Hunting the Thimble
Categories: Badfic/Alternate Universe
I am finally going to graduate! Yay! I have so many friends and they are all so nice and are so happy for me. Also, I got into good colleges and got asked to prom by my crush and we're going to have so much fun. My best friend and I are going together to prom to celebrate the end of high school. I am so happy. Everything is going so well.
Everyone that I have gotten to know in the past four years is in the room with me. Everyone I've shared a lunch table with in the crowded cafeteria. Everyone who I've walked to the mall with afterschool to binge on Taco Bell Crunch-Wraps is rolling their hips to the music. Everyone who has bitterly congratulated me on my college acceptances is throwing smiles at me.
My crush is holding my hand and I can't really blush but my face is so red. Oh my god! I feel like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls when she kisses that guy at the end. Did you know that the actor who played that guy is actually gay? Funny right? Of course, it's the slow dance and I really want him to kiss me. Not the actor. I mean my crush. I don't know if he likes me though. But he is looking at me very hardly.
"He's only desperate for a girl." So I've been told by well-wishers who pat my arm and glare daggers into my back. "He only asked her to prom after she got into all those ivies, right?" Overheard. "He asked Starbucks for a hot frappucino on which he asked the barista to write 'Prom?' with a little heart dotting the question mark." So cute. It took me about five minutes to see the black lettered question on cup. Five minutes during which he squirmed with awkwardness.
I can't wait for my first kiss but I'm so nervous. Movies make it look so easy but how do you actually kiss even? I've thought about him holding me hardly and kissing me but it's just weird cause I don't really know the sensation I would feel. I mean I am good at imagining things but this just isn't something I've been able to imagine.
When he kisses me, both of our lips are dry. I later find out that it's his first kiss too. First kisses at prom. Such a cliché. Afterwards I am dancing with all my friends. They are all so pretty for prom. They small talk with me over the music about how they will be my friends forever and how much they love me and how we will get together over every break and go to New York. Nothing will change between any of us.
That's when the music suddenly stops and I hear the sound of a helicopter. I just know that I have to run up the stares and out to the balcony. An arm clad in tight black spandex shoots out of the plane and I grab onto it. Somehow I have the power to maneuver my body in such a way that I am inside the helicopter within the next minute. I automatically start unzipping my prom dress and inside I'm wearing a suit also made of black spandex.
"Your mission tonight is to find and diffuse a bomb that is in a five-mile radius of here. Succeed and you all save thousands of lives. Fail and many will die. Look in your private tablets for more information." The voice blasts from an intercom.
I grab the tablet labelled with my name off the wall and start scrolling through the file labelled "Top Secret Bomb Threat."I can't tell you what is in the file because then you would have to die but I'll tell you this: the bomb threat is super scary. I know immediately that the code that the bomber has sent to taunt us actually is GPS coordinates to a local park. We fly there in the helicopter.
"There is no way we can find the bomb in so big an area. We need to narrow it down. Do we have a radiation-detector?"
"Here you go." Someone hands me a big, round metal object attached to a plastic stick. I take it and start jumping out of the helicopter. Halfway down I open my parachute and fall safely onto the grass in front of a dog that's pooping. The owner doesn't seem to be paying attention. You can get fined for that sort of thing, you know?
The detector starts to beep and I just know that the bomb isn't far away. I'll find it in a matter of minutes and everyone in this park will be safe. I don't care to be the hero but it would be so nice if I could succeed. If only I could succeed.
I play a strange game of "hunt the thimble" with the detector until the detector is beeping so loudly that the people of the park are shooting me dirty looks. I'm trying to save you all, you fools, I think in my head. The detector light starts to turn green as I come to a stop in front of a woman with a gigantic leather purse who is sitting on a bench to the side with her phone out. The bomb is in the purse. I know it. I grabbed her purse and start running away. She yells after me.
"I'm saving your life! I swear!" I yell back.
I wrench open the bag only to see that the bag is empty. Oh my god. Is that what I think it is? It's a jewelry box with a diamond ring. It's emitting radiation. It's not a bomb. I throw down the bag and start running again as the owner of the purse finally comes close enough to retrieve her purse. She doesn't even look angry. Just puzzled.
I run back to where I left the helicopter and only to find that it has left me. My companions must have discovered another lead and decided that it was too urgent to let me know or to take me with them. Hopefully, they manage to find the bomb. Till then I read through the tablet file again.
Another set of coordinates! I need to borrow someone's car. I know how to hotwire a care. I can't tell you who taught me or you would have to die. I take a yellow Porsche off the side of the street. Woooo, I'm like Alice Cullen. Is that a police siren behind me? Gosh, cops can be so annoying when you're trying to find a bomb.
I drive to the second set of coordinates. It's an empty house. Beautiful lawn. Gorgeous façade. The kind of house I have always wanted to live in but the kind of house a family from a lower middle-class background could never afford. I wander through the house with my radiation stick but this time it is so silent that I can hear birds chirping outside.
No bombs here. Another set of coordinates found on the tablet along with a message that the bomb will go off in an hour. I drive to the new coordinates. It's a library. So much radiation that I don't even bother taking out the stick. The books are radioactive. I have always known. Like I know that I will find no bomb here. Only safety.
Inside the gigantic library, I walked by a little television room on my way out. The monitor is showing a tremendous blast like an orange tornado bursting out of a building. A strip on the bottom says "Prom bombed. Everyone you knew is dead."