Can’t Let Go


Liz steps out of her car revealing her rainbow brand sandals. She leaves the comfort of her heater on and country music playing. She enters the world of high school. Hockey team boys laughing like hyenas walk towards the school’s front doors like they own the place. She begins to head to those doors herself. She puts on her tight fitted sweatshirt and Burberry scarf to fight the cold. The wind doesn’t affect her tied back blonde curls. She observes the cheerleaders walking in a gaggle, and the majority of people walking by themselves showing they are secure enough to be alone even if only for a couple minutes. She may not particularly love school or everyone in it, but she understands everyone goes through it and it could be much worse. Snow crunches under her wet feet when she reaches the doors.

“Hey Liz! We missed you at band practice. Where were you yesterday?” Sara, her friend, asks.

“Oh. It was my mom’s birthday”. It wasn’t her mom’s birthday. She would rather hang out with her best friend Rachel than go to band. She wouldn’t dare tell Sara that. She was the perfect band geek and would jump at the chance to bump Liz to second chair violinist.

“Liz! Get over here!” Rachel calls her to her locker and she knows Liz wants to be saved from more conversation with Sara. ”Sorry to interrupt your band talk.”

“Yeah you are so rude! We were having a deep conversation about Mozart and then your annoying voice just bursts through our conversation”. Liz says jokingly.
The school day passes like a blur as it does every day. Liz changes in the sweatshop of a locker room for cross country practice. The heat and stench are bearable only because of the bone piercing, oxygen stealing air outside. No one in front of her was the only way she could stand running. Even at practice. She tells people she just loves to feel like she’s running alone, but she really loves knowing there are people trying to catch up. By the end of practice, she’s burning up inside, and frozen on the outside. She takes that walk to her car an hour after practice is over. She concentrates on doing homework best all alone in the dark gym with that dim emergency light in the back corner.
Someone is waiting for her.

She sees a little girl about seven with pale skin and light blonde hair with straight across bangs in a black dress with a white trim standing by her ford focus.

“Who is that and why is she standing in the middle of a parking lot? She must be freezing.” Liz’s forehead winkles as her eyebrows draw near each other. Still, she continues walking. She is only a few feet from the girl when she notices that this girl isn’t wearing any shoes. This girl doesn’t change her monotone gaze when Liz delivers a friendly, but puzzled smile.

“Hey um are you alright?” Liz starts to shake under her three layers of jackets. She feels her knees go week and her head feels heavy. Why is she so afraid of this little girl? The girl finally starts to speak.

“There will be a catastrophe. No survivors.” Her expression doesn’t change. Liz’s eyes widen. She breaks into a cool sweat.

“Why are you saying this? Who are you?”Liz doesn’t understand why a child would try to scare her like this.

“November 3rd. Fire.” The girl turns to walk away.

“Hey wait!” Liz reaches to grab her, but her arm feels like it is being pushed down by someone. She fights to catch the girl, but soon her whole body is weighed down. November 3rd is Thursday and it is already Monday.

A sharp pain starts to fill the side of her torso. It tastes like sitting downwind at a camp fire. She grips her side and falls into the three inch deep snow. She lifts her layers and pats snow on her stomach. She reviles burn marks. As she whips the snow away, she sees they read N3. This minute long encounter replays over and over again in her head until she reaches her house. She goes to her room and lies in her bed. She feels so weak and doesn’t know whether to believe this girl or not. She falls asleep.

Liz stands at the end of the main hallway in her school. She looks down it and hears screams and cries. Her lungs fill with smoke, but the hall is clear to see. People start running in and out of classrooms, but these people don’t look normal. They are so deformed that she can’t tell who is who. Their faces look like hamburger meat. Soon the hallway fills so much that nobody can move. The mosh pit grows until Liz can’t escape seeing their faces just inches away from hers until finally, her alarm goes off.
She wakes up wet. And she now believes what she was told. She leaves for school right away and sees the principal.

“Ms. Foster I need to talk to you.” She is visibly shaken so the principal takes her into the office.

“What’s the matter?” The principal is known for her bitterness, but she seemed a little sympathetic.

“You have to make sure no one comes to school on Thursday!” Liz is still acting like she just witnessed a murder.

The principal’s left side of her lip rises. She has just realized to not take this as seriously as she thought. “O really. And why would I want to do that?”

“Because the school is going to burn down!” Her panic advances when she realizes how crazy she sounds.

The principal’s smile goes back down. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Listen I know how this looks, but its true! I know it is true!”

“Liz, you can’t be saying things like this. Do you know what will happen to you?” The principal looks concerningly into her eyes trying to find some sanity.

“You don’t believe me at all do you?”

Liz runs out of the office and into the school. She runs until she finds Rachel. Rachel is talking in her first period class before the bell rings when Liz comes in panting.

“Rachel you have to help me. Somebody is going to burn down the school on Thursday and we have to get nobody to come.” She speaks so loudly that the whole class hears. Everyone is silent.

Rachel’s face looks as if she was looking at Liz’s tomb stone. Liz sees this and feels as if she has been defeated. What could she do if the person she trusts the most doesn’t believe her. Before another word is said, a large, muscular man dressed in a business suit walks in.
He says, “Liz I’m sorry. I guess you weren’t ready for this again. Let’s take you home.”
Liz gets quiet. She says with the last of her energy, “No, you don’t understand. It’s true.”
The man walks towards her with a shot. “I know it is true. Just not the way you’re saying.” He sedates her. Liz can’t even put up a fight.

Liz wakes up in a white room and she back in her white gown. The doctor has been waiting for her to wake up.

His compassionate voice is un-mistakable to her, “Hey Liz welcome back.” She can hear the sadness in his voice. “I guess you’re just not ready for that next step yet.” The doctor knew that school for mentally unstable was the next step for Liz to get better. This being her third relapse showed him that there was almost no hope anymore.

He met Liz when she was only seven. Her hair was still a light shade of blonde and she had just attended a funeral for her parents who had died in a house fire while Liz was sleeping at a friend’s house. Her black shoes along with everything else was destroyed. Since that day of the fire, the third of November, Liz has never functioned normally. She will never conquer that trauma.