"Aw stop it, that's just a lightning bug Nathan," Elysa sighed, "This is the third time you've come to us with one. In fact I think you just keep catching the same bug over and over!" I looked over with a sympathetic grin on my face upon seeing the disheartened look on Nathan's, "She does have a point, you know stars are really rare around here. The ones that do fall die out really quickly, it's cool that you're trying though."
"Thanks Evan," he mumbled a reply, then becoming happy again, "I'm going to keep trying! No matter how long it takes me!" I let out a small awkward laugh, "Quick rebound," I muttered half to myself.
Our short conversation was interrupted abruptly when a small explosion sounded in the corner of the dim classroom, Elysa, Nathan and I all turned simultaneously to see smoke pluming from a mass of wire that a now covered in soot Ike was backing away from, coughing up a storm. I saw Elysa tense up and a small groan escaped her before she completely exploded on Ike. "You complete IDIOT! You know you're not supposed to be using school materials for your stupid projects, the teacher is going to freak when he sees this!" she stormed over in his direction, fuming.
"What are you going to do about it tattle tale?"
"Oh that's it you jerk!"
Before things could escalate any farther the bell rang and school was officially let out for the day. Even though we were leaving and wouldn't see him I could tell this would be the last time the teacher trusted us enough to step out of the room for five minutes. I was in no hurry to leave the classroom though, since no student who came here trusted the structural integrity of the building they would all try to storm out at once so they could finally know that the roof hadn't fallen on their heads yet.
It's true, the old schoolhouse wasn't the prettiest, the building leaned a little and the paint was rough as well as the brickwork. The floors creaked and everyone dreaded the day they would get a class on the upper floor, the lighting was dim, if it even worked. There was work going on to fix some of the issues but it wasn't going very fast, people had been too preoccupied with getting their own lives back together since populations had been coming back up from the underground. There were also problems because of the patches or low radioactivity, it was messing with the wildlife and plants, it was unnatural and nobody liked it.
"Hey Evan, you coming or what?" Ike elbowed me as he was nearing the door, snapping me out of my thoughts.
"Oh, right. Sorry," I stuttered anxiously, striking up a quick pace and passing him out of the worn doorway. I looked around a little before walking on down my own path to home, by my guesses we had been let out later than usual, but I couldn't tell, thick clouds were covering the already dimmed sky and I couldn't see the sun at all today. Without anything to preoccupy me, I became lost in my own thought again as I always did when I had the chance to be alone, and drifted away from the gray pavement and the brown world.
I always liked to daydream about what it would have been like to live before the giant nuclear war, as I had heard stories from Elysa many times before about how green and full of life it used to be in our home. But it was only dreaming, I realized, as I finally stepped onto the front porch of my house and saw how brown the grass was, and how bare the trees. I sighed and pulled open the door, just like any day before and let out my usual call of, "I'm home!"