Yeah, so somehow I managed to single-handedly murder my history teacher. But like I said, that was only the beginning.

The continuation of my suckish day started with what came directly after Social Studies class…a fire drill. Or, at least, that's what a lot of other people thought because they didn't know Mr. Ralphwood had been fried from the inside out and was lying on the floor of his classroom in a helpless heap.

So, like always, there was a whole bunch of whining and complaining about how the alarm was too loud. I heard voices through the walls from people wondering where the smoke was coming from and I couldn't do anything besides swallow a lump in my throat. I looked at Kiya and Nathan who were choking on the infected air and examining the room, as if there were candid cameras in the classroom. Kiya was a level-headed individual. She'd probably come up with some sort of plan for us to contact the police station and inform them thoroughly on the bizarre smoke that had ____

"We need to escape school." Kiya stated.

Great. When in doubt, turn to Nate for advi___

"And we should take the others too. Which way do you think will be faster? We can't use any of the fire exits." Nate replied to her.

Now I was just really bewildered. First of all, escaping school would be like going A-wall or making a jailbreak or something. The stairwells were made out of brick and cement. You needed special electronic keys just to open the doors to this place. We were on the 3rd floor of our building, too. There weren't even any windows in the classroom!

I heard Kiya give a frustrated sigh and look over at Malcolm.

He seemed to think she was using eye-contact to interrogate him as to why he was still here, so he said, "Well, Mrs. Macroft sent me to get you guys when she came up three short during the headcount." Malcolm was getting bombarded with smoke, as the grayish fog flew into the clear air of the hallways, looking for some more oxygen to contaminate.

"Why are we even trying to escape at all?" I asked. My throat was dry from coughing heavily and my heartbeat was drumming against my chest so noisily I could barely hear my own voice. I guess I already knew the answer. I had killed someone. Okay, fine. I was going to the big house, my name would show up on the news tonight, I would forever shame my family blah blah blah. I was completely freaked out, sure, but why were Kiya and Nate even concerned in the first place. They might be mutants, but they weren't the ones who had accidentally made our teacher nearly spontaneously combust. This was my fault, not theirs.

"Because you killed someone," Kiya answered in that 'Duh' tone she used with Lola and all of the other popular sluts at our school.

I nodded, even though it didn't make sense. My eyes must have furrowed (a sure sign I was totally lost here) because Nate stepped in to explain. "Obviously, ever since the attack on Alcatraz, mutants aren't being trusted____"

"If they were ever even trusted in the first place" Kiya interrupted. Nate ignored her, "Look, Westley, if they find out a mutant did it, they can't just assume it was you. They need proof. They'll take blood tests and mental scans. Not just of you. But of every person who was here when that happened," he pointed to Mr. Ralphwood's corpse. The smoke had completely dissipated from our teacher's mouth and the room, but that didn't stop us from coughing. It had to be the smell the smoke had sent off…it smelled like extra-crispy internal organs…and I knew that wasn't too far from the truth.

"And when they find out there's more than just one mutant here at the school, they'll find some way___make up some psychotic lie____so that we'll all be blamed. Staying here to hope things pan out good would be like committing suicide" Kiya continued.

Realizations began to bitchslap me in the face. So Kiya is for sure a mutant? So is Nate? Who are the others? How did they both think the same exact thing about the authorities? Did that make one of them a telepath? How were we supposed to escape anyhow?

I'm not gonna pretend like I wasn't afraid. I was. I didn't want to escape school (even though I never thought I'd say that.) At least, I didn't want to escape knowing the police would be hot on our trail and ready to take mental scans of us. That was enough to freak any teenager out.

I was so absorbed in Kiya and Nate and this new revelation, that I totally forgot Malcolm was still standing in the doorway. I turned around to face him and the other two followed my gaze. Malcolm's face had lost its color, his nostrils began to flare, and his eyes had turned into sharp little slits.

"You're a mutant, Wes…and you didn't even tell me?" were his only words.

Well, this is just great. I killed my teacher and the only friend I've had for years looks like he's ready to pulverize me into a dust.

"Well…what was I supposed to say…I didn't know how to…I can't even control it. I figured it wouldn't matter. I mean, no big deal, right?"

"No big deal?!" he screeched at me angrily, "You MURDERED our history teacher!"

"Shut-up, shut-up, shut-up!" Kiya yelled. And I did shut-up. Because if there's one thing in this world that scares me more than policemen and biased doctors taking mental scans of me, or ex-best friends pulverizing me into dust, its Kiya with her temper flaring at a nice 200 degrees Fahrenheit. "We're a whole bunch of mutants standing directly in front of our dead history teacher, the staff and just about every other living organism in this whole damn school has already left the building, and we only have about 4 minutes to get out of here before firemen come in searching for our presumably dead bodies! There is no time on this godforsaken planet to worry about your traumatically crumbling friendship!"

She looked over at me. Her curly black hair whipped around as she did and tiny beads of sweat poured down her cocoa-colored face from the heat of the classroom, "Do you wanna live or what?"

