Hometown Heroes, National Nobodies (All Time Low) TO BE UPDATED NOV 13

Hometown Heroes, National Nobodies - Chapter Six

Chapter 6

Zack’s P.O.V

I shoved my hands deep in my pockets as the cool breeze outside the hotel ruffled my hair. Goosebumps had formed on my bare arms so I began to walk down the sidewalk, trying to warm myself up again. The forest on the other side of the road whistled eerily with the wind and made me feel somewhat uncomfortable.

The others were crazy. As if a crash in the swamp could cause all these things. It must have just been the trauma of everything that had happened in the past few days finally getting to our heads. A lamp post ahead of me flicker slightly, and I stopped walking. It was about one hundred meters away. I contemplated running toward it, to see if I really did have ‘super speed’ as Jack suggested.

I pulled out my phone and clicked on the stop watch app. I could sprint 100 meters in about 15 seconds, usually. I stared at my phone before my curiosity slowly outweighed my logic. I took my mark, set the timer and sprinted toward the light post. Within a flash, I was touching the pole with my hand, not panting even a little. I quickly pulled out my phone and stopped the timer. Three point two eight seconds. Three seconds. That was impossible, right?

I looked up to see a street sign behind the lamppost. I willed myself not to, but eventually decided to test if I really did have ‘super strength’. I pressed my hand up against the metal sign and watched as it bent away from me. I had barely even pushed my hand into it, but it had bent backwards into itself. I stared in amazement before I realized that I could probably get in trouble for this.

I walked back to the hotel and climbed the stairs to our room before anyone had the chance to accuse me of breaking the street sign. I busted through the door to find everyone but Jack asleep. He was lying on his bed wide-awake, underneath the gaping hole that had been left from where the tv had fallen off the wall.

“I believe you,” I whispered, closing the door quietly.

“What?” Jack sat up in his bed.

“I believe you,” I repeated, taking a seat on the sofa that sunk under my weight.

“Why?”

I didn’t reply, instead, throwing my phone at him. When he saw the stop watch, he gave me a look.

“I ran 100 meters in that amount of time.”

Jack gaped at me before throwing my phone back. I shoved it in my pocket before leaning back into the sofa.

“What are we meant to do about all of this?” Jack asked, lying back down and putting his hands behind his head.

“No idea,” I replied, “Who can we tell? Everyone will think we’re crazy!”

“True,” Jack nodded, “But we leave for home tomorrow. We have tours and stuff. What are we meant to do then?”

“Pretend like nothings happened. The fans can’t know. No one can know. Not until we figure out what has happened to us.”

Jack nodded in agreement and sighed. We both knew how hard this would be to keep under wraps, especially with Alex spontaneously combusting all the time, but we had to try. I pushed down on the arm of the sofa to stand up, but fell back as it snapped underneath me and set me tumbling on my back. As I pulled myself up of the ground, I saw Alex sitting up staring at me.

“I’ve really got to be more careful,” I groaned, sending Jack into a fit of laughter.

I watched as the sun started to make a glowing ring around the closed curtains, marking the new day. I sat on my suitcase, jamming it down and zipping it up. Jack appeared from behind the bathroom door in just a towel, so I turned away to let him get dressed. Rian opened the curtains and let the sunlight burst into the room. Alex was still asleep and rolled over, snoring and breathing heavily.

“Get up, Alex, you fat lard,” Jack shouted, shaking the bed.

When Alex didn’t do anything, he ripped the blankets off him and jumped onto his body.

“Get off,” Alex shouted, shoving Jack onto the floor.

“C’mon, Alex,” I murmured, “We’ve gotta go.”

Alex pulled on his clothes from yesterday as Jack picked himself up off the floor. He sprayed half a can of deodorant on himself, calling it ‘shower in a can’, before we all dragged our bags out of the room. We handed the keys back to the bald hotel manager before dumping our things in the trunk and cramming into the cab.

I didn’t pay much attention to where we were going,. I watch as tree after tree flew past us and sighed, resting my head against the window. The few hours that we had been travelling felt like years, and when we finally arrived my legs had gone numb. I climbed out of the cab, paying the driver and stretching my back and legs. I was exhausted even though I hadn’t been doing anything vigorous the whole trip.

We got our bags out of the trunk as the cab sped off. I stared up at the airport. It was just a small hanger, with no extravagant entrances or a whole mall on the inside. We entered and took a seat in the waiting area while flights were called out for boarding and Rian went to check in. I was careful how I sat down, trying not to break another chair. Alex looked as tired as I felt, and for once, Jack wasn’t bouncing off the walls.

“Where’s Rian?” Alex asked after half an hour of waiting for him to come back.

“Long queue?” Jack suggested.

I nearly believed Jack until I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned to the seat beside me, but no one was there Then I remembered what Rian had said the night before. “It was like I was invisible.” I turned around to where the tapping was coming from and extended my hand out toward the empty chair.. I could feel a shoulder, and a face?

“Rian’s right here,” I murmured, turning back to the others.

“What?”

I pointed to the ‘empty’ chair beside me. Alex gave me a look that said, you’ve gone completely insane. Jack reached across me to feel Rian’s shoulder and smiled.

“This is weird.”

“How do you think I feel?” Rians voice came form nowhere.

When I looked back to the chair beside me, there he was, sitting there as if he was never gone. Before any of us had a chance to express our amazement, someone called over the loud speaker that our flight home was down boarding. I picked up my hand luggage and headed toward the boarding tunnels, keeping a close eye on Rian so that we wouldn’t lose him again. This really was starting to get strange, and without and answer to our problem, it was starting to get scary too.