Strangers by David Alexander Robertson

Author:David Alexander Robertson [Robertson, David Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Portage & Main Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

WHEREABOUTS

COLE STAGGERED OUT OF THE SCHOOL. Cast by the fire behind him, his long shadow spread out over the grass and stretched all the way to Eva’s and Brady’s bodies. Cole’s face was blackened with soot. His skin was singed a deep red from the heat. His clothing, what was left of it, was hanging off his body, torn and burnt. He didn’t know why he’d gone back inside. There was no doubt, after what he’d seen, that there were no other survivors. But he went in, because what had happened to him was a miracle, so why couldn’t there be other miracles? A child trapped under rubble, somehow shielded from the heat. A mother, somehow breathing, somehow alive, somehow spared so she could raise the only son she had, and not let him grow up alone.

Eva and Brady weren’t moving. Brady must’ve passed out after escaping the gym. Cole walked slowly towards his friends. He’d ripped his shoes off somewhere inside the school. The rubber soles had been melting, burning him. He could feel the cool grass against the bottom of his feet. He slid his feet across the grass, step by step, until he reached Brady. Cole knelt down beside him and placed his hand, palm up, near Brady’s nose. He kept it there until he felt Brady’s warm breath. He looked over at Eva’s body, imagined feeling her breath against his hand as well, then got up and went to her. There was some hair over the side of her face. He brushed it aside, behind her ear. With the same hand, he moved it over her mouth, and waited. There it was—her breath—and he let a breath out in unison.

“You’re okay,” he whispered to her.

Cole reached into his pocket. He pulled out the sweetgrass ring he’d braided for her by Silk River. He lifted her hand, held it for a second, and then he slipped the ring onto her finger. He could hear shouting in the distance, footsteps approaching through the darkness, towards the autumn-coloured light, towards the heat, towards the hell. Footsteps, like an approaching storm. There was nothing more he could do. He took one last look at it all, at the school, at the flames engulfing it, Brady and, finally, Eva. He ran into the darkness, through the field, into Blackwood Forest. He went as far as he could before he collapsed.

Cole opened his eyes. He found himself back in Brady’s living room, on the couch. The dream had been so vivid that he expected to open his eyes and find himself in Blackwood Forest, still seven years old, still ten years of regret to come. He expected to wake up, his side sore from a tree root, and run home to his house. He could still feel the hope that he would find his mother sleeping in her bed. But just like ten years ago, when he found her perfectly made bed empty, reality set in quickly.

A familiar group of people were sitting around the kitchen table.

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