The next day Jackson drove us to the exhibition. It took half an hour to reach the designated location. As we reach the gallery, my gaze fell on the colossal front side of the building, and the large open garden in front of it was mesmerizing. The architecture was both impressive and unique. There were a group of journalist who had come to capture the event.
As we entered the gallery, we found that the place was even larger than we initially thought it would be. There were five floors to the gallery and the inside architecture reminded us the imperial age. We could see the top of the building from the ground floor. Apart from the winners, people from different age groups and countries were closely observing the gallery.
The first floor of the gallery had some structures from different era. The sculptures were protected by a glass and an iron railing to prevent visitors from touching them. The other section had the structures that were sculpted by the participants. We quickly went towards Riya's sculpture and took some pictures with it. She was beaming with excitement as she saw her sculpture being displayed at the International Art Gallery.
The second floor of the gallery consisted of wax statues of different imminent personalities behind the glass and iron railings. The names of those personalities were encrypted on bronze plates in front of the statues.
The third floor was a lounge. It had a restaurant and a coffee house. And the fifth floor was occupied by a large theater. Every floor was occupied with large spectators. Amongst them were some top notch businessmen, celebrities, and artists.
Mine was on the fourth floor. We excitedly sprinted towards fourth floor. There were beautiful paintings displayed on the walls with a spotlight above each painting. The intensity of visible lights in the display space was low enough to avoid object deterioration, but bright enough for viewing. There were about 50-100 paintings of various great artists across the world. Students paintings were displayed in an adjacent room. I find around ten paintings in the room and I was easily able to locate my painting.
A sense of pride filled in me as I saw my painting displayed on the wall in an International Art Gallery. My name was encrypted with my schools name under it. I kept staring at my painting to my heart's content.
"You made our school proud girls." Mrs Rose's voice brought me out of my reverie. When I look at her she is already smiling at us with proud filled eyes. She hugs us beamingly, her eyes gleaming with happiness as me and Riya look at each other smiling knowingly. "Lets take some pics what say?" I ask removing the camera shutter and adjusting its lens.
We took various pics but one, that we wanted was we trio to get in front of the camera and we needed someone's help for that. As we roam our eyes around, I spotted a girl standing in front of a silk painting, her eyes diverted from the painting towards her phone as she tapped her heels softly on the floor. I went in her direction and tapped her shoulder lightly to gain her attention. She turned around making me gasp internally. "Mashallah she is so pretty. She had those pretty beautiful grey eyes that twinkled under the light, her long brown hairs flowing beautifully down her shoulders, a light tint on of pink on her cheeks complemented her pale skin, her height somewhat similar to mine..."Yes?" she said grabbing back my attention that was busy admiring her features.
"Umm...Hi...Would you mind if you help us take some snaps?" I asked gesturing at my camera in my hands. "Sure, why not?" she smiled happily obliging as she extended her hand for the camera. We posed ourselves in front of my painting while she snapped our pics.
"Thank you so much" I say to which she just waves her hand smilingly. "By the way that's an amazing piece of work. Is it your painting?" she asked complementing as her eyes directed towards my painting. "Thanks. And yes it's mine." I stated proudly.
"By the way I am Adiva" I introduce myself extending my hand towards her. "Khristina" she replied taking my hand in hers. "And that's Mrs Rose our guardian teacher and this is my friend Riya" I continued introducing her to my teacher and my friend. "Hello" they said in unison as they shook their hands with her. "Soo..... you people are one of the winners I guess.." she inquired looking back at my painting. "Yes. And guess what...we are from the same school and same class and we are best friends." Riya chirped happily putting her hand on my shoulders. "Wow! that's amazing..I must-" suddenly her phone pinged indicating a message cutting her mid-sentence. Whatever the message was, but it did brought a smile on her face.
"Hey guys, I gotta go...It was a pleasure meeting you people" she replied hurriedly, sprinting out towards the exit.
"Gorgeous...wasn't she?" Riya sighed.."Yeah" I replied.
"Hey lets send our pictures to our parents.."I suggest..."Sure, Why not?" Riya complied. I sent all my pics that I took from my phone to my parents and in no less then 5 minutes, I received a call from my dad. I smiled looking at the screen knowing that they have seen the photos by now. I cut the call and text him about, calling him back in 5 minutes. I informed Mrs. Rose that I'll be in the lounge talking to my parents and will be back in maximum 10 minutes. "Be careful" she said before I sprinted towards the exit.
