Dusk **UNDER CONSTRUCTION**

Chapter 19

"Ash?" I whisper, my shaky hand reaching out towards the front of the car. My leg is crushed in between the car door and my body, glass falls gently onto my face from the window on the opposite side of the toppled over car. My vision is blurry and the pain that is surely meant to come with a bleeding head is numbed by adrenaline.

The front of the car remains silent. "Ash?" I ask, my voice louder and clearer. By sheer luck, I manage to pull my body forward to the front of the car. Asher is limp. "Ash!" I scream, shaking his mangled body frantically, dark spots beginning to cloud my vision. "Daddy?" I whisper once more as I twist to my Dad. I nearly cry in relief when I notice the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

I cling to Asher as my head begins to spin, hoping that by some miracle life will magically come back to him.

Everything soon goes black and I fade into the abyss.

I wake up with a start, my body clammy shaky, tears stain my cheeks. I pick up my phone and check the time. "3:02am, it was just a dream Maya," I mutter in a vain attempt to reassure myself.

I suck in a deep breath and run my hands through my sweaty hair as I pull my exhausted body out of bed, knowing at this point that sleep is a pipe dream. I pull my notebook out of my bedside drawer, Thomas having given it back to me a few days ago. I sit down at my window seat and look out the window into the bleak night sky.

The sky's full of clouds, choking out the beauty of the stars and the moon. All that's outside is murky, grey darkness. There's no second star to the right, no Peter Pan or Tinkerbell to take me away to some magical place. No hope.

With a heavy sigh, I pull out my notebook and begin composing.

­­­­­­­________________

"I can't do it, I just can't," Luke groans from his desk as he crumbles up another scrap of paper to throw away. We had decided to go to his house after school instead of rehearsals, the other songs were basically perfected, and we were just waiting for the one we were meant to write.

"Come on, they can't be that bad," I say from his bed as I bend down and open up one of the sheets of paper. "Okay maybe it can," I cringe as I read the lyrics.

"I told you, I can't work under pressure Maya!" he buries his head in his hands.

"I believe in you Luke," I stand up and rest a hand on his shoulder. "In fact," I hesitate for a moment, unsure whether it's something I want him to read. "I wrote one last night," I finally sigh.

"And your only just telling me this now?" he says in mock anger.

I nod wordlessly before pulling my notebook out of my bag, flipping to the page and handing it to him before sitting back down on the bed.

As he reads, I try and gauge his emotions. His eyebrows are furrowed as he bites his lip and bounces his leg. As he progresses through the song, his eyes flicker briefly to meet mine, an unreadable emotion behind them.

"This is.. woah," he breathes after some time. "We need to get this out there, Maya."

I both inwardly cringe and jump up and down in excitement. "Let's do it."

The piano part of the song was already written, so all we had to do was write the guitar, bass and drum parts. Luke, however, insisted on him doing this in his own time because, and I quote "you're hopeless at guitar and I don't want you sitting around doing nothing."

"So we should probably film that video," Luke says while we both lay on his couch in our phones.

What? "Huh?" I ask.