Bright Eyes

7.2. Smoke

The world appeared to her in shutters and glimpses—the smoke and the clear, the shadows and the colors, stillness and motion, the song and the noise—each a flicker of a vague image.

There was a pull into the void, and a fall out into reality, and her mind danced from one to the other.

Lyn found herself stumbling out the double doors, down a few steps, onto the grounds of Ravenwood Academy. How she had managed to escape the confines of the auditorium, through the hallways, and out into the open—that she didn't know, and that she had absolutely no care. She must have drifted with the current, as waves of students rushed out the doors, into a sea of people under the overcast sky.

She walked on, her steps dissonant of the concrete walkways. She could hear them talk around her, students and friends gathered together in groups and cliques of their own, eyes glued to the stone-gray and smoke-blue facade. She could hear them sing in whispers, voices in the dark. Everyone smelled of smoke, or at least a trace lingered on their clothes; everyone was damp to the touch.

There was fear, she could sense that, one that arose from the flame and the fumes. Yet she had a creeping fear of her own, and—as far as she knew—it had very little to do with the incident.

Her feet took one step after another, past people, past the anxious looks on their faces, past the snippets of conversations. She was walking in the shadows, and they stalked her with each step, still singing, still whispering. She had to get out of here, she thought to herself, walking past a huge statue of a raven on the verge of taking flight. Something felt very wrong. They still sang to her in the dark. She had to go away, far away.

An ambulance van was parked by the curb. A couple school medics were assisting someone, a girl sitting on the ground, breathing in and out of a paper bag. Her friends were watching nearby, worry clouding their features.

In the shadows, the cold air was smothering her, and the choir wouldn't leave her alone.

Then sirens rang through the air, red and blue lights coming to view. Another ambulance, a larger one, screeched to a halt by the curb, parking behind the other, and the doors behind were pushed open, disgorging out two people in white, a stretcher on wheels, followed by two other medics.

Lyn witnessed them run head on into the sea of students, the woman at the front yelling to make way as they navigated through the crowd.

Yet the raven-haired girl seemed unperturbed physically, unable to express any concern or emotion whatsoever. But she was afraid, she was very afraid. Her face was blank and unreadable as she slipped away from the crowd unnoticed, a step out of the grass, onto the concrete pavement, and she walked on, away from the chaos. Yet no matter how far and fast she ran in the dark, they wouldn't leave her. They were the smoke that filled her lungs; they were the shadows that painted the depths.

Lyn slid a hand into her bag, grabbing a pack of tissues inside. She pulled a sheet out, and wiped the moist off the skin of her right hand, and slid the hand back into the bag. She needed something. Her fingers felt for the items, pulling out a mobile phone and a pair of earbuds. Something to drown the song out. She placed an earbud into her right ear, the dangling piece into her left. Something to mute the voices that echoed in her headspace. Music. Songs. Shuffle.

Beats pounded into her ears, melodies—electric guitars—joining in after the fifth second. She could still hear them. Her finger pressed a button at the side of her phone, once, twice—louder, waves crashing into her brain.

And she walked on, headed—where? She didn't know. She'll find out when the time comes. That's just the way it works: move—first without purpose, without destination—till the motions tire and the idea of an actual destination comes to mind. Right now, all she needed was to go far away, from the chaos, from the voices, from everyone.