When We Were Kids {Currently Revising}

Chapter 13: Invisible To Me

"We have to save her!" I said urgently, desperately trying to hobble on one leg out of the secluded cave. Elliot pulled me down. 

"Look at yourself! Obviously, we're not going to saunter out of here and walk up to them and ask them for her?" Elliot said sarcastically. I sat down in defeat. 

"How foolish," I now noticed Barfing Bella, sitting on a huge boulder, about sixteen feet in diameter, messing with her hair. She had stopped vomiting after our little freak run, and I had barely even noticed her since. This was the first time she'd ever done anything to acknowledge us, which was not including barfing on our shoes and nodding her head in reluctant agreement to our insane plan.  

"What's foolish? For me to want to save my friend?" I asked, ganging up on her. She widened her blue eyes and laid her index finger in the middle of my tiny breasts, pushing me away. 

"It's futile for you to try to save her, because she has been dead this entire time." Barfing Bella noted, as if it had been obvious. Elliot and I shot her blank faces. She crossed her right leg over her left, showing more of her bony tan thigh, and inhaled slowly. "Henri didn't do anything to that poor girl. She was in it with them from the beginning." I laughed as Elliot joined in, simultaneously. She kept her straight face. I shut up quickly. This could NEVER be true. Clementine would never do something like this to me. 

"OK, let's say it IS true, which it isn't. How did you find this rumour out?" I responded.

"Isn't it obvious? She was always telling you how Henri was romantic and how you were such a great couple. Then, when she started to fall for Henri, she was all for you and Jay. Granite, she didn't know what Dmitri had done to you so she wasn't in it from the very beginning, but when she became Henri's puppet of love, she joined their little posse. Oh, the things one will do for the fantasy of romance." she stared up into the ceiling as if imagining it. My first thought had been to immediately grow denial for all of Bella's thoughts but now that I had heard her sensible ideas on why Clementine was one of them, I was slowly starting to believe her. Clementine was always one to fall deep for love, but I had thought that love was for Jack. Was she faking that, according to Henri's orders? I shuttered at this thought. 

"Don't believe her, Lay," Elliot told me softly. "It's not true." I stared into Bella's eyes and there was all truth. I didn't see a speck of a smile or jokester in them. Clementine was one of them.

"SHOOT!" I screamed as I crawled over to a nearby rock wall and banged my head against it, feeling some blood trickling down, and not caring. "This day couldn't get any worse." I mumbled to myself. Suddenly, we all heard a beeping coming from deeper in the cave.

"Laylah...," Elliot ran over to me and picked me up. After a couple more beeps, it started to grow faster, like a pulse during exercise. After a minute, the beeping stopped. Elliot was now holding me, and we were stuck there, speechless and unable to move, as shock overwhelmed us. Finally, I snapped out of it.

"MOVE!" I yelled as smoke and fire followed us as Elliot ran out of the cave. We finally jumped out of the cave and ducked under some trees, slamming our heads on the rough bark, and scraping our skin which was sliced with nearby rocks. The fire consumed the cave, rushing out of it with incredible force. I coughed, irritably as Elliot held my hand.

"Are you alright?" he asked. I nodded.

"You?" I gestured towards his bloodied nose. He nodded, glancing back up. I had no idea where we were now but we had ducked under some trees, and were now on a huge boulder, hidden in a giant ditch. I sighed in relief and examined myself. My head was pounding and I had probably received a minor concussion from slamming it on the tree, and my leg and arms were covered in gashes. My metal leg looked slightly functional (at least the part I still had), and my other gashes may have been a little deep but were nothing a few stitches couldn't fix.

"Wait a second...," Elliot paused, considering our situation. He then glanced back up at the top of the ditch, where the explosion occurred. "Where's Bella?" I gasped in fright. I had thought she'd followed us out, but I wasn't sure. She had just been sitting there when it happened. She had been invisible to me.