When I arrive at the school and see his bike still chained to the bike rack, I know it’s not true.
Chapter Nineteen
THE SCHOOL BUILDING IS EMPTY. I TRY opening the back door, but it’s locked. When I run around to the front door, I notice another bike leaning against the side of the building. Axel’s bike. Maybe Axel started beating up on Lyle in the schoolyard and someone intervened? Again, I don’t quite believe my own thoughts, but allow myself a kernel of hope as I race up the front steps of the school and pull on the front door handle. It doesn’t budge. For the second time today, I find myself banging on a door.
After a while, I give up and sit on the stoop. My legs are tired from running and I need to think. There’s no use running off when I have no idea which direction to go.
Where could they be? I tug at the tear in my jeans. An empty plastic bag blows around the parking lot. It looks like a dancing ghost, moving up and down and back and forth in the air. I can hear Ms. Fontane’s voice in my head saying, “Three steps, left, right, left.” What did I see in the gym that day? I press my palms against my eyes. There was so much smoke blocking any vision of my surroundings. But there had to be some sort of clue. We were inside somewhere. And I tripped over something, something soft that bumped against my shins.
“A cat!” I yell, jumping up.
I dash across the parking lot to the back of the school and then down the cracked dirt path. I’m nearly to the hill when I hear a familiar sound. A shrill noise, like a loud whistle—like Lyle blowing against a piece of grass. I stop and listen again. It’s coming from the direction of Tabitha’s house.
I pluck a piece of grass and put my fingers around it like Lyle taught me. I bring it to my lips and then hesitate. Helen’s voice repeats in my head: “She saw you in the fire, too. Only you didn’t make it out.” What am I running toward? Do I really want to find Lyle? If my future flashes always come true, does that mean my mom’s future flash will also? The shrill noise pierces the air again. My mom left me to deal with this on my own. I can’t do the same to Lyle. I take a deep breath and blow. To my surprise, a piercing sound fills the air. A second later, another whistle responds. I am running again.
When I get close to Tabitha’s house, I scan the roof for smoke and fire. My legs nearly crumple in relief when I see none. Then I see Lyle. Or at least I guess it’s Lyle because of his gray T-shirt and red hair, but his face looks entirely different. His eye is still swollen and purple from the other day, but now the other eye is swollen too and his nose is a blood-smeared bulge. He’s pacing back and forth across the porch, his hands on his head, taking deep breaths.
“What happened to you?” I cry.
“Axel,” he says.
When I step onto the porch, he stops pacing and starts talking so quickly that I can barely keep up. “When you were home sick today, I thought I’d come feed the cats. I found the key next to the pot, which seemed kinda weird, but then I thought maybe you forgot to put the pot back over it the last time you came. I let myself in and I didn’t know it, but he was already inside. I think he was burning those GI Joes on Tabitha’s bed because there was a weird chemical smell coming from the bedroom.” Lyle’s voice sounds strange, like he’s holding his nose, his n’s sounding like d’s. As he talks, he keeps eyeing the glass door behind him. “Anyway, I didn’t know what it was but I went into the kitchen and then I heard a noise upstairs. I grabbed a cat bowl—it was the closest hard object I could find—and I climbed the stairs. I thought it was probably just a cat knocking something over but I wanted to be sure. I got to the landing and Axel was walking out of Tabitha’s bedroom. He saw me and he did this.” Lyle points to his nose.
“Did you talk to him at all? I mean, before he—”
“I asked him what he was doing in Tabitha’s house. He told me it was none of my business and then I said he had to get out. That’s when he punched me.”
“I can’t believe he broke into Tabitha’s house and then broke your nose!” I don’t know why anything Axel does shocks me anymore, but somehow this does.
“I don’t know if my nose is necessarily brok—”
“It’s broken,” I interrupt. “There’s no question. It barely even looks like a nose.”
Lyle winces. “I knew this would happen. If not today, then tomorrow. Axel came up to me at school, you know. He asked me why my, uh, girlfriend wasn’t there.”
My face flushes.
