Lulu felt different. Her skin felt electric, like her entire body was suddenly fueling her power. The emotions that coursed through her felt amplified. Fear and panic ebbed as she witnessed Drake courageously running back into the building, the archway over the door cracking. Maybe that was her breaking point. Whatever happened, it felt just like the curse she had laid on Grey so many years ago. But instead of the malicious and sinister feelings of complete hatred that had filled her in that moment, she was filled with something else. Love and hope.
Lulu was so focused on Drake and all of the other people still inside the school that she was startled when someone walked up beside her, someone she wouldn’t have expected to breath a single word to her. Jackson. He stood next to her, barely dressed, one hand in his hair and the other wrapped awkwardly around his bare torso. She swallowed, her white-purple eyes searching him for something. Was he happy to see Drake running inside?
"He'll be okay, you know,” Jackson told her suddenly. Lulu bit on her lower lip, blinking rapidly. “I thought you hated me,” she blurted out suddenly. What a pair they made. Lulu was barely covered herself, her tank top only basic and if anything a little too small. The fabric was barely thick enough to hide the pattern of her bra, while her t-shirt remained wrapped on her arm, increasingly growing red from the gnash from the window glass. She surveyed the chaos around them before looking at Jackson. Lulu didn’t hesitate when she suddenly threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.
“I have always loved you Jackson Murphy,” she whispered, gripping him tightly, like he was the only floating buoy in the middle of an ocean. “I’m so glad you’re okay. So. So. So. Happy. You have no idea. I know I screwed up. I let you go when you fell in love with Beth. I never said anything just like you never said anything now. But I need you. You can’t just drop me. I may make mistakes, we all do. I need this chance with Drake, but I need my best friend and hell, if it's meant to be it will be.”
Katia’s lungs felt raw within a matter of minutes. She shouted whatever words came to her, mainly every curse she knew under the sun, whether Spanish, Italian or English. She could hear people running by the door, words yelling, people screaming. The shaking was slowing down, but it wasn’t stopping completely. Tremors continued to cause the contents of Leo’s office to shake and rattle. Was this a student’s power or was this mother nature hating on them all?
The door to the office opened suddenly and Katia screamed again, barely able to lift her head to look at who had heard her.
"Katia! I'll get you out!"
Dear lord it was Chris. “Oh my God it’s you,” she breathed. He moved toward her immediately, kneeling to bring a shoulder underneath the gothic bookcase, lifting it just enough so as to get his arms underneath it. He shoved it upward and into place quickly, so much so that he shifted back to fall on him as it swayed. “Chris!” she shrieked. Her hands shot out to him, her power activating as she tried to get him to move. The shelf slammed into his shoulder regardless and she yelled when she felt it herself. She severed the connection immediately, watching him stagger for a second before pushing it back into place permanently, checking himself before he shifted back to her, kneeling. Katia shifted her head back to the couch, feeling her eyes water. The drugs, everything from that morning were the farthest thing from her mind.
"Are you okay? Do you need help getting out?" he asked, his eyes searching her and the room. “I’m in so much pain,” she confessed. “I think it compressed my disk and I’m in withdrawal from painkillers.” The admission came out so bluntly. “I don’t know if I want to move, but I can’t stay here. You can’t stay here.”
It was so confusing. It would be hours before an ambulance came for her, no? “Pick me up,” she told him suddenly. “Keep moving Chris. I can’t move you for you right now.”