Young Writers Society

[This bit is the prolouge. I don't really like it very much, because I think the first chapter is a lot stronger, so please don't hesitate to give me any horrible critiques, because I'd really like to improve it.]

Prologue - Angels

Run away from here

I know there's something more to this

In this dark room, nothing that shines

Run away from here

Angels - Augustana

He’d never cried before.

His father had always thought it strange that no tears ever left his eyes, even when he was baby. He’d scream up a fit, but never cry. Not once. He knew what if felt like to want to cry, that tightening in your chest that doesn’t go away, even if you try as hard as you can to swallow it down. It always hurt, when the tears didn’t come out, and he felt like he was going to explode. He always expected it and hoped the shrapnel wouldn’t damage anyone, hoped that the lingering traces of him wouldn’t be anything embarrassing.

Today, though, when he wanted to cry more than anything, he couldn’t. The world was on fire and everything was burning, and still, he couldn’t cry. It should’ve been easy to do this, he told himself, it should’ve been something you didn’t have to think about, that you just did. It never came. The tightness in his chest, just behind his breastbone, a little to the right of his heart, never released. He hated him himself for it, this inability to do this human thing, because more than anything, he didn’t want to be a man.

The sharp smell of smoke should’ve warned him, as the distant echo of sirens should have, but he’d just stalked down the block, hands in his pockets to keep in the warmth. This time of year was cold as ice in Boston and it froze over everything in sight; just this morning he’d awoke to ice slick on the sidewalks, but it had melted in the midday sun to a gentle slush that you could walk on. He was only wearing a t-shirt and the Red Sox jacket his father had given him for Christmas, but he didn’t really feel the cold. All he could concentrate on was one thing: Allison Parkinson. She had those green eyes that took you away someplace where you could never recover from, and she’d been the only thing on his mind for the past two months, since she’d transferred from somewhere in Canada. And tonight she’d lost herself in someone else’s eyes, in someone else’s thoughts. His hand still hurt from clenching it, his joints achy and his palm bruised with the little half-crescent his nails had made. He didn’t want to think about it, but it was all he could think about.

He heard it before he saw it: the crackle of fire, the sizzle and crash of concrete block, the pop and smash of exploding glass. He shoved his hands further into his pockets, walking faster, curious now, thoughts of Allison gone. Then he smelled it: the cloying, sharp scent that shoved its way up your nose and never left, that made you hack and cough and want fresh air to breathe. It was smoke, and he turned the corner, almost running, and he saw it. He saw the flames licking at the night sky, at the starless sky, outshone by city lights. He saw the only home he had ever known burning, cracking, falling. He saw it and smelled it and heard it, all in one hard glance.

And then he couldn’t breathe.

There were so many people, everyone gone out of their houses, watching, staring openmouthed, but he was the only one who had the right to be crying, because his parents were in there. He’d snuck out, went to go see Allison, and they’d been asleep, fast asleep. He could scream, that’s what he could do, if any air would find its way into his lungs, but it was too late, too late…

The firemen came too late, and he still couldn’t cry.