“HEY,” TAD CALLED as Rashid walked down the hazy hall. But Rashid didn’t stop or look back.
Damn it all to hell. He should have just kept his mouth shut. But seeing more people dead had freaked him out. He hadn’t meant . . . he didn’t really think . . . He saw Rashid disappear around the corner and hurried after him.
“Hey. Wait up. I’m sorry. Okay? I didn’t really think that you were planting a bomb.” He just couldn’t get the lie about the 911 call out of his head. And Rashid was hiding something.
“Really?” Rashid yelled without looking back. “Then what did you think I was doing in there? I’m pretty sure whatever you were thinking was terrible. But you want me to believe you’re really a nice guy.”
“I deserve that.” He did. And worse. “Just wait up, okay?” He was breathless as he reached Rashid, who had stopped and turned. Waiting for whatever it was he had to say.
Only what could he say?
Damn. He shoved a locker shut. Metal slammed against metal, making Rashid jerk, but he never took his eyes off Tad. Waiting for answers.
“Look,” Tad blurted. “There was a friend I was supposed to meet today. And I’m not sure if he’s still trapped in here.” Friend. Not exactly the truth, but it was close enough. “I’ve been thinking about him ever since the first explosion, and then we found someone and they weren’t alive, and it made me think . . .” Tad jammed his hands into his pockets and looked at the wet floor as the hollowness he’d felt when Rashid had announced the people inside the bathroom were dead returned. All the anger and frustration that had brought him here today had vanished in an instant when he thought Frankie might be one of them. He’d wanted Frankie to pay for hurting him, but now he wasn’t so sure what he wanted. Just as he wasn’t sure what Rashid wanted from him. He’d screwed up, but he wasn’t the kind of person Rashid thought he was.
Tad could feel Rashid’s eyes still on him. “I’m not . . .” He shrugged and kept his own eyes lowered. “I know my friends say a lot of things, but I never do. I’m not like them.”
“Really? So you automatically assumed I had something to do with the bombing, but you aren’t racist like they are? Fine. You can keep telling yourself that.” Rashid shook his head and started walking again.
“I’m not a racist!” he yelled at Rashid’s back. “Hey.” He hurried after him. “You know I’m half black.” Tad’s footsteps were right behind Rashid.
“Wow. I never noticed.” Rashid’s laugh was bitter as he stepped over a fallen board. “You think that means you’re not a racist? Then why did you automatically assume I’m hiding something terrible because I didn’t want to tell you who I called when I thought I was going to die?” Rashid stopped next to an open doorway.
“It’s not because I’m a racist, and it isn’t my fault my friends say crap things sometimes.” Tad stopped walking. “You don’t know anything about me, so don’t pretend you know me.”
Sweat trickled down his back. The hallway was growing hotter. The smoke was thicker, making it harder to breathe.
Rashid turned and started walking again. “You’re right. I don’t know a thing about you. But not knowing me didn’t stop you from passing judgment.” Rashid rounded the corner. “Your double standard is—”
Rashid suddenly went quiet. Tad raced around the corner and almost crashed right into Rashid, who was standing as still as a rock. Then Tad looked beyond Rashid and realized why.
Smoke. Waves of it poured down the stairs located smack in the middle of the hallway. Dark tendrils were coming from the blackened ceiling. And there were flames.
“Aw, hell!” Tad looked back down the hallway they had just come from and then toward the staircase in the middle of the hallway . . . near the fire. “This sucks. This really and completely sucks.”
Rashid didn’t move. He was just staring straight ahead as if he’d fallen into some kind of trance. Great. This was just perfect.
Tad stepped around Rashid, swallowed down the pulsing panic, and rubbed the back of his sweat-coated neck. The fire hadn’t reached this floor yet. It was still in the upper stairwell. The stairwell going down looked okay. But who knew how long that would last?
“Screw it. I’m going.”
“What are you doing?” Rashid asked, grabbing his arm. “You could get burned. We should wait for the firefighters to put out the fire.”
“If we wait, the fire will spread to the rest of the staircase.” He pulled his arm out of Rashid’s grasp and started down the hall, trying hard to ignore how much hotter the air was with every step. “I lost one escape route because I decided to save you. I’m not going to lose another.”
“And what about the friend you said was still in the school?” Rashid called. “Do you intend on leaving him to die?”
Tad turned. “I don’t even know for sure that he was in the school when the bombs went off. He probably stood me up.”
The heat pushed like a stiff wind, stealing the air around him.
Pressure built in his chest.
He wiped his stinging eyes and turned back toward the stairs. The fire was moving down them, closer to the second-floor landing, but the stairs going down to the first story were still clear of flames. “I think we can make it.”
The smoke was terrifying. Flames crackled as they licked the stairs, getting closer to their level. Tad started forward, but Rashid grabbed Tad’s arm and yanked him back. Tad stumbled and slipped on the wet floor.
“Let me go.”
“Stop.”
“We can make it if we go now.”
“Just stop.”
“You want to stay here, fine, but I’m going.”
“Wait!”
Rashid’s fingers dug into Tad’s arm and refused to let go.
“Look in that locker!” Rashid yelled, pointing through the growing haze toward the wall near the stairwell.
“Who cares about a locker? We can—” That’s when Tad saw what Rashid was pointing at. A flicker of red light glowing near the bottom of one of the lockers.
He squinted and took a step forward to get a better look as a wave of hot air swept over him. Sweat dripped down his back. “What the hell is that?”
Something in the stairwell above snapped and cracked, and a flaming board crashed down the stairs.
Rashid grabbed his arm and pulled hard, but Tad held his ground as he studied the stairs. He could still make it. He was fast. If he went now, he might get down to the first floor. Then he looked back at the locker, squinted into the haze, and realized what the red glow was. Numbers. And they were counting down.
“Tad! Run!”
Holy hell.
Something cracked.
The fire roared down the stairs.
Tad took two steps backwards, then turned and followed Rashid’s lead. He ran.
“This way!” Rashid shouted over his shoulder as something else came crashing down in the stairwell. Tad ran faster. He couldn’t breathe. Rashid rounded the corner. Tad raced right behind him. The minute the flames reached that locker, all bets were—