Ghost Bird: The Academy Omnibus Part 1: Books One - Four

by C. L. Stone

  I clutched at Derrick’s thigh. I pushed my face against it as I readjusted the cloth over my mouth.

  Only as Derrick was being pulled, when I clutched at him to hang on, he shifted down again further.

  He was pulled up again.

  I clutched to him.

  He shifted down further.

  I was weighing him down.

  I whimpered against the cloth in my face. As hot as my face was, my feet felt like they were scalding. The further we sank, the more it burned. It was too much to bear.

  And if I held on to Derrick, he’d never get out. We were falling in deeper together.

  I swallowed, feeling a couple of bits of sawdust against my itchy throat. I knew what I had to do but didn’t want to. His leg was all I had right now.

  And if I didn’t let go, we’d sink further into this and suffocate together.

  I released him.

  SANG UNLEASHED

  I could only release a little, backing away. I felt him slipping further up, although the shorts remained behind, his legs started moving up again.

  Derrick tensed hard, shifting his knee, almost kicking me. He stopped. I didn’t understand what he was doing.

  I thought maybe he was stuck, so I felt around, reaching for his knee. He tensed again, and he started moving up.

  This time, since I didn’t have a good grip, I simply followed him with my hand, feeling at his calf. He was being pulled up.

  The weight of the sawdust, though was growing heavy around me. Heavier than before. Derrick must have still been holding up a good portion of the dust.

  He was still rising though. I followed with my hand, trying to straighten my body. If he got pulled out, I would be found next.

  He drifted further up, my hand slipped down to right above his ankle.

  He stopped. I squeezed. I’m fine. Just go.

  He was pulled up again. This time I held on to his ankle, trying to use his momentum to get myself to move further up.

  I tried a swimming motion Nathan taught me, only it wasn’t working. The more I tried to push myself up, the more the dust tightened in around me.

  The best I could do was drift a hand up as Derrick started getting pulled up again.

  When Derrick was no longer moving, I pushed up. Go.

  He shifted.

  Go, I pleaded silently through my fingers. I squeezed again.

  He shifted up, this time so quickly that his foot slipped away from my grasp. I clutched at sawdust.

  But I wasn’t sinking and neither was Derrick.

  There was shifting above my head. I had no idea how far I was into the sawdust. The cloth around my face was suffocating, but I felt the weight of the dust around it. I wanted to draw my hand in to help cup my face better and to readjust the cloth, maybe readjust and get a new air pocket.

  Only I couldn’t move my hand above my head. It was like I knew if I drew back, it would be even harder for them to find me. I also might lose track of which way was up. It was hard to tell now without Derrick being there, so I remained as still as possible.

  The waiting was so long.

  The heat bore into me, reminding me of scalding water on my face.

  I coughed, unable to hold it back any more. The sawdust in my mouth reminded me of how scratchy my throat was after swallowing lemon and vinegar.

  I bit my tongue. I couldn’t pass out. Not now. Not like in the rain. Not like when I tried to take a shower. If I did it now, they’d never find me. I’d die. I couldn’t die. I would never die on them. Never.

  The weight above me shifted again, and so did the sawdust around the hand above my head. Something brushed at my fingertips.

  A hand dug in around mine, gripping at my palm.

  A thumb traced over the back of my hand.

  Victor! I sobbed against the cloth at my mouth. Victor! How embarrassing that I was thinking the other day I barely knew them. One touch was all it took. I knew what he felt like. I could now recall his berry, moss fragrance and the way his fire eyes lit up when I slipped into the seat behind him in class.

  I clutched back. I’m here.

  The hand held on, not letting go. Another pair of hands, bigger ones--Silas’s hands--felt down along my arm, trying to get a grip to pull me up.

  The weight shifted again around me, though. They were yanking my arm but I wasn’t moving. The weight of the dust was holding my body down.

  I was pulled again. Pain radiated through my shoulder. They were going to pull my arm out. I clawed at Victor’s hand to warn them.