I should've been angry at her. But I knew she was right. No one had stuck around long enough to know if Mr. Ralphwood had literally started to burn. They probably thought there was a fire and we were dead. It's not like there were any windows to spot the flame either. This could either be a good way to pretend we had died, maybe even left the school grounds in delirium, or this was a really bad way to be caught red-handed.

Malcolm sighed. "Well, if you're all mutants and Westley really did kill Mr. Ralphwood…I'm not defending any of you freaks!"

My friend-turned-nemesis turned around at the speed of light and began to run down the hallways, turning into a black silhouette before disappearing completely in the smoke that was still wafting outside.

I started to go after him, but Kiya yanked me back by my wrist. "There's no time for a heroic chase," she snapped, "If we really want to stop him, we can start by getting the hell out of here."

"Can one of you fly? Walk through walls like that one girl from the news on____"

"Nope." Nathan shut me down immediately.

I could tell Kiya was getting irritated that we had already lost so much time.

"We could try going down the stairwell and using an alternate exit," I tried to calm her down. I don't know why her bad moods affected me like they did. Maybe it was a healthy fear of being ripped to shreds by her nimble fingers; maybe her mutant ability had some weird empathic influence on people.

"That's what I was thinking," she mused absent-mindedly before snapping back to attention, "Okay. We'll do that. But when we get down to the first floor we'll have to use a doorway that goes to the back of the school. They always line up in the front, right?"

Nate nodded his head in affirmation. Kiya walked around a few of the desks that had been turned over in the other students' rush to get out of the classroom. She grabbed her purse and stuffed it into her backpack which was nearly empty, only holding her history notebook, her Geometry textbook (for the next class), and a notebook and novel I couldn't identify. Nate had followed her lead, so I decided to do the same. Something told me we wouldn't be coming back here for anything so I did the one thing I had wanted to do for a while. After unzipping my black and gray Jansport backpack, I grabbed my history textbook and threw it against the wall with an earsplitting BANG!

I had managed to forget just that quick that Kiya and Nate were even with me in the room. My face went red from embarrassment. I had just had some sort anger-induced spaz attack in front of the class pretty boy and a chick who already seemed hesitant to let me within a 20-mile radius of herself. I zipped up my backpack to delay turning around to their stares. But when I finally did, I was surprised to see Nate chuckling under his breath and Kiya with some goofy grin slapped across her face.

Maybe it was their way of letting me know having anger-induced spaz attacks were okay, but the fact that it just amused them embarrassed me even more.

Well, we grabbed our stuff and off we went. We had already lost time and I could tell Kiya wasn't playing around anymore by the overwhelming tension and determination that was flickering in her eyes.

The hallways had disgusting pale pink tile with an occasional sea-green tile popping up every now and again. It wasn't like it was designed that way. It looked like some of the pink tiles had undergone damage, and when they tried to replace them, they found out the color was out of stock so they had to settle for something else. And I guess the unflattering sea-green was that something else. My palms began getting sweaty from anxiety as I caught a glance, through the humongous glass window at the end of the hallway, of a few firetrucks pulling into the school parking lot where a whole bunch of kids were lined up for "safety". That was the one thing I didn't get about our fire drill procedures. We'd just stand outside in the parking lot, pretending as if there weren't a fire, as if there wouldn't be any flaming debris exploding and jabbing our eyes out if we didn't duck in cover. I'd always wanted to believe that if for some reason our school did catch on fire, we'd find a more suitable place to go. But as I passed the window, seeing my fellow classmates and the whole faculty lined up in the gaping space where cars should be, I knew that wasn't the case.

We made a sharp turn at the end of the hall and continued down, passing posters advertising the school plays and the boy's restrooms. I turned my head to see Nate running up ahead of us to burst through the stairwell door with such strength it almost scared me. Maybe he wasn't a telepath, I thought. Maybe he had super strength and duration and_____

"Speed it up back there, Westley!"

I snapped out of my thoughts to see Kiya already beginning down the stairs and I hadn't even reached the doorway. So I did speed it up.

We ran down the stairs, Nate jumping down the last three steps of every flight. I wasn't sure if he was doing that to get downstairs faster because he had seen the firetrucks, or if he was just doing that to look cool. Either way, he got down before Kiya and I, but that was where our road stopped. Nate attempted to twist the doorknob….it wouldn't open.

"Dammit!" Kiya growled, kicking the door and kneeing it powerfully. I didn't judge her. Anger-induced spaz attacks were okay during times like these.

I probably would've gotten in line behind her to open a can of whoopass on the door like it was the sole reason my life sucked so much, but then I heard this pounding noise from outside the firm brick walls of the stairwell. It sounded like someone was knocking against the walls with a gigantic hammer.

My stomach dropped the way it did when I had gone on my first rollercoaster. Nate's face twisted in fear and a drop of disappointment. Kiya looked downright infuriated and positioned herself like she was about to fight some wild animal.

The firemen were here. They had to be.