AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was lifted. Silas's hands slid further down, gripping around the elbows and at my bicep.
But it was a slow process, still. I couldn’t breathe.
My lungs burned. I tried tucking my head down, trying to find any small pocket of space, any air at all.
My mouth opened, unwilling to wait.
I choked on sawdust.
???
The next thing I knew, I was on my back, waking up from what felt like a deep sleep, like at the slumber party where I had the nightmare and I clawed up North’s arm after.
The first thing I felt was my mouth full of itchy dust, and a face pressed close to mine.
I gagged, turning over, pushing away whoever it was. I coughed hard.
Arms clutched me around the shoulders. “Breathe, Peanut. Just breathe.”
There was grass below me. I sucked in the harsh headiness mixed with the fresh air and the leather and Cypress of Nathan. When my lungs were filled, I had more energy to spit and cough out the sawdust clustered in my mouth. Someone had my hands, but I yanked them free, clawing at my chest and neck as if that would help ebb the amount of sawdust in my mouth and throat. My nails clawed away the wet, stuck wood particles, leaving trails along my skin but no matter how hard I wiped at my body, it wasn’t enough.
“Get her out of here,” Kota’s voice ordered, his voice deeper than I remembered. “Get those kids back home. Victor?”
“Already on it,” Victor said, hovering over me somewhere. He started talking again and backed away as he did so. He, too, barked orders but not to the guys, and in a code I didn’t recognize. I was too distracted to figure out what he was saying.
Luke’s voice came after me now. “Sang, I’m going to clear your eyes, okay? But don’t open them yet. We need to get you to some water.”
It took me that long to realize that I hadn’t yet even attempted to open them. There was a thick layer of wet dust stuck to my eyelids, like wearing a heavy, itchy eye mask. They felt glued shut. I wasn’t sure it would ever clear.
Luke’s tender hands brushed against my eyes, tracing carefully over the crevice under my brow and ducking into the corners. He pulled away the heaviness but there still remained a thin layer, itchy. I squinted hard, wanting to blink but kept my lids closed.
A cloth covered my chest, and I realized I was in my bra and underwear. I smelled the scent of the ocean.
“Aggele mou,” Silas murmured. “I’m going to pick you up. Keep those eyes closed.”
Silas wrapped his thick arms around my shoulders, hooking under my legs and lifted easily. When I was in the air, he was moving.
There was a hustle of movement. I heard Derrick telling someone he was okay. Gabriel was barking after Micah to hurry along. Nathan yelled at Tom to run ahead to Kota’s house. There were more voices but they mixed together.
Silas snugged me into him, his grip on my body strong enough that I was sure there would be bruises but it didn’t bother me. I clutched at his chest, willing myself to stay awake now. I wanted to keep breathing. I was scared to death of losing myself in the dark again. I wanted water to rinse my mouth to talk to them. I wanted to wash my eyes to see their faces.
Silas moved quickly. From what I could hear, others were around him, too. Quiet, focused. They didn’t need to speak to each other. They knew their jobs and they did them. Always watching. Always prepared.
It was several eon-long minutes before Silas stopped moving. I was lowered to the ground. Concrete warmed my back. Silas moved away and I struggled to sit up. The shirt over my body dropped to my side.
“Sang,” Luke hovered over me again. “Just lay back for one second. I’ll clean your face.”
I couldn’t say anything. It felt like my mouth was too full of sawdust. If I opened up, it would shift and I’d start coughing again.
The sound of water drew my attention. Luke touched my chin, tilting my face where he wanted it. A smooth stream of water chased along my temple, washing over one of my eyes. I flinched, trying to pull back because it was cold. My eyes stung at the contact.
“Stay still,” Luke said, more stern than I’d ever heard him. “If we don’t get the dust out of your eyes, it could hurt them permanently.”
I made a guttural groan and stilled, biting my tongue against the chill and the pain. I made fists, my nails digging into my palms. Big hands, Silas’s hands, found one of my fists and held strong to it.
Luke swept tender fingers across my eyes, brushing away the stinging. When one eye was clear, he tilted my head again, sweeping the other eye.
The second eye was swept clean. He removed the water. “I’m going to tug on your eyelids, okay? One more second.”
