by Mina Thorne
I crouched down and slid the stick across the floor. I missed the phone and the heat from the fire made it hard to focus, sweat poured into my eyes and the air all around me shimmered with waves of smoke.
I slid the stick over again and hooked it, drawing my phone back across the polished concrete floor until I could pick it up.
I tossed the stick down, stood up and flipped my phone over.
I was still hot in my hand and the screen was cracked. I pressed the button and nothing happened, so I pressed the power button and the screen lit up but it was pixelated and fragmented.
My phone was dead.
“Fuck,” I said and tucked it away in my pocket. “We need to get out but I don’t know how.”
“We’re going to die,” Sienna screamed and cried out as she slowly sunk to her knees. “We’re going to burn to death all because of that jealous psycho!”
“Come on,” I said and ran back to the door where I stood in the middle of flames and pounded on it, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Help! We’re in here!”
I couldn’t hear anything from the other side.
“Listen, one of us has to get out,” I said and helped Sienna off the floor. I put my hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes while willing her to ignore the fire burning all around us. “You can do this, Sienna. I believe in you. I’m going to boost you into the ceiling so you can escape and get help.”
“I can’t leave you here,” she wailed and looked around.
“You can and you will,” I told her. What I didn’t mention was that she wouldn’t be mentally capable of sticking it out in here alone, I was sure of it. I could probably run faster and be more effective on the outside than Sienna, but I couldn’t leave her in here. If it came down to her having to help us get her out, she would probably crumble and possibly die.
I would never be the same again if I left her in here alone and she didn't make it.
She sniffled, thought about it, and finally said, “Okay. Let’s do this fast though.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and quickly outlined my plan. She agreed and seemed appreciative that I was taking control.
We moved to the spot closest to the door and farthest from the fire. I bent down, and she put her foot in my cupped hands. “On three,” I said and counted, “One, two, three!”
I pushed her upwards hard at the same time she jumped. Thank god for cheer leading, because we got it on the first try. She pushed through the drop ceiling panel and managed to hook her elbows onto the edge.
I moved my hands to her knees and gave her somewhere to boost herself from, and suddenly she wiggled up and through the hole. A moment later her face appeared, looking down at me.
“I’m not leaving you, Steph. I’m coming back for you when I get help.”
“Just go!” I yelled and motioned for her to hurry.
She turned and was gone.
All around me the room grew hotter and smokier and still the sprinklers and fire alarm didn’t kick in.
I screamed and banged on the door again, then started yelling just in case somebody needed to know where I was.
I didn’t last long. I began to feel light-headed and needed to sit, so I moved away from the largest fires at the door to the back of the room where it was cooler.
I pulled out my phone and began to play with it, hoping and praying I could get it working. After what felt like hours, I heard the fire alarm ring outside and I jumped up to celebrate. “That’s my girl!” I yelled and laughed.
That small burst of energy and exclamation immediately tore me back down though, my lungs burned raw as I breathed in and my limbs turned to lead as I sat back down.
The alarm was ringing everywhere but inside the locker room, and there were still no sprinklers or lights so Becca must have known how to disable something in order to trap me in here.
She had set the place on fire and barred the door. She had intended to kill me, she literally wanted me dead.
The thought of that finally hit me, of my death, me actually dying.
I pushed the home button on my phone a few more times and finally it powered up again. Even though this time it was pixelated, I could almost understand where I was at. I was in my text app and could just make out the name of the group chat with my guys.
Studs R Us.
I laughed to myself as I remembered picking out the silliest name I could think of and how the guys had each laughed so loudly when they’d seen the name of the group chat.
“Help me girls locker fire.”
I couldn’t seem to text much, I didn’t know if the keyboard wasn’t working on the touch screen or if my fingers were growing numb from lack of oxygen.
Something exploded at the front of the locker room and something else slammed into a row of lockers. Flames exploded up, and I heard sizzling as a pile of discarded pom poms caught fire. They licked the wooden bench near the door and up the wooden support beam to the ceiling.
The fire was so hot I was starting to feel sleepy.
My phone buzzed and I looked down at it, but my eyes wouldn’t focus.
It was mostly just exclamation points anyways, as far as I could tell.
From somewhere in the distance I heard the sound of a siren and I hoped it was for me.
I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t fill my lungs. The air was too hot and thick, and the fire too greedy, depriving me of precious oxygen.
I felt myself slipping to the floor and stayed there with my face pressed against the polished concrete.
At least it was cooler here, and I was beneath the smoke layer cloaking the locker room.
Why hadn’t the sprinklers kicked in?
Why didn’t anyone come for me?
“Where are you….?”
My voice was barely above a croaked whisper and I closed my eyes to protect them from the dry heat that felt like it was desiccating them inside my eye sockets.
It was strange how calm I felt at last, how tired I was and how I welcomed the darkness.
Again I thought, “Where are they?” as I drifted away from consciousness.
