Disclaimer: All recognisable characters come from Stephenie Meyer. The minor amounts of Earthquake knowledge that I have come from my old Geography teacher. And the plotline comes from me.
Read through it if you will and comment if you wish.
Catlin.
Emblazoned
Rosalie's Point of View
I stared dejectedly at that same area of wall, letting my eyes glaze over as the brightly coloured "inspirational" posters did nothing to improve my mood. I allowed myself a quick glance at the clock on the wall. Twelve thirty. Great, another forty five minutes till I'm free for lunch.
Huh, that smudge on the board almost looks like a poppy. Oh God.
"…and so if N equals 3, Y must equal…"
Mr Richardson's voice droned on from the front of his class room. His back, as-per-usual, was facing us as he tried to work the interactive whiteboard (unsuccessfully may I note). His muffled voice continued to go on and on. I honestly have no idea why he bothers, I'm quite sure that the rest off the class agrees with me on that. Even Mr Richardson if I'm being honest. No one can be that boring and like themselves. The poor guy probably marked exercise books on Christmas Eve while biting into a mice pie for some form of comforting solace.
With every second that passed, his mumbling seemed to further induce my already sleepy haze. I let my head rest on my arms and my eyes close, knowing that I'd be put to sleep with that voice quicker than Terry Wogan on the BBC Radio 2 morning show I have to suffer through each and every miserable car half an hour car drive to school.
The glittering golden carousel at the base of the Eiffel tower was trembling, its horses breaking free and galloping through the faintly lit city of seduction.
I was being shaken. Someone must be trying, in vain, to wake me. When I slept, I was more or less in a coma resistant to rousing. Subconsciously, I smiled, thinking back to sleepovers where friends had to resort to drastic measures to rid sleep from my body. Honestly, who does hit someone with a bible?
As my mind mulled over these thoughts, the shaking increased in tempo, into something almost violent. Simultaneously my awakener uttered a low profanity.
My eyes flew open as I registered the familiar voice.
I was instantly alert and on the defence. It was rare that my best friend ever said anything like this. She is a sweet and caring spirit, everybody's friend and irritation combined with her bubbly but hyperactive personality.
My body tensed in preparation for what had triggered her reaction as I swiftly stood. Hearing an exhalation of relief from the side of my now discarded and forgotten chair, I scanned the room.
Pandemonium.
That's what surrounded.
Complete and utter pandemonium.
I sucked in a sharp breath at the sight that greeted me. A startled cry burst forth from my lips, but was lost in the shrieks of terror issuing from my classmates and the apparently collapsing roof.
I was still shaking. That's odd. Maybe not as badly as before - but still shaking.
Realization hit me like a ton of brick. The room was shaking. Not me. Not by myself at least.
Huh?!
Nothing more coherent wanted to form in my mind. I turned in fearful curiosity to Alice, my now trembling friend. As if to prove my point, the segment of roof above us groaned, showing us it's tell tail signs of soon-to-be collapse.
My survival instincts kicked in as I snatched Alice's frozen form from around the waist and hurtled us under the nearest desk.
"Brace yourself!"
I ordered tersely, just before our area of ceiling collapsed.
I searched my friends face for a grimace or look of pain, caused by my rough grab and dash or the roofs jarring impact with the top of our table. Instead what I saw in her baby blue eyes was something far worse for myself to witness, a sight which I knew from that very moment that I would give my last dying breath to keep off of my very best friends face. A girl I considered more like my own blood than a mere friend.
Fear, desperation, loss, suffering.
Her orbs reflected all of these emotions in quick succession, eventually settling on horror.
Someone so innocent and loving should never have to go through something that would make her feel this way. Nothing.
The expression on my face must have shocked her into speaking. One moment I'm quite sure I was numb in the blankness caused by the sudden shock of what had one been me counting down the seconds till the end of Algebra, to the all sweeping tidal wave which twisted the contours of my face rapidly to a pitch black, burning fury.
"Are…are you okay?"
Her sweet trembling voice questioned my state. I recognised that my reactions were not helping her right now so I made a considerable effort to reign in my emotions, to force myself into a guarded mask covering the turmoil within.
It was all that I could manage to respond without any sort of tone, "Are any of us?"
I closed my eyes, needing to think clearly of how to escape with minimal damage to ourselves as possible considering our circumstances.
I opened my eyes to first see that it would be possible to climb over the debris, and then discover that I was just in time to witness the door being blocked off as more of the roof collapsed in on us, now being joined in by fragments of brick from the walls that were once our protectors from the elements.
