On The Verge

Chapter 19- What Comes Around

——————Maddie——————

⠀⠀My friends were behind me, coughing wildly as the flames consumed the house. A loud explosion suddenly rocked the house, throwing me back against the door. My head was spinning, my lungs were heaving as my eyes burned.

⠀⠀This is how the nightmare that Liza had created would end. Actually, the nightmare wouldn't end; We would. I began to sink into an unconscious state where I could not feel the burns that littered my body, where my lungs didn't beg for air that I couldn't give them.

⠀⠀I leaned my weight against the door, weakness prohibiting me from escaping this house. I suddenly felt the door give out beneath me and I fell backwards out of the house and into someone's arms.

⠀⠀"Chloe?" I asked, weakly looking up the girl's face. She hushed me as she pulled my frail body across the lawn. Laying me a safe distance away from the burning structuring, she raced back in. A bobby pin fell from her hand as she ran back towards the burning home. She must have picked the lock in order to be able to open the door.

⠀⠀She pulled Kendall and Nia out of the house and to safety, her muscles heaving under our foreign weight until we were all safely laying on the grass next to the road. Sirens wailed in the distance, the sound becoming louder as they approached. The black dots that threatened to overcome my vision finally won their battle as I was consumed by darkness.

———————Chloe———————
♛Flashback to before the fire♛

⠀⠀I lay in bed, tear streaked mascara creating shaky lines down my cheeks.

⠀⠀I was worried about Josh. Worried that he wouldn't come back, worried that he was hurt, worried about everything. The girls had invited me to Nia's house for a planning session but I had no intentions of going. I preceded to lay in my misery, sulking about Josh's potential danger.

⠀⠀My phone buzzed, breaking me from my dismal thoughts. '1 new text message' the dim screen read. I unlocked the phone and opened my iMessage. The message was from Kendall; 'SOS! Nia's house!' She had typed.

⠀⠀Nia's house was only a few doors down from mine. Momentarily forgetting my melancholy state, I leapt from the bed in response to Kendall's SOS.

⠀⠀"I'm going out. I'll be back." I cried to my mom as leapt down the stairs. My mother nodded in response as I slipped my converse sneakers on to my frantic feet and threw my front door open.

⠀⠀The porch outside the door squeaked as my feet made contact with its wooden surface. I was about to take off in a dead sprint in the direction of Nia's house when I noticed a single sheet of paper wedged between two of the boards on the deck. My heart clenched knowingly, my shaking hand instinctively reached down and pried the paper out from its nook between the boards.

W⃞h⃞a⃞t⃞ c⃞o⃞m⃞e⃞s⃞ a⃞r⃞o⃞u⃞n⃞d⃞ g⃞o⃞e⃞s⃞ a⃞r⃞o⃞u⃞n⃞d⃞.⃞ 7⃞6⃞6⃞ 8⃞5⃞t⃞h⃞ s⃞t⃞r⃞e⃞e⃞t⃞.⃞

⠀⠀I flipped the paper over, just to find myself looking into Josh's soft eyes. It was an image of his body, bound and broken, printed on the back side of the note. He was tied to a chair, a gash running down the side of his face from his eyebrow to his left ear. His head flopped weakly to the side, his once gorgeous blue eyes inanimate and haunting. He was alive, but barely so.

⠀⠀My face paled and a sob caught in my throat. I dared not breath in fear that I would erupt in a flurry of relentless tears.

⠀⠀The address inscribed on the paper gave an adresse, that must be where Josh was.

⠀⠀I was conflicted. My friends needed my help— but I needed to help Josh as well. How would I pick who to help when helping one could potentially hurt the other?

⠀⠀It was like the burning building metaphor that children would ask one another; your mother and father are trapped in a burning building. You can only save one, and the other will die. Who would you choose?

⠀⠀Who would I save? And who's plea for help would I ignore?

⠀⠀I thought of Josh and I's date, how perfect it was and how sweet he had been. I thought of all the times my friends and I had laughed, all the times we had cried.

⠀⠀Knowing there was no time to waste, I raced down the stairs of the porch and sprinted all the way to Nia's house.

♛End of Flashback♛