“What is all this?”

Mikey and Alicia were standing in Angharad's room. School was starting in twenty minutes' time and they hadn't left yet. Alicia had decided to show Mikey what she was worried about with Angharad.

The only difference was that the countdown that Alicia had seen before had all the numbers crossed out, asides from the last number which was circled several times over. They were having a hard time trying to work out what was special about today.

“Mikey, I'm worried and I don't exactly know why,” Alicia confessed.

They were both going through the stuff that was on her desk, trying to work out what each paper meant. Some were just drawings but drawings are meant to tell you something. It's what Gerard always told Mikey because he was always drawing and whenever Mikey would question him about it he'd tell him that each drawing he made meant something different to him. That they all held meaning.

“She didn't make sense this morning,” Mikey said, remembering the conversation from before.

“What?”

“When I saw her before coming here, she didn't make sense. She was thanking me, saying that I was a nice person and everything. She was being nice which didn't make sense to me, Alicia,” he told her, trying to see whether that was linked to the countdown they were looking at.

They ended up giving up looking for something that would tell them why today was special to Angharad and left for school. They knew they'd be late, but they figured that it was the second to last day before the holidays and that they wouldn't get into too much trouble.

Mikey was just about to tease Alicia about the Christmas present he got her when he heard their names being called and saw that Frank was running towards them. Behind him Gerard and Ray were walking slowly towards them, being the old people they were.

“What is it, Frank?” Mikey sighed.

“Dude, something's happened at school! There's like... cops and shit there and we're not allowed in or anything like that,” he breathed, hands resting on his knee trying to catch his breath.

Alicia and Mikey looked at one another, both had their eyebrows raised.

By then Gerard and Ray had caught up with them, and unlike Frank, they weren't out of breath. “Dunno what's going on, but whatever it is, I'm glad it's giving us today off,” Gerard told them all which had Ray and Frank nodding in agreement.

“So what we doing now then?” Mikey asked after they had been standing around for a few seconds, not doing anything.

“I think we should go check it out,” Alicia said, looking at Mikey.

He got what she meant and agreed with her. The others didn't really want to – they had just been there – but they went with them anyway.

It wasn't like they could see anything as they stood outside of the school with the other students who were being nosy. The police were still there, and what surprised them all was the fact that there was an ambulance there, too. Almost half the school were standing around outside of the building, wanting to know what had happened which had given them the day off but warranted the police and ambulance. They were nosy and it wasn't like they were going to just leave and go home, back to the warmth of their houses. Oh no, they would rather stay outside in the cold willingly so that they could see what was going on in their school.

Though, no one would have guessed what had exactly happened.

And nothing could have prepared them for the sight they saw as a stretcher came out of the school.

The blood was a clear indicator that something terribly bad had happened.

Just, none of them knew what had happened exactly. At least, not until they saw a body bag come out of the school.

And it was only one of a handful they would see.