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Drawing attention to himself was a mistake. Ronald stopped and stared at him. So did everyone else in the general vicinity.
Another guy from soccer, Jonathan Carroll, gave him an unfriendly up-and-down and got in his face. “The school’s on fire, dickhead. You know something about it?”
Gabriel was ready to shove him back, but Ms. Anderson put a hand up in front of his face and in front of Jonathan’s, too.
“We’re evacuating, gentlemen. Keep moving.”
Ronald and Jonathan kept moving.
“You, too, Mr. Merrick.”
He hesitated. His element was calling him.
But his brain was warning him. If the school was on fire, being caught anywhere near it would be bad.
Then someone from behind him snorted and said, “Leave it to Merrick to find a way to set the library on fire.”
The library.
Layne.
And Nick.
He shoved a hand into his bag for his phone which wasn’t there, of course.
“Mr. Merrick,” said Ms. Anderson. “We need to move.”
He moved all right bolting left, fighting the surge of students, ignoring his teacher’s protesting calls behind him.
CHAPTER 40
Layne and Nick were trapped.
They’d been able to crawl to the “Cozy Corner,” an alcove the librarians had set up for casual reading. It was really just an old storage area, five feet high and four feet deep, and there was only enough room to sit on beanbag chairs. The back wall was painted cinder block with inch-wide openings that vented into the computer lab.
Which was deserted, of course, the door at the opposite side of the room closed. The library was at the dead center of the school. Any students would be heading away.
All the bookcases were engulfed in flames, completely blocking escape. The heat was intense. The carpet crawled with fire barely inches from where they crouched against the wall. She couldn’t hear students screaming anymore and wondered if anyone even knew they were stuck here.
The fire alarms, however, were deafening.
Simon.
He’d been at lunch, and she knew he’d taken to shooting hoops in the gym instead of submitting to ridicule in the cafeteria.
Would he even know the fire alarms were going off?
“Stay close to the vents,” called Nick. “I’m trying to create a gap in the oxygen so the fire stays out of here.”
Staying close to the vents wasn’t a problem. She practically had her face pressed against the cinder blocks, hyperventilating through the gaps. The air on the other side felt like it was coming out of a freezer. She was sweating through her clothes from the heat at her back.
She couldn’t worry about her brother now. He hadn’t been in the library, so he was probably in better shape than she was.
“How?” she gasped. “How are you doing that?”
“Maybe we can have that whole discussion another time.”
Nick glanced over and she watched the firelight flicker across his features. He was sweating, too. “You all right?”
