Chapter Sixteen
Christmas had been the bitterest disappointment. I'd been looking forward to going home and relaxing with my friends for the first time since I'd returned to Briarwood after half term, but when I'd gone to one of their house parties I'd been shunned. I was the posh girl now and they didn't want anything to do with me, apparently. I was the butt of every single joke and I'd left early.
No one had bothered to message me the next day to see how I was doing, or to apologise. I hadn't tried to contact them againâI'd sat in my room with too much wine and sad films for the majority of the two week break.
Not that it meant I'd been wanting to return to the Academy. I just wanted to wallow in my bedroom, no matter how much it had been worrying my parents. My friends had been my rock. What did I even have to look forward to anymore?
My best friend, ex-best friend, had messaged me on New Year's Day to apologise. It had been an essay of bullshit telling me how it was hard to stay friends since we didn't speak very often anymore and that I hadn't made the effort to Skype with them or anything since I'd been at the Academy.
Maybe it was true. It was probably true. I'd been practising as many hours as my body could take and that didn't leave much time for maintaining friendships.
I hadn't replied to her.
Instead, I'd come back to Briarwood and told Liliana that I was in on her stupid bombing scheme. Liliana and the twins were the only friends I had left and I was going to do everything I could to make sure they stayed friends with me.
I couldn't deal with loneliness.
So I was in the back of a ridiculously expensive getaway vehicle with a balaclava in my hand knowing I was making a horrible decision.
Liliana had been sceptical when I'd first said I wanted to come on the missionâI liked to call it that, it made it sound far more exciting and important than it really wasâbut I'd spun her an apparently believable story about some research I'd been doing on the topic that really moved me. As long as she thought I was heavily invested in the same cause as her, nothing else mattered.
The car was surprisingly energetic. Dean was sat beside me with the biggest smile I'd ever seen on his face and his knees were jumping up and down with excitement. It just made me feel even more out of place as I tried to stop my hands wringing together in a nervous gesture.
Why was I here?
Liliana liked me anyway. She'd explicitly said that I didn't need to come to this, but in my lowest state I'd done the stupidest thing possible. I was making a massive mistake. If I got caught I could probably go to jail, never mind losing my scholarship.
I wanted to bang my head against the window. I was a complete idiot.
We pulled up a couple of miles away from the chemical plant, but I could see it in the distance. "We're walking the rest of the way." I hadn't even been given the entire plan since I'd come on board so late. "Through the forest. We don't want the car to be seen at all." The number of backroads through these woods was ridiculous. It was like a maze, but we'd only driven ten minutes. I hadn't realised the chemical plant was this close at all. You could probably see it from the roof of the Academy.
I was glad I'd wrapped up tight, anyway. Luckily the only coat I owned was black and I blended into the seemingly endless trees easily. I was practically a ghost. The group didn't stick to silence like I'd expected. "We'll be out of earshot for at least another half an hour," Liliana assured everyone before beginning to jabber away. "I just can't believe we're finally going to do something about all this."
They'd apparently got plans to put some kind of anonymous message on the internet letting everyone know that they'd bombed the plant because of its pollution output. I was doubtful of how successful this entire thing was going to be. If their own daughter had started to hate them just because of the pollution then someone blowing up a shed probably wasn't going to be the scariest thing in the world.
I kept my thoughts to myself and traipsed along behind them. At least my stamina from maintaining such an extreme amount of ballet recently was built up. The walk didn't take much of a physical toll on me at allâit was just dodging the various roots covering the floor that was irritating.
"I know," Callum was bouncing along beside her. It was quite obvious something had gone on between them and I watched it with envy. I wasn't sure when exactly I'd descended into being a bitter bitch, but I didn't like it.
I hadn't seen Ethan since coming back from the Christmas holidays, but I'd received a present in the post from him. It was a calendar with sexy male ballet dancers. When I'd flicked through, he'd circled the date of my graduation. For some reason, I'd cried the most that day.