“Then he said he doesn’t like people spying on him, and I told him that he already gave me a black eye to prove that point. Then I said that he’s crazy to think that I was spying on him since he would never do anything interesting enough to be worth spying on.”
“You said that to him? How did you get away with him not punching you right then?”
“Good question. He probably wanted to. A whole bunch of kids were listening. But Ms. Fontane interrupted. She got us right back to doing pliés.” Lyle starts pacing again. “Still, I just don’t get how he knew about Tabitha’s house. I mean, he got here before I did so he couldn’t have followed me.”
I close my eyes and picture the Dorito bag caught in the bush’s branches. The bush that I can almost touch from where we are.
“Axel followed me here yesterday,” I say. “He must have figured out that no one is home and thought no one would be here because I wasn’t at school.” I look at Lyle’s nose and wonder what would have happened if I had come instead of Lyle. Axel might hate me, but he’s never physically hurt me. Did he punch Lyle because Lyle caught him in Tabitha’s house? Or because Lyle stood up to him today? Or just to do it, like all the other times? Then I realize all that matters is that it has to stop.
“Lyle, you have to tell someone.” I take a deep breath. “Or I will. I mean it. I don’t care if you hate me and don’t want to be friends. He’s going to kill you if we don’t stop him.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry I said that before about the whole friend thing. You’re right. I should have told someone a long time ago. And I will. I promise. It’s just, well, there’s another more immediate problem with Axel.”
“Where is he?” I ask, as Lyle glances at the door again.
“That’s the thing,” Lyle says and then hesitates. “He’s in the house.”
“What? We need to get out of here before he—”
“I don’t think he’s going to come out. I fell down when he punched me, but when I stood up, I hit him over the head with that.” He points down and I notice the sparkly purple ceramic cat bowl on the porch.
“What?”
“He’s knocked out in there. Upstairs, in the hall,” Lyle says, pointing to the door. I look from Lyle to the cat bowl to the door, trying to take it all in.
“You knocked out Axel Johnson with a cat bowl?” is all I can think to say.
“He’s not moving, but he’s breathing,” Lyle replies, looking back at the house.
“We need to get help right away. It’s at least half a mile to the closest house and we can’t drag him that far. Not to mention that he’d probably kill us if he woke up while we were dragging him. Wait a sec. I’ll call Walt. I’ll explain what happened . . .”
“You’re going to call Walt?”
“You have a better idea?” I ask.
“No, I guess you’re right.”
“Hopefully he won’t wake up while we’re looking for the phone.”
“I’m going to try not to think about that,” Lyle says.
When we step into the house, the putrid odor of cat urine is overwhelming. Despite the cat door, apparently Frida is the only cat going outside with Tabitha out of town. I look around the living room and see dozens of cats, but no phone. No phone in the kitchen either. Suddenly I remember Tabitha talking to her friend on her plum-colored cell phone.
“There’s no phone in the house,” I whisper.
“Okay, let’s get out of here then. Your comment about Axel waking up doesn’t exactly make me want to stick around.”
“Hold on. D
o you smell that?”
“Do you really think I can smell anything with my nose like this?” Lyle asks. “But I’m guessing it smells like cat pee. Surprise, surprise.”
“No, there’s something else.”
“Maybe that chemical smell I noticed before?” Lyle asks.
I wrinkle my nose and step past Lyle toward the stairs. The cat odor no longer masks the strange smell.
“Smoke,” I say, sniffing again. I try to keep the rising panic out of my voice. “I think it’s smoke.”
“Don’t go up there, Laney. That’s where Axel is,” Lyle says.
“I don’t want to, but that smell—”
There’s nothing good upstairs, but I trudge up the steps anyway.
At the top of the staircase, I take a deep breath and poke my head into the hall. I look to my right and see nothing but a door at the end of the hallway. Tabitha’s sewing room. I look the other way.
