The Beginning of The End

America isn't home

Scarlett

All my life I have been in the middle of all the action. I only feel comfortable when I am facing everything with my friends. I can't sit back and watch my friends suffer but I don't always have a choice. Some things are out of my control. I would do anything for them but when I was in America this wasn't possible. My time there was frustratingly slow. It didn't seem to have any real meaning to me when my friends were actively fighting against a million other things. I still feel, even now, that I have wasted valuable time miles away from the heart of the problem but at the same time without my trip to America, I would not have had the knowledge I do today. However, that will never help me defend against the repetitive thought in my head that if I didn't go to America so many things could have gone differently. I am a leader, I always have been and always will be and I never took a seat at the back willingly.

***

We went round to the twin's house the following day. I tried to be hopeful but my spirit had been crushed. We were frustratingly close but close wasn't good enough. We needed cold, hard evidence and that was proving incredibly difficult to find.

It was obvious that we were taking too long when the boys had to come help us. They had written off their site when it gave nothing to help us interpret our own problems and they had tested every possible other solution. But from their site, we had gathered a lot of evidence and I knew from how many time Adrian looked back at his own screen that he was still thinking about it - churning the information over and over in his mind and still wondering if it still had more to give.

All four of us were crowded around Ella's laptop. Adrian often felt way too close. He had positioned himself between me and his sister and took every possible situation to lean on us. He was being very unsubtle about it and it was kind of annoying.

He would often meet my eye, smile at me and in conversations he would try to flirt with me. He would try and catch me alone when Alex went for a run to work off his frustration and when Ella got a very important phone call, which proved to be very often. Adrian explained how she was the equivalent of the queen in their school and as part of her duties she had to be extremely nice to everyone and maintain a high academic standard whilst also setting the trends for the whole school and keeping an active social life. Sounded exhausting to me.

He had more competitions (arguments) with Alex. I guessed it was their competitive nature but also to some extent it must have been boredom and frustration too. Adrian needed to feel as if he had achieved something even if it was the most minor thing in the world.

Even with four brains, we didn't get much closer to the right answer. We all had our own theories but none of them could be proved without actually trying them out and there was no way to do that here.

I hung on to my phone as if it was a lifeline. I had left millions of messages asking any of my friends to call me back just to tell me they were ok but I received no answers. I was hoping that if we even came up with something true that could prove useful we could tell them but as I usually received no answer every time I called or texted and Alex got the same response that seemed kind of useless.

The conversation often swerved away from the task at hand to stop us all from going totally insane due to lack of progress but I knew that it plagued on everyone's mind. I personally could think of nothing else even when I tried to contribute to meaningless banter all my thoughts were about Stanville and the information on the scientific site. So many things made sense now but none of the information we had gathered would actually help in real life other than to explain why the scientist were so stupid and how they had let this happen even from the beginning of the process with their initial experiments.

It was often awkward when we exchanged words. No one knew what to talk about but everyone was trying to avoid the inevitable.

"Tell us about America." Alex didn't really care. We didn't really want to stay here but we had to. He was just trying to get a non-awkward conversation going.

"There's not really much to tell." Adrian was obviously as bored as he was arrogant. His eyes were cast upwards staring at the ceiling.

"That's not true. I mean you're in Florida, the home of the holidaymakers." Ella had picked up on what Alex was trying to do but she really didn't know what to say. It was quite obvious that the twins thought very little of where they lived.

Adrian shot Ella a confused look which changed almost instantly when he saw her expression. He attempted to continue but sarcasm entered his voice involuntarily. "Yeah, there's Disneyland around the corner, reasonably good weather most of the year round and never a dull moment."

"Shame I was looking forward to a boring life, must have come to the wrong country." Alex tried to be funny. Everyone else smiled but we couldn't laugh. We were too frustrated.

"If you were looking for a boring life you would struggle to find it anywhere especially in America." Although it sounded like a joke Adrian's voice was quite serious when he spoke. I presumed that was just his way of speaking. It was like he didn't really care about much.

"And Florida at this time of year is probably the worst place of all to be." Ella knew how to lighten the mood.

I joined in so that I felt like I was acting more normal but I couldn't shake the thought's on my mind so what I wanted to say came out all wrong. "Maybe we can go to Disneyland when this is all over."

I knew after I had said it that it was a stupid thing to say. The awkward silence that stretched on told me that much not that I needed to be told.

But Adrian pulled us out of it when I appealed to everyone for help with my eyes not sure what to say out loud. "Then we can test who is most fearless - Americans, who are born and breed on rollercoasters, or the English, who love to take it easy."

With his competitive nature, Adrian had managed to lighten the mood easily. Alex's competitive side took over. "I think the answer is easy. We're fearless."

"Of course we would thrash you." I smiled despite everything. For the first time in history, competition had brought out the best in us.

"But the two of you have never been up against Americans. We can make even the most fearless of people shake in their boots." Ella had a feisty, competitive nature too, she was just better at hiding it than Adrian.

It was only a friendly competition but the idea of being scared or running from a challenge brought my thoughts back to Stanville and thoughts of my friends running for their lives from the bees.