Set In Motion

The rest of my day passes fast. In English, my teacher assigned a bunch of homework to do for tomorrow, and between that and the work from the other classes today; it’s going to be a long night of painful math equations and history projects.

But the last class is my favourite and I hope it’ll relax me before I have to go home and stare at numbers that just won’t multiply for hours. I head to science. It's my favourite class because the teacher, Miss Gale, teaches in a fun way most of the time. She's also really funny.

I arrive in class just in time and slip into my seat in the back when the bell rings. Right after that Sam and Nicole come in a little breathless. After giving their tardy slip to Miss Gale, they come and take their seats right beside me. I look at Nicole for the reason why they were late and she explains: 

  “We stayed a little late in the back of the safety tree to... collect our papers.” Code word for kissing.

“So as were going in, we see a group of teenagers that are just hanging out, though they don't go to our school.”

Huh. That's weird. The school has strict rules of no loitering, especially if you're not from this school. 

“So then we we're walking by and we hear them talking about something happening in our back yard today! Sam stopped and asked what they meant and all they would tell us is to watch out!”

That doesn't really bother me, I mean teenagers love to scare people and they just saw an opportunity to have some laughs with them. That’s what I tell Nicole but she still seems a little freaked out so I just decide to leave it be. Nicole can sometimes be gullible and when that happens its better just leave her alone. Besides I still have a pretty big headache and I can't deal with it right now.

So instead I try to focus on Miss Gale but after a couple of minutes I can tell it's impossible. I guess it's just one of those days were I can't concentrate so I look out the window.

If I stretch my neck to the far left I can just make out three or four teenagers standing around. They just seem to be waiting for something to happen, and that reminds me too much of the prediction of danger I had when I came in, so I switch to watching the clouds.

In the background I hear Miss Gale, still talking about the way the human cell needs water given to it by osmosis every day or else it’ll die, along with the body the cells are in.

I’m pretty sure she’s holding up an image of a dead cell or something as gross as that, because everyone starts making gagging noises. That just makes me concentrate more on whatever’s happening outside. The sky seems to be darkening but I can’t really tell. Is that thunder I just heard? I ignore it, probably just a car backfiring.

As I watch a cloud elephant dancing with a cloud mouse the sky turns blacker. In a second the wind starts picking up and the air is charged with electricity. So that was thunder I heard. I mean where I live it’s pretty dry but we do get bad rain storms without any notice. I turn to tell Nicole about the flash storm happening outside when I hear a giant BOOM and someone starts screaming. I look back out the window and see the safety tree being ripped out of the earth by the winds. It seems impossible that I was just underneath it a minute ago.

Then a hole the size of our school opens up in the field. It looks so deep and it keeps expanding... toward us! It takes me a while to get this but when I do I don't think of running.

I watch cars fall into the growing hole, watch as people outside are scrambling to get out of its way but failing and getting sucked in. Somewhere, someone, I think it's Sam, screams my name but I don't answer. I don’t turn around or try to run, or do anything.

Time has slowed to a crawl. I know I'm in shock, that I need to get up and run away but I just can't. I think about all the warnings, my gut feeling, that guy telling Nicole and Sam to be careful, and I know I'm going to regret ignoring them. Then the window explodes and I black out.