“She’s here!” Whitt’s frantic voice exploded in my ear. “I’ve got her. Fuck, Steph, I’ve got you…I’ll never leave you, sweetness, not this time…”
I felt his strong hands lift me up and I tried to stand but my body was boneless, I was formless, and I wanted to fall back down.
All around us the fire roared and I couldn’t believe how big it had gotten. It was consuming the entire room.
“Steph!” Barrett’s voice joined Whitt’s. “Over here, Rome!”
I felt all three of them reaching for me, but only Whitt had a firm hold on my body.
“This pile’s too big, you have to take her,” Whitt said and lifted me up, pushing me forward over a debris pile that was still on fire. I didn’t recognize what it was until I looked down and realized it was ceiling tiles piled on the locker room bench.
Barrett took me, and with Rome’s help they cradled me and backed slowly through the flames.
As the light flickered and danced all around us, it occurred to me that I hadn’t died. I wasn’t in heaven, I wasn’t in hell.
I was still alive and my three boys had saved me. They were gigantic, otherworldly in their football gear as they carried me like a delicate bird through the twisted, flaming rubble of the collapsing locker room.
“Whitt,” I croaked when I realized he was slowing down. He was having trouble seeing his way through the ceiling tiles and part of his shoulder was smoldering and catching fire. It was just his equipment but it distressed me to no end.
“Whitt,” I said again and reached for him.
We were almost at the door when firemen showed up at last. I twisted in Barrett and Rome’s arms to tell Whitt we were all going to be safe when there was another explosion.
This time something blew up overhead, and as my eyes franticly searched the room through the flames for Whitt, I caught his gaze.
His face was a
mask of fear.
The ceiling exploded, falling down in flames all around him.
“Whitt!” I screamed at last and tried to run back into the fire for him, but Barrett and Rome kept me safe as they handed me to the paramedics.
Inside the locker room my last glimpse was a wall of flames.
And no sign of Whitt.
Read the stunning conclusion, Betrayal Academy, Boys of Westview Academy, book four.
Part IV
Betrayal Academy
Chapter 67
Everything hurt.
That’s what I woke to; everything hurt. My head, my body, my skin, and my heart.
I struggled to wake completely up so I could understand what had happened.
I had been burned. I remembered that.
They had to drug me to keep me from harming myself; I remembered that.
The rest? I had no clue.
It was a fog of memory, a haze of broken images, a maze of emotions that I couldn’t untangle no matter how hard I tried.
And part of me was afraid to untangle them because at the center of the maze was a great beast, and I wasn’t sure if I could survive knowing it.
“I think she’s awake.”
I heard my mom’s voice. She wasn’t here though, how was she in Harrisburg?
My eyelids fluttered, and I opened them but shut them immediately when my sight flooded with bright overhead neon lights.
“Mom,” I tried to say, but my throat was so dry. And it hurt.
Everything hurt.
“Mom…”
“Oh my god, she is awake! Stephanie, can you understand me?”
“Hi,” I croaked and opened my eyes again. My entire view filled with Mom’s face, concern twisting her features into a bizarre parody of my mother.
I needed her to back off; I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
“Water,” I rasped, and she stepped back, frantically searched the room, and I took a moment to get my bearings.
I was in a hospital bed. I was bandaged, I could feel them on my arms and legs and some on my face. My throat burned, and my eyes felt like they were two glowing coals jammed into my flesh in place of my regular eyeballs.
I drew my fingers up my torso and felt bandages almost everywhere. I touched my face and felt the skin puckered underneath another bandage on my left side, there was nothing on the right side.
“Am I burned?” I asked as a few memories came back to me.
“You were burned, yes,” Mom said and brought me a glass of cold water with a bendy straw. I tried to sit up and drink, but she held the straw at my mouth and put her hand on my chest. “Stay down. The doctors told me you’d need time to rest before trying to move.”
“What happened?” I asked and closed my eyes again after I took a couple of sips. The water was cool and soothing but burned on the way down.
Everything burned.
Everything had burned, memories flashed into my head like shards of a mirror, each reflecting a moment in time.
“You were hurt in a fire,” she said and placed a cold compress on my forehead. “You’re going to be okay, but until then you need to rest.”
“At the school,” I said. “It was at the school.”
It felt as if I was floating on a raft in the ocean. I was comforted by the gentled movements of my thoughts, but I was adrift on wave after wave of chaotic emotion.
Fear and terror. Love and relief.
And Whitt.
Suddenly my gentle thoughts were dragged under, and I gasped as I struggled to sit up.
“Whitt,” I cried out. “Where’s Whitt?”
“Shhhhh,” Mom said and tried to keep me down again by pressing her hand on my chest. “I don’t know who that is. Just calm down, Stephanie, and I’ll try to find out.”
“Is he alive?” I asked, and my throat clenched tight with unshed tears.
What would I do if I lost him? How would I ever forgive myself?
That last image sprung into my mind, of him saving me and the ceiling falling around him.
