Vivid (BoyxBoy) {Pipe Dream: Book I}

Chapter Thirty-One: Save the Last Dance

Chapter Thirty-One: Save the Last Dance

"I...can't dance." I want to bolt in the other direction right now. There's an opening right there-

She smiles as she takes my hands, paralysing me, "That's ok, I'm not expecting the samba, just put your arms around my waist."

I've never danced with anyone before in my life. Fuck. I think I'm redder than her dress as I do as I'm told, she's really soft...and warm. She's the same height as me. Her arms go around my neck, "Just follow my lead." And we just sway to an unheard rhythm.

As the seconds tick by in silence I realise that she was drawing me in closer so that she could rest her head on my shoulder and her hold become more of a hug. "You know, I was going to confess my feelings to my crush at the prom," she mumbles into my shoulder. "I was going to ask him to be my date."

"I read in books that it's supposed to be the guy who asks..." I would find the prospect terrifying.

I could feel her grin, "Probably, but I didn't want to risk waiting. I wanted to jump in first and snatch him before anyone else...I'd probably be turned down though."

"I don't see why."

"Thank you. What about you?"

"Me?" I decided to tell her the truth, "I'm an Outsider. I haven't been near any proper civilisation until a week ago. So...no school...no dating...no dancing..."

"Ah, well...you're doing fine."

"Am I?"

She nods, "Yep, just fine."

I asked the question that made my soul go cold. "Can I ask you how you came to be like this, Zoe?"

"I was walking home from work, late at night then I felt like I was shot in the back...and I woke up in that place." Her memories saturated my mind. It was a dark night and she was walking alone back to her house. She checked her phone for a message only for something to puncture her chest through her back, blood pooling from her chest. She didn't feel pain, just collapsed forward onto the walkway and the world darkened into black. She woke up in the catchment area, to watch the door at the top of the stairs shut with a heavy thud, leaving her alone and scared in the darkened tunnels. Her ankles were broken. She could only crawl to the stairs by her hands. The pain was indescribable as she tried to reach the door and bang on it over and over until her hands bruised and bloody. She began coughing up black goo and her arms darkened. Things grew from her back, wracking her in pain-

"You don't have to keep seeing, I can feel it hurting you," she whispers, drawing me out of the memories.

I shudder and swallow the bile rising, "...Did you see who did it?" I realise that we've stopped moving and that she was holding onto me tightly.

"I can only make out dark outlines of people wearing army gear. Even if I did, my memories are starting to go fuzzy..."

The desert and dying trees...the wisps decaying into smoke were fragments that made up 'Zoe' were all disappearing. She wasn't going to graduate from school. She wasn't going to go onto collage. Get a job...get married...have a family...grow old...she was in a permanent standstill. Permanently eighteen, waiting to go to prom.

"What about your family?" I had to ask. Was someone missing her? Was someone looking?

"...I was in an institution. My parent were killed in the Disaster."

An orphan to top things off. She had no family. She was probably one of many orphaned children. One that no one would immediately notice disappearing.