All The Pretty Ghosts (The Never Series Book 1), Jamie Campbell [english reading book TXT] 📗

glowing, the sunlight drowned out any flames. There was still plenty of smoke, though. Plumes of the grey ghosting mists travelled upwards to the sky. I hated to think of the damage the fire had left in its wake.

Everyone it had killed.

There would be more ghosts in the city today.

I closed the curtains so I couldn’t see it anymore. I didn’t need or want a reminder that something terrible was going on nearby and I hadn’t done anything to help stop it.

Not that I could have done something anyway. It wasn’t like I was a master survivalist or anything close. I wasn’t even a fireman that would know what to do with a damn fire. I would have been useless.

That’s what I told myself, anyway.

I didn’t really believe it.

The phone’s high pitched ringing brought me out of my thoughts as my heart stopped beating in my chest and jumped up to my throat.

I ran for the house phone, practically the only appliance that still worked in the house. Picking up the receiver, I prayed to hear Oliver’s comforting voice on the other end.

“Oliver?” I asked hopefully. I didn’t breathe again until I heard a response.

“Hello? Is Jonah there?” It was a female voice, one I didn’t recognize.

“No, there’s no Jonah here.”

“Oh, sorry, wrong number.” She hung up so all I could hear was the crackling dial tone.

It wasn’t Oliver. He was still out there somewhere.

The chatter started instantly around me. “Jonah? Who’s Jonah?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was a wrong number,” I stated, just to shut them up.

“She was hoping it was Oliver.”

“She’s worried about him.”

“She should be worried about him. Those fires were huge.”

“It’s still burning.”

“Still?”

I turned to face them all, addressing them in a way I rarely did. “If you’re all so smart, tell me what I should do.”

My question seemed to take them by surprise for a moment. There were a few seconds of absolute silence but it was a heavenly few seconds. I had almost forgotten what it was like to just have peace and quiet around me.

But then it started.

“You should go into the city and find Oliver.”

“No, she shouldn’t. It could be dangerous down there.”

“How could she find him in a big city? It’s not like he’s fifty feet tall.”

“She should try.”

“Two souls that care about each other always find their way.”

“She might not come back.”

“That’s probably a good thing.”

“We’ll be lonely.”

“She should do whatever her heart tells her to do.”

“Not if it will cost her life. No man is worth that.”

“I hear ya.”

Clearly I had been stupid thinking they might actually be able to help me. I should have known better, I had brought that on myself. But that didn’t mean I had to stand here and listen to them argue about my life.

I grabbed the book I had read twice already and hurried into the backyard. I settled myself on the deck chair in the sun and tried to get lost in the pages.

It wasn’t going to work. I found myself re-reading the same lines over and over again. My mind was too buzzed with conflicting emotions to allow itself to be absorbed into the fictional world.

Everything used to be so different. Thinking back to the things I once worried about, they all seemed so trivial now. Just days before the Event, it had been the school dance I was concerned about.

I was going with Oliver. Not as a couple, just as friends. Everyone else in our group all had boyfriends and girlfriends. Oliver and I were the odd ones out. So we agreed to go to the dance as friends and help each other find someone to dance with.

I didn’t know what to wear because the weather was going to be cold. A dress would make me freeze but what else could I wear? I didn’t want to be the outcast that wore a tuxedo in some lame attempt to buck the system and be cool. So I knew I needed to find a winter-type dress that looked great but kept me warm at the same time.

It was embarrassing now to think of how much time I actually spent trying to find that dress. Oliver kept bugging me about what color tie he needed so we’d match. I kept telling him the perfect dress was out there somewhere, waiting for me, but I didn’t know what color it was.

I never found that dress.

The Event happened instead of the dance.

I wondered for the longest time what life would have been like now if we had all gone to the dance and everything continued on as normal. Perhaps I would have found the perfect guy and we would have fallen in love. We would still be attending school and getting ready to graduate. College would be looming in the distance like a big signpost.

There wouldn’t be one part of my life that resembled how it was now. I couldn’t have imagined how things went. Who would expect something like the Event to happen? Not even all the survivalists and doomsday preppers were prepared for it.

I closed the book because it was pointless keeping up the charade. I stared at the sky instead. How was it possible that it was still the same blue sky I had stared at before the Event? It seemed like nothing had changed above but everything had changed below.

Suddenly another siren started blaring from the city, jolting me upright. I had to stand to see over the fence but I instantly regretted getting up so quickly. Everyone followed me as I rushed to the gate to peer over.

Fresh plumes of smoke were rising up toward the sun, turning the blue into an orange-grey. At least it now looked like a different sky