The Illusion of Us

Chapter 38

The mountain.

The hot spring.

Her room.

It had all been a lie.

Khalil had had every opportunity to tell her the truth, every opportunity to come clean, but he had continued to lie to her and she had continued to let him manipulate her into thinking that her friends and her family were the liars, that they were the enemies when it had been him all along. She had let the guise of a pretty face deceive her into turning her entire world upside down and now she was left with nothing but a throbbing heartache, a headache, a stream of salty tears, and memories that she wished she could mentally burn from her brain.

"It's going to be ok MJ." Noah whispered, her arms once more trapped around Mina's torso as they were tossed back and forth in the back seat by Sahil's reckless driving as he sped in and around traffic in Mina's Lexus.

"Everything's going to be ok." She promised, but Mina wondered how she could throw around expectations like that when they both knew that everything that was coming out of her mouth was nothing more than a lie.

Asher was dead, Chris was in a coma, Sahil had almost died, and her parents were surely about to suffer one of the same fates.

Nothing was going to be ok, and Mina wished her friend would stop trying to pretend like it was.

"Holy shit!" Sahil cursed from the front seat, the car lurching forward as he spoke.

"Oh no, MJ." Noah echoed his woes in a whisper, both their eyes trained on something out the window behind her. She didn't want to turn around, she didn't want this night to get any worse, but she knew she had no choice.

The scene that met her was familiar and she had to force herself not to gag at the realization of what was going on.

Reds and oranges and yellows lined her vision, the sounds of police sirens and firefighter horns sounded in the near distance as she gazed upon her home in terror.

No.

Her cries were vocal and visceral, her hands grabbing at her chest, trying to hold onto some of her control as the world began to move in slow motion in front of her once more and the irony of the situation only made her heart ache even more.

"No!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, straining her throat red raw.

She screamed again, "No!" Her hands moved from fumbling with the material of the jacket she was wearing to the small silver handle of the door in front of her, and she zoned out the protestations of Sahil and her friend behind her as she tumbled out of the car and began to run straight towards the burning building.

The cool night wind whipped past her face as she ran and only the crackling sound of the flames and her tennis shoes against the pavement permeated her hearing. She had already lost one person tonight and she wasn't about to lose any others to Khalil.

Head empty and thoughts clear she ran as hard and as fast as she could, her eyes trained on the flames licking the brick of her only home.

"No!" She cried into the air as a strong pair of hands grasped her around the waist pulling her backwards and away from the smoldering structure in front of her.

"No!" She screamed, as if it were the only word in her vocabulary, her feet dangling in the air as her hands gripped and tugged at the pair of hands around her waist, though to no avail. They wouldn't budge.

"Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!"

"MJ! Stop!" Sahil's voice boomed behind her.

"They're in there! They're in there!" Her screams slowly began to turn to cries once more. "Please!" She was pleading now. "P-please! I have to- I have to save them! I couldn't save Asher, but I can save them. I can- I can save them."