At Ends

Chapter One: The Beginning of the End

     It was fourth period.

     I yawned and stretched, getting onto the risers, and standing next to my best friend, Marra. I smiled up at her, excited to finally be in choir with her. Mr. Baine had finally decided to put me in varsity choir. It only took half a school year.
 
     I smirked and looked at Marra. "So, how was your holiday?" She rolled her eyes.

     "As if you didn't know," she replied.
We lived together, so we basically knew each others lives in and out of school.

     Just then, the choir director, Mr. Baine, walked in, dress shoes clacking on the tile.

     "Okay, varsity. Welcome back from break, I hope you all were safe and had a wonderful time with family and friends. Adelynne," he looked at me, "if you find this particular period too rigorous let me know, and we can move you, okay?" I nodded.
     "Awesome! Now, I spent the last week and a half of break looking for music for you guys. It is going to be significantly harder that what you're used to, but you deserve it," he smiled at his top choir class. "Furthermore, you will be singing more songs than you're used to. Five. No folders." The class collectively groaned, except for maybe four or five, Marra and me included. 
    He had the assistant choir director hand us music that I wrote half-assed solfege into. I doodled the rest of the time we were given for solfege.
    Mr. Baine sat at the piano in front of the risers and said, "okay, warm up! I seriously doubt any of you did any choral work over break." He led us through a series of warm ups, and I enjoyed them very much. I loved singing. Marra and I had been in choir together in middle school, so it was a huge  deal to get to be in choir with her again, even if it was just for half of senior year.
   After the warm ups had been finished, we pulled out the music piece we had been given. I became increasingly uneasy throughout the day, and just then, the feeling intensified dramatically. It almost made me nauseous. Mr. Baine was telling us about the piece we had and I took this chance to turn to Marra.
     "Dude, I don't feel right." She gave me a look.
     "Have you eaten today?" I rolled my eyes.
     "Of course. I just feel like today is off. Like there's something wrong, or something bad is about to happen." Marra looked at me, like she was worried about my mental state. Granted, I didn't have the best mental state, I probably had the worst mental state in this entire class. But I knew something was wrong. The feeling only got worse.
      Mr. Baine sat at the piano, and I turned to watch him, ready for him to conduct. He had us sing the atonic triad, and we did. We began the piece, singing solfege. We got through three pages and he stopped us to fix vowels from his seat. Just as he was about to cue us in, there came a loud, low rumbling from all around, and the risers clanked. I immediately looked back at Marra, who looked confused. Mr. Baine got up and went out into the hall, after a moments pause. The trembling had stopped. He looked around and talked to someone outside the door, and walked back in.
       "It was probably just an earthquake," he sat back down and scooted his bench up as close to the piano as possible, and raised his hand to conduct again. I turned around to make sure the hobbits behind me could see. Mr. Baine had decided to try making tall people stand on bottom risers, and short people stand on the top risers. Terrible idea, if you ask me, but oh well.
   I faced him again, just as another, deafening thunder like sound came out of nowhere. The ground and the other end of the risers suddenly split and opened, the risers falling into the chasms. Marra grabbed onto me to steady herself.
  "What the fuck is going on?" I said, looking at her. She looked bewildered.
   "How the fuck would I know Adelynne??" Just then we heard Mr. Baine scream out over the cries of falling students. Marra and I automatically looked over to see Mr. Baine being pulled into a tear in the earth, stuck between the falling piano and bench. Without thinking we jumped and pulled him back, saving him from falling.
    "Come on!" Marra yelled. We ran out and began running to the front of the school. While running, I happened to see my personal favorite teacher- Mr. Caplyn- standing there and looking extremely confused and scared.
    "Mr. Caplyn!" I yelled over everything going On around us.

     His head turned in my direction, and we made eye contact. "Come on! Hurry!". I waved him over and he ran to us. We continued running, and made it out of the building just in time to see it split into two halves.
   We paused to look at this once nice building, panting and confused.
   We were so dazed, we didn't realize we could see nobody else in sight.
    What the hell just happened?