Emaria

chapter four.

Wc: 1081

There were too many emotions to feel at once. The four of us sat in silence for a few seconds in just pure disbelief, too many possibilities of what could happen and not enough time to figure anything out. The first person to speak was Madison.

"What the fuck?" She announced. I jumped out of my chair and onto my feet as a guard walked over to a still very shocked Clowie to finally get her onto her feet and to the stage. Jordan was just as shocked as Clowie. Saying " Wait. Wait. Wait." Under her breath, desperate to keep her friend, yet knowing she was unable to do anything. We all watched the tears pour down Clowie's face as the guard easily led her up the stairs of the stage. From the middle stage, the Dean bows and he along with all four teens are led out by guards to only God knows where. The rest of the audience takes that as their cue to get up and leave. A few kids move through the crowd with tears in their eyes. But Madison, Jordan, and I stay put. We told ourselves we would be ready for this moment, yet disbelief pulled at our brains.

A moment later, I find myself being pulled from the auditorium from Madison, the one person who seemed to have gained any rational thinking in the last few moments. We made it outside into the parking lot that was a void of cars, the sky seemed darker than usual. I looked over at Jordan and Madison who stood next to me.

"What now?" I asked solemnly. Madison shrugged.

"We go home."

"I don't want to go home." Jordan whispered.

"But...What about Clowie?" I asked.

"What about her?" Madison started to walk away, "She's gone now, and there's nothing we can do about that." Subconsciously, I start to follow her, Jordan right behind me.

"What if we could? She can't just be gone."

"Well, she is. What do you want me to tell you? You should be used to this by now." That pushed the three of us into silence. Quietly, Jordan and I continued to follow Madison through the streets of our town, none of us wanting to be alone for a while.

We walked for about ten minutes before I realized we've seen this side of the block before, and I caught on that Madison wasn't walking home, she was just wandering.

"Madison?" I questioned the brunette. She pursed her lips as she stopped and turned around to look at us.

"Sit with me, children." She planted herself on the cardboard covered sidewalk, not caring about getting her jumpsuit dirty, and patted either side of her. I swapped a look with Jordan and went ahead and sat next to Madison.

"Your guy's sadness is bumming me out. Stop." She announced bluntly, not really caring about our reactions.

"It's just," I stopped. I had a feeling that this conversation would get oddly deep. "How can we sit around until we die? As we watch our friends get taken from us unwillingly? As the world crumbles at our feet knowing there are people who have the potential to help us."

"That's the thing, AJ. What the hell are we supposed to do? We're seventeen years old! Well sixteen, counting you."

"I turned seventeen a week ago!" I exclaimed, offended.

"Oh wow, blame me for not caring." She put her hands up in surrender. I glared at her.

"What if we went after her?"

Madison and I break away from our conversation to look up at Jordan. The silence is eerie.

"How do you expect us to do that exactly?" Madison asked.

"...I didn't think that far." Jordan muttered. I stayed silent. Thinking about the possibility of actually being able to pull that off. It was almost funny.

"What's so funny?" Madison questioned. I looked over at the two pairs of eyes looking at me. A surprised laugh startled its way out of me.

"I mean think about it! What if we decided to go after her? We'd probably die from clean air! Plus, I don't think there's a possible way to get to Emaria from here."

"I bet we could figure it out. We're smart, kind of." Jordan added.

"Who would even have information like that though?" I thought out loud.

"I mean, hypothetically, the Dean." Madison stated. "He's the most powerful Emarian in our region. But that would mean our best hope would be sneaking into the school since he doesn't live on Earth for the most part, but that's impossible because you need a keycard to get through the doors on the outside of the school past school hours."

"Oh yeah. The keycards." Jordan seemingly deflated.

"Well...hypothetically, would there be a roof entry?" With that Jordan snapped her head up.

"Oh shiz! There is. I mean, hypothetically, if we were to do this, there's an entrance on the roof, a loose panel, that drops down into a storage closet on the top floor. Clowie and I accidentally broke it last year."

"Then hypothetically, we would sneak into the Dean's office, and find any information needed and then get the heck out of there." I finished. The three of us pondered for a second. Was there a reason that no one has done this? Was it because they were too scared, or is it because it's less possible than we think? How realistic does this actually sound? Why would we even put ourselves at risk like this?

"Clowie deserves a choice," Jordan started, "They have no right to take us. Send us away like we're nothing." I nodded my head in agreement. I'm tired of feeling helpless.

"There's really nothing left for us down here. We have nothing else to lose, they've taken everything. The one thing we can try to take back is Clowie." I stared up at what used to be a sky. One that I never saw. The once white clouds, forever in the dark, because of them. Madison's head whipped from me to Jordan a few times, before she sighed and stood up.

"Y'all are hellbent on doing this, huh?" We nodded. "Welp, that's enough for me." She shrugged. "I can't promise we'll actually blast our asses to Emaria, but we can at least find some information. And if we're actually going to pull this off, we'll need to make an actual plan and not just a bunch of hypotheticals." We all chuckled as we got up off the dirty sidewalk. There was an undiscovered world above of us and we were determined to make the sky fall.