Chasing Cars

Chapter Twenty One

My eyes were half closed, and I had no idea what was going on. A gray-black blur clouded over my eyes and I felt achy all over. That was understating how I felt. It was like I was being burned alive, but from the inside rather than out. It hurt to breathe, to blink, and to move. When my mind was finally clear, I realized that the blur wasn't just any blur. It was thick smoke. It filled my eyes, nose, and mouth. My eyes watered and stung and I gagged on the taste.

My nose was burning and I couldn't breathe without the internal pain and the smoke being inhaled. "Help," I attempted to shout, but it came out as more of a raspy whisper. I couldn't tell if anyone was around me or not. I began to mumble a monologue of words that even I couldn't understand, but said anyway. In my limited field of vision, I saw the silhouette of someone so ... large that it could only be the principal.

Her blob-like body jiggled as she fiddled with something on the door, after a period of squinting and turning my head, I realized it was locks. In her hand was a massive key ring with more keys than I'd ever seen on it. She unlocked one after the other, but there were so many it didn't even look like she was making progress. The fire burning around me was her revenge on me. If I hadn't grabbed her bat or even called her name when I did so, this could have been a completely different scenario.

I glanced around the room in confusion, and then saw the flames creeping toward me. It was then where it all flashed back. The lighter. The beating. The alone time with Charleston. It was all restored. The heat radiated off the fire in painful waves. I could see my skin burning in some places, and it terrified me to see that my arm looked like it was boiling. I had to get to the other side of the room before I melted.

I tried crawling away from the fire again, and this time Charleston paid no attention to me and focused on the three remaining locks on the door. Three. Good. That meant we could get out soon. We could be saved! Saved by Charleston. The thought was revolting, but it was better than dying in the wretched office, I was sure Karev would understand.

In her attempts to get out fast, Charleston messed up the combination numbers on one lock. She glanced at me once, but left me where I was and continued trying to open the door. The carpet in the room was burning so fast I could tell the entire space would be engulfed in flames in a matter of seconds. Maybe a minute or two if we were lucky. Mustering all my strength, I pushed myself into a standing position. Every muscle, organ, and bone in my body screamed at me to fall over again, but I couldn't.

More blood than before stained my shirt and pants, I'll bet my face was covered too. Where I'd been laying moments before was a dark crimson puddle, now being burned. I was shaky and unstable on my feet, but obviously I wasn't going to resign myself to being burned alive, so keeping one arm wrapped around my stomach, I stumbled across the room and collapsed in a heap on the floor as far from the fire as I could get.

Light headed and tired, I had a feeling the last things I'd see would be Charleston's ugly walls and floor. With the amount of blood all over me and the floor, I was surprised I was still awake. With a growling noise, Charleston flung a padlock at me before moving on to the next combination. The lock hit me in the knee, which was a thousand times more painful than it sounds. I had no strength to call out in pain or grab my leg, so I let the fiery pain spread up my leg and throughout my body in silence.

As I lay on the floor, I prayed to God that my psychotic principal could get the locks open before it was too late, and I could possibly escape. I wouldn't be able to walk, I didn't think, but I would drag myself if deemed necessary. Death by fire. What an unfortunate way to die. Right after I finished my prayer, Charleston swung the heavy door open and made a break for it as fast as her body could handle. She left me, the food, and the office all together then. But she was a foul person, and she lit the main office before disappearing into another office room, I think it was Vice Principal Murray's.

Gripping my stomach again, I pulled myself to my feet using the door's handle, and steadied myself for a split second before shuffling out the door. My injured knee screamed in pain, but I had to ignore it. There was no point in trying to keep it mild, because doing so would definitely be the death of me. My feet crossed the threshold just as the office floor was entirely engulfed in flames. In the main office, I was met by an equally horrifying scene. There, at the entrance, was Charleston. She had a match in her hand, and she was grinning psychotically at me.

"Rest in peace, Andrew," she laughed before throwing the match at her feet and stepping back as the dry carpet burst with flames. My only means of escape were blocked with flames, and if I was going down like this, I wasn't going down alone. As Charleston stood there laughing, I shuffled towards the new fire and reached out for one of the principal's arms. When I got a hold of one, I pulled back with all my strength and pulled her through the flames to join me in the office.

As soon as I got her on the same side, the small fire in front of us sprang to the ceiling. There was no way we could get through now. Screaming, Charleston ran to the back of the office to find some windows while I headed slowly past the vice principal's office, where a third fire had been started.

Panic surged through me in tidal waves. I had no idea where else to go. There were no more unblocked exits. As the fires drew nearer from all sides, I prayed for some sort - any sort - of help. While I was frantically looking around, I heard a loud crack from above my head. My swollen face made it hard to look up, but I didn't even need to. "Move!" a boy shouted. In the spur of the moment, I hadn't even stopped to think about where the random boy had come from. Instead, I did the dumb move of trying to look around for him rather than obey his command to move.

Another crack, louder this time. Burning wood splinters showered down on me, singing my hair and clothes and burning my exposed skin. "Ow!" I jumped, looking up at the ceiling as well as I could. A thunderous sound came from the ceiling, and next thing I knew the ceiling was falling towards me, and I didn't even think to move out of its way. Everything was happening in slow motion, and I was unaware that it was about to kill me.

"I said move!" the mysterious boy shouted once more. I felt my body collide with some unseen force, and then I was falling. But I wasn't under the chunk of ceiling anymore. I was pinned by the body of another guy, which would have been awkward in any other situation. The breath taken from me by the sudden impact, it took me a minute to get myself together. My already sore limbs felt one thousand times more wounded than they had moments before.

Suddenly, the cracking started up again and the other boy and I began to move out of the way, but we were too late. A second ceiling piece came crashing down, and this time there was no one to help us both out of the way. At the exact same moment, the blackened office windows shattered, and a spray of water came pounding on us. The glass shards sunk into my skin and clothes. But it was when the ceiling piece hit us when my neck snapped back, slamming my head onto the floor. Sparks flew, and the weight of the ceiling piece on me crushed my bones. I could hear the cracking of them. The sparks bounced around in the few empty spaces nearby, rolling out of sight. I wondered where Charleston was.

A serene sense of calm fell over me like a blanket, and for the third time that day, I felt all my senses fade away. I felt nothing but calm as I allowed the darkness to take me again, but this time I wasn't quite sure if I'd come out of it or not. "Thank you," I mumbled to the mysterious guy who'd saved me, but the last thing I saw before blacking out was the flame-destroyed face of him, a horror that was sure to remain with me for the rest of my life.