  They stopped short, as if realizing this. The sawdust shifted around me, lightening, but it wasn’t enough. I imagined they were trying to scoop out the sawdust, but with them shifting above me, my body was being weighed down.

  They stopped again. I could almost hear their brains calculating their next move together.

  I coughed again. It was too hard to breathe. The heat was too much, and my lungs were starting to hurt. There wasn’t enough oxygen.

  I was suffocating.

  I swallowed. They didn’t have time to think for me anymore. I had to do it myself. I had to help. They couldn’t rescue me without me helping, too.

  I let go of the cloth at my face, closing my mouth and trying to relax like I’d done in Nathan’s pool. I could hold my breath for a good minute, I knew. Every second counted.

  With my hand now free, I cupped at the wood dust around me. I threaded my hand up, along my arm. It was slow. Sawdust crept into the edges of my mouth. I wanted to spit, but if I opened my mouth, I knew all I would get would be dust, not air.

  I pushed harder. I pulled on Victor’s hand.

  He clasped mine, nearly too hard. He seemed to sense what I was doing. Hang on to me. I’ll pull myself up. And so he was. He’d hold on as long as I needed.

  I fought against the onslaught of shifting sawdust, worried I might be pulling him in. He didn’t seem to move, though.

  My fingers broke through the dust close to my arm, finding one of Silas’s hands. Another hand dropped down next to it, finding my elbow. I recognized Nathan’s calloused fingers. I would have done anything to have popped those into my mouth in that moment.

  He gripped at my arm. His other hand found my forearm and he held on. Now they had a better grip of me.

  I was lifted. Silas's hands slid further down, gripping around my elbows and at my biceps.

  But it was a slow process, still. I couldn’t breathe.

  My lungs burned. I tried tucking my head down, trying to find any small pocket of space, any air at all.

  My mouth opened involuntarily, unable to wait.

  I choked on sawdust.

  ♥♥♥

  The next thing I knew, I was on my back, waking up from what felt like a deep sleep, like at the slumber party where I had the nightmare and clawed up North’s arm after.

  The first thing I felt was my mouth full of itchy dust, and a face pressed close to mine.

  I gagged, turning over, pushing away whoever it was. I coughed hard.

  Arms clutched me around the shoulders. “Breathe, Peanut. Just breathe.”

  There was grass below me. I sucked in the harsh headiness mixed with the fresh air and the leather and Cypress of Nathan. When my lungs were filled, I had more energy to spit and cough out the sawdust clustered in my mouth. Someone had my hands, but I yanked them free, clawing at my chest and neck as if that would help ease the amount of sawdust in my mouth and throat. My nails clawed away the wet, stuck wood particles, leaving trails along my skin but no matter how hard I wiped at my body, it wasn’t enough.

  “Get her out of here,” Kota’s voice ordered, his voice deeper than I remembered. “Get those kids back home. Victor?”

  “Already on it,” Victor said, hovering over me somewhere. He started talking again and backed away as he did so. He, too, barked orders, but not to the guys, and in a code I didn’t recognize. I was too distracted to figure out what he was saying.

  Luke’s voice came after me
now. “Sang, I’m going to clear your eyes, okay? But don’t open them yet. We need to get you to some water.”

  It took me until then to realize I hadn’t yet even attempted to open them. There was a thick layer of wet dust stuck to my eyelids, like wearing a heavy, itchy eye mask. They felt glued shut. I wasn’t sure it would ever clear.

  Luke’s tender hands brushed against my eyes, tracing carefully over the crevice under my brow and ducking into the corners. He pulled away the heaviness, but there still remained a thin, itchy layer. I squinted hard, wanting to blink, but kept my lids closed.

  A cloth covered my chest, and I realized I was in my bra and underwear. I smelled the scent of the ocean.

  “Aggele mou,” Silas murmured. “I’m going to pick you up. Keep those eyes closed.”

  Silas wrapped one thick arm around my shoulders, hooking the other under my legs and lifting easily. When I was in the air, he was moving.

