The Explosion

Chapter 5

Vivian burst out of the forest as if she had never been free before. "Help! Someone! Help!" She yelled. When no one answered she ran all the way through the road – on the pavement of course – screaming and crying; trying to get someone's attention. There weren't many people on her road but there had been a few. The first two had been two boys walking together; they had shrugged her off and told her that they had their own problems to sort out, apparently what had happened to her was nothing new. Soon after that she had seen a girl who looked maybe one or two years younger than her. She had run up to her and jumbled a load of words that eventually came out to be what had happened. All through her story, the girl had just stood, sort of staring at her but her eyes weren't quite focused, as if her body was here but her mind was elsewhere. She looked dead inside. Vivian felt sick. What was going on? What was wrong with everyone? Had other people died? Her head started spinning as she ran onwards, towards the middle of town, still calling for help. Her voice now came out as a croaky, hoarse whisper and her eyes and head became painful. She realised that she couldn't breathe and her legs were turning into jelly. She could hear her panicked, forced breathes and her rapid heartbeat and tried to take a step forward but only succeeded in stumbling and catching herself on a small wall that went up to just above her waist height. She held onto her stomach which had also become painful and tried to fight the horrible dizziness that was trying to take over. "Oh God," she rasped, "I'm dying." She collapsed down onto her knees and started moaning. She could hear some voices shouting but she didn't know what they were saying; she couldn't be bothered to listen. Everyone here was horrible; no wonder she didn't even have a single friend in his horrid town. It didn't matter now anyway; she would soon be with her mum and dad again.

Vivian was surprised when she felt a pair of hands touching her. "You need to slow your breathing." The voice attached to the hands said.

"I- I- I can't" She gasped back. "I'm dying, I- I'm going to die."

"No, you aren't You're fine. You're just having a panic attack, okay? You have to calm down."

A panic attack? Well, that was new, she hadn't had one of those before.

"Breathe with me, okay? Breathe in on one and two, and breathe out on three and four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four."

They kept at this for a minute or so until Vivian's breathing was back to normal speed and her heart rate had slowed. She looked up to see a girl and a boy around her age, maybe slightly older. They both had light brown hair and pale, ever so slightly tinted, skin. The girl smiled, stretched out her hand and helped Vivian up. From here she could see that they both had green eyes. Twins, she guessed.

She didn't really know what to say to the two people that she had just had an extremely embarrassing panic attack in front of so all Vivian said was "Um, thanks." She was sure that, had she been white, she would have gone red with embarrassment. She was worried that they would think she was really rude but luckily for her they seemed to understand her shyness.

"I'm Rosemary, what about you?"

"Vivian." She replied with a grateful smile, and then looked expectantly at the boy.

"Thyme." The boy said with a hint of embarrassment in his broad grin.

"Time as in a clock?"

"No," he replied, "Thyme as in the herb."

"Rosemary and Thyme? That's amazing!" Vivian laughed.

"Yeah, hilarious, right?" Thyme said sarcastically, not rudely; more like a joking sarcastic tone. Even so, Vivian was a bit concerned that she had offended the twins and apologised just in case. Thyme laughed and said, "We get that all the time; don't worry. Besides, it is pretty funny." With an amused expression.