He tugged gently at my left upper eyelid, pulling it out and down over my lower one. Natural tears formed. He held the water again to my face and it washed my eyes.
He did the same with the other eye. He pulled the water away again. “Open up, Sang.”
I blinked hard, forcing my eyes open. Sunlight blinded me for a minute. I blinked again, and Luke’s face hovered into view, with Silas right behind him.
Luke’s brown eyes bore into mine. “Hang still one more second,” he said. He pulled apart my eyelids, when I really wanted to blink some more. First one, then the other, and stared at my eyes. He held a flashlight over them, gazing after me. “Okay. You look clean.”
“Can you get up?” Silas asked.
I nodded. Silas held on to my hand, his shirtless body flexing as he pulled me until I was sitting up. I was sitting next to my own house, just outside the garage. It surprised me that I wasn’t at Kota’s but then I wondered if there was a second short cut to that part of the woods that Nathan hadn’t shown me before.
The first thing I grabbed for was the water hose. I yanked it toward my face, letting the liquid fill my mouth. I gagged on it, swished, and pulled away from Silas and Luke to spit at my side. I did it again, and again. When I thought I’d finally cleaned the last little bits out of my mouth, I’d find a new crevice with another trace of dust.
When I couldn’t taste any more wood in my mouth, I ran the hose over my face, sloshing away the water. The coolness ran over my body, over my exposed skin and the bra that still clung to my frame and even into the panties I wore. I didn’t know where my shorts were. I imagined they might still be in the sawdust pile, stuck forever.
The sound of a helicopter flying overhead pulled me away from my desperate attempt at self-cleaning. I looked up, watching it bear down at the woods, about where I imagined the sawdust pile was located.
I opened my mouth to speak, coughed. I picked up the hose again, swallowing some water. I pulled it away again. “What—”
“Don’t worry about that,” Luke said.
“That’s right,” a deep voice thundered from beyond where I could see with Silas and Luke hovering. “Don’t worry about that, because you’ve got a lot of other shit to worry about right now.”
Luke frowned, looking up in North’s direction. “Not now. She’s had enough.”
“Me, too,” he barked.
I sat up more, getting onto my knees, choking back another groan. What now?
Luke stood up, turning around. “Leave her alone.”
North stood further back, his intense eyes barreling down on me. “Fuck that. She’s going to fucking listen to me now.”
I dropped a foot down, using it to rise as steady as I could. Luke stood with me. I took the hose from his hands and aimed it at my neck, rinsing the clumps of wet dust from my body, not caring that I was standing in my underwear. I was free. I was alive. I’d do anything they wanted. I’d even listen to North.
“What the fuck do you think you were doing, Sang?” North pointed a fist at me. “I said don’t go, and you left. I said stop, you ran off. Not a word about where you were going.”
“I didn’t have time,” I said, my voice cracked. I shoved the hose at my face, swallowing some water.
“Didn’t have time, my ass. I told you to stop
and you didn’t listen.”
“I had to leave,” I said in a voice calmer than I expected. My head rolled back, then tilted so I was gazing over at him while I continued to rinse off my stomach. “There was the call. I heard it. We left.”
“What call?”
“The hooting,” I said, I straightened, meeting his eyes. If he wanted me to be honest, here I was. Honest. “Emergency.”
Silas stepped between us. “This isn’t the time for this.”
“It’s fine, Silas,” I said to him, planting a gentle hand on his back. He turned to me. “It’s okay. I can talk.”
Silas seemed unsure, but shifted a half step back, keeping his eyes on me. A mixture of confusion and fear settling in.
“What the fuck do you mean emergency?” North growled. “That squealing pig noise?”
“The boys invented it,” I said. “Micah, Tom and Derrick.”
“How come we didn’t know about it?”
“It was designed so you would never know. They didn’t want the Academy cavalry barging in for the rescue for every little thing.”
“So they told you? And you didn’t tell us? Why?”
“Apparently they thought I could help,” I said, straightening my shoulders. I didn’t mean to sound so arrogant, but I couldn’t help the calm in my voice. I don’t know where the strength came from. “And I promised them I wouldn’t tell you.”
