miralalbhai:
Date: October 29th, 2019 Time: Late Location: Nurse’s Office
@kingstonoverstreet
It was cliche to say that everything was a blur, but it was true. Mira remembered talking to Daniel, alcohol burning her throat, and then smoke, fire, and falling, falling. Crack. Her face in the dirt and a blinding pain in her wrist. Then the nurse’s office.
She sat with her knees tucked up to her chest, head leaning back against the wall. Her wrist was throbbing painfully, even with the assistance of alcohol and an ice pack to numb it, but her mind was on other things - namely the sudden, out of control fire. It could have been an accident. There were campfires everywhere, after all - one strong breeze and it wasn’t entirely beyond reason that something could have caught fire. But there was a gnawing, itching, at the back of her mind that told her it was too big of a coincidence. She hadn’t received the usual red letter from Dante, and she knew that Daniel wasn’t dumb enough to get hammered right before he had to start a fire, so was it someone trying to frame The Arsonists? Was it a few members acting without orders?
In an attempt to distract herself from her concerns, Mira turned her gaze from the ceiling to the other students around her before her eyes settled on one in particular. Aside from herself, he was the only other person in there who wasn’t surrounded by supportive friends. She recognised him from the library. Freshman kid, basically lived among the bookshelves, never seemed to talk to anyone. Curious, and in need of a distraction, Mira cleared her throat to get his attention.
“You okay? What are you in for?”
He cannot say he was definite on who the guilty was for the flames that sparked at the camp-night, but he could say, with absolute conviction and truth, that Kingston Overstreet was most certainly amused by the nights events. Whoever set aflame to the tents, creating a cocktail of mass panic and fear that the night obviously became drunk on, Kingston had to give some credit for. It was organized, precisely thought-out, and masterfully executed.
But, the question that gnawed on his head, a question that paralleled the question he had on the night of the play, where he had walked into a hurricane of broken furniture, scratched walls, shattered glass, and petrified students, if only to a different subject, was why? Why did they do it?
At that moment, Kingston’s being decided on another way to remind him of, to relive, tonight’s events, this time in a more direct, straight-forward avenue of his skin tingling in little bubbles of pain at the cause of the fire that caught onto his sweater, one that he quickly removed but still managed to leave him a remind of itself in the form of the now red and singed part of his forearm, skin red and slightly bubbly. It was his own fault for not paying attention to how close he was to the camp-ground, but at that moment, he was too mesmerized by the orchestral burning of the tents that he didn’t notice the bright red-and-orange flame consuming his sweater. That was one more sweater he needed to replace.
As he pulled himself out of memories of the previous event, his eyes wandered around the emergency room he, and numerous other students, were situated in. He knew Astor Academy was a wealthy school, but seem the detail and supplies that is invested in their emergency room alone had, admittingly, impressed him. Still, his focus shifted back to the numerous worried wales of injured students and overwhelmed staff, even lingering on the various beds that were surrounded by individuals Kingston clearly knew did not attend the school. Loved ones and relatives. He was surprised they had gotten to the school so quickly. He assumed that many of them did not actually live near the Academy itself; they plainly had the money to send their children here.
Still, he couldn't help but fixate on one thing: the one freshman girl he recognized from his classical music course being hugged by a boy much younger than her. It was logical that the younger boy was a relative, a cousin, a little brother, so that was why Kingston couldn’t stop himself, really, when his mind envisioned the small head of blond, curly hair that he loved so much.
He was so engrossed in it, actually, that the sound of the individual near him caused him to freeze.
The pawn directly in front of the king moves ahead two spaces, prepared for the opponents move.
He quickly pulled himself out of his defensive mindset and turned his head slightly to view the source of the voice near him, eyes landing on someone who he recognized, but never approached. She was an upperclassmen, he knew, the same one who worked at Astor’s library and who always saw Kingston walking in at the late hours of the night and in the early hours of the day when he visited. If anything, Kingston appreciated the flexible hours of the Astor library, which accommodated his need to new literature and insomnia. He saw her before, of course, and a few times in their very brisk interactions, they would lock eyes, but Kingston wouldn’t make an attempt to speak to her, and neither would she with him.
But, in their current circumstances, to which Kingston could acknowledge as him being alone and her, in a similar state, Kingston could imagine that she was bored, tired, or plainly curious, so, after the opponent moved a single pawn forward, testing, Kingston decided to move the pawn in front of his queen one pawn forward as well, for now he was curious, and had nothing better to do.
It was at that moment that he felt the coldness of the water-droplets falling onto his sweatpants that he realized he had an ice-pack held against his burn, one that seemed minor in comparison to the state of which the upperclassmen’s wrist was in, in addition to the marks on her face. He decided to inquire.
“Well, apparently some campground was set on fire and some kids got injured,” he then let his head fall in direction to the arm that he held against his chest, an ice-pack situated against it. “Apparently, I was also one of them.” He lifted his head up slightly and smiled at her before his eyes situated back onto his sweatpants, staring at the wet-patch the ice-packs droplets had left on it. “Fire caught my sweatshirt and burned my arm. It’ll heal.” Although his head was still facing downwards, he made sure to not pause for too long, because he, liked the upperclassmen, had nothing better to do, and if he was being honest, he wanted to know the mind behind the eyes that would somehow catch themselves with his when he would walk into Astor’s library late at night.
“Your’s seem worse, though. How bad is it?”
