Chasing the Browns

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Boom.

The flash of brilliant white before the fierce oranges and reds was blinding. The sweltering heat hit me like a wall, and I was sweating before I even knew it.

‘No!’

I was dazed as I felt something grabbing my arm, pulling me away from the sight of the car.

What was happened? Who was taking me? Where were they taking me?

I could only blink in surprise and mutter inaudible words, with the bright white of the explosion still branded in my mind.

When I came out of the weird stupor, no more fazed by the fire, I started screaming for whoever it was to stop pulling me away, screaming that there was a teacher in that car – my teacher. A hand was put over my mouth to muffle my screams. I bit down hard until the hand let go, and began to scream for Jack.

‘Ssh, Lea! It is me!’

My head throbbed, and I managed a weak sigh of relief before turning on him angrily. ‘What are you doing? We can’t just leave him there. Are you crazy?’ I yelled.

He frowned.

He’d taken me behind a bush. Behind a bush. Why?

‘What the hell are we doing here? Jack, I can’t believe that you just—’

‘Lea, there’s nothing we can do,’ he said softly, looking down at me pitifully.

Lea, he’s…

‘N-no.’ My voice wobbled. ‘No, Jack, it’s wrong. We cannot just leave him inside a burning car t-to…to…’ I trailed off, going back to my previous question, trying to get out of my head everything that had just happened.

I’d just witnessed the death of my teacher.

He’d died because of me.

All because I hadn’t sent a stupid email.

And now…now it was too late to resend because I’d gone and deleted the account.

God, Lea, you’re so stupid.

The last thing I wanted right now was that voice niggling away at the back of my mind. I sank down to the ground, hugging my knees against my chest. Shaking.

‘Get up!’ Jack hissed. ‘We’ve got to go, quick!’

I could hear people approaching. A lot of them.

‘Why? Jack, we have to tell them what happened!’ I cried. ‘We have to tell them—’

‘We need to get away from here, and we need an alibi,’ he whispered, taking my arm and steadying me up.

We snuck behind the bush, keeping care to stay out of the sigh of CCTV from the library, which overlooked most of the school compound, and made our way to the nurse’s office. I was still shaking after what I’d just seen, which made Jack’s alibi about me having a panic attack and throwing up in a biology lesson on human blood seem a whole lot more real. The nurse stared at me, concerned, as she typed up some details on the computer before asking me if I was OK to go home by myself, or if I needed to be picked up.

‘It’s OK,’ Jack cut in. ‘I’ll take her home.’

She smiled. I could only guess what she was thinking. Whilst her back was turned, I glared at him. How could he act so casually? Didn’t he care about what we’d just witnessed?