“I don’t think anyone died, but there was one serious injury,” Mom said. “I will find out what I can if you promise me you’ll lie down again.”
I couldn’t though, it was as if something possessed my body and I had an overwhelming need to find Whitt, Rome, and Barrett so I could know everything was okay.
I had to make sure the world was still whole, that they were in it.
Mom tried to keep me down, but I fought her to sit up and get out of bed.
She reached for the alarm on the side of the bed, pushed it, and within moments there were several nurses and a doctor surrounding me.
“You have to stay calm for the burns to heal,” the doctor told me. Her name was Dr. Reierson according to her name tag, and she was younger than I would have expected.
Prettier too.
But right then, I hated her. I hated her for keeping me from them and for pushing me down as she explained everything to me.
“Your burns are mostly second degree, which is good. It means your dermis and epidermis are affected. But if you keep struggling, the burns on your legs will get worse. They are just a few layers away from being third degree, so let’s keep them that way,” Dr. Reierson said as a nurse injected something into my IV.
“I need to know where they are…”
I started to protest and fight back, but whatever it was hit me hard, and I was put back on that raft, floating on an ocean of images and memories.
I closed my eyes, they were too heavy to keep open, and I let myself drift.
But the entire time I thought about Whitt. And Rome and Barrett.
I wanted them with me; I wanted the world to be whole again.
* * *
“She’s waking up,” I heard Dad say and felt somebody squeeze my hand. “Stephanie, can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I replied and opened my eyes again. “What time is it?”
“It’s night time, ten o’clock. How do you feel? You’ve been sleeping,” he said.
Mom rushed over and stared down at me, scanning and examining my face. “You look good, you’re so lucky you weren’t burned worse, considering the extent of the fire,” she said.
“Where’s Whitt?” I asked Dad.
He flinched as if he didn’t want to reply, but I stared at him until he had no choice.
“He’s in the burn ward,” he told me. “He sustained third-degree burns on his torso and upper thigh. He has a long road to recovery ahead of him.”
“Oh god, all because of me,” I moaned and closed my eyes. Bright tears leaked out from my lids, and I was overcome with guilt. “He’s burned because he saved me.”
“That’s not it at all,” Dad said. “If anybody is at fault, it’s that crazy girl, Becca.”
“Did they catch her?” I asked.
“No, but your friend Sienna told the police everything. They’re looking for her,” he said.
“I can’t believe you sent my little girl to a school filled with psychopaths,” Mom said under her breath like I wouldn’t hear her speaking a foot away from me.
“Nobody knew she had problems,” Dad said. “She dated Barrett for a while. Or at least she wanted to, she hung around Elaine at our place and always seemed nice enough.”
“Nice enough that she almost killed our daughter?” Mom spat. “Nice enough that she spent time planning this and setting it up?”
“Nobody could have known,” Dad said, and he sounded tired. I didn’t blame him for Becca, but I knew Mom was looking for anywhere to direct her fear and anxiety.
“What about Rome and Barrett?” I asked. Nobody had mentioned them, and I was dying to know how they were.
“Relatively unscathed,” Dad said. “Barrett and his friend Rome carried you to safety. The doctor said if you were in there for even ten minutes longer, you would have succumbed to the smoke. You’re going to have trouble breathing for a while because of it.”
“Your lungs need to repair them
selves,” Mom explained. “And thank god those boys showed up when they did. I can’t even let myself think about it if I lost you—”
Her voice cut off as she choked up, and tears began to fall.
“Why don’t you go get cleaned up and let Reg know she’s awake?” Dad told mom. “We can let the boys come see her. They’ve both been sleeping in the hall for the past two nights; we should let them spend some time with her.”
“Thank you,” I said and closed my eyes.
On the way out I heard Mom ask Dad, “Which one of them is her boyfriend, anyhow? I know it’s not Barrett, he’s her stepbrother…but what about the other two boys?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said as the door closed.
I smiled to myself and mentally shook my head.
Even I didn’t know the answer to that question most days, but after the fire, I was determined it would be all three of them.
We were all in this together, and in spite of some crazy ups and downs, I couldn’t choose between them.
And they didn’t seem to worry about forcing me.
I waited with my eyes closed until two of my boys came in, and the world felt normal again.
Almost normal.
Chapter 68
“I thought we fucking lost you, Steph,” Barrett said when he saw me. His voice sounded raw as if he’d been saving up his unspent emotions until we were together again.
“Fuck, if we lost you—”
Rome couldn’t even finish the thought without his voice cracking. I think we were all on the same page over this; the fire had brought into sharp focus how much we meant to each other and how we couldn’t live without each other.
“I know,” I said in a small voice. Just the talk with Mom and Dad had drained me, but I was determined to stay awake for my guys. I patted the bed on either side of me, and soon enough, I had one on my left and one on my right.
We all fit on the bed, and with some adjustments for my IV lines, I curled up and felt their strong arms envelop me.
