Silver Lining

Chapter 6

“Yeah? Well you're Satan.” Ilish stuck her tongue out at me before closing the book with a sigh.

“You two okay?” Jasmine asked, looking up from the top of Mel's head.

“We're fine.” Ilish smiled thinly. “Just can't find anything on 'immortals', rather than 'vampires'.”

“It's a bit of a strange thing to be searching up, isn't it?” Mel laughed. I shrugged.

“Just something we're interested in. It makes no difference though. I can always Google it later.”

“You could.” Elliot said after loosing his third game. “What's with your face, by the way? It's looking much better.” He turned and thumped Mel's arm at the gagging sounds she was making. “I mean that it's healed quickly you sick little ba-”

“I'm just lucky!” I cut in before things escalated and we had to take Mel back to hospital. “Has anyone heard any more on the school situation?”

“Other that we're going to be off school for a month? Nope.” Jasmine shook her head.

“Who the Hell cares?” Ilish demanded. “That's the only news I'm looking for!”

Elliot rolled his eyes. “No idea on who did it or why, only that it was a professionally made bomb that was designed to kill people.”

The room was silent for a few seconds before Ilish cried out. “He did it! Run for you lives!”

I turned to glare at her. “Cant you keep your voice below the legal noise limit for more that a few minutes?” She pouted but shut her mouth.

“I know because I read the papers in the morning and watch the news. The press are still calling for any eyewitnesses.”

I snorted. “No, what they're calling for is for people to interrogate. The eyewitnesses will be people at the school. It's unlikely that some fat lorry driver or old lady with twenty cats saw what happened.”

“Yeah. School's pretty crap at keeping people out, but I'm sure they'd have noticed my grandparents.” Mel chuckled. “I better be heading off. My parents are still edgy about me being gone for long periods of time.” She got carefully to her feet and headed towards the door, calling a goodbye over her shoulder.

“I think we should all be heading home.” Elliot sighed. “It's been a long few days and I'm beginning to hurt.” Once the other two had cleared off I headed up the stairs for a bath. Hopefully, by tomorrow morning, my face would be completely healed. I was pretty sure that my wrist was nearly healed, but that would have to stay on for another six weeks to satisfy the hospital and avoid complicated questions.

Once I was back to a human standard I fired up my dying laptop and logged onto the local news site. I didn't want to know anything about what had happened at the school, but it felt disrespectful to not know the names of the dead. I blinked in shock when I saw that the number of dead had doubled. Twenty six people dead. I scanned the names slowly, putting a face to each one;

Matthew Coulson (19)

Rebecca Roberts (16)

Macauley Savage (27, Biology Teacher)

Amanda Morris (12)

Emma Stevenson (11)

Rebecca Brown (18)

Cerys Waters (16)

Kelsey Calvert (39, Music Teacher)

Tamsin Williams (14)

Amy Llewellyn (14)

Emily Becker (19)

Sara Evans (17)

Bethany Smith (14)

Darren Walters (15)

Abigail Turner (29, Teaching Assistant)

Lewis Day (49, Physics Teacher)

Michael Hoadley (38, Maths Teacher)

Ben John (12)

Nicole Parsons (19)

Daniel Cromwell (11)

Tyler Campbell (11)

Sara Lawrence (12)

Erin Jenner (16)

Dylan Nurse (15)

Hannah Edwards (15)

Alex Jenkins (19)

I read and re-read the names over and over in the hope that something would jump out. Maybe an intended target but there was nothing. Other than the teachers giving us too much homework, there was nothing that would make someone want to blow up half of the school. Well, nothing which would prompt serious action like this.

A chilling thought entered my head; what if it wasn't the dead they were trying to kill?