Cranberry Clairvoyant (Azealia Banks Story)

Dream and Disbelieve

A/N: Dedicated this chapter to @larrysangel for the great cover at the side, thanks love! Ask her for covers if you need 'em.

We all trekked back to the ship on somnolent feet. The wind blew, twirling its fingers through my hair and whispering sweet nothings into my ear. I didn’t want what the breeze could offer, unless it could fix everything that just happened.

Dr. Humming was the first one to board the ship—ironically—shouldn’t he be staying back a few minutes to help out, to see if everyone was okay? With the small amount of people here, I was sure that he might be the only doctor available.

That wasn’t the only strange thing about the few minutes after the accident. Among the flock of the fair’s employees in red vests, no one seemed to be going toward the direction of where Darrius had flown. I couldn’t walk onto the ship like everyone else without telling someone about that part. It was the least I could do; I didn’t save their lives, but I could help out this way.

I left my group and ran in the opposite direction, where the burning car was (the car was no longer burning actually, so I figured they had put out the flame).

“Hey!” I called to one of the employees. He turned his head and I motioned for him to come to me, only for my father’s large, broad-shouldered figure to block my vision.

“Azealia, what are you doing?” He asked, his voice cold and flat. I pushed him, trying to get past him. There was no use of explaining; he would rush me onto the ship.

“Dad, move!”

My father grasped my wrist and kept his eyes locked with mine, making me shrivel as if I was a raisin in the sun. I wriggled my wrist but he wouldn’t budge; my whole hand was beginning to go numb. I finally stopped fighting, and he released me.

“Go back onto the ship. Sometimes you try to help out too much. Don’t worry, the employees will take care of whoever was injured. It’s not our business.” Dad declared. I glared at him as if he was crazy—because he was.

“What do you mean it’s not our business? It’s more than just our business—these are lives that you accounted for!” I squealed while he dragged me. He had returned his big, sausage-fingered hands to my little wrist, but this time he was at least holding on more gently.

My wails were useless, because in no time I was on aboard the ship and being forced to go further and further on by the wave of people behind me. Never had I felt so helpless before. Why were they all acting as if two boys who had been sailing with us all along hadn’t just died? It wasn’t like they were two boys that no one knew—everyone knew them; whenever we made a stop, they always wanted to get off of the ship and swim in the waters. When they wanted to swim, Dad would always get three life guards to be with them in the water, just in case. Dad always made a big deal of making sure their lives were in safety, for if anything happened to them, he would most likely get sued by the boys’ parents.

So why wasn’t he making a big deal now that they were really dead?

As soon as I reached my bedroom, I closed the door behind me and groaned. A thick lump rested in the middle of my throat, signaling tears to fall any second. I had never experienced the death of someone close, or someone I barely knew, ever before. This was a first, and it was worse than ever. They didn’t have to die.

But that was fate, wasn’t it? I could have stopped it, sure, but fate said no. They were supposed to die today for whatever reason, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. If there truly was a way to bend fate, I hadn’t yet discovered it.

I curled my toes in the plush purple carpet and kept my eyes wide open. If I closed them, I would cry, and I didn’t want to do that. For some reason, I felt like Ezekiel and Darrius wouldn’t want me to cry. They would want me to stop blaming myself, and move on with life. But how could I know what they would want me to do?