I ran towards the elevator and punched the third floor button that lead to the lounge area. There was a large cluster of people and, almost every seat was taken. My eyes searched for a corner with less noise. After searching for another minute my eyes darted at a corner that was completely isolated and a little dark.
Not minding at all, I ran towards the corner, calling dad as I rested my body against a pillar. Dad picked up the call on the third ring itself.
"Assalamualaikum dad" I greeted.
"Walaikumassalam my sweetheart, we are so proud of you" dad beamed in happiness.
"That's all because of your blessings."
"You always have our blessings jaan. Apart from that, it's your talent and hard work that brought you to this position." I could hear voices from behind as dad spoke.
My gaze lifted to the adjacent building as I chatted with dad. The lights were off but I could see a shadow leaning against the window through the street light. 'What might be a man doing on the floor with complete lights off?' I wondered. Discreetly following his movements out of curiosity, I concentrated on his movements through the lights provided by the street lamps.
I noticed that, he was aiming something straight towards the direction diagonal to me with some gadget in his hands. I followed his gaze to see a girl standing, her head bent as she was busy typing something on her phone, occasionally raising her head to look around her. I realized it was Khristina as she looked in my direction but her eyes quickly went back on her phone. 'she didn't see me, I guess..'
Suddenly I saw a flicker of red dot on her forehead. The red dot moved according to her movements. Wandering what it might be, I again gazed back to the shadow across the building.
I sense a queasy feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, when I realized that, the thing in that person's hand across the building was a freaking gun and not some gadget as he aimed his target at Khristina.
"Adiva.....Adiva....honey, are you there?" dad's voice startled me making me almost drop my phone.
"Dad, I'll call you back in a while." my voice shivered as I spoke.
"Wha- Adiva....whats going on?....Adi......" I didn't wait for him to complete his sentence and hung up the call.
"Think, Adiva think.... You need to save her without alerting the killer." I was blabbering to myself. Suddenly an idea popped in my mind. I ducked myself and started crawling fast towards Khristina. As soon as I was close to her, I caught her hand and jerked her towards the floor. The gunshot went down as soon as I pulled her on the floor.
Completely caught off guard, Khristina screamed, "Whoa...what's-" another gunshot echoed before she could complete her sentence, followed by the shattering of the glass wall. I rolled her towards the pillar as fast as I could, glass pieces piercing into my skin in that process making me gasp in pain. I somehow got her to the safety pillar unscathed and accidentally bumped my forehead hard, against the pillar. "Aaahh!!" I shrieked.
By the time, a loud commotion followed, as people panicked and started running towards some safe place. The pillar had forestalled the bullets for now, but I had to look for a much safer place. As I scanned the place, my gaze fell on a nearby settee. I motioned, a completely shocked Khristina towards the settee. "Come" I whispered as we slowly started dragging our bodies towards the settee.
"Are you okay?" I asked as soon as we breathed in relief upon reaching a safer place.
"Yeah, I'm fine....But, Jesus! you are bleeding." She shrieked, in horror. Only then did I realized. there was a long trail of blood as it oozed out of my arms when we crawled towards safety. I winced at the pain.
"Jesus! your-" Khristina was obstructed by a loud commotion. We raised our heads to see large number of crowd surrounding us. I could see Mrs. Rose and Riya making their way towards us. They helped us to stand on our feet but, my legs were turning wobbly making me lose my balance, but Riya caught me before I could fall down.
Mrs.Rose caressed my face, her eyes filled with concern. I hissed when she touched my forehead. "Honey..We need to take you to the hospital as soon as possible. Wait for me till I call Jackson." She informed, removing her phone from her purse.
I could see all of their eyes trained on us as we stood injured between the crowd.
"We need to inform the police and also get medical help for the girls" I heard someone yell from the crowd.
My vision was turning blurry, when I saw a man running towards Khristina, his back facing towards me. I could hardly concentrate on anything, when the world started spinning around me. The loud commotion of people was making me more difficult to stay steady.
Black spots started covering most of my vision and I slowly felt my body giving up. As I started falling backwards, I felt a pair of arms encircling my body, as I fell into unconsciousness. The last thing I heard were Mrs.Rose and Riya's distant voices as I succumbed to darkness.
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