And then the girl I saw coming out of the gym after prom runs down the graduation aisle, not in a cap and gown.
“Everybody get out of here!” she screams, loud enough to be heard over all the noise. “The school is about to blow!”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST, in which they blow up the high school.
We watch the school burn, despite the best efforts of every fire truck within fifty miles.
The explosion took out nearly everything, including half the football field and nearly all of the parking lot. Most of our cars were destroyed, so no one’s been able to quite get home yet. Blue lights flashed through the initial explosions – including a pillar that reached all the way up to the clouds –
but then they stopped and it was just a ridiculously huge fire.
One that, as far as we can tell, didn’t kill anyone. Not even any indie kids.
When that girl told everyone to run, everyone did, even the adults, who you would have thought would assume it was a prank. But maybe they really could sense that there was something wrong going on in the town. Or maybe they remember more about their own teenage years than they ever let on.
Even my mom, carrying Meredith, found us in what turned out to be our second stampede of the month.
“Should we take her seriously?” she asked.
“We really should,” Mel said, dragging her along.
Everybody ran. Everybody got to a safe distance. Everybody was able to watch as the gym exploded in a wave so strong, it still knocked us back.
And that was the end of our high school. Which was only eight years old, because it had replaced the last one that had been blown up to destroy the soul-eating ghosts. The circle of life, I guess.
There are small hills to one side of the school. They’re fairly wooded, but you can still get a good view of the fire through the trees. There’s also a fast-food place at the bottom of the other side, down from the Mexican place where we ate lunch so many times, and after everyone realized we weren’t dead or likely to be, a lot of us were hungry. We got burgers and fries and climbed back up the hill to watch the blaze. We’re surrounded now by students in their caps and gowns, parents in suits and dresses, a few news crews – who are talking to my mother, but she’s keeping them a safe distance from me and Mel and Henna and Jared and Nathan and Steve and Meredith (who my mom left with us) – as we sit and eat and watch our high school burn to the ground.
“Well,” Mel says, taking a bite of a chicken burger, even eating the bun, “at least we got our diplomas.”
“I’m sure everyone else will have theirs mailed to them,” Jared says. He’s unzipped his gown and is wearing it like a cape. Still got the cap on, though. We all do. Because why not? We graduated.
“Think Dad can get us some cars for the summer?” I ask.
“As payment for missing the ceremony?” Mel says. “Oh, yeah. Henna and Jared and Nathan, too.
Though, actually, if he’d come today, he might not have been able to run fast enough, so maybe it’s for the best.”
“I can’t believe they blew up the school,” Nathan says, his head resting on Jared’s stomach.
Henna drinks the last of her soda. “I know. It felt so inevitable, you kind of thought it would never actually happen.”
“As long as they rebuild it by the time I graduate,” Meredith says.
“I’m sure they will, Merde Breath,” Jared says. “They can only have really good insurance, you’d think.”