  There was a hustle of movement. I heard Derrick telling someone he was okay. Gabriel was barking after Micah to hurry along. Nathan yelled at Tom to run ahead to Kota’s house. There were more voices, but they mixed together.

  Silas snuggled me into him, his grip on my body tight enough that I was sure there would be bruises, but it didn’t bother me. I clutched at his chest, willing myself to stay awake now. I wanted to keep breathing. I was scared to death of losing myself in the dark again. I wanted water to rinse my mouth to talk to them. I wanted to wash my eyes to see their faces.

  Silas moved quickly. From what I could hear, others were around him, too. Quiet, focused. They didn’t need to speak to each other. They knew their jobs and they did them. Always watching. Always prepared.

  It was several eon-long minutes before Silas stopped moving. I was lowered to the ground. Concrete warmed my back. Silas moved away and I struggled to sit up. The shirt draped over my body dropped to my side.

  “Sang,” Luke hovered over me again. “Just lay back for one second. I’ll clean your face.”

  I couldn’t say anything. It felt like my mouth was too full of sawdust. If I opened up, it would shift and I’d start coughing again.

  The sound of water drew my attention. Luke touched my chin, tilting my face where he wanted it. A smooth stream of water chased along my temple, washing over one of my eyes. I flinched, trying to pull back because it was cold. My eyes stung at the contact.

  “Stay still,” Luke said, more stern than I’d ever heard him. “If we don’t get the dust out of your eyes, it could hurt them permanently.”

  I made a guttural groan and stilled, biting my tongue against the chill and the pain. I made fists, my nails digging into my palms. Big hands, Silas’s hands, found one of my fists and held strong to it.

  Luke swept tender fingers across my eyes, brushing away the stinging. When one eye was clear, he tilted my head again, sweeping the other eye.

  The second eye was swept clean. He removed the water. “I’m going to tug on your eyelids, okay? One more second.”

  He tugged gently at my left upper eyelid, pulling it out and down over my lower one. Natural tears formed. He held the water again to my face and it washed my eyes.

  He did the same with the other eye. He pulled the water away again. “Open up, Sang.”

  I blinked hard, forcing my eyes open. Sunlight blinded me for a minute. I blinked again, and Luke’s face hovered into view, with Silas right behind him.

  Luke’s brown eyes bore into mine. “Hang still one more second,” he said. He pulled apart my eyelids, when I really wanted to blink some more. First one, then the other, and stared at my eyes. He held a flashlight over them, gazing after me. “Okay. You look clean.”

  “Can you get up?” Silas asked.

  I nodded. Silas held on to my hand, his shirtless body flexing as he pulled me until I was sitting up. I was sitting next to my own house, just outside the garage. It surprised me that I wasn’t at Kota’s, but then I wondered if there was a second short cut to that part of the woods Nathan hadn’t shown me before.

  The first thing I grabbed for was the water hose. I yanked it toward my face, letting the liquid fill my mouth. I gagged on it, swished, and pulled away from Silas and Luke to spit at my side. I did it again, and again. When I thought I’d finally cleaned the last little bits out of my mouth, I’d find a new crevice with another trace of dust.

  When I couldn’t taste any more wood in my mouth, I ran the hose over my face, sloshing away the water. The coolness ran over my body, over my exposed skin and the bra that still clung to my frame and even into the panties I wore. I didn’t know where my shorts were. I imagined they might still be in the sawdust pile, stuck forever.

  The sound of a helicopter flying overhead pulled me away from my desperate attempt at self-cleaning. I looked up, watching it bear down at the woods, about where I imagined the sawdust pile was located.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but coughed. I picked up the hose again, swallowing some water and then pulled it away again. “What --”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Luke said.

  “That’s right,” a deep voice thundered from beyond where Silas and Luke were hovering. “Don’t worry about that, because you’ve got a lot of other shit to worry about right now.”

  Luke frowned, looking up in North’s direction. “Not now. She’s had enough.”

  “Me, too,” he barked.

  I sat up more, getting onto my knees, choking back another groan. What now?

  Luke stood up, turning around. “Leave her alone.”