"Shit." I groaned. Of course.
Our only simple escape lost all possibility as soon as I merely looked!
At least the shaking had stopped now. It couldn't have been going on for any longer than fifteen or twenty seconds. What your mind can process when it believes it is going to die.
No. I'm not going to die. Nor will Alice if I have anything to do about it.
I laughed a bitter laugh in my mind. There is just no way in hell that I will ever let Alice die. If I'm killed before I get her free, well I guess I'll just have to claw my way back to the land of the living to push her through that final gap.
Glass smashed somewhere in the room. Its small tinkling sounds never felt as wonderful to me once I saw the solution. Windows. The number of times that I'd complained to Alice about how cold it always was in this God damn room, how drafty and dreary. Because the building was listed, we weren't allowed to have double glazing installed.
This should make the process easier, I though to myself in glum satisfaction.
"We need to smash through the window. We just need to use something heavy enough to break it, to make a gap big enough for us to get through." I stated.
"Ah yes, I have loads of them availab-"
She stopped her adrenalin induced sarcastic sentence when an idea gleamed on her expressive face. I knew the look well. It was normally used when she wanted to get me to do something that I would normally put up a fight about. Ugh, never would I have gone up on stage and sang 'I need a Hero' without that little munchkin and her pout, I reminisced.
"We need to pick up the table and put it through the window!"
"Fuck it, have you had your meds yet today?! If you hadn't bloody well noticed, it's the one thing that's protecting us from everything that's above the damn table!"
"Look, we pick it up with us under it. That way we keep ourselves away from the classroom debris and shattered glass. We use it like a battering ram. Kinda like that one scene in Pirates of the Caribbean."
"You've got to be kidding me. We're about to face death head on and you're thinking about Johnny Depp?"
She rolled her eyes but a pink flush heated her pale cheeks at being outed.
"Okay, on three?"
I meant it as a statement but it came out as a question in my remaining hesitance.
"On three."
She agreed.
I placed my hands on the underside of the table and pushed upwards as Alice mimicked my actions. I thought I heard her grumbling about old gum stuck underneath. Trust her to be worried about that at a time this.
Then again, I was thinking of how this is so going to screw my back from having to bend down to her height to lift the table evenly.
"One."
She started.
"Two."
I continued.
"Three!"
We both exclaimed.
The window broke in a single fell swoop.
We dived after the table a milli-second after it left our hands to avoid the piles of rubble that would be sure to soon smother us.
Creaking sounded from behind us, and with one look between us we ran as far as we could away from the building we had just escaped.
A hell raising boom echoed toward us as half the wall caved in under strain. I had to look away from the wall as a guy from our class, Mike, whom I had never been on the best of terms with before had attempted to come through our window that had once occupied the space where there now was a pile of rubble and dust clouds.
His body had been caught between the floor and a large part of brick wall. Only half of his now mangled body was out. I knew immediately that the sight would forever be emblazoned behind my eye lids and would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my time on this earth.
I started running again, needing to escape the chaos that surrounded. I ran to the school field with Alice hot on my heels. Knowing that there were no buildings on the field and that this is the only logical place on site where other escapees would go to.
---
7.0 on the Richter scale.
That's what the lady on the news said.
Alice was next to me in the hospital where we were being treated for some breaks and sprains. Nothing too serious. Neither of us noticed any pain until later, when we were being treated. Apparently the adrenalin rush and shock had just about taken up all the room that we had for emotion.
We were the only survivors of our class. Our rescuers were amazed at out our survival, saying that in a building like that our chances were more or less non-existent.
My taped up sides started to hurt as I chuckled darkly with no real sense of humour. Apparently we were some very lucky survivors. I felt no relief at this. So many people. Petty enemies, close friends, people that I had hardly exchanged a word with. So many died! While Alice's and my own parents were here, sobbing with happiness that we were alive, so many other families were about to be told of the premature death of brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.
The world is cruel. Innocents die through no fault of their own. Death and destruction. Violence and pain.
I have never been sure if there is infact a heaven or hell. But please, let them go to some place better, somewhere so very far away, where our suffering can no longer reach them. Let them finally now be free.
'Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.' – Mahatma Gandhi.
'I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge – myth is more potent than history – dreams are more powerful than facts – hope always triumphs over experience – laughter is the cure for grief – love is stronger than death.' – Robert Fulghum.
This story has nothing to do with the Haiti disaster, but please, remember those in need who have suffered and lost oh so much in resent weeks. Please keep a charitable heart and remember to value what you have and hold it with you forever. You never know what you have lost until it is gone.