Starry Eyed

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sunlight danced between lace leaves across my closed eyelids, splashing red and orange and yellow into the darkness as we drove. Beside me in the driver's seat, Finn was bristling. He sighed every breath, wouldn't stop fidgeting. Even with my eyes shut I could sense that he was aggravated. I didn't want to ask why. I'd already indulged in his private life enough today. 

The winding road rose up into a lumpy mountain underneath the tar, and the pick-up truck did a jump off the 'ramp' before landing with a groan back onto the safety of the street. The familiarity of the jump reassured me of where we were. Sluggishly, I peeled my eyes open to the blazing daylight, peeking through the heavy black curtains of cloud draped across the sky. The pick-up truck groaned as it swung around a bend, squealing towards the open gates of the academy. Finn's hands on the steering wheel threw us down the driveway like we were being chased. And as we slowed into the carpark, the sound began to drip through.

It wasn't so obvious at first. My head was already rolling; I assumed that I was dreaming up the howling noise in the background. But as Finn chugged the truck to a stop, tossing his head around in bewilderment, it dawned on me that the noises were real. We both glanced around for the source. My eyes darted over the black fog that was wrapped around the roof of the teacher's rooms, but by the time I had worked out that it wasn't fog, Finn was out. And as he kicked open his door, the smoke filled our lungs. 

I leapt from the passenger seat onto the gravel. The stones crunched beneath my sneakers like curled autumn leaves. Lost in the maze of grimey cars and beat-up bumpers, I dashed after Finn out into the middle of the carpark before I could lose him. After all the trouble between us, after all this time, it turned out he was the only familiar thing I had to hold on to.

"Fire?" He spat out, stopping in the middle of the carpark. He hadn't even bothered to lock his truck. I didn't blame him; there were more important matters to deal with. I stared up at the sky, and saw that underneath all of the smoggy blackness, it was baby blue. Cloudless. What I had thought were storm clouds were really puffs of fire and ash littering a beautiful summer skyline. What was going on?

We headed out of the ocean of cars, past the court with the death toll graffiti. However, I was not interested in spray paint initials this time around. All of the police cars still perched on the court, spread out so they speckled the pavement in white and blue. But the police officers were not inspecting the graffiti now. 

The alarms seemed to be squeezing my brain tight, squashing my cells apart. Finn tugged at my arm, and I whipped around, on edge.

"Hey." He pointed towards the field with his free hand. There on the grass, wrapped in smog and soot, was our entire school lined up in pretty little rows. And yet the picture of elegance and organisation was spoilt by the smoke curling around the buildings beside them. The sirens screamed like wolves in my ears.

"Shit," I whispered. Suddenly, a figure bounced up from the crowd, and a piercing scream split the sky in two. The ground seemed to shake beneath my feet. Then the figure was hurtling towards Finn and I, at two hundred miles an hour, arms spread wide like an angel's wings. The tangled blonde hair identified the person as soon as the sunlight slipped through. 

"Star?" I yelled, and Finn's hysterical shout echoed my own. Behind me, I caught the sound of something crunching up the gravel again, pulsing amongst the alarms. Another siren crushed the noise around me, even louder than the fire alarms. Two alarms, two sirens, two deafening howls from both sides of me. Finn started yelling, and then Star was there. She threw her arms around my neck with so much force, it nearly knocked me over. Smoke knotted itself through her hair, down inside my stomach, around the cars and the court and the concrete.