Ephemeral: An Apocalyptic Novel

Chapter 3

Elijah

Ting!

That wasn't my alarm. I groggily woke up, slapping around my headboard for my phone. The bright light of the phone screen agitated my eyes, making me blink way too much. A constant beeping kept coming from my phone and I focused my eyes on the white, bouncing notification.

It was a text from the school.

Langston High Main Line: School is still on! If any of your classes are on the east side, please report to the football field and go to where your teacher's sign is. School will be opening up at 6 AM but will officially begin at 7:15 as always. Go Cougars!

I groaned. "Seriously?"

It was 5:40 now. I guess it would be better to wake up. After getting ready, I went downstairs and started making a sandwich. Mindy had begun her daily cleansing routine that apparently took an hour when I started taking a bite out of my sandwich. Footsteps neared behind me and I looked. Derek was fumbling with a bowl of cereal.

"Jesus, Derek, I didn't even hear you come downstairs."

"I guess school makes everyone really off."

"Why would school still be on after half of it is pretty much torn off? The back's all in pieces. How are we even going to enter the school?"

Derek plopped his face down on the table and lazily ate the cereal, dribbling milk all over like a baby. I smacked his head.

"HEY!"

He jumped up, banging his knee against the table.

Derek exhaled shakily, grabbing at his knee. "FUUUCK!"

Footsteps tumbled down the stairs. Junho slid into the kitchen, looking alarmed and deranged whilst wielding a toothbrush.

"What happened?!"

I groaned. "Ugh. Derek stupidly hurt himself. Just go back to getting ready. I'm leaving in 10 minutes."

"You made me fucking hurt myself!" Derek hissed.

Junho coughed. "What? Why're we going so early?"

"I want to see how the school plans to make things work. We'll probably end up skipping anyway, so might as well have an early start."

Derek sighed. "Elijah, I don't think curiosity is enough to sacrifice beautiful sleep."

I stood up, grabbing my phone.

"Go tell Mindie to hurry up."

Junho jogged up the stairs as I turned on my phone. I walked into the lounge near the door and walked around. Scrolling through my contacts, I tapped on Aunt Adina's number. My heart started racing as the waiting began.

A few seconds later, she picked up. "Hi Elijah."

She didn't sound worried and wasn't screaming about my dad, so that meant things were pretty good. I cleared my shaky throat.

"Hey Adina. Is my dad there?"

There was silence.

"Hello?" I said.

"No, he left just a while ago."

"Well can you tell him that I need to talk to him when he gets back?"

"I will but Elijah...well, he's kinda scaring me. He talked about the destruction so casually and said that he'd be staying with me for a while. He said he left to protect you."

I almost hacked at the bitter taste forming in my mouth. "Protect me? All he's done is cover his own ass. Whatever shit he saw the government do, he knows pretty fucking well that leaving me smack dab in the middle of the mess isn't going to protect me."