BROWN SKIN | BOOK 1

|| C H A P T E R . 21 ||

Remember when we ran?

I do. If you don't, I do because the memory was like cancer. I studied cancer in my notes with you. What did you tell me again? Oh yeah, it was a very bad disease with uncontrollable abnormal cells that doubled, tripled over time, destroying what makes us human. Eating away at the tissue that holds us up in one whole and if one bug irritates our system, we would be broken into a million parts. It demolished us.

You questioned why God would do this to people. I didn't have a clue, but you sounded angry, like it was more than cancer, more than people. You almost had a hatred for Him. I didn't understand that either.

No matter how many times I try to get rid of it, it's there, never leaving my side. Some people make it, the lucky ones.

Let's hope we're one of them tonight.

So as we're forgotten and old news, I realized

What if that's a good thing.

Maybe then, moving on, trying not to talk about bad times is better than moping in sorrow.

My lungs that I thought were functioning, collapsed in my chest, deflating like unfiltered balloons. Catching air was difficult that it turned into breathing in a clogged faucet with running water.

We were so loud. Terribly loud. Just utter chaos to the world on open grounds in an unknown location. I was amazed silence and noised mixed into peaceful riots.

You ran alongside of me. The same fear and flight or fight response terror I carried on my face. I was not quite fast enough, I didn't have quick feet as I began deciphering between wanting to give up and wanting to continue, slowly lagging behind. You weren't too far from my reach and we ran like Olympians in a massacre.

Running from quiet fallen deaths and bloodbaths to get to the white finish line of life being our only chance of survival. Our only chance of winning.

It could potentially be the last time we see the stars and sky.

It was a battlefield out here.

I always thought life and breathing were important, but now as it's affecting me, I needed it, simply desperate for something I haven't cared about it until I was low. All for selfish reasons because I actually might die, I don't know for sure.
I just don't understand, teenagers shouldn't be living like graves were upon us so soon. But this could happen to anyone. Life can be taken away just a breath away for anyone. For the unfortunate. For the unlucky ones. For the ones really trying.

Even me.

  — Ebonee  

1 missed call.

Beau.

(2) missed call.

Beau.

My eyes watched the screen change over time until my actions seemed futile and I did pick up. I wasn't doing anything. Life continued to be a routine with nothing new or different occurring. I place the phone to my ear.