Deadly Secrets

Chapter 19: So We Ride

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round. Round and round...


-:-

Zara leaned slouchily against the bus seat, her cheek pressed up against the window. She strained to remember what happened the day before—she had blacked after her morning shower and everything that happened after that was a blank page. Her memory was filled with holes, places filled with nothing but darkness. Everything surrounding those holes was mundane; it mostly consisted of her going to school and doing homework.

Sometimes, she felt like she had been absent for days, for weeks even, only to wake up with new scars, new questions. Zara didn't try asking her friends for information—they never spoke of anything unusual when she was present, and she was too afraid to come across as crazy. It was like she was living two separate lives: this one, where everything was ordinary and in a shade of grey, and another one, darker and unbeknownst to her. She felt herself fading away—the stretches of time between her wakings was slowly expanding, while the time she spent conscious was shortening.

A shrill cry jerked her out of her thoughts, and Zara remembered that she was amidst the chaos.

She absolutely detested riding the bus to school. There wasn't a day when the vehicle didn't resemble a zoo on wheels and, in fact, it was in times like these that Zara questioned the validity of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Most of the teenagers surrounding her appeared to have forgotten the transition stage from pre-human, their behaviour, therefore, mimicking a rabid ape's.

Scratch that, an ape had better etiquette than these morons.

Her head thumped with a pain that was just shy of excruciating while every muscle in her body ached. If she had an iPod, then, at least, she could temporarily forget their existence, like Aurora, was with her death metal blasting into her ears.

Alas, a girl can dream.

"Gawdon Bennet! If yew don't qui' makin' noise back there, I'm gon'a stop da bus right now an' yew lot can all walk da next ten miles ter school! OK?" the driver roared, his British accent massacring the words— making his rage appear comical rather than intimidating. A few people, particularly those sitting at the front, fell silent.The noise coming from the last three rows, however, grew impossibly louder.

Zara let out a frustrated breath, closing her eyes as she sunk deeper into her seat.

Please make this torture end.

She felt a soft nudge against her rib, but ignored it, tuning out the pandemonium to focus on her thoughts.

Another nudge, a little more forceful this time. Zara slowly opened her eyes and fractionally turned her head towards the nuisance, poison dripping from her gaze.

Aurora's eyeliner-rimmed eyes stared back while pink lips moved in synchronisation with the gibberish that was spewing out of her mouth. "—Are you even listening to me? Hello, Earth to Zara!" Aurora nagged, grabbing her friend with both hands and shaking her. Zara shoved her away, her hand then flying up to her face to reposition the glasses that were now hanging loosely onto the top of her nose.

"Yes Aurora, yes! What is it? I'm listening!" she spat, adjusting her no-shoulder white top.

It was the single most revealing piece of clothing she owned, and that day she had dared to wear it. Zara usually wore a sweater over shirts anyway, but the heat in the bus was stifling, and after battling against it for twenty minutes she just had to peel off her layers.