"For some reason I'm very excited to see something blow up in real life," Dean remarked from beside me, rubbing his hands together.
"You are such a stereotypical guy." I could picture Liliana's eyes roll from where she walked up ahead.
My tone would probably give everything away if I spoke now. I was happier to listen to them and try to stabilise myself. They wouldn't be risking it if there was a real chance of us being caught. I was just working myself up over nothing. They were blowing up a shed, for God's sake. There was nothing to worry about.
Except for potentially going to jail.
My hands tightened where they were linked together in the front pocket of my hoody. I was an idiot.
"We can throw another party to celebrate this at the weekend," Callum decided. "I've only been back for a couple of days but I already miss all the Christmas partying."
I'd thought that was going to be the situation I'd be in, too.
"And then Carly can see what our parties are really like. We'll make sure to definitely disinvite Leon this time, promise," Liliana teased, tightening her ponytail. She must have been freezing, wearing only tight-fitting black jeans and a slim jumper. She definitely looked like some kind of infiltrator, though, which was apparently what she was going for. Part of me thought they were enjoying the role-playing more than anything else.
My laugh was horribly awkward, but my friends were too absorbed in their excitement to notice. I was an accessory, tagging along because I'd asked to not because I was actually a part of this thing they had going on.
I was an idiot.
"Right, let's shut up and put these stupid balaclavas on," Liliana decided after I'd been forced to listen to their excitement for far longer than I wanted. "We're getting really close now." She reached into her rucksack and produced a package wrapped in a significant amount of bubble wrap.
I practically cringed when she continued to walk with it in her hand. It could blow up right now and we'd all be dead. How was that risk worth anything? I trailed behind them a little bit further.
"It's really a bit silly that we're all here," Callum chuckled, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders against the cold. "Liliana could have easily done this by herself. Any of us could have done."
"But it's about us all making a difference together," Liliana said resolutely. "It's something we all care about and we're all helping."
I seriously doubted it, but maybe I was bitter rather than them being delusional.
"And all you have to do is send a code off that phone?" Liliana was carrying an old Nokia in her other hand, white flingers clenched around it.
"Yup. It's as easy as that."
"I'm impressed. Why doesn't everyone do this? How can the people on the forums justify not doing anything?"
They were definitely delusional. They'd been raised without any perception of what real life was actually like.
Liliana pressed her finger to her lips as the trees began to thin out and the plant came into view. It was a hulking great thing and I could agree to the view it was a stain on the landscape. Reams of black smoke deleted the stars from the sky. I wouldn't have minded it not being here. In another situation, walking through the forest on such a beautiful night could have been fun, but this was extreme. Extremism never seemed to end well.
Liliana paused and we got into a huddle. "We need to be as quick as possible so that someone watching security doesn't get to us. We're going to run up, throw the explosive over the fence, then run back so I can blow it up without us getting hurt."
We all nodded, mine far stiffer than everyone else's.
"I can go by myself, if you want," Callum offered. "You can stay here and set it off after I've thrown it over."
That sounded ideal to me. Maybe I could start running away now and then I'd definitely not be incriminated in this. "No, we're all in it together," Liliana emphasised. "But... I do think you have a better throw than me, so you should probably handle that part. There's a chance it'll blow up on impact, by the way, but I don't think it's powerful enough to do that much damage to us."
I opened my mouth, ready to protest, but slammed it back shut. We were all in this together. I was included in this with them, because we were friends.
Everyone nodded again and then we were sprinting. Towards the wrought iron fence, topped with barbed wire, that protected the chemical plant. The chimneys were on the other side of the plot, so that hopefully meant we definitely weren't going to be dying from inhaling anything.
We got to the fence and I tried to keep my gaze on the floor. I wanted those cameras to have little knowledge of me as possible.
Callum hurled the explosive over the fence and I flinched, waiting for something to happen. It didn't.
