys in our class, who walk around with swaggy bravado and dumb looks on their faces. Apparently they think it makes them look cool.

Sure. It's fine. I smile at him to show that I don't care whether or not he has good manners. Kim is the most mature of the three of us. I like her, but her sophistication can be annoying. She often scolds me for eating with my fingers and constantly reminds Tim to act his own age, but Tim and I don't mind so much. Other than her nagging, Kim's a good friend to me and a good sister to Tim.

I can tell that Kim doesn't want to go riding by the brief pout that crosses her face. As usual, I play the compromising peacemaker. How about this, we go riding and then find a nice spot to have a picnic and play games, go for a small hike, and just hang out. Tim and Kim look satisfied.

I'm happy that I'll be spending the summer with my best friends. It's the first summer without my parents, but I'll have fun. I survived without them through the second half of the school year.

My parents are far away. Several months ago, they were drafted from the General to go to Basinside, our rival country, to fight in the war. Mom and Dad were yanked out of the city so fast that they had no time to make living arrangements for me. I made out well. The school has an auditorium with an indoor balcony. People who're solitary sit up there for Sunday service. The school said that I could sleep and study there as long as I was responsible. And I was. On the weekends, my aunt drove me home so that I could tidy the place up, tend to the flower beds, and take care of the dog. Some of my classmates wonder why I don't stay with my aunt. I have three good reasons.

Reason one: My aunt has an unpleasant personality and doesn't like people very much, not even family. Living with her wouldn't be fun for either of us.

Reason two: Her pets are pests. Her dog is spoiled and untrained and yap, yap, yaps till I want to pull my ears off. (Not that I have the guts to do that. Yet.) Her cat is also a she-devil. But it, (yeah, yeah, I know the cat's a girl, but I will not give that creature respect by calling it by it's gender) doesn't mess with me anymore after I made it understand what it's like to be bullied. I've been on my aunt's naughty teenager list since that happened. But anyway, my grades would be as bad to look at as corpses because of all the noise.

Reason three: My aunt hates driving, probably because she's terrible at it. She would not enjoy taking me to and from school every day. And I would fear for my life.

It was better for everyone if I lived on the school campus. Others wonder how I've managed to not turn anorexic because of the constant intake of cafeteria, or rather, hellateria food. Believe me, it was a struggle. But then I figured I get what I get and I should be thankful for it. It's not really worse than my aunt's cooking anyway. A few times a month, Tim and Kim and their dad took me out to have dinner at their expensive yet humble restaurant to give me some fresh fruit and a big, juicy steak. I wish I could go with the twins to their restaurant every day, but life's life.

Living in the auditorium during the summer wasn't really an option. The school has the temperature of the Sahara desert in the months of July and August. I would also starve. Most of the school cooks spend the summer in Tirona, a party city on the other side of the country. In the summer, people only show up at the school for church. It's completely deserted after that. I explained my unpleasant predicament to Kim, and she said I could live with them until school started again.

I was very pleased. The ranch her family lives on is only a few miles outside of the city. It's a beautiful sight of fifty acres. They have goats, cows, horses, pigs, and a security guard, Mugo. He doesn't look like much at first, gangly and short like Tim; but he's as quick as a blink and sly as a fox. Mugo usually keeps to himself, but he's always on the lookout for trouble. Kim's parents hired him shortly after the war started; which was about five months ago.

Nobody is surprised that there is war among the four countries. Only it's kind of depressing, considering the four nations are the only ones that recovered from the third world war. In 2030, countries in the Middle East once called Syria and Iraq launched nuclear missiles on South America and Africa. While the rest of the world was recovering from the shock of the loss of two continents, the Middle East wasn't done. They had infiltrated so many of their people in Europe and Asia, and on the east and west coast of North America. The terrorists in Indonesia destroyed most of Oceania. The people in Europe were killed off by hybrid diseases invented by the Syrian scientists. Only that plan had backfired because the majority of the terrorists themselves had died from them. The animals, the ground, the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean became toxic and Europe became a dead wasteland. During this time, terrorists on the east and west coast of North America burned major cities to the ground, including places called San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Manhattan, Tallahasse, etc. While the terrorists' attention was on destroying cities, people who lived in small towns on the coasts took the opportunity to flee toward the Midwest, having nowhere else to run. There, they found unexpected refuge. It turned out that for decades, the Midwest Secret Nuclear Association, the MSNA, had been gathering tons of nuclear supplies and preparing to bomb the Middle East. Word spread to the Canadians and Mexicans, and they too, fled to the MSNA shelters. A similar thing was happening in Asia. East Asia had been prepared for the attack of West Asian terrorists, and fought them off for a long time. Just as their defenses began to weaken, the MSNA launched atomic bombs on all the Middle Eastern countries, Indonesia, and West Asia. Without their home base in the Middle East, the terrorists in North America were left on the desert west coast and died off from the lack