@bruisetoo (continued from xxx)
Gail desperately wanted to stay behind, to help Carrie, to stop her, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Carrie didn’t want to be stopped. So she had to try and escape while she still could. Her long skirt got ripped in the scuffle, but honestly, the easier it was for her to move, the better. Shivering as the sprinklers tried (and failed) to put out the fires, Gail frantically searched for her friends.
Upon hearing Ernst call her name, she spun around, waving her arms, letting people shove past her. She couldn’t leave without Ernst.
Despite the tears and smoke blurring his vision he can see her. And has rushed towards her tripping over his feet. The room smells like burning flesh. And he realizes that even more so he knows the flesh that’s burning. That this is real. These are kids he knows. This is his prom this is his life. His friend has somehow, and he doesn’t know how, caused this, this hell.
He wraps his arms around her torso squeezing tightly at her and burying his head in her smaller frame. He dwarfs her but she has always seemed bigger than him. When they were little it’d been Gail who’d punched kids on the playground who made fun of his voice. Now, in this moment of fear, that need to hide behind her returned.
“I can’t find them! JD and Veronica, or Hanschen, I don’t know...the door we need to...but we can’t leave without them!”