  North stood further back, his intense eyes barreling down on me. “Fuck that. She’s going to fucking listen to me now.”

  I dropped a foot down, using it to rise as steadily as I could. Luke stood with me. I took the hose from his hands and aimed it at my neck, rinsing the clumps of wet dust from my body, not caring that I was standing in my underwear. I was free. I was alive. I’d do anything they wanted. I’d even listen to North.

  “What the fuck did you think you were doing, Sang?” North pointed a fist at me. “I said don’t go, and you left. I said stop, you ran off. Not a word about where you were going.”

  “I didn’t have time,” I said, my voice cracked. I shoved the hose at my face, swallowing some water.

  “Didn’t have time, my ass. I told you to stop and you didn’t listen.”

  “I had to leave,” I said in a voice calmer than I expected. My head rolled back, then tilted so I was gazing over at him while I continued to rinse off my stomach. “There was a call. I heard it. We left.”

  “What call?”

  “The hooting,” I said. I straightened, meeting his eyes. If he wanted me to be honest, here I was. Honest. “Emergency.”

  Silas stepped between us. “This isn’t the time for this.”

  “It’s fine, Silas,” I said to him, planting a gentle hand on his back. He turned to me. “It’s okay. I can talk.”

  Silas seemed unsure, but shifted a half step back, keeping his eyes on me. A mixture of confusion and fear settling in.

  “What the fuck do you mean, emergency?” North growled. “That squealing pig noise?”

  “The boys invented it,” I said. “Micah, Tom and Derrick.”

  “How come we didn’t know about it?”

  “It was designed so you would never know. They didn’t want the Academy cavalry barging in to the rescue for every little thing.”

  “So they told you? And you didn’t tell us? Why?”

  “Apparently they thought I could help,” I said, straightening my shoulders. I didn’t mean to sound so arrogant, but I couldn’t help the calm in my voice. I don’t know where the strength came from. “And I promised them I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “What the hell made you think you could yank that kid out of that pile? Why didn’t you call us when you saw what was happening? Why didn’t you tell us before you left that it was an emergency?”

  “You would have made me stop and explain it. I didn’t have time.” I took a jagged step in
his direction, tired of feeling like I needed to shout for him to hear me. My voice box didn’t want to do that anymore. “I don’t know what the signal means every time. It just means they are lost or something. I knew when he kept doing it, that it was bad. I didn’t have time to stop and explain it.”

  “You should have told us about the call before.”

  “They made me swear not to!”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  I motioned to the helicopter, still hovering over the woods. “So the Academy cavalry doesn’t come rushing in headfirst. What is that? Why is that helicopter here?”

  North teetered toward me, one step closer. “That helicopter was coming to save your ass. Now it’s there pointing the way.”

  “For what?”

  “We’re taking apart that whole god damn death trap. Victor called in the last favor he had. We’ll make sure you can’t fall in again. I should tell him to forget it. I’m just going to lock you in a padded bubble so you can’t do something stupid like that again.”

  “What do you mean, favor?” I dropped the hose away from me, shoving my palms to my forehead. “And I don’t need to be in a stupid bubble!”

  Silas knelt next to me, picking up the shirt I had tossed aside before. He held it out to me. “Sang, don’t get mad. He’s just ...”

  “I know what he’s doing,” I said, taking his shirt from his hand. I didn’t mean to be so short with Silas, too, but North was getting to me. I found the shirt’s hem and slid it over my body, stuffing my arms through the sleeves. The shirt covered me down to mid-thigh. “He’s planning exactly what he said. Sang’s useless. Sang’s helpless. Sang can’t take care of herself. Let’s lock her in a closet.”

  North closed the distance between us now, pointing a long finger at my face. “Don’t give me that passive aggressive bullshit. You ran off without telling us where you were going and why. When you get there, you’re yanking that kid up and then fall in after him.”

  “I was fine!” I pointed a finger back at his face. “As I recall, we’d almost gotten him out until someone spooked us.”

  North growled at me, his pointer finger almost touching my nose now. “You fucking almost died, Sang! We fished your damn body out.”