ashes to ashes ➵ camren

5. bravado

Listen while you read - 'Bravado' by Lorde

Lauren discovers just how much she hates crowds as she struggles to keep up with Camila and Dinah, who are weaving their way through the other students trying to make it to the front of the building. She feels her anxiety spike when she sees the tall uniformed men standing by the doors.

They're dressed in all black. Even the helmets they wear. The sight makes Lauren feel horribly uneasy. She can't put a finger on the reason why. But she has no other choice but to hurry and catch up with Camila, who has adopted a colder stance as she presents her small ID card to one of the officers.

He pulls out what Lauren thinks is a pocket knife, but she's proven wrong moments later, when he presses a button and a red beam of light coils out, scanning the barcode on Camila's card. There's two small beeps, and then he's giving Camila a curt nod and practically shoving the girl into the building so he can move onto the next student.

The next student just so happens to be Lauren, and she can see Dinah and Camila watching her anxiously from the doorway. But she takes a deep breath and holds out the ID card. The man scans it, there's two beeps, and Lauren is scrambling into the building before he has the chance to lay a hand on her.

"She wasn't lying," Camila notes in surprise. "Sofi was right."

"We can thank the heavens for your little sister later," Dinah shakes her head, grabbing both girls by their arms and pulling them out of the front entryway. "Let's get out of this mess."

Lauren takes the time to scan the building around her. It's huge. But it hasn't been kept up very well. There's graffiti on the walls and she swears she can see a hole in the ceiling from where she's standing. And there are so many people here. Too many, in her opinion. It scares her to think that this run down building is the only source of education these people may have.

"Up here," Dinah nods, nudging Lauren towards a set of concrete stairs. There's vines going up the walls and Lauren is slowly becoming more and more uneasy. She's never gone to an actual school before, but she knows that this isn't what they're supposed to look like.

Eventually, they arrive at the correct classroom (according to Camila). And Lauren can immediately tell this is nothing like the schools she's seen in the old VHS movies her dad would occasionally bring home from work. There's people of all ages. There's even a woman nursing a newborn baby while paging through a worn textbook.

"Over here," Camila nods, motioning for Lauren to follow her. The green eyed girl had been frozen in the doorway, studying the wide open room with curious eyes. Luckily, Dinah grabs her arm and ushers her towards one of the desks in the back of the room.

There's two other students sitting there. Lauren moves to sit at the furthest chair away from them, but Camila is sitting alone on the other side of the table and she gives Lauren a hopeful look. The green eyed girl decides against ignoring it and takes the seat beside Camila.

Dinah grabs a stack of papers from the table and passes them over to Camila and Lauren. The green eyed girl is distracted, studying the two other students at their table. She's doing so subtly, and she notices how the dark skinned girl directly across from her has her eye on someone else. Dinah. Lauren has to bite her tongue.

"Where's the teacher?" Lauren whispers, looking to Camila beside her. The brown eyed girl scans the room for a few moments before pointing in the direction of a dark skinned woman, knelt beside a desk and talking to a group of students.

"Isn't she supposed to be... I don't know... teaching?" Lauren quirks an eyebrow.

"She is," the dark skinned girl across the table speaks up, startling Lauren. "What makes you think she isn't teaching?"