Get Up Again

-five-

The floor is covered with blood. The air is full of bullets and the sound of gunshots. Suddenly I wish that I could turn back and go get my shoes. But I don't. I'm running for my life. I have been grazed by bullets multiple times, but this is not a normal situation. Sure, I knew how to throw a punch, but the guys creating all the chaos looked too distracted for me to be able to hit them. 

So my feet and walker are covered with blood of people that I somewhat know, and I'm pretty sure that there's some on my pants, my hijab doesn't match my leather jacket and dress, and I'm running away from my mother's dead body and my father's corrupted soul. I'm wondering if Allah is going to allow me to live to see another day. 

That feeling isn't very foreign. Wallahi, it isn't. I felt like this when Baba kicked us out of the house, when he told my mother to get lost, and he told me that I was a embarrassment, because I'm disabled and I'm beautiful but I chose not to show it. He told us that Islam was oppressive. He told us that we are making the biggest mistake of our lives by choosing to follow Islam. 

Only Allah knows what happened to him. But all I knew, and will ever know, is that he was insane. My father was insane. He didn't know what he was doing half the time. Only Allah knows what goes through his head. 

I hope that it stays that way. 

I was thinking of a way out. And then I remembered. 

The tunnels that lead under the school. And I knew exactly where it the closest entrance was. And I knew how I could get there. 

I run to the room that was hosting the boy that I have been crushing on ever since I saw him in front of my dorm room, leaving a trail of small footprints and two thin lines that were made by the wheels of my walker on the bloody floor. 

---

"Neya, why are you here?" Hiro hissed. He was in front of his door, and when I first saw him, he was stealing a gun from one of the people who were firing and was shooting at him. His once clean white leather jacket was stained with blood. His cheek was stretched by a bunch of bullets, leaving light cuts in their wake. "Go back to your room, and stay there."

Somehow, Allah helped me not lose my stomach's contents as I watched all of this. Somehow, my knees kept me up the entire time. It was all by the grace of Allah. He knew that if I fell, I would have died that day. 

"Get into your room." I told him. "And take me too." 

He looked behind me and before I knew it, there was a bang and a bullet zipping less than a inch away from my ear and Hiro was pulling me inside his room and I'm plunged into a darkness that is so foreign that I don't know how to take it. 

I heard a another gunshot and a door slam shut. I feel for my face and feel something warm and wet running down my cheek. I knew that it was staining the hijab I was wearing.

"I need lights." I said, not sure that Hiro could hear me. "I need them right now." 

"Give me a second." His voice was hard, and harsh. But it was comforting. I wanted him to say something to try to scare me, so that I could tell him how hot it made him sound. 

I hear rustling. And then the lights dimmed on. Just enough so that I could see. Immediately my eyes locked with Hiro's. "I know about the tunnel." He said. 

"I'm not surprised." I said. "How did you find out?" I looked at my fingers to see red. I knew that it was blood. 

Oh My Allah, I'm bleeding. 

"Taif told me." I gasped. Taif. Laila. Taher. Are they okay? 

"I'm gonna open it." I told him. "And then we're going to run." 

"Got it." He shoved the gun into his pocket and I silently thanked Allah that I found him at the right time. "I'll move my bed." 

"You have a band aid?" It slipped out of my mouth. Even though, in my head, I knew that we didn't have the time for a band aid. 

He shook his head. I closed my eyes, and felt the sting of my tears as they fell on my cheeks. Oh Allah, I lost my family. Will I ever see them? We lost each other. Ma is gone. I don't know what happened to Taif and Laila and Taher. Where are they? Dead? Hidden? Are they looking for me? 

I knew that now wasn't the time for grieving. I had to get up and move. 

The reason we fall is to get up again. 

"Neya, it's ready for you." Hiro cut through my thoughts like a knife cutting through butter. I looked at him. He tossed me a water bottle. 

I caught it, and somehow, it didn't drop on the floor. 

"Down it." He told me. He was unscrewing the top to his own water bottle. "All of it. Do it now." 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Because we are going to have to run." He looked at me. "And we are going to have to run far from the entrance." He gestured at the door. "They can come in whenever they want." 

"I know." I was looking for a place to sit. He cleared his bed and patted the area next to him. I walked there and sat down gingerly. 

"You don't know." He told me. "They are people I know. And their leader's my father." 

"What?!"I looked at him, not knowing what to say. "You're kidding, right??" Please tell me that he's kidding. 

"No. I wish I was." He sighed. "They're after me and you. And we have to run. We have to get far away from this place." 

"What? Why?" I asked. I knew what he was going to say. I didn't know that later, I would love him for it. 

"I promise I'll tell you later, once we're out of danger." Hiro downed the rest of his water. "But now, we have to move. Finish your water bottle Kayandi. We have to move."

I started unscrewing the water bottle. As soon as I got the cap off, I said Bismillah and I drank the whole thing in one gulp. I know I shouldn't have, but I did. I felt the risk that us staying here was creating. And I knew, somehow, that Hiro Namikaze wasn't lying to me. 

He ever never lied to me. 

I grabbed my walker, pulled myself up, and walked to the false wall behind the bed. I quickly found the pin pad, and punched in the pin. It was the year that I came to Island Boarding School. And it wasn't based on the solar calendar. It was the Islamic lunar year. 

The door opened and I bolted, knowing that we had 30 seconds until it closed. I heard Hiro run behind me and soon he came up next to me. But I knew he could go faster, but he didn't. 

We run, and run, and run. 

I never ran so much before. I was worried that it would effect my rods and my joints, the reason why I use the walker in the first place, but we didn't stop.

We didn't stop until I felt the world turn upside down, and watch it go black.

We didn't stop until Hiro panted to a stop, and we both collapsed onto the floor like empty potato sacks, and we fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.