A voice broke the silence when we started to sprint back towards the forest. "Hey!" It was a deep, male shout. "What do you think you're doing?"
I was thrown to the ground with the force of the blast. Liliana's idea of what 'very much' explosive constituted apparently wasn't realistic. I choked against the black smoke that billowed into the sky behind us and ignored the heat.
It was the pained shout that kept me laid on the ground for far longer than was necessary. Liliana was going to have done some serious damage to that man and I didn't want any part of it.
She'd set off a bomb knowing there was someone there.
More voices came quickly, rushing towards us and I panicked. Getting to my feet unsteadily, I didn't even turn around to assess the scene. I scrambled, sprinting into the forest with all my speed. I didn't have a lot of itâI was a ballerina not a sprinterâbut my endurance meant I could keep up my top speed a hell of a lot longer than anyone else present.
Liliana's shout of frustration let me know someone had stopped her, but I didn't even turn around then. People would be chasing me and I was going to get as far away from them as I possibly could.
I didn't want to ruin the rest of my life just because I was a friendless loser. I shouldn't have been here in the first place.
After ten minutes of running with cold tears tracking across the side of my face and sobs getting caught in my throat, I was forced to come to a standstill. Resting my hands on the tops of my legs, I realised that my heavy breathing was the only sound. I couldn't hear the flames of the fire and I couldn't hear voices.
I was alone.
And I needed to get back to the Academy before anyone realised that I was missing.
Looking around the bleak forest, I allowed a real sob to escape. Callum and Dean were nowhere in sight, I had no idea if they'd been caught as well, and I hadn't a clue which direction his car was in.
Staring up at the sky and scrubbing at my eyes, I picked a direction and started walking. My breathing recovered from the sprinting relatively quickly and the only toll was physical tiredness due to not having enough hours of sleep. My stamina could pull me through if I was going in vaguely the right direction.
It had been a pretty straight line when we were walking towards the plant and so I picked a straight line now. I'd probably chosen to run back the way I came, so that seemed like a sensible option.
The forest didn't have a single landmark. We hadn't even come across a stream in the course of our travels. It was completely up in the air whether I ended back at the Academy or not and without the car it was going to take me another hour.
Three hours down the line, when I'd fallen over plenty of tree roots in the darkness and scratched my face on low hanging branches, some real light began to appear.
It was only dim, but my eyes honed in on it with all the hope in the world. My pace picked up to a desperate jog and I, by some miracle, managed not to fall over as I dragged myself towards the source of the light.
The Academy met my gaze as the number of trees began to decrease and I stopped and sobbed. I'd found my way back, without ever coming into vision of Callum's car. I was around the back of the grounds rather than the side like when we'd left, too. My supposed straight line hadn't been very straight after all.
Either way, I was here, and I just needed to get back inside without being found out.
The Academy probably had CCTV in every corner of its walls and it was unlikely that I'd escape punishment if Liliana's parents asked them to check it, but I had to hold out some hope. Attempting to straighten out my appearance somewhat, I walked around the outskirts of Briarwood until I came across the hole in the fence we'd originally left through. My balaclava was stuffed in my coat pocket and I had no idea what I supposed to do with it.
The walk from the outskirts of the grounds to the main building was almost too much. Every muscle in me ached and I desperately wanted my bed. I wasn't even sure if I'd be able to sleep due to the paranoia of someone bursting in and taking me away, but just the comfort of being able to lie down would be welcome.
I'd been the biggest fool in the world tonight and I wasn't sure I'd ever forgive myself.
Sliding into my bed, somehow without waking up my sleeping roommates, I curled into a foetal position.
If I was thrown in jail, I'd absolutely deserve it.
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I really enjoyed writing this chapter! It was a fun one. Let me know what you all thought!
Reminder that I've started a new student/teacher romance novel. You can find it in the external link and on my profile. If you're following both, you'll have an update from me every day <3