Axel is laying on his stomach with his face turned to the side. My heart beats so loud I’m sure I’ll wake him. I take a few steps down the hall. His white-blonde hair is flopped over his face, sticking to some blood on his cheek. His shirt moves up and down. He’s breathing, but otherwise doesn’t budge. I feel a moment of pity for the boy laying on the floor. Then I hear a noise behind me. Lyle’s battered face appears in the door frame at the top of the stairs.
I raise my eyebrows at Lyle.
“That’s him,” he whispers.
“No kidding.”
I didn’t come up here to risk rousing Axel. I came up because of the smell, much stronger now, coming from the room behind him. I walk past Axel, careful not to bump into him.
The door to Tabitha’s room is open.
Please don’t be what I think this is.
I close my eyes for a minute before peering in. Instead of the usual purple patchwork quilt, furious yellow flames and thick swirling smoke cover her bed. The fire leaps to Tabitha’s purple curtains. It devours them in an instant. A wave of heat slams against my face. I take a step back and bump against the wall.
“Run!” Lyle yells, turning back toward the stairs.
“Wait! We can’t leave him here!” I lean down and tug on one of Axel’s black high top sneakers. It comes off in my hand. I grab onto Axel’s leg, but he’s too heavy to move by myself.
Smoke pours into the hallway now, above our heads. A flame jumps from the room and lands on the rug. It races down the carpet quicker than I would have thought possible.
“Laney! C’mon!” Lyle yells.
I take a step toward Lyle and trip over a cat. I sprawl forward. Fire sears my hand. The pain is far more intense than it was in my future flash. Blisters instantly erupt on the reddened skin of my palm, and I pull myself up, screaming.
It is happening. The future flash I saw when I first touched Lyle is no longer a future flash. The nightmare of fire and blood is my real life.
I glance down the hall. I am terrified. I can run for the stairs, like I did in my future flash, or I can find the courage to stay and try to save the life of someone who used to be my friend. I know what I have to do. I didn’t choose to come here so I could just run away. I’m not going to be like my mother. Maybe it’s hopeless, maybe I won’t be able to change what happens to us, but I have to at least try.
I pull my shirt over my mouth and use my free hand to grab Axel’s arm. He doesn’t budge. Lyle pauses at the top of the stairs, looking back at me.
“I can’t move him by myself!” I yell.
Lyle rushes to me. Together, we flip Axel over. His eyes flutter open and then close again.
“Under his arm!” I yell. Lyle is bent over, coughing up blood. I panic and reconsider running. There’s no point in trying to help Axel if it means all three of us might die.
Lyle reaches under Axel’s arm. I let my shirt fall from my mouth and hold onto Axel with both hands, pain blasting through my blisters.
We can’t do this, I think with each step, but somehow we keep pulling. Smoke fills my lungs until I can barely breathe. The rug behind us is now on fire. Axel’s leg is burning too.
“Stop!” I scream to Lyle. A fist-sized flame is eating through Axel’s jeans. I drop Axel’s foot and stomp out the flame.
“We need to get out of here,” Lyle wheezes. I grab Axel’s leg again. When I glance down at him, I notice that he’s staring back at me, his pale blue eyes wide with fear and confusion.
“Lyle!” I scream.
Lyle looks down and drops Axel’s leg. For a second, no one moves.
Then Axel pushes himself up, his body erecting slowly like some huge bloody creature rising from the deep. He steadies himself against the wall. Then he lurches forward. I flinch, but Axel doesn’t even look at me or Lyle. He heads for the staircase, the only way out.
Then it comes to me—the one future flash I had of Axel. It replays in my head in an instant. It happened in kindergarten on the day we were trying to recreate strawberry astronaut ice cream in Carmen’s bakery. We both had wanted to stir the sticky pink mixture so Carmen suggested that we stir it together. We grabbed onto the wooden spoon at the same time. When his hand touched mine, I saw the hallway. This hallway. These stairs. An older boy and a white cat with black ears. I followed the boy down the stairs.
Then, in the future flash, came a crash.
And darkness.
A cool sensation washed over me, like a late afternoon breeze in the fall. The kind that tells you that snow is blowing in.
