Lighter

Chapter 13

The stairs were gone and so were the people. Nobody was there anymore. We had been gone for no more than an hour and a half and they already evacuated everyone. I put Clara down and climbed down and jumped the rest of the way. I looked up and Clara was looking at me with her teddy bear. 

"Come on sweetheart I'll catch you I promise" I said. She was hesitant at first but then she sat down on the edge and jumped, right into my arms. I caught her and put her on the same cement slab I was on. I looked around the stadium and everyone was gone, nobody left here. My mouth was wide open as I looked around for any signs of anybody, but they had all gone. 

I grabbed Clara's hand and we walked down the stairs together, towards the middle of the field. I sat on the bench the players use when there not in the game with Clara right beside me. I looked around wondering how everyone got out in an hour and a half. I got my answer right away when I spotted a hole in the wall towards the east.

"Alright Clara, it's getting dark and we won't be able to maneuver through anything when it's dark. I have no idea where my phone is and I'm sure nobody will be out this late looking for us" I said and put a lock of hair behind her ear "so here's what we're going to do little one. We are going to go around and find as many blankets as we can and we are going to make a giant blanket fort and stay the night here"

"That sounds like fun" she said and I could see it brightened up her day a little bit. I smiled and we walked around grabbing as many blankets as we could and walked to the bench where we just were. We had to have had sixty or seventy blankets here. 

"Alright do you see those chairs" I said and pointed to all the chairs scattered everywhere. She nodded "we are going to grab them and set them in a large circle. Then we're going to tie the corners of the blankets together and put them over the chairs"

"Ok" she said. For a four year old she was quiet competent about what was happening around her "so I will go and grab the chairs and you can tie the bankets"

I nodded my head and my heart melted at the fact that she said bankets instead of blankets. She placed her teddy bear on the ground and went to grab the chairs one by one. I sat on the ground and tied maybe twenty or tenth-five blankets together by there corners. She had gotten all of the chairs and brought them over by me. 

I smiled at her as she sat down on the bench with her bear. I arranged the chairs in a big circle, intertwining their legs with each other so they stayed. It took me a good ten minutes before I finally got it to where the chairs were sturdy enough I could climb over them without them falling. 

"Clara can you hand me one end of that large blanket I just made" I asked. She got up and pulled the blanket towards me. She gave me a corner and I tucked it under one of the chairs. The blanket was big enough so that no part of the chairs was showing from the outside and it looked like a multicolored dome. She giggled a little bit at it. 

"Alright, I'm going to climb in and you hand me the rest of the blankets so I can lay them down, so it's like a soft bed ok" I said. She nodded and I undid one part of the blanket that was underneath one of the chairs, crawling in. I sat on the floor and she began handing me blanket after blanket. 

After the last blanket she climbed in with me and I re-tucked the blanket under the chair. There was a huge pile of blankets and we began layering them on the ground. By the time we were done I would have estimated it to be around 10 or 11 o'clock at night. The padding from the blankets and the dome pretty much gave us a warm environment. 

I laid down and put my head on the pillow made of blankets, Clara snuggling into my side as I put a blanket over the both of us. I could hear her soft snores as she fell asleep. I looked up through a little hole in the dome and towards the star lit sky. I hoped and prayed Patrick didn't stop looking for me.

He's all I have left after all. I don't even know if my dad made it out. He was in the restroom when  they took me. I silently prayed to God that they both would be ok.