The darkness I experienced in that future flash was almost peaceful, which is probably why I didn’t remember it until now.
Axel takes another step toward the stairs and it hits me. I know what’s going to happen.
“We’ll die,” I whisper it first. Then louder. “My mother saw it and I saw it too. We will die! Axel, we all will die if we go down the stairs! We need to find another way out!”
He turns to me, bleary-eyed. He clearly doesn’t understand.
“Laney, it’s the only way out,” Lyle says from behind me.
“No, Axel, stop!” I scream, tears choking me. “Don’t go that way! Please, that’s the wrong way!”
“Laney, what are you talking about,” Lyle says. Axel is leaning against the wall, barely able to stand. The heat is unbearable and the smoke thick around our heads.
“Lyle, Axel, listen. You have to trust me. If we go that way, we’re going to die.”
“Look, Art Freak,” Axel says before more billows of thick, black smoke send him into a coughing fit.
I grab his arm. His muscles scare me, but I hold on tight.
“I saw this,” I say, gripping tighter. “You have to believe me. I don’t have time to explain, but I saw this and if we go down those stairs we’re going to die.”
“Laney, that’s crazy,” Lyle manages through a cough. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Fine!” I cry. “There’s going to be a white cat with black ears in front of that stairway in a second. I swear.”
We all look at the stairway entrance.
“There’s no cat,” Axel says as he makes another move toward the stairs. I reach out and grab Axel’s shirt, but he pulls away.
“Laney!” Lyle yells. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
“It’s true, I swear it!” I yell, but they’re not listening. I can barely breathe through the smoke and tears. I don’t have a choice. I have to tell them the truth.
“The picture,” I say. “The one I drew of you in the fire! I saw it, Lyle. I knew this would happen!”
That’s when the cat appears.
“There,” I say, pointing frantically at the black-and-white cat.
“Where do we go then?” Lyle asks.
“This way,” I say. “There’s a way out this way.” To my relief, both Lyle and Axel follow me. I have no idea where I’m going, really. All that I know is we’re going away from the stairs.
I pull open the door to the room at the end of the hall—Tabitha’s sewing room. It’s decora
ted in purple, of course and filled with cloth, colored thread, and embroidered cat pillows.
“There,” I point to the window at the far end of the room. “That’s how we get out.” We rush to the window and look down. There’s a row of bushes underneath but not the kind that would cushion your fall. They are the kind with thorns and thick branches that could impale you.
Axel opens his mouth to say something. A crash interrupts him. We can’t see it, but I know. Part of the floor in Tabitha’s bedroom caved in. The floor would have landed on our heads if we had taken the stairs down to the living room below.
Lyle pushes past me and yanks at the window, wheezing and coughing as he strains to open it. It doesn’t budge. Axel joins him and together they struggle with the stuck pane.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Axel says. The window gives suddenly with a shriek. Axel punches the screen out and it lands on the bushes below. We all stick our heads out to feel the cool, clean air against our faces.
“Go,” Axel says, looking at me.
“Yeah, go, Laney,” Lyle coughs.
“No. I’m going last. You guys go.” I came here to save Lyle from the fire. I’m not going to have gone through all this for him to still burn up in this house.
No one moves.
“Go!” I scream.
Another crash echoes through the hall. Lyle and I back up and Axel swings his legs up over the windowsill and jumps. He lands hard just beyond the bushes and stumbles forward before falling, face down, into the grass.
“Go,” I repeat to Lyle. Lyle pulls himself up and then hesitates on the windowsill for a second before he jumps. He lands with a scream. His foot twists unnaturally under him.
“Jump, Laney!” he yells to me, clutching his foot with his hands.
I pull myself up so that I’m sitting in the windowsill with my legs dangling below. The air is clear outside. In front of me, the fields surrounding Tabitha’s house appear to go on forever—the fields we’ll need to walk through to get help.
Below me, Lyle and Axel don’t look like they’re walking any time soon, but at least they are alive.
I push myself off the windowsill and land smack in the middle of the bushes